BLUE DANUBE REFLECTIONS -- VIKING RIVER BOAT CRUISE IN THE BALKANS -- SUMMER 2011

BLUE DANUBE REFLECTIONS – VIKING RIVER BOAT CRUISE IN THE BALKANS – JULY-AUGUST 2011

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© August 19, 2011

REFERENCE:

Impressions gleaned in this brief boat trip on the Danube River in the Balkans the summer of 2011 are my own.  I was not familiar with this majestic region, its enchanting history, or resilient people.   I claim no authority other than that of a curious tourist.  I apologize in advance for interpretations of history or erroneous generalizations.  I would invite the reader to visit the Balkans, or the very least to read about its captivating history. 

OVERVIEW

A German friend, upon learning we were to visit the Balkans, said he was building up the courage to do so himself.  I hope this essay helps, as the Balkans have a history that goes back long before the time of Jesus. 

It felt as if we were stepping back in time, or that time had stopped, as we experienced the people and their culture. 

BB and I were on the Viking Cruise catamaran, the Primadonna, along with some 146 others from places as far away as China and Australia, nearby as Western Europe, as well as from Canada and the United States, some as close to us in Tampa as Sarasota, Florida.

There were few children with most of retirement age, many still working.  We met a doctor, professor, several engineers, a nuclear power station director, a geologist, psychologist, lawyer, two high school teachers, several independent business men and women, one running an ADD institution, an accountant, but no other author than myself. 

We spent time in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary, taking side trips on buses – some taking more than an hour – which then required extensive walking, the degree of difficulty posted to allow people to decide whether to take the side trips or not. 

Briefings were conducted before each excursion.  A learned guide would conduct a quasi-seminar in route, which proved invaluable.  Once at the destination, we were given electronic handheld devices with ear attachments to listen to the guide explain the site, its artwork, architecture and history.

Stunning modern cities across the Balkans, some having been rebuilt several times after being laid in waste by wars and invasions over hundreds of years, seemed to hold fast to their ancient cobblestone streets as if a resolute connection to the past.  These streets have survived invasions of the Huns, Turks, Romans, Nazis and Russians.  I twisted by leg in one cobblestone street with my thigh feeling as if it were bleeding inside the pain was so severe.  I walked gingerly thereafter.

BLUE DANUBE VIKING CRUISE AMBIENCE  

People of the Viking River Cruise were well trained and efficient, creating a climate of casual grace without hauteur 

The dining was satisfactory, but escaped ocean cruise liner cuisine.  Nor was there a professional entertainment staff.  Local amateur groups came aboard at dockings and provided a sample of ethnic culture.  There was no need for formal attire even for the Captain’s Dinner.  I packed a summer suit and a blazer, and BB dinner dresses. 

A young lady, Serbian Nevena Cvarkovic, was Program Director of Viking, and an exceptional talent.  She saw that everything worked as smoothly as clockwork. 

Nevena is tall and blond, and in a way BB and I adopted her, or so it seemed, as she treated us special.  She beamed when asked about Serbia’s great engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, one of my heroes.  I knew Belgrade had a Tesla Museum, and wondered if we could visit it.  You would have thought Tesla was family.  Serbians are used to references to the bloody history of the 1990’s, and not to Tesla, who personified Serbia’s greatness.  She made arrangements for the museum visit.

As we moved from one Slavic country to another, it was soon apparent that most Slavs are tall, dark-haired, narrow-faced, essentially thin, and healthy with sparkling brown eyes and telltale Slavic complexions.  It was not uncommon to see young ladies over six feet tall, and young men even taller.  My daughter, Laurie, herself a professional model, says that these tall young ladies from Hungary, Croatia and Serbia are the most sought after models in the world.

I can’t recall seeing a single obese person in any of these countries, other than tourists on board our boat.  We stayed at Hilton hotels in Bucharest and Budapest, where all service personnel were also Slavic.  We never saw a person of color, again, other than on the boat.  We didn’t know if this were a sign of Slavic xenophobia or immigration policy.  

A disproportionate number of young people in cafes and restaurants were smokers, compared to what might be found in American cities.  Smoking, however, was not allowed on Viking’s Primadonna. 

Wherever we went, people appeared industrious, fastidious and orderly.  The cities reflected this with the streets immaculate except for the preponderance of graffiti on the walls of buildings.  Someone asked a guide if the graffiti were of an obscene nature.  The guide acted as if she didn’t hear the lady.

Religion is important in the Balkan culture.  Orthodox Christians dominate Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, while Roman Catholics represent the majority in Croatia and Hungary.  You get the sense that the church is pivotal to the Balkan culture.  The Cyrillic alphabet of forty characters is used in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, while the Latin alphabet of twenty-six letters is used in Croatia and Hungary.

We would sit on our private deck as we moved up the Danube River, which extends from the Black Sea to Germany’s Black Forrest, feeling transported.  I told BB it felt like being on the Mississippi River, which the Danube resembles with its narrow sloughs, ubiquitous channels and preponderance of small green islands.  A parade of barges could be seen navigating its muddy waters, which like the Mississippi require skill to navigate.

The Viking put out a daily Canadian, British and American Internet Newspaper when it could.  It was not possible when we were in the vicinity of the Ural and Carpathian mountains, making it impossible for Internet connection. 

There was a bar on board but no casino.  People could visit the bar, play cards, games on their computers, rest, watch TV, or read.  Some Major League Baseball games were televised.  BB and I read.  She read one book, Cutting for Stone (2011) by Abraham Verghese and I, four.  I can read in flight, she finds it difficult.  It took us 24 hours to reach the Balkans, and 25 hours to return to Florida. 

LEISURE READING

I read Mockingbird (2006) by Charles J. Shields, a biography of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).  It would be her only book.  Fifty-one years later, Mockingbird sells more than a million copies a year.  Only the Bible exceeds it in sales in the United States.  Lee assisted Truman Capote in his research for In Cold Blood (1966), a best selling nonfiction novel.  Lee and Capote grew up together in Monroeville, Alabama.  A first edition autographed copy of Lee’s Mockingbird sells for $12,000 today.

