Prague Oct 23 – 28

Prague

 Daniella

The physical description of what we have seen in Prague is in books, on the internet, and in many people’s photo albums. No need to go into details. I will highlight personal experiences only.

We took three walking tours with one company, whose guides were very informative and knowledgeable. The first of them was a tour of the Jewish Quarter with Roman, a non Jew (but nobody is perfect, to quote him) who knew his stuff. When in the first of the synagogues we visited, we noticed that it had Friday night services. We decided to go, especially when we learned it was a Conservative congregation.

On Friday (last night) we arrived 15 minutes before the service, expecting to be tested on our knowledge, in order to gain entry into the service. We were checked for weapons like in the movie theatres in Israel, but no proof of religious observance was necessary. When we got in, a group was seated already, listening to a talk about the place in English translated into…Greek. A Jewish Greek group with their spiritual leader were guests of the synagogue. Their leader was invited to lead the Friday night service. Usually the service is a regular North American Conservative service, but that night it was a Sephardi sampler. I had very mixed feelings about it. It was interesting to hear the melodies as they are sung in Greece, and see the different prayers (a few). On the other hand, Bernard and I are participatory Jews. We like to get right in there and take part in the service, and sing our hearts out.  No matter. We had a Friday night service in Prague in a hundreds of year old beautiful Spanish style synagogue.

Until our last afternoon, every time we saw a tower, we climbed up. Bernard did it to see the view, I did it to get some exercise (is vanity controlling my life?) I enjoyed the view just as much, though. This afternoon we realized how many towers were in Prague, and our tired feet rebelled. We did not climb the mini Eifel Tower, and we did not climb the Powder Tower, and we did not climb the second Charles Bridge Tower. Vanity be damned.

We found many buildings and monuments in Prague hiding behind scaffolding and large plastic sheets. So when we walked by a pink and white building called Paladium, with scaffolding in front, people busy washing windows, and much activity, we did not pay much attention. But then my eye caught a digital sign at the top of the building, with the message “212,680 seconds until opening”. On the next day, the number of seconds was down dramatically. On the third day, when we walked in front of the building on our way to whatever tourist attraction was the order of the day, we noticed that a large bandstand had been erected in front, with band instruments and huge speakers on it, television cameras before it, and more activity. The Paladium turned out to be… a shopping mall, opening that night at 10pm. On our way to the opera at 6:30, hundreds of people were milling about in front of the band stand, and a female singer was singing. On our way back from the opera, we arrived at 5 minutes to 10. An announcer talked, there were many thousands of people, and then the count down from 10 to 0. At 0 a colourful firework show erupted, lasting maybe 10 minutes. The doors of the mall opened and people streamed in to see the wonders of commercialism and capitalism.

We waited until next morning to see the mall from the inside. It is a modern handsome mall on 5 levels, which does not lag behind anything you or I have seen before.

We did not get to talk to any locals, except our tour guides. A pity, because we did not get to know what life is like for the good citizens of Prague. But we did get to eat like the locals. Around the corner from our hotel, and half a block down, we found a small restaurant (7 tables in all), with a menu for the common taste and prices geared to the local population.  The clientele looked like people on the way home from work, whether the office or labourers, in groups of two or more. We were so delighted with our little discovery, that we went back two more times, feeling less like tourists, and more like we belonged.

Bernard:  Architecture and Headstones

There are sometimes good things that come from not having money. I have recognized this for a long time (and have maintained that having big money often is a curse) but in the case of Prague, it is because the city had no money for hundreds of years that the architecture is so varied. They had Romanesque buildings (1100s and 1200s) and then Gothic (mid 1200s to 1500s) buildings. When it was time to tear them down and build new beautiful Renaissance buildings, they didn’t have the money to do so as they did in Paris or Stuttgart or Vienna. Therefore Prague kept the old Romanesque and Gothic buildings as a base and added on in Renaissance style, then Baroque, then Rococo, etc. The old was reinforced but not torn down to make way for the new. One finds many different styles of architecture all over Old town, Lesser town and New town, and it makes Prague one of the most visited cities on earth. The place is quite full of tourists now and it is COLD and the end of OCTOBER! A cab driver told us that there are 30 million foreign visitors a year to Prague, which is triple what all of Canada gets.

