Black Mountain – Part 1

Straub (L) & Carney (R)

Bunker and Tower of London

By James T. Carney
Photos by Detmar Straub

For reasons that I do not understand, I have always been fascinated by the areas encompassed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the neighboring lands to the south of them. Certainly, the interest is not inspired by genealogy since I have no ancestors south of the Alps or east of the Elbe. In all events over the years I have made four trips to the area on pleasure and on business. My last trip there, in October 2015, was to Montenegro (“Black Mountain”), which country was part of Yugoslavia but was for most of its history semi-independent. Today it is a small country of perhaps 600,000 people (the population of Glasgow). It was recently the scene of a Russian plot to overthrow the government and install a pro-Russian regime.
    Montenegrins are Serbo-Croats; ethnically Serbs and Croats are the same people but they are divided by religion, because their lands were the borders between the split Latin (Roman Catholic) and Greek (Orthodox) churches. Between the two groups, Montenegrins are Serbs, but not all Serbs are Montenegrins. One fact says it all about the Serbs: they erected in the main square in Belgrade a statute of Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and (with the help of a number of bungling idiots in the governments of Serbia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany – with special kudos to Kaiser Wilhelm II) set off World War I. Serbs historically have been pro-Russian, and Serbia (and Belarus) are today the only countries in Europe that Putin can consider friends.
    My good friend from high school, Detmar Straub, was retiring around the time of this trip. I had wanted to go through the Pyrenees for the occasion, but our schedules would not accommodate that, so I seized upon Montenegro as a viable alternative. Det and I flew into London and spent two days there before taking off with HF Holidays on a flight to Dubrovnik, in southern Croatia[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik], a few miles from the Montenegrin border.

The actor wears a Tudor costume

    We had a very interesting time in London, spending one afternoon exploring the bunker that Churchill inhabited during the London Blitz. Certainly, Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century, even though in many ways he was a creature of the 19th. He was a cabinet minister in 1904 and the prime minister in 1954 – a record that seems unbelievable.
    We also explored the Tower of London, which is really not so much a tower as a huge castle with a series of buildings that have been used for administrative purposes as well as to host prisoners of state.

The White Tower

    It encompasses the White Tower (built by William the Conqueror in 1068), which was the greatest fortress in England; whoever held it could not be dislodged from it. Of course, England, like France – and unlike the United States – has always been dominated by its capital city in a way Americans can’t understand.

Model of the Tower of London complex

Copyright © 2020 by James T. Carney & Detmar Straub