Harper Lee has led a reclusive life in Monroeville in her modest family home, despite being a multi-millionaire.  She is now 85, and spurns publicity.  A spinster, like Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, two other famous southern writers, she, like them, has been disinclined to celebrity, unlike Capote who craved it.

I read the final volume of Robert Wilson’s mystery novel of Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon of Seville, Spain, titled The Ignorance of Blood (2006).  Someone saw me reading, and said, “I’ve read that, isn’t it terrific?”  Actually, it was the weakest in the series.  I suggested he read The Vanished Hands (2004) and The Blind Man of Seville (2003).

The Last Pope (2005) by David Osborn was my next read.  The book is a clever attempt to reveal the secular and political character of the papacy, and the internal fighting in the Roman Curia.  The book has an American Cardinal becoming pope.  He abolishes the dogma of papal infallibility, celibacy of the clergy, entertains the idea of ordination into the priesthood of women, while retiring his nemeses, the old guard of Cardinals.  He also sets forth an agenda of an increased role for the laity, seeing this as the ultimate challenge of the church.  The book ends on that note.  A sequel is surely planned.

The most disturbing novel I read was Jerzy Kosinki’s The Devil Tree (1981).  Kosinki (1933 – 1991) committed suicide at the height of his controversial and meteoric career.  Many are familiar with the film, Being There, which was adapted from his 1970 novel.  He won the prestigious National Book Award, and was acclaimed for his acting in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981), a film about the American journalist John Reed in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. 

“The devil tree” is a native myth about the devil getting tangled in the tree’s branches, and punishing the tree by reversing it with the roots now branches, the branches now roots.  Kosinki’s books are terrifying psychosexual dramas.  Clues are given in his works why his life came to its regrettable end.  Six Kosinski novels read previously, along with the biography Jerzy Kosinski (1996) by James Park Sloan, gave me the feeling I had invaded his naked mind.  With that, I turned myself to learning more about the Balkans.

LOOMING SHADOWS OVER THE BALKANS

 

TITO 

There is something of the chimerical to the Balkans.  It is the site of the legend of Dracula in Transylvania, a book authored by Irishman Bram Stoker, who may never have stepped foot in the Balkans.  Then, too, Winston Churchill made the region more hauntingly unreal in his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”  This cut the Balkans off from Europe and the rest of the Western world. 

The Balkans has a long and bloody history that goes back 6,000 years with few long periods of peace.   The common theme across the Balkans, especially in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, is that times were better when Josip Broz Tito was the absolute ruler of Yugoslavia (1943 – 1980).  His shadow is still apparent.

Our guides explained he brought order, peace, relative prosperity, and most important of all, protection from Soviet Russia and its invasive form of Communism.  The Yugoslavian Federation was made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. 

Yugoslavia pursued a policy of neutrality after the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, and became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.  Paradoxically, it benefited from the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan that helped to rebuild Europe after WWII.  Although Tito’s government was a brand of Communism, Truman rushed to support the dictator with economic and military aid in Tito’s anti-Stalin stance.  Subsequently, US Presidents followed Truman’s lead with Yugoslavia remaining strong, stable and independent until Tito’s death in 1980. 

Rising ethnic nationalism followed in the wake of his death.  This led to dissident uprisings among multiple ethnicities that previously were notably tolerant of each other.

Several republics vied for independence in 1991 along ethnic lines.  Multiple brutal wars followed with ethnic discrimination and human rights violation.  Among these was the Bosnia War of ethnic cleansing of Bosnian non-Serbs during 1992 – 1995.

Most recently Kosovo declared its independence (2008) with only 81 out of 193 United Nations member states (42%) recognizing her independence from Serbia, the USA among them.  Border Kosovo-Serbia skirmishes were reported while on this cruise. 

MILOSEVIC

A shameful shadow in the Balkans is that of the late Slobodan Milosevic.  He served as President of Socialistic Republic of Serbia after the death of Tito.  It was during his presidency that the Bosnian Genocide took place.  Some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were arrested, tortured and killed under the command of Milosovic’s General Ratko Mladic. 

Milosevic died at The Hague in 2006 while being tried for war crimes.  Mladic was captured in May 2011 and transferred to The Hague.  He is now being tried for his role in that ethnic cleansing Bosnian Muslim bloodbath.

Tito failed to groom a leader with the vision and political acumen he demonstrated.  Although a communist, he allowed ethnic groups a modicum of cultural autonomy. 

In 1989, Milosevic rose to power in the League of Communists of Serbia.  He promised reduction of powers for the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina.  This ignited tensions with the communist leadership of the other republics.  It eventually resulted in massive succession of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia from the former Yugoslavia that Tito had crafted so carefully.

We got a sense that tension still exists when a Serbian lecturer, Slobodan Stetic, gave a passionate commentary about Serbia today on the Primadonna.  He asked us how we would feel if 15 percent of our country was taken from us, as he saw the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.  Like most rhetorical questions, there was no answer.

CEAUSESCU

Under communism from 1948 to 1989, Romania first nationalized private firms and then collectivized farms.  Elections were fraudulent forcing out King Michael I, and proclaiming Romania a People’s Republic.  The USSR constantly drained Romania’s vast natural resources until much of the land became fallow.  Farmland was turned into factories while traditional life and lifestyle was ripped from the land and country living into crowded urban apartments.  The natural was made suspect. 

The Communist government established a reign of terror to eliminate “enemies of the state.”  Punishment included deportation, internal exile, and internment in work camps, prison and often death.  The Romania underground fought against this repression longer than any other Eastern bloc nation.

In this hostile climate, the shadowy figure of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, rose to political prominence.  Elena was held in the same contempt as Queen Marie Antoinette was by the French in the French Revolution for her impertinence and extravagance.

