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June 1 - Leaving the United States
June 2 - Arrival in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, walking the streets
June 3 - Museum-going and walking in Zagreb
June 4 - Zagreb--Ljubljana--Postojna
June 5 - Postojna--Bled--Salzburg, Austria
June 6 - Salzburg
June 7 - Salzburg--Prague, Czechoslovakia
June 8 - Prague
June 9 - Prague--Vienna, Austria
June 10 - Vienna
June 11 - Vienna--Budapest, Hungary
June 12 - Budapest
June 13 - Budapest--Cluj, Romania
June 14 - Cluj--Brasov
June 15 - Brasov--Bucharest
June 16 - Bucharest
June 17 - Bucharest--Sofia, Bulgaria
June 18 - Sofia
June 19 - Sofia--Belgrade, Yugoslavia
June 20 - Belgrade--Sarajevo
June 21 - Sarajevo--Dubrovnik
June 22 - Dubrovnik
June 23 - Exploring Dubrovnik on our own
June 24 - The flight home
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So the travels begin again. First things first: who are we? Well, since this is a guided tour, there will be more later but for now there are four of us. (Well, five if you count the limo driver, but I did not get his name and I expect he will not be coming much of the way with us.) First there is me. You can call me Ishmael. That's not my name, of course, but it does give a nice literary feel to the log. Then there is my wife Evelyn. Together we are two innocents abroad with great expectations. We each keep a log as a remembrance of things past. Presumably you will not get too distorted a view of Eastern Europe through the looking glass of our observations. Anyway, you can call us Ishmael and Evelyn. Well, enough of this literary stuff. Also along is Steve Goldsmith and Mary Syseskey. Steve is Evelyn's ex-supervisor. He was with us in Southeast Asia and it looks like somebody didn't learn their lesson! Mary is a new friend of Steve's.
In the van I accidentally fell asleep, luckily not for long. I find on a long trip I can use all the exhaustion and fatigue I can muster. Last night while Evelyn slept, I watched two films. One was THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER; the other was a weak horror film called MIDNIGHT. I fell asleep two or three times but probably not for more than an hour total. If I let myself, I can fall asleep now, but I will keep myself awake until I am airborne. That is about the only way I can sleep on the plane. So far that has always been a pretty good way to avoid jet lag.
The driver had never heard of JAT airlines. Funny, I would have thought it was the premiere airline of Yugoslavia. I wonder which side will get it if civil war breaks out.
Oh, yes, I say didn't anything about civil war in Yugoslavia, did I? Well, it seems that the Croats and the Slovenes have declared independence from the Serbs starting June 30. Hopefully we will be gone a week before that. But it still gives a person pause that he might be caught in the middle of an insurrection. Supposedly both sides like the Americans (lucky us), but when you have a civil war, who knows? It adds some interest to the trip. Back in school, everybody thought of old weird Ishmael as a sort of a simp. How many of them would be surprised to see old Ishmael caught up in an Eastern European civil war?
There was some confusion at check-in. Our bags were apparently ticketed for Belgrade, where we have a stop-over, when they should have been ticketed for Zagreb. The attendant had to go running after the bags to change the destination tickets, presumably from Belgrade to Sarajevo.
We came up to the gate floor after a hard time with a stubborn elevator. (It should be mentioned that Mary is arthritic and often needs a wheelchair hence the need for the elevator.) (Incidentally, she is also diabetic.)
We decided to wait for things to settle down so sat in the snack bar. One of the things that needed settling is the monitor that said our gate was #33, but our tickets said it was #32. Eventually the tickets won. JAT has a reputation for confusion.
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June 2, 1991 (destination time):
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We boarded the plane pretty much on time but spent a half-hour taxiing on the ground. Meanwhile the baby in the seat right in front of me expressed clear disapproval of the situation at a decibel level inversely proportional to his size.
There is a dispute with one of the passengers who insists on smoking in a non-smoking area. She claims she requested a smoking seat. The stewardess offered her a seat in the smoking area toward the back of the plane, but she doesn't want to sit back there. She's foolish. The further back you sit, the safer the seat. Airplanes rarely back into anything. Of course, that is just short-term safety. You have to take into account the cloud of smog at that end of the plane. I guess all things even out.
They handed out earphones but I think they won't do me any good. It looks as if the whole electrical system in my armrest has broken free of its moorings and has sunk into the armrest. Some people appear to get music but nobody in our row does and the switch that is supposed to control the light is a no-op.
As most airlines do with international flights, JAT--the Yugoslav airline--has really packed the seats in and although I have heard it claimed the plane is only half full, there are very few empty seats to be seen, so we are in for an uncomfortable time.
