In the spring of 2007 we treated ourselves to a road trip through the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia. We passed through Serbia on our way to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, then through Montenegro and Albania on our way to Macedonia and Greece. We did the trip Farber style, a day here and two or three days there, but this time instead of using public transportation, we drove our Renault Scenic.
Pardon my French. Actually, not my French. Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait a beau voyage is a line from a sonnet by French poet Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560). I recently came across it in the prologue to Rebecca West’s lengthy Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the best travel book ever written according to our favorite travel author, Robert D. Kaplan. It recounts a journey that West and her husband made through the Balkans in 1937. The spirit of du Bellay’s line resonates with me. I like to think there is still something, if not heroic on the scale of brave Ulysses, at least important about choosing to expose oneself to the vicissitudes of personal travel. Although the mechanics of travel have probably never been easier, its industrialization, by which I mean mass tourism, tends to diminish our experience of it. As people conscious of the sense of adventure and discovery that the tourism industry tries to remove from travel, we struggle to regain these things. Fortunately, we have our imaginations for this.
Dear Friends,
Pardon my French. Actually, not my French. Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait a beau voyage is a line from a sonnet by French poet Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560). I recently came across it in the prologue to Rebecca West’s lengthy Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the best travel book ever written according to our favorite travel author, Robert D. Kaplan. It recounts a journey that West and her husband made through the Balkans in 1937. The spirit of du Bellay’s line resonates with me. I like to think there is still something, if not heroic on the scale of brave Ulysses, at least important about choosing to expose oneself to the vicissitudes of personal travel. Although the mechanics of travel have probably never been easier, its industrialization, by which I mean mass tourism, tends to diminish our experience of it. As people conscious of the sense of adventure and discovery that the tourism industry tries to remove from travel, we struggle to regain these things. Fortunately, we have our imaginations for this. Continue reading Vienna
August 2006
The journey that Kay and I recently undertook from Istanbul to Helsinki — with stops in the cities of Plovdiv, Sofia, Brasov, Bratislava, Krakow, Gdansk, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn — lasted a month and became a test of endurance. At one point, in Tallinn, Estonia, I seemed to be failing the test when my body told my mind, “Enough, already” and refused to keep up the pace. It took a couple of days of long afternoon naps and long nights of sleep before I felt myself again.
In the early morning of July 12, 2006, after an uncomfortable night spent on a broken-down train from Sophia, Kay and I arrived in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
It was our first visit, and we didn’t stay long since our destination was the Transylvanian city of Braşov, a comfortable two-and-a-half-hour ride north in a modern train. In Braşov’s train station, while I was in the ticket office arranging for our ongoing travel, Kay was approached by a man and uncharacteristically agreed for us to stay in an apartment that had belonged to the man’s late parents.
May 2006
A recurring memory from a recent trip that Kay and I took to the Republic of Georgia is of a large pig running freely alongside our bus as it slowly edged around the large, linked potholes that make up many of Georgia’s secondary roads. A free-range pig, unpenned and unsupervised, is not something I believe I’ve ever seen before, yet it wasn’t the most unusual sight we experienced during our four days in this seldom-visited country.
November 2-5, 2005. Here are a few words about a four-day trip Kay and I have just taken to Warsaw. It was our first trip to Poland, and we had been told that Warsaw might not have been our best choice as a destination; Krakow is Poland’s big tourist draw. Despite the warning, we loved Warsaw. It’s a modern, dynamic city, one of the fastest growing in all of Europe, yet there is much there that speaks of it’s past. And what a past it’s had! In Warsaw, World War II is not yet a distant memory, and you don’t have to be a history buff to sense the shadows of those dark days that still linger.
Amasya’s charm and interest derives from several sources, the first being nature. Situated in a narrow valley along a beautiful, winding river, the old city is flanked on its north side by a sheer rock face and on the south by hillside nearly as precipitous. At what point does a rock become a mountain? I don’t know, but I can report that those that enclose Amasya are awesome in their size and proximity.
July 2005
In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson observes that “Earth is not the easiest place to be an organism.” This is especially true if the organism in question is one of us, for as Bryson continues, “in terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless. Of the small portion of the planet’s surface that is dry enough to stand on, a surprisingly large amount is too hot or cold or dry or steep or lofty to be of much use to us.”
Turkey is a land of surprises. It was in July, 2005 when Kay and I drove out of Istanbul in a rented car heading for Gelibolu. Westerners know this as Gallipoli, where one of WWI’s tragic military campaigns unfolded.