Ceausescu came to power in 1965.  He pursued independent polices from the USSR as had Tito.  He condemned the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, maintained diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967, established diplomatic relations with West Germany, and had close ties with the Arab countries and the PLO. 

Lavish building and profligate spending led to soaring foreign debt under his autocratic rule.  To satisfy this debt, he imposed debilitating economic austerity on the already exhausted and impoverished Romanians.  His regime came to be known as the most brutal in the Soviet bloc. This culminated in his overthrow and summary execution of he and his wife after the bloody Revolution of 1989. 

The execution left no doubt that it was meant to obliterate, to punish, and to forever discourage other power seekers in the future.  Two hours after a speedy trial a captain and two soldiers executed the couple by shooting them with AK-47 assault rifles.  The execution was videotaped.

In the 2006 Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, it was estimated that as many as two million Romanians were victims of communist repression with tens of thousands dying at the hands of the state.  “Memorial of Rebirth” is a monument in Revolution Square of Bucharest, commemorating the Revolution of 1989.  The monument was inaugurated in 2005.

HISTORY – ITINERARY OF BALKAN CRUISE

The Balkans is an old land.  Archeologists have uncovered evidence that in the Neolithic Period (6500 to 4000 BC) Mediterranean inhabitants here had sophisticated beliefs about the afterlife, a form of proto-writing, and created unique ceramics and excavated gold.

During the Copper Age between the end of the third millennium BC and the first half of the second millennium BC, proto-Greek speaking tribes arrived in the Balkans.

During the Iron Age, Greek colonies peaked in the ninth century BC with the onset of democracy and the Hellenistic culture of Athens. The Persians from the East invaded the Balkans in the fifth century BC in an attempt to capture Greece, and then proceed to the fertile areas of Europe.  Conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC spread the Greek culture.  By the end of fourth century, the Greek language and culture were dominant in the Balkans.

Fierce resistance of the Greeks drove the Persian army back into Asia.  The Balkans were free of Asian nations for a thousand years.

Pre-Roman states existed in the Balkans from the fourth to the first century BC.  Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, defeated the Illyrians in 358 BC, and assumed control of what today is Macedonia. 

The Roman Period started in the second century BC and extended to the sixth century A.D., transforming the Balkans into one of the Empire’s most prosperous and stable regions. 

The Rise of Christianity commenced with Saint Paul and his followers traveling to the Balkans in the first century AD.  Christianity flourished with Emperor Constantine issuing the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.  This ended Roman-sponsored persecution of Christians.  In 325, Constantine assembled the First Council of Nicacea.  Christianity was made the official religion of Rome in 391 AD. 

Nearly seven hundred years later, the “Great Schism” divided Christianity into Western Catholicism and Greek Eastern Orthodoxy.  In 1054, Pope Leo IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius excommunicated each other.  The dispute was primarily over papal authority.  Today, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia are Orthodox Christian nations while Croatia and Hungary remains Roman Catholic.

Coinciding with the decline of the Roman Empire was barbarian incursions of Ottoman Turks and Persians, Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Germanic tribes, and the Slavs.  Only tribal Slavs settled permanently in the Balkans. 

From 1000 to 1300 AD, nomadic Turks entered the fringes of the Balkans.  These steppe people ceased to exist as a formidable body after the Mongol Invasion of the twelfth century.  The Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian populace eventually assimilated these people into the ethnicity that is the Slavic Balkans today.

The Ottoman Turks were one of the most powerful civilizations since the tenth century with the Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1923) persisting until after World War One.  Then Turkey adopted a more European style of secular government. 

The Turks weren’t gentle rulers of the Balkans with centuries of bloody struggles and protracted stalemates along the borders of Hungary, Croatia and Serbia.  Nationalism rose in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire declined with the various groups never forgetting how the Turks had ruled.  The Ottoman Empire was called, at the time, “the sick man of Europe.” 

ROMANIA

For centuries, Romanian lands were collections of a few villages settled by Romanians (Vlachs) and Magyars.  The Magyars first settled in the Carpathian basin just west of the Carpathian Mountains.  This region eventually consolidated into the Hungarian Kingdom, which included Transylvania, made famous by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.  It is the ninth largest country in the European Union, and the seventh largest in population with 22 million people. 

A Second Bulgarian Empire arose in 1115 AD. with the aid of Vlach (Romanian) fighters.  This new kingdom extended over the Romanian lands and included Tatar, Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia.  As the kingdom spread, Hungary’s influence diminished.  Wallachia and Moldavia flourished in the fourteenth century, a relative peaceful and prosperous time throughout southeastern Europe.  During this period, the Eastern Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople established an ecclesiastical seat in Wallachia.  Today, seventy percent of Romanians are practicing Orthodox Christians.

In the fifteenth century after being heavily influenced by Hungary and the Polish Kingdom, Romania became subject to increasing influence by the Turks, although never conquered outright by them. 

The Kingdom of Romania emerged when Moldavia and Wallachia were united in 1859.  Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared in 1877.  At the end of WWI (1918), Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania.  It prospered between the First and Second World War.  After WWII (1945), Romania was largely occupied by the Soviet Union and forced to become a socialist republic in the Warsaw Pact.  With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the 1989 Revolution, Romania transitioned to democracy and a capitalist market economy. 

*     *     *

We spent our first two days in Bucharest, Romania, the capital since 1859, visiting the beautiful seventeenth century Patriarchal Church and Greek Church.  We also visited the lavish and expansive “House of the People” that Ceausescu had erected in his honor.  The rooms were large with stunning chandeliers and spoke to opulence that escaped most Romanians.

In contrast, we stopped at the Village Museum, an authentic rustic Romanian village with rural cottages and thatched roofs, farmhouses and water mills, as it was in feudal times. 

We had lunch at the Pescarus (word means “sea gull”) Restaurant in which dancers in native costumes entertained us.  Before leaving the area, we bought a water colored T-shirt for our granddaughter, 3, but couldn’t find any for her twin sisters, 6.   We then transferred to the Viking Primadonna on the Danube River port of Oltenita and headed for Rousse, Bulgaria. 