This whole trip has become a trip of cemeteries. We visited another 2 in Prague, and I know this sounds ghoulish, we are learning a lot about the lives of people in the past by visiting their graves. The first one was the old Jewish cemetery, which is on all tourists’ top 3 list. People were buried there from 1329 (this is proven, but it could be much earlier) to 1787, when the Austro-Hungarian emperor disallowed further burials in the city boundaries. It is estimated there are 120,000 bodies in this small cemetery, and headstones are in some cases inches apart from each other, lined up in an asymmetrical puzzle, like standing up dominoes in no particular order and facing no particular direction in a small space. (D: Bodies were buried one on top of the other, when space became scarce.) Most headstones seem to be about 50 to 70 cm (2  to 3 feet) high, 7 to 10 cm (a few inches) thick and are illegible. We are told that the Jewish ghetto for hundreds of years was very overcrowded and the cemetery certainly seems to reflect that. Jews were a big part of Prague society, doctors and teachers and craftsmen, but at the 7 pm curfew the ghetto was closed and all Jews had to be inside until morning, on penalty of death. This was rescinded by the emperor Franz Josef in the nineteenth century.

The second cemetery that we visited here was the one at Vysehrad Castle, a beautiful spot on a hill a few metro stops from the centre. There is a Romanesque church from the 11^th century and a Gothic church from the 14^th century and beside the Gothic church is a cemetery where many rich and VIP tombstones made of granite or marble are found. The art on the tombstones is very intriguing, because in addition to the normal religious objects of angels and Jesus on the cross (which many tombs are adorned with), there were also some amazing personal expressions of the people buried there. Busts of the deceased, some non-religious statues, sculptures and even abstract art were used as headstones. Nowhere else in Europe have we seen such creativity in the expression of the life of the person buried there.  Life was probably more sophisticated than we would otherwise have thought back two hundred years ago and more.

We spent 5 days in Prague and felt we got to know the old (UNESCO World Heritage preserved) areas well.

Daniella: Addendum to Life in Novi Sad, October 17

Daniella: Addendum to Life in Novi  Sad, October 17

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was to look at the Jewish community births and deaths registry to find information about my family. For generations, Jews in Novi Sad registered births in the community registry. Although this is no longer done, I found some information in the archives stored on CDs together with other community documents. It turns out that while my maternal grandmother and her 7 siblings lived in the city, most of the members of the family I know of were born somewhere else.

It was an emotional moment when I found my mother’s registration, as well as that of her sister’s, who was born 6 years after her. The registration gave date of birth, their given name, their Jewish name, parents’ Jewish and non Jewish name, and parents’ place of birth. My father’s parents did not register him with the Jewish community. Too bad, because I don’t know my paternal grandmother’s Jewish name.  Also, not many of my family members died and were buried in Novi Sad. Only one is buried in the cemetery, my paternal great grandmother, and my maternal great grandmother is mentioned on the monument erected to commemorate those who were shot and thrown into the Danube in 1943. Others perished in concentration camps or moved away.

 

Novi Sad plus

Life in Novi Sad October 16 to 22: Bernard

Our train ride from Zagreb to Novi Sad was eventful in that our train left 4 hours late. The thing was, Zagreb is modern in many ways and one of those ways is digital billboards announcing what trains are going where and on what track. Our train was to leave at 11:10 AM, according to the digital board. We didn’t know the word for “track” so we stopped by Information to find that out. The woman told us the train would be 2 hours 10 minutes late, but the board did not say that. No matter, that is what it is. The board never did change, but the train didn’t come at 11:10. At 13:20 the train was supposed to go to Belgrade, according to the woman at Information, but when we climbed aboard and tried to confirm with the conductor, he said no, it would not go to Serbia. Without dragging out this story too long, we got to Novi Sad about 5 hours after the original time schedule. Good thing we are not in a hurry.  We are on holiday! (D: During the wait we practically became best friends with the info lady, checking with her, confirming, reconfirming, and plain making sure that we get on the train that will take us over the border.)

