Tuesday Voice: To There and Back Again: Part 1

Ljublijana

By James T. Carney

With all due credit to Bilbo Baggins, the title "To There and Back Again" will work for most travelogues, of which I am creating another to deal with our epic 2004 journey to Central Europe—the first time I had been back since the Curtain fell. I even made it to Prague for a few hours in between airlines so to speak but I was not able to locate my 1967 digs, which were right next to a Russian Tank regimental headquarters. (I always figured the neighborhood was pretty safe.)
    This time my journey was to Ljublijana [Slovenia] (various spellings and pronunciations permissible), Budapest [Hungary], and Košice [Slovakia] (pronunciation), where I saw the rarest of all manufacturing operations—a USS steel mill that made money.
    Well, why this itinerary one may ask? My two companions were Rich Gainar and Merrill Kline, friends from USS—Merrill had worked in the Košice mill and spoke Slovak; Rich was a Slovene by background, and to get between Slovenia and Slovakia one has to pass through Hungary.

We started our stay in Ljublijana by hiking a half-mile from where the airport bus dumped us to our hotel. I did not bring a suitcase but rather my old hiking pack, which made this type of trip easier. Our hotel was in the center of the old section of Ljublijana, which is a rather small city of about 300,000. Our first touring stop was the historical museum, which was a little short on history since Slovenia was really a creation of the 20th century in one of its more stupid moments of liberalism. We had an English-speaking tour guide who was extremely friendly and informative. One of the things that struck me most about this trip was how prevalent English had become as opposed to my earlier trips in 1967 and 1989. One of our Slovene friends explained that everyone took a second language starting early in grammar school and that most took English. The same was true in Slovakia except that it had apparently been Russian policy to prohibit the learning of English.

    One thing we quickly determined was that if we wanted to go into the export-import business, we would make a fortune selling red hair dye to women in Eastern Europe. The first couple of times we saw a woman with red hair, we thought that maybe we had hit some left-over Celts, but we soon realized our mistake. I think the stuff must have been seconds in the U.S. One shade looked bright red and another pure carrot. Almost none of it looked even half-way natural. Slavs don’t seem to have the right facial structure etc. for it.
    After our visit to the history museum, I led the expedition up the hill (which was pretty damn steep) to see the citadel or castle. We got some exercise out of that one although unhappily the weather knocked out my plans for two days of hikes. April in Eastern Europe is a little like April here [in Pittsburgh]. If you are a duck, you are happy. If not, not. I brought a pair of shorts along but never used them and spent most of the time wearing a ski sweater. The top of the castle hill afforded a beautiful view of Ljublijana.

Ljublijana from castle

We then had dinner in a Slovene restaurant. (For those of you who are like my wife’s relatives and interested mainly in cuisine, I had game goulash.)

The next day I undertook my chauffeuring duties and we made a trip to the Adriatic, on which Slovenia has almost 30 miles of coastline. The other 30 miles (including Trieste) the Italians ripped off them following World War I. (The Italians seem to me to have been like the Hapsburgs—they couldn’t fight worth a damn but they always got more territory by losing than the US did by winning.) We visited Perano, which is a medieval-looking city that is a major tourist trap in the summer. Since there are no parking places, I am not sure how anyone ever moved in it.
    On the way back, we took a tour of a natural cave that would have put Durin’s folk to shame. At one point we were 1,500 feet above the floor of the cave through which an underground river was rushing at horrendous speed and noise. We crossed a bridge from one side of the river to another that would have done for the bridge at Khazad-Dum. One woman had to be half carried off it as she became paralyzed with fright. Of all the things that I saw or heard on the trip, the cave was the most marvelous.
    We then made a stop at the stud farm that was the original source of the Liput performing stallions.

Lippinsa horses

(After World War I, the herd was split in two and half were sent to Austria, which now sends the performing stallions around the world. However, the herds are still interbred by visiting stallions, which sounds like a traveling-salesman joke.) While we didn’t get to see any training, we were able to go around and see the stalls. After that we headed to Bled, which is sort of a Slovenian Lake Placid (it is on a lake) in the middle of the Julian Alps. It is said that 10% of the hotel rooms in Slovenia are located there—something that led me to conclude that there are not too many hotel rooms in Slovenia.

The next day we walked around the lake and up to the castle on the hill above the town. It was almost impregnable in the sense of occupying almost the entire top of a hill, which had sides as steep as anyone could ever think of. We then headed to Menges, which is the home of the world’s most famous accordion factory. We took a tour of the factory and I learned more about making accordions than I really cared to know. Rich Gainar, who was interested in buying an accordion, found that the people there were not very interested in making the one that he wanted or even seeing us since we were a little late, they closed up the shop early for lunch, and then the salesperson could not be found thereafter.
    Following this adventure, we headed back to the Slovenian Alps to view the Soca valley battlefield, which was the scene of the 12 battles of the Izono in World War I featuring the Italians against the Austro-Hungarians. The last battle, when the Italians got soundly whipped, was the one Hemingway was involved in as an ambulance driver and the one which is the scene of A Farewell to Arms. A museum we went to there even had a Hemingway room showing Hemingway being escorted around by two to three beautiful nurses.
    Much of the campaigning there was done on the top of the Alps, which are a good 10,000 to 12,000 feet high there; it is a wonder that anyone could actually climb them, let alone fight on the top of them. It was raining cats and dogs on this day so we were not able to take a five-mile hike over the battle field, which is supposed to be one of the greatest walks in Europe. The museum in Karpid was fascinating and the guide there kept it open for us. His family had lived in Karpid during World War I (when it was occupied by the Italians) and he had a lot of stories to tell about the battle.
    Getting to Karpid from Menges had not been easy, as we had to cross a mountain range on a road that sometimes seemed to have had room for just one car in any direction. It reminded me a lot of my drives with Dad in Switzerland in 1967 although the heights were not as high. It was up and down all the way and slow driving. We took a better road back to Ljublijana, where (for the cuisine enthusiasts) I dined on deer medallions. (All may assume without further reference that we had an ample supply of pivo at our dinners.)

Second Tuesday from today (August 6): Budapest
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Copyright © 2013 by James T. Carney

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