BULGARIA

We arrived at Rousse, Bulgaria in the morning.  It is known for its Neo-Baroque and Neo-Rococo architecture, and has been called “Little Vienna.” 

Bulgaria was a fledgling state in the seventh century, and coalesced into a Slavic people known as “the Bulgarians” by the middle of the ninth century.  The process of coalescence was strengthened by the en masse conversion to Christianity under Boris I Michael in 864 AD. 

In 886 AD, Bulgaria adopted the Glagolitic alphabet, which was devised by Saint Cyril and Methodius.  It became the Cyrillic alphabet in the beginning of the tenth century.  The Cyrillic alphabet was a version of the Greek letters, as the Greek letters were a modification of the Phoenician alphabet. 

In 893, the vernacular of the Bulgarian Slavic language was adopted as the official language of the Bulgarian state and church.

Bulgaria was an independent state until it fell to the Byzantine Empire in 1018.  The Bulgarian state was restored by a revolt of the Asenides in Moesia in 1185.  Throughout the first half of the thirteenth century, Bulgaria profited from the disastrous effects the Fourth Christian Crusade had on the Byzantine Empire.  At the end of the thirteenth century, Tatar raids and a series of mediocre Bulgarian rulers reduced Bulgaria to a narrow strip of land between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube River.  Thereafter, Bulgaria was subjected to numerous raids from the Ottoman Turks in the 1350’s, and finally completely overrun by the Turks in 1396.

Since the Byzantine period, Bulgaria has maintained a state and national identity close to Christian Orthodoxy.  Today, seventy percent of Bulgarians are practicing Orthodox Christians in a population of 7.4 million citizens.

*     *     *

After breakfast, we left Rousse for the picturesque medieval city of Veliko Tarnovo, and stopped at Tsaravets Hills to view the ruins of the royal castle, and shot film of the picturesque hillsides around the town.  Veliko Tarnovo was the capital and imperial city of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (twelfth to fourteenth century AD).  With its stone houses seemingly on top of each other along its hilly terrain, and its ancient cobblestone streets, it was easy to imagine yourself in the twilight zone of the middle ages.  BB and I spent some time on Samovodska Charsia, a street of traditional old buildings and shops and found a T-shirt for our grandson, Ryan.  

Nearby, Arbanasi, another gem, was under the rule of the Turks in the fifteenth century.  It flourished in the seventeenth century known as the “Golden Age” of pottery, jewelry, icons and silversmith work.  Local craftsmen had a great reputation with their works much in demand in Russia and the Austrian Empire. 

The booming village also developed a peculiar architectural style with the houses looking like small fortresses, and the churches and monasteries richly ornamented with woodcarving icons and mural paintings.  We visited the Nativity Church.  Its walls were covered with panels of the entire old and New Testament of the Bible.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures.  A young lady from the region gave a passionate if somewhat “new age” proselytizing lecture. 

We had lunch in Arbanasi at a restaurant that featured rose wine, rose perfumes and soaps and rose beauty creams.  Free samples of all products were given out.

*     *     *

We traveled the night on the Danube and arrived in Vidin, Bulgaria in the morning.  Vidin is a port town on the southern bank of the Danube in northwestern Bulgaria, close to the border of Serbia and Romania, and the administrative center of Vidin Province since 870 AD.  An agricultural and trade center, Vidin has a fertile hinterland and is renowned for its wines.  Metropolitan population is 47,000. 

The word Vidin means “fortified hill” from its Roman days.  Romans ruled it until 46 AD. 

We were given free time in the morning.  BB and I used it to walk in the park that paralleled the Danube called the “Walk of Love.”  We took pictures of landmarks adjacent to the park, including the well preserved tenth century medieval fortress, Baba Vida, the old Orthodox church, St. Petka (built in the seventeenth century), the Vidin Synagogue (1894), deserted after Jewish immigration to Israel in 1948, the Osman Pazvantoglu mosque and library, named for the late eighteenth century Turkish ruler, and a number of other old Renaissance buildings. Yet nothing compared to Stambol Kapija, a walled city with an ancient arch that once you pass through it you felt like Alice in Wonderland stepping through the glass darkly into another dimension.  BB took great pictures of this.  It helped that we had a map to guide our sightseeing. 

Bulgaria has the distinction of being the oldest surviving state in Europe to have kept its original name (since 681 AD).  Today, it has a population of 7.2 million with 70 percent of its citizens Orthodox Christians. 

On board the Primadonna, Nevena presented a humorous portrayal and lecture on Dracula and the impact of Dram Stoker’s book on Transylvania, as well as the world. 

We also had an informative talk by a local Orthodox Christian priest on the differences and similarities between Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. 

Orthodox Christianity does not use church organs but only the human voice as the instrument of music.  The Holy Spirit originates from the Father; Catholics have the Father/Son as God.  Rome is seat of Catholicism; Constantinople is the seat of Orthodox Christianity.  The sacraments are essentially the same; baptism is the same.  Orthodoxy does not recognize the pope or the papacy’s infallibility.  Orthodoxy does not endorse the view that teachings of Christ change with time.  Catholicism endorses doctrinal changes with a theology growing in stages.  Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy see the Virgin Mary as the “Mother of God.”  Orthodoxy does not allow paintings of “God the Father” because He has never been seen.  Other differences: Orthodox do not kneel in church, Catholics do; Orthodox have no “Stations of the Cross,” Catholics do; Orthodox priests may marry before ordination; Catholic clergy are celibate; there are no Orthodox orders of monks or nuns, Catholics have both.  Orthodox Christians make the “sign of the cross” in the reverse order to that of Catholics. 

Again underway, we awakene in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and one of the largest cities in Southeast Europe with a population of 1.3 million.  The city has a vibrant well-educated population with 93 percent high school graduates, 27 percent with bachelor college degrees and 5 percent with graduate degrees in many disciplines including the sciences, engineering and medicine.  Over half the population is under 25-years-of-age.