The next week or so we spent time in and around Novi Sad. The more we are here, the more we are getting the feel for life in this city. Before we left Canada, Daniella said that she wanted to live like people here live, and in many ways we are doing just that. We have an apartment so we bought buckets and mops and cleaning materials in the market; we shop at the market for food and we set up a dial up internet connection. For cleaning things, say a broom, in Novi Sad one can either go to one of the outdoor markets and buy a plastic broom for 180 dinar ($3) or go to the very fancy Mercator Shopping Centre and buy what appears to me to the be the same broom for 529 dinar. It depends on where you want to shop. We found a North American style small supermarket near our apartment where we buy most of our food. Many things are cheaper than what we are used to, and very cheap by European standards. But big items and luxury items are heavily taxed, so they are more expensive.  The coffee shops are full, and the restaurants always have patrons and prices for just a coffee or just basics are cheap but nice restaurants cost similar to what we are used to.

Have you ever spent time in a second world country and tried to feel what life is like? I did it in 1978 when I moved to Israel for a year. This is different. Serbia is now one of the poorest European countries, with the average salary being something under 300 Euro a month. That is $410 Cdn, about 10% of the richer European countries. It is really hard to know how people make it here. Because Serbia is relatively small, they need to import many products. I mentioned earlier how old most cars are. Along with that goes punctured or non-existent mufflers, so many cars sound like Harley Davidsons as they ”roar” past, even if they are small, weak cars puttering along. We see cars abandoned on the streets. It seems every house has a dog, and there are lots of dogs just roaming and scavenging in various areas, particularly by the river Danube. Dogs wake us up at night as they bark at everything that moves at all hours. Every morning but Sunday cars and trucks start driving past at about 6 AM, and that starts the cacophony. The cars and trucks have either no pollution control devices or have disabled theirs, so smoke spews out and the trucks are particularly noxious to be behind or near.

About half the population smokes. Every bar, restaurant, home, office is full of smoke. There is no area that is truly “no smoking”, although some sporadic signs do exist. Speaking of signs, some are in Cyrillic, some in Latin letters, some both. In some areas signs are also in Hungarian, in some Italian is the second language. It is rare to have English anywhere; they just don’t have any need for it yet. Daniella is good at reading the Serbian in Latin letters, but the Cyrillic needs a Masters Degree.

There is graffiti on every wall, colourful, mostly in Serbian but also other languages. Most of the graffiti is not swearing, it is someone with a can of spray paint (or several cans of different colours) with something to say. Some of it could even be stretched to be called art, but not much.

Things go wrong. Mirko’s choir went to Sombor, a town less than 2 hours away, by bus Sunday to take part in a concert. It was less than 5 degrees outside and the bus heating did not function. The choir froze on their way down. The choir had threatened to take the regular bus line and not to pay the chartered bus. Miraculously, it got fixed, although the bus did not move from its parked spot during the 6 hours in Sombor. Twice we have seen cars go the wrong way on one way streets, not accidentally. When things go wrong, people shrug their shoulders and say “Serbia” as if that were the answer to any issue. It seems to be. And somehow, despite going wrong initially, things seem to work out in the end. They certainly have for us.

Despite that, we drink the tap water everywhere and have had no problem. Buses are regular and taxis are plentiful and cheap. Food is good and organic (they cannot afford chemical agents). People are helpful where they can be. We just cannot figure out how they make it in this crazy place.

 

Excursion to Bačka Topola: Daniella

My paternal grandmother lived her last years in a small town north of Novi Sad, where she was born. I had visited her there in 1972, a year before she died. I do not remember much from that visit, except that it was not a modern place. When I visited her, she wanted me to take a large and heavy crystal vase with me. Being young, I did not develop any feelings for crystal, and did not appreciate the vase. I could not see myself carrying it on the plane with me, with a whole day stopover in Athens, and did not take it.