They brought around drinks before. I had the worst orange juice I have ever had on a plane. My guess is that it was made from a powder. It tastes like bitter Tang.
Shortly afterward dinner came, a choice of lasagna or turkey. I had the turkey and it wasn't too bad. There was a nice shrimp cocktail.
After dinner, Mary had the good sense to ask if there were empty seats someplace. It turns out there was a whole business class section that was totally empty. I moved up and found the section nicely comfortable. The earphones worked and everything. The in-flight movie was HOME ALONE. I had some curiosity to see it, but I saw only the opening credits and a scene or two toward the middle; the rest I slept through. I woke up a little after 7 AM.
Breakfast was mediocre but passable. After a while Evelyn came forward. She pointed out the Alps (?) as we flew over them and I took some pictures. Mary and Steve claimed problems with a babushka'ed woman who claimed their travel bag was hers and continued to claim it after the contents were revealed to her. I am not sure what she hoped to gain once she'd been discovered.
I made up twenty-four flashcards and taught myself some of the basic Yugoslav pleasantries and basic words.
We had a two-hour layover in Belgrade. Originally this was supposed to be a single flight with a stop. We were supposed to get a new plane, but it was still considered a single flight. While we were stopped we were supposed to clear customs, according to the pilot of the first leg. When we got off the plane we were motioned to a line for people going on to Zagreb. It took about ten minutes to get to the head of the line. Then a Yugoslav pushed to the head of the line ahead of us and it took another few minutes for him. Now they got to us. It turns out they turned out one flight into two flights, requiring two tickets. They took the first ticket in New York; where was out second ticket? Well, our stub said we were going to Zagreb and we had given up the one ticket we had been issued in New York. They had to think about this one. They told us we would have to come back in half an hour. Didn't we have to clear customs? No, we would do that in Zagreb. Oh, okay. Come back in half an hour. She would hold the tickets. This worried me. I asked for the name of the woman who had helped us. She wrote her name down but said it was okay--she was always there.
Well, we went away for half an hour, waiting in the lounge. We came back to find that the woman who was always there was gone. A man at the front of the line was picking up his tickets. The woman at the front of his line handed him a pile of tickets. He started leafing through them to his. We found ours. I am glad the guy at the front of the line did not just take the pack. We could have been in real trouble. It took Steve and Mary a good ten minutes of red tape before they could get their tickets.
Mary is diabetic so she had to get some protein. The airport restaurant was a dim affair. Without much light there was a somber pall over all. It took a long time to get menus and longer to be served. Mary got ham and eggs and the other three (Evelyn, Mary, and Steve) got coffee. I got nothing because I was not really hungry. Also I was not sure I wanted to trust the restaurant. Sure enough, the bill came to $9 American. The coffees were about $1.98 each. They had served the eggs with bread unordered and charged for it. Steve concluded we had our first taste of the Yugoslav cheating that the tour book warned of. It is certainly true that the Yugoslavs we have seen are fairly somber and dour when they work. Not at all like, say, the Dutch.
After I published my Holland trip log in which I talked about this rather nice feature of the Dutch, a Dutch reader said he liked Americans better. The Dutch seemed to be friendly but were insincere. My response was that is much better than New Yorkers who seemed to be unfriendly and were sincere.
I guess more and more I consider the acid test of a nation's character is how they behaved in the Holocaust. The Dutch and some Scandinavian countries had a better record than the United States did. On the other hand, in my grandfather's land of the Ukraine the locals rounded up so many Jews so fast that Germany sent out orders to slow things. The degree of compliance and resistance in the countries we are visiting is well-known and I will not go into it at this point. Another measure is how often people of that nationality cut in lines. Of course, there are good and bad people of all nationalities, but the Dutch are doing something right so that the percentage of inconsiderate people is low.
Well, getting on the flight to Zagreb was disorganized. One Yugoslav did not have his proper papers. I think he was mixed up somehow in our transaction and his ticket information was with Steve's. I spent a little more of my precious fatigue to pass time waiting for the plane to take off. I will probably use most of the rest up sleeping tonight. The flight itself was about thirty-five minutes. Customs was fairly quick. Then it happened. There was simply nobody to meet us at the airport. We are supposed to be met and transferred to the hotel and it just didn't happen. We saw a bus that had the name Globus on a newspaper in the window. Now the so-called tour company is Brendan, but it is also known as Globus. This turned out to be a false lead. The driver was simply reading a newspaper called Globus.
After we waited for nearly an hour and we'd called the travel agent (who did not answer on a Sunday), we gave up and took a taxi to the hotel. The outskirts of Zagreb look surprisingly like Denver. The town is sort of flat and spread out. There are tall hills in the distance much like Denver also. The graffiti is not as bad as in New York, but it certainly is present. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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