SERBIA

During the Neolithic Period, the Vinca culture existed in or near Belgrade and dominated the Balkans some 8,500 years ago.  Some scholars believe the prehistoric Vinca signs represent one of the earliest forms of writing systems (dating to 6,000 – 4,000 BC). 

The history of Serbia begins with the Slavic migration into the Balkans in the seventh century, when the territory was governed by the Byzantine Empire.  Serbia occupied territories previously under the direct control of Rome in the first and second century AD. 

The most famous Roman Emperor born in Serbia was Constantine the Great, who empowered Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.  He came to power in 306 AD but only gained absolute control of the empire in 324 with the defeat of his chief rival, Licinius.  While espousing Christianity, he had coins issued bearing the image of Roman gods as late as 320.  His reign came to an end in 337, when he was baptized a Christian on his deathbed.

Byzantine Greek missionaries Christianized all the Serbian tribes upon arrival in the Balkans.  This influence was solidified after the Great Schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople with the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet. 

In the ninth century the Serbs established the House of Vlastimirovic, which evolved into the Serbian Kingdom in the twelfth century, and later into the Serbian Empire in the fourteenth century.  The Serbian realm disappeared in the mid-sixteenth century by a combination of internal tribal conflicts and the Ottoman Turk conquest. 

The Ottoman Turks then occupied Serbia.  In the early nineteenth century, the Serbian revolution reestablished the country as the region’s first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently pioneered the abolishment of feudalism in the Balkans

The Serbian Revolution of 1817 was successful in overcoming Turkish dominance, and gave birth to the Principality of Serbia.  The country achieved de facto independence in 1867. The Serbs were the first people to be liberated from the Ottomans in the early nineteenth century, followed by Bulgaria, Romania and Montenegro.  Yet, the borders were constantly being changed arbitrarily with Russia’s influence on Serbia and Montenegro, and Austria’s on Bosnia and Herzegovina.  The Russo-Turkish War (1877 – 1878) led to more territorial changes in the Congress of Berlin (1878), which was chaired by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.  Far from appeasing the situation, it made war inevitable on a large scale.

As victor in the 1913 Balkan Wars, Serbia regained Macedonia, Kosovo and Raska (old Serbia).  In 1918, it became the pan-Slavic State of Slovenes and Croats.  After WWII (1946), Serbia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito. 

After a series of wars in the 1990’s, Serbia once again became an independent state on June 5, 2006, following the breakup of a short-lived union with Montenegro.  Further anguish occurred for Serbia when Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008.  Serbia is also Orthodox Christian and claims seventy percent of its citizens are practicing members.  Present day Serbia has a population in excess of 10 million.

*     *     *

We docked in Kostolac, Serbia.  One of our first excursions was to visit the Porta Praetoria, the north gate of the former military camp and Roman Baths of the Roman city, Viminacium. The legacy of Rome is clearly visible. 

Viminacium was the Roman capital and military training center from the first to fifth century (AD) with a population of 40,000, the equivalent of 2 million today.

The city was called “The Balkan Pompeii” for the exceptional number of remains and gravesites that were found buried for centuries under layers of earth.  The thirty-seventh Emperor of the Roman Empire, Hostilian, was born in Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) in Illyricum sometime after 230 AD.  He was emperor only briefly in 251 (with Trebonianus Gallus) dying shortly thereafter a victim of the plague.  We visited the mausoleum where this third-century Roman Emperor is buried with beautiful fresco paintings. 

An earlier Roman Emperor, Trajan (53 – 117 AD) was a prolific builder.  Notable among his marvels was the challenge of “The Iron Gate.”  The Danube has carved a series of spectacular gorges through the lands between the Carpathian and Balkan Mountains.  Trajan built a bridge, an absolute engineering marvel of the time, across the stream, as well as a road and canal around the Iron Gates.  The current of the Danube here is so strong that it scoured out the riverbed to an amazing depth of 130 feet.  Navigating vessels through the Iron Gate had to brave whirlpools and treacherous crosscurrents along a 60-mile stretch with steep rocky banks. 

A little upstream from the Romanian town of Turnu Severin, Trajan leveled the rocky hillside and checked the waters of the Danube with a dam, an Iron Gate as it were, which has helped to make the river more navigable since.  An enormous dam has been constructed with an important power generator station here today. 

Theologian Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan.  In Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (1308), Trajan’s spirit is seen in the Heaven of Jupiter.  Also, a mural of Trajan is present in the first terrace of Purgatory providing justice for a poor widow.   His reputation has endured over nearly 20 centuries for his leadership and building genius.  New emperors were greeted with the felicitation, “Be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan.”

The excavation of the Roman ruins at Viminacium is only about 10 percent completed with at least thirty years work ahead according to the archeologist spokesperson.

Many Emperors rose from this region of the Balkans as it became stable by the time of Emperor Constantine (third century AD). 

Waves of non-Roman peoples crossed into the Balkans with the emperor’s permission to avoid the barbarian Huns, who eventually invaded the territory.  The Visigoths followed the Huns, and laid waste to the entire Balkan region.  By the end of the Roman Empire (sixth century AD), the region had become indefensible and a conduit for invaders of the east aspiring to move westward. 

We once again boarded our bus to return to the boat for dinner and a night’s journey on to Belgrade, Serbia, the capital of the country.  Meanwhile, I entertained the idea of this Roman presence here in antiquity.

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The word “Belgrade” means, “white fortress.”  We saw the famed Kalemegdan Fortress looming over the old town with its medieval gates, Orthodox Churches and the Victory Monument.  This was followed by a short panoramic drive through Belgrade, stopping at the Square of the Republic near a pedestrian shopping area.  Here we had some free time to explore on our own, or shop. 