Now I wanted to visit this town, and see my grandmother’s grave. Unfortunately, the family here did not remember her  last house address, or where she was buried. We set forth on our journey, and found Bačka Topola to be a town which was not so small, with a museum, a town centre, and two cemeteries. At the museum we also found that there was a Jewish cemetery in Bačka Topola. Even though I knew my grandmother was not in the Jewish cemetery, we visited there. The cemetery was not very small, but was much neglected. At the gate there was a small, empty, dilapidated chapel.  On one of the walls there was a large stone plaque for the victims of the Holocaust. Among the names I found my great grandfather’s name, Ŝimon Vajs (Weiss), and that of his brother Herman. I had had no idea when they died. I recognized another name or two of some distant relatives.  Another plaque on the opposite wall was from 1938, naming people who donated money to renovate the chapel. All the graves at the cemetery were among weeds waist high and wet from the morning’s rain, so we could not go around and look at them, as much as I wanted to.  The graves close to the entrance were from the 1940s, no later. I wonder how many Jews were left there after the war and 1948, when many left for Israel.

We then checked the 2 non-Jewish cemeteries in town. To my chagrin, we did not find my grandmother’s grave. The cemeteries were large, the wind was bitter cold, and we did not see any graves which did not have a cross on them, that is, a Jewish area. But I am left with a picture in my mind of the town and the cemeteries.

The vase came back to me, because my mother’s cousin has had it in his house for the last 34 years. This time I will carry it, as heavy as it is, on the plane. It is lucky we have only one change in Frankfurt. Together with a pair of earrings and a matching ring, this is the only inheritance I have.

From Bačka Topota we drove to Subotica, a city on the Hungarian border. The road signs came in triplets: the top one in Cyrillic, the middle in Latin, and the bottom in Hungarian with the Hungarian name which is usually different from the Serbian name. We found the “centar” (tsentar) and parked, looking on the map for the synagogue which is famous for its beauty. You can google Subotica synagogue, and find it easily. Lo and behold, we found ourselves parked 50 meters from it. It is run down, but you can see how in its glory days it was very impressive.

The center of town is a pedestrian mall, attractive and inviting. We walked around enjoying the middle European architecture. We had excellent grilled trout at a restaurant. I still do not have to resort to chicken, as I expected I would. It is quite easy to find fish or vegetarian food even out of the main cities.

I am not sure if I am sorry or not that I am not forced to eat chicken paprikaŝ, and enjoy a culinary walk down memory lane. I did have palačinka (local crepe), which my grandmother used to make,  and another dessert which looks like clouds floating in a yellow soup. Needless to say, it is not good for anybody’s cholesterol. As well, several times we bought on the street roasted chestnuts, to honour my mother’s fond childhood memories, and because they are so tasty.

Tomorrow we are off to Prague, hoping to get away from the rain which has plagued us for the last two days.

 

 

The Adriatic Coast

October 11 – 15 The Adriatic Coast

Thursday we decided to see Istria. We drove along good but narrow roads to a town at the top of a hill called Groznjan, a medieval town which now has an artists’ colony. Very picturesque, very lovely narrow cobblestone streets and houses built in the 16^th century and later. The whole town is old, there are no new parts, and in some respects it reminds us of Safed in northern Israel, but not run down. It was a pleasure walking through the town around 10 am, the artists just starting to open their doors.

We then drove to another hilltop town called Motovun, which is also an old city but this one has grown much more and we found it much more touristy and less to our liking. Great views from the walls at the top of the town. Both these towns were 15 to 20 km from the coast. We then drove all the way down to Rovinj, also on the coast but south of Poreč. Rovinj had another wonderful old town and we had lunch and walked around the old town and up the bell tower to get a spectacular view of the Mediterranean.

Here Bernard stopped writing, and is watching soccer: Israel (0) Croatia (1). Daniella is taking over.

Istria is called Istria in Italian and English, and Istra in Croatian. There is a lot of Italian all over the place. In Poreč the street signs are in Croatian and in Italian. Talk of Italian influence, every restaurant is (also) a pizzeria, even if it is a fish or other restaurant.