BB and I took the liberty to take a taxicab to the Nikola Tesla Museum.  There we had a guided tour and demonstration of some of the Serbian inventor’s famous inventions in electro-magnetic devices, including alternating current (A/C).  My familiarity with Tesla provoked me to ask questions to inspire our guide to share more information then, I suspect, he would otherwise have preferred.  For example, how Edison sabotaged Tesla’s A/C electrical invention, or Edison’s refusal to allow Tesla to use his incandescent light bulb in the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.  Tesla had to invent and produce 200,000 non-tungsten filament light bulbs in less than a month because of this action, and did. 

Demonstration of the “wow” aspect of Tesla’s inventions was emphasized at expense of the genius of the man and his career.  It would have been informative if the guide had mentioned of Tesla’s fascination with the wireless transfer of power through electronic devices as early as 1893.  Marconi was given credit for the invention of the radio with a transmitter that used the “Tesla coil” that would not have otherwise been possible.  Marconi won the Noble Prize for Physics.  Tesla had earlier published details on the radio before Marconi. 

Tesla’s problem was that he was thinking of a worldwide radio communication system of wireless power distribution.  Considered eccentric and thought to be a mad scientist, Tesla was easy to discount.  It was reassuring to find Serbia had not forgotten him. 

Later, we rejoined the Viking group and visited a small town in the northern region of Vovoijdina.  There, in a neat little bungalow with a small manicured lawn in front, we were guests of the home of Ian Nemcek, the violinmaker.  He makes violins for orchestra musicians across the world.  It takes him two or three months to make a violin with the perfect sound required.

We were shown how violins are made, the wood and other materials required, and even shown a tiny violin made for his three-year-old granddaughter.  He then played briefly for us on one of his creations. 

In the same area, we next visited a country art gallery that featured the works of many local artists including Martin Jonaf, famous for creating figures with small heads but big hands and big feet.  The works were not for sale.  I purchased a small painting in which a naked maiden caresses a giant phallic stalk of corn between her legs.  It symbolized the fertility and power of nature to provide sustenance.

Back on the boat, we sailed through the night to our next stop, Vukovar, Croatia.

 

CROATIA

In the ninth century A.D., the territory of today’s Croatia became part of the Roman Empire.  Emperor Diocletian (245 – 313 AD) came to power in 284 AD and immediately devolved power, as it was known.  Emperors spent increasingly less time at Rome, senators no longer had the ready source of access to them, and therefore of diminished status.  Power was now in the hands of staff members whom the emperor chose to take with him. 

No one established this precedence more firmly than Diocletian.  He replaced the ramshackle administrative system he had inherited into a bureaucracy unlike anything the Roman Empire had seen before.  Out went the notion the emperor was the friend rather than the boss, and out too went the obsolete conceit that the empire had a single capital, Rome.

Diocletian plainly did not find the city of Rome agreeable.  In twenty-one years as emperor, he only visited the capital twice spending in total less than six months there.  The center of power would henceforth be wherever the emperor chose to reside.  He built a massive palace in Split, Croatia where he retired from politics in 305, and died in 313.

During the fifth century the last western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos ruled his small empire from Diocletian’s Palace before his own soldiers murdered him in 480 AD in Spalatum, Dalmatia. 

The early history of Croatia ends with the Avar invasion in the first half of the seventh century and the destruction of almost all Roman towns.  The Croatian people (called White Croats before the migration) settled in the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, surrounded by hostile neighbors such as the Franks, Venetians, Avars (Magyars), while Byzantines try to control the coast and the Bulgarians to the south.

Pope John IV (640 – 642) sent Christian teachers and missionaries to the Croatian Provinces.  Conversion of the Croats to Christianity was largely completed by the ninth century.

The Croats struggled to establish a kingdom under Kresimir IV, experiencing all the incursions the Bulgarians had experienced.  The king wisely allowed the Vatican to influence Croatia.  This act protected the fledgling country by exchanging Papal authority for recognition of the Croatian Kingdom.  The Kingdom of Croatia existed from its foundation in 925 AD until the end of World War I (1918). 

Despite being a Latin rite Christian state, for a time the people preferred features of Christian Orthodoxy.  The priests wore beards, married and preached in the liturgy in Slavic rather than Latin.  This changed after the Synod of Split (Croatia) decreed Latin and the Catholic liturgy to be official, although pockets of Croatians resisted until the sixteenth century. 

The Dalmatian coast of Croatia has always been sought after for its wealthy Latinized cities and centers of trade, culture and academia, and therefore vulnerable to invaders. 

Hungary became dominant in Croatia in the twelfth century bringing feudalism to Croatia with the country ruled by local banns appointed by Hungary.  Eventually the country was split into Croatia and Slavonia. 

With the Ottoman Turks conquest of the Balkans in the early sixteenth century, Hungary ended its rule over Croatia.  Remarkably, standing fast to its faith, Croatia became a frontier to Christendom.  Today, 88 percent of Croatians are practicing Roman Catholics.

The population is nearly 5 million, but unemployment is high at better than 16 percent.

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Once we left the Primadonna in Vukovar (Croatia), we saw evidence the scars of war.  Vukovar, a prosperous city, suffered the brunt of the Serb-Croatian War of the 1990’s during the Croatia War of Independence. 

A self-organized embryonic army of 2,000 men and boys defended the city for 87 days against 36,000 Serbian troops, 110 vehicles and tanks, and dozens of planes that bombarded the city.  Today, gutted skeletal structures remain, remnants of this war, along with pockmarked buildings with mortar shell scars from that war.  It is estimated that 2,000 defenders lost their lives, 800 are still missing in action, and some 22,000 civilians forced into exile in a town of little more than 30,000 residents.

Vukovar remembers especially the “Vukovar hospital massacre.”  Near that city (November 20 – 21, 1991), members of the Serb militias following the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) murdered 263 men and 1 woman. 

   

After lunch, we disembarked for Osijek, the fourth largest city in Croatia, a town known for its Baroque architecture, beautiful suspension bridge across the Drava River, and its neo-Gothic styled Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. 

We were shown a film in the church center of the atrocities committed by the Serbs against the Croatian people during that war.  A Croatian Catholic priest talked after the film was shown, making reference to the hospital massacre, while a young man translated what he said into English.  The scars of war here as elsewhere recede slowly. 

Croatia has a vibrant industrial sector of shipbuilding, food processing and chemical manufacturing.  It has a population of nearly 5 million with Roman Catholicism center to its culture.  Unemployment like other Balkan countries, however, is a problem with it currently above 16 percent.  Back on the Viking, our next stop was Kalocsa, Hungary.

HUNGARY

Present day Hungary became part of the Roman Empire in 14 BC.  Foundation of Hungary was laid in the late ninth century (AD) after a five-century migration of the Magyars from the east.  The Magyars were a Uralic people (from Ural mountains) known for the art of horseback warfare, which they learned from the Turks.  There is a Chinese proverb, “Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step.”  The proto-Magyars wandered not a thousand miles on horseback but ten times that distance over centuries before discovering a homeland, Hungary. 

Magyars are credited with the founding of Budapest.  Tribute to them in the city center is an obelisk surrounded by huge bronze statues of warrior horses with Magyar warriors in saddle.  It is an impressive monument.  When someone says, “I’ll meet you at the horses,” everyone knows where they mean.  To give you a sense of the center’s size, there were at least ten other tourist buses and scores of people walking around with the place still feeling sparsely occupied.

 

By the end of the ninth century, the Magyars became permanent settlers.  The ruling prince Geya introduced Christianity, in the late tenth century.  Geya’s son, Saint Stephen I was crowned king with a crown sent from Rome by the pope in 1000 AD.   The king then converted the Hungarian people to Christianity.  The Hungarian dynasty lasted until the fourteenth century.  The last strong king of medieval Hungary was the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus (1458 – 1490). During the European Renaissance of the fifteenth century, the country reached a high level of culture and political power.  Since King Matthias was not of nobility, when he died without lawful sons, Hungary declined over a generation (1490 – 1526) with the Ottoman Turks gaining a decisive victory in 1526.  The Ottoman dominance in Hungary gradually took hold and would last until 1699. 

The ethnic composition of Hungary was fundamentally changed as a consequence of the prolonged warfare with the Turks.   A large part of the country became devastated, population growth stunted, and many small settlements perished.  The Austrian-Habsburg government settled large groups of Serbs and other Slavs in the depopulated south.

After 158 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541 – 1699), and a period reform and modernization in the eighteenth century, Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, but before the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and its failed attempt to win independence.  Once integrated with the Habsburg’s, it constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 – 1918).  This held until the end of WWI. 

The dual monarchy led to growing tensions between Austrians and Hungarians evidenced by rising national awareness and growing desire for self-rule among Slavic minorities.  This shattered the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Ultimately, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife by a Bosnian Serb in June 1914 became the spark that led to World War I. 

The Treaty of Trianon at Versailles was the peace agreement signed in 1920 between the Allies of World War I, who won the war, and Hungary (a successor state to the Austro-Hungarian Empire).  The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary’s borders by more than 70 percent and lost nearly two-thirds of its total population, among which a third were of Hungarian ethnicity.  Hungary also lost five of its ten most populous cities, and was deprived of direct access to the sea.  The military establishment of Hungary was reduced to an army of 35,000, while its navy ceased to exist. 

Hungary fought as a German ally in World War II, but towards the end of the war (1944) Germany invaded Hungary creating Fascist Hungarian gangs.  Soviet troops liberated the country from these gangs in 1945, but not before there were atrocities.  Free elections again established a republic, but briefly. 

In 1949, the Soviet Union declared Hungary a socialist state, “The People’s Republic of Hungary.”  Imre Nagy, a communist reformer, attempted to limit the USSR’s influence by withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, declaring Hungary neutral in 1956.  In response, the Soviet Union brought in tanks and forced Nagy to resign, then executed him and buried him in disgrace.  Today, there is a bronze statue to Imre Nagy standing on a bridge in Martyrs’ Square in Budapest. 

Until 1988, when the unpopular leader, Janos Kadar, was forced to resign under pressure of reform, he was the leader of the Communist government.  By October 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, Hungary had changed its name to the “Republic of Hungary,” and abolished the communist monopoly on power.  The country’s first free elections were held in 1990.  Hungary is now a member of NATO and the European Union. 

Hungary has a population of 9.9 million with 2.5 million in the capital of Budapest.  Seventy percent of Hungarians are practicing Roman Catholics.  Unemployment as of 2011 is 10 percent.  More than half the population is under the age of twenty-five. 

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We arrived in Kalocsa, Hungary (not to be confused with Kostolac, Serbia) just after noon. 

We first attended an organ concert in the Cathedral and Archbishop Palace of Kalocsa.  This had to be one of the most memorable experiences of the cruise.  The giant organ filled the huge cathedral with powerful pulsating music of Ave Maria, Rosamunde and Serenade, all compositions for organ by Franz Peter Schubert.  The music resonated with such power that it seemed to alert every nerve ending in the body.

Kalocsa is the location of the archdiocese seminary for priests, a convent for training nuns and a college for training male and female teachers.  It is one of the oldest towns in Hungary with the archbishopric founded in 1135 after King Stephen the Saint made Catholicism the religion of the realm in 1000.   

Kaloscsa’s culture and roots suffered much in the sixteenth century when hordes of Ottoman Turks ravaged the countryside. 

A large part of the town was destroyed by fire in 1875 when most homes were constructed of wood and open fires places were used for heat. 

Kaloscsa has an informed and well-educated citizenry with the archbishopric, the colleges, convent and seminary.  People work either in town or on the land outside of town cultivating fruit, flax, hemp and growing cereal grains.  

We next visited Puszta.  The town is often associated with Hungary’s traditional landscape, as the word “puszta” means barren land, wilderness, and a grassy kind of semi-desert.  Cowherds, shepherds and horse herds originally inhabited the land here.  So, not surprisingly, this is where we would find ancestors of the Magyars, the great horseman of the open plains.