Language

Since the creation of Yugoslavia after the WW1, the language spoken here was Serbo-Croatian (or Croatian-Serbian, depending where you are from). Since declaring independence in 1991, and more so since the end of the civil war in 1995, the Croats increase the number of words that are different from Serbian. Someone said that maybe 20% of the words are different now. For example, the work for bakery is pekara in Serbia. In Croatia I saw it in at least 3 different ways. I think the Croats are so intent on changing the language that people try to make up words as they go. It seems the Croats put much effort in highlighting the differences. (B: Daniella is a bit worried about using her language because it has a Serbian vocabulary. More later on what the Croats think about Serbia).

For some reason (we should find out why), Serbs adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, and use Cyrillic and Latin alphabet interchangeably. The Croats use only the Latin. In Yugoslavia everyone learned both. Today, the young people in Croatia are clueless when they go to Serbia, which they do out of curiosity, but the older ones are versed on both. Bernard and I began to identify letters, and worked on mastering Cyrillic, partly from survival instinct. However, a week away from practicing and we will have to start from the beginning.

Money

In Serbia, the local currency is dinars, and the exchange rate is about 2 cents to a dinar. In Croatia the currency is kuna, 20 cents to a kuna. In Slovenia they use euros, as well as in Bosnia. But they take kunas, if that is all you have. It is no problem getting money. ATMs are everywhere, and our bank card always works. What does not work is travellers’ cheques. Nobody, but nobody, wants them. We have not tried to see if the bank would take them. Traveller’s cheques are an antiquated system, which ATMs pushed totally out.

Down the coast

Friday, October 12, we left Poreč and drove south. Our hosts recommended a stop in Opatia, next to Rieka, just as we leave the peninsula of Istria. Many buildings in Opatia were built during Austro Hungarian rule, and look quite impressive right on the water’s edge. From there we had a choice of taking the highway, or driving along the water. We chose the road along the coast. Oh, my! It was so winding, with switchback roads, that there were hardly any straight stretches for more than 200 meters. It was slow going, constantly shifting between second, third and fourth gears in our little standard car. Many times the road was right on the edge of the cliff, with no barrier to speak of, only some cement cones 30 cm high, two meters apart. But it was worth the queasy stomach. We passed small villages and towns, with white walls and red roofs climbing onto the slopes, and the clear blue and inviting Mediterranean under them. There were tons of small picturesque coves.

After a picnic lunch on a pier in Stari Grad we decided to take the highway into Split. We got impatient. We wanted to find a hotel and be able to go to the Oneg Shabbat with the Jewish community of Split, which we had learned about in advance. On the highway the speed limit was 130 km/h down to 100 when you go through a tunnel. We were the slowest car on the road, keeping to my 120 km/h (chicken).

Bernard

Israel lost 1-0 to Croatia and was thoroughly outplayed.

We arrived in Split and found a hotel just by looking for a hotel sign. Before coming to Croatia I had never heard of Split, but we found it quite an amazing place. The old town is hopping and renovated and full of life. It also has some stone and mosaics dating back to the Romans because the Emperor in the 4^th century had a palace there. The Romans also built a 6 km aqueduct which is still in use today.

Split Jewish community

We found the Jewish Community and Synagogue through our hosts in Poreč, and joined for an “oneg Shabbat”, where a blessing is made on the wine and candles and bread and people sit around and eat and schmooze. A man in his late 50s, Mr. Altarac (Altaratz), who said he worked as a cameraman for Croatian TV told us the history of the Split community and of the synagogue there. It was fascinating that the community there started in Roman times. The synagogue has been in constant use for about 500 years. These days, they don’t use it often, the community is small and dwindling, and assimilated, and the young here consider themselves Croatian, not Jewish. He felt the community in Split would not last much longer.