We were entertained with great horsemanship at the Bakodpuszta Equestrian Center in Puszta.  Among the performances was one of a standing horseman straddling two bareback horses of a team of four, driving them several times around the track, then stopping directly in front of us in the arena’s stands.  It was quite spectacular. 

Other horsemen performed several feats of equestrian skill, including breaking horses down to the ground, and then urging them back on to their legs, racing around after each other, jumping off and on the horses in flight, and always bareback. 

We then returned to the ship for the Captain’s Farewell Reception and Dinner. 

After breakfast the next day, we disembarked to tour Buda and Pest, the two remarkable and stunningly beautiful parts of the Hungarian capital on the east and west banks of the Danube River. 

The capital is separated by the Buda Hills and the Old City from the elegant boulevards of modern Pest.  From this vantage point, we could look down and across the river to the more traditional “Buda” side of the city.  You also observed the famous Chain Bridge and Elizabeth Bridge, two of many that connect the two halves of this special city. 

The day’s tour ended as we registered for our room in the Budapest Hilton Hotel.  Quite regal in its own sense, the hotel stands next to the Fisherman’s Bastion, a terrace in neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque style situated right below our room on the Buda bank of the Danube, on Castle Hill in Budapest, around Matthias Church, which we also visited.  The Bastion was designed and built between 1895 and 1902, but nearly totally destroyed during World War II.  We could look down from our window any hour of the day or night and see people moving through the castle’s complex of turrets.   

In the afternoon, now on our own, we visited a small-gated mall and bought some gifts for our grandchildren.  In the evening, we dined at a quaint little restaurant on the boulevard with BB still busy taking pictures of everything in sight. 

Our last day was the first day it rained.  We visited the Budapest Great Synagogue, said to be the most beautiful in the world.  It is truly magnificent.  We took a three hour guided tour of the Great Synagogue from Dohany Street and into the rectangular garden.  The structure is massive, the artwork compelling, and the architecture unique.  It was impossible to appreciate its true character in so short a period.  Fortunately, BB recorded our presence with scores of pictures. 

Our guide explained its uniqueness.  A Catholic architect designed the structure.  Incongruously, it had from the moment we entered the feeling of a Roman Catholic Church with pews and what I perceived to be side altars and a central main altar, which of course was not the case.  We had both been in synagogues before but BB didn’t share my confusion, as she is not Catholic and therefore not familiar with the layout of pews and the main nave familiar in Catholic churches. 

Once this part of the guided tour was completed, we went into the Synagogue Courtyard where we saw the “Tree of Life.”  The tree is a metallic structure of limping metal leaves carrying the names of the holocaust victims.  I found it more moving than the Berlin Memorial to the Holocaust.  The Tree of Life touched my heart.  The Berlin Memorial touched my mind.  The Berlin Memorial consists of nearly five acres of concrete rectangular slabs of various heights arranged in a systematic grid on a sloping field.  They are designed to produce an uneasy and confusing climate, displaying an ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.  The Tree of Life demonstrates the connection we all have with each other, and how fragile but beautiful that connection is.

Another reminder of the inhumanity of World War II was seeing the “Shoes on the Danube Promenade.”  This is a memorial of victims of the Holocaust on the Pest side of Budapest.  The monument on the embankment of the Danube contains 60 pairs of shoes in bronze in the styles of the time, forming “shoes of silence” in a row 40 meters long.  Those who died here in the winter of 1944 – 1945 were victims of the Hungarian Fascist Arrow Cross Party.  The war was lost but they still wanted to exert the last expression of inhumanity and hate on the innocent.  People of all ages, were lined up and shot after removing their shoes, then dumped into the Danube, sparing these fascist thugs the bother of burials.  Shoes were valuable commodity at the time, and the reason for their removal.

We had lunch at a small café, did some more walking, and returned to our hotel to ready ourselves for the 24-hour return trip home on the plane.  We had had so many formal dinners that we went to the restaurant of the Hilton and ordered hamburgers and fries.  It was a $50 treat, and the hamburgers and fries weren’t half bad. 

We flew out of Budapest to Frankfurt, Germany, and then on to New Jersey in the United States landing at the International Airport, going through the time consuming and somewhat laborious process of customs, and then picking up our baggage, taking it to a designated area for our flight home to Tampa, Florida. 

Despite the scores of times I have done this, and the many times BB has as well, we are always glad to be back in the United States.  Someone once said to me, “The difference with Americans to others is their confidence.”  I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that most Americans, whether it is expressed or only felt, feel blessed, and it shows.

THE BALKANS, WHY IMPORTANT TODAY

There is perhaps no other part of Europe which non-Europeans know less well than the Balkans.  Yet, the Balkans have been the straw that has stirred the international diplomatic cocktail more frequently than not over the last 600 years.  It was the sociologist Pitrim Sorokin who suggested that we are currently at the end of a “600 Year Sensate Day” (see The Crisis of Our Age, Dutton, 1941), predicting what is to follow is to be a “600 Year Ideational Day” of the creative tomorrow.  With the explosion in the wireless world that Serbia’s Nikola Tesla pioneered now gaining some traction, the Balkans appear still in the mix.   . 

With remarkable accuracy, Sorokin could see the dying sensate triggering the sexual revolution, the breakdown of traditional values, the collapse of institutions, the rise of science and materialism, the decline in belief and spiritualism, the rise of genocide, homicide and suicide, the clash of cultures, the fading of ethnicity and venerated identity, and the rise and fall of nationalism as borders became increasingly blurred.  No place has this story been more tellingly told as preamble to the future than in the Balkans.

With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, political and economic instability followed with tragic consequences, among these Slavic nations with ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs of non-Serbs.  This cannot be denied.  Nor can the scars of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992) with the NATO bombings, or the Bosnian Serb atrocities in the Balkans.  Still, since the year 2000, the Balkans have shown a friendly inclination to the West, especially to the European Union and the United States. In 2007, Croatia became a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.  The people of the Balkans are a vibrant and resilient people and are showing signs of economic and political stability.  It augurs well for the rest of the world.

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