The civil war

The cameraman then gave us a personal tour of the old city, he was so fiercely proud of Split and its history. He also talked about the 1991 – 1995 civil war, and clearly the Croats feel very wronged by Serbia and still hold it against them. According to the Croats, the Yugoslav army made up mostly of Serbs attacked Croatian cities and killed thousands with rockets and snipers. In fact in Dubrovnik, the next night, we saw a memorial room with pictures of what Dubrovnik looked like under siege and rocket attack in 1991 and 1992. It looks very different today, full of life and tourists and bustling shops. Only 15 years ago it was dust and lots of rubble around damaged buildings, with everyone hunkered down underground. In short Split is very worth a visit, it is quite like Venice only nicer because it is clean and without stagnant water. I cannot say it is undiscovered because the place was teeming with tourists, but it is not on the tourist scale of Venice or Dubrovnik and it should be. In fact, Venice ruled over most of the Adriatic coast from about 1200 to about 1600, which explains part of the Italian influence here.

Dubrovnik

We drove down the coast 220 km to Dubrovnik, again a beautiful drive on the water in many places. The road is a little scary and in places you need to slow right down. It is not a highway from Split to Dubrovnik, it is a road, and the maximum speed is about 60 for much of it. The drive took 4 hours. We crossed 2 borders (in and out of Bosnia) without getting off the road or seeing anything Bosnian but some gas stations which charged in Euros. In Dubrovnik, we immediately went to the old walled city and walked around on top of the wall. It took an hour and 20 minutes to walk all around, with the wall being up to 6 meters thick in some places but always was at least 2 meters thick. No one was going to bash down this wall. Dubrovnik was a secure Republic for about 400 years, from about 1400 until Napoleon conquered it in 1806. It was therefore economically successful and had great trade and commerce, arts, health services and culture for the first 250 years. The great earthquake of 1667 destroyed much of the prosperity, but the old city stayed intact or was rebuilt. The walk around the walls was one of the highlights of our trip and we took loads of photos. If we ever figure out how to link them to this blog, we will start to do so.

Later we took a walking tour of the old city. Dubrovnik is world famous for a reason, although we are discovering other places that should be ranked almost as highly. Split is one of them.

Daniella

We did the walking tour with a guide and one other couple from New Zealand. After the tour they happened to enter the same restaurant we did, and we had dinner together. These people are formerly British. We found a lot in common and had a lovely time.

Sunday, October 14, 07

This morning we took a bus tour around Dubrovnik and got a better feel for the whole city. It is built on the hills around the old city. I would not want to ride my bike there. They say that the tourist season is almost over, but there were two or three large cruise ships and other smaller ones, on top of several bus tours, etc. Summer in the height of the season must be very, very crowded.

Our original plan was to drive back to Zagreb with a stop in another nature wonder, Plitvice, in one day. After discussing the plans with some locals in Poreč and Split, we decided to split the trip over two days. We left Dubrovnik after the bus tour and got on the coastal road heading north. Lunch in Makarska, another Mediterranean town, and onward north. We got on the auto rout at the first opportunity, this time driving at 130 km/h when possible. One day the highway may get to Dubrovnik. The drive would not be as beautiful but the nerves would be in better shape. Croatian drivers tailgate, they pass in no passing zones, and most of the road is one lane in each direction, so getting behind a slow truck can really slow you down.

At 6:00 we got off the highway at a town with larger letters on the map thinking that larger letters means hotels. We found the only hotel in town easily. It was clean, friendly, and empty except for us. This hotel is a prime example for our general feeling that things work out. There wasn’t another hotel around for 50 kilometres.

Bernard on Plitvička Jezera

Plitvička Jezera is the oldest national park in former Yugoslavia and it means the lakes of Plitvice. At the park we are driven by tram to the top level of a series of lakes. Each little lake or pond is on a level and at the end of the lake the water cascades down waterfalls to the next lake which will be one level down, sometimes 10 meters and sometimes up to 40 meters down. This is a natural phenomenon and it is quite incredible to walk down the wooden paths along the lakeshore to the end of the lake and hear the waterfalls, then round the corner, go down steps and see the waterfalls and next lake. The lakes are crystal clear and cold, with many trout and some ducks swimming freely. The lakes are surrounded by forest, and the October cold wind had turned the leaves colours. It was an amazing sight and we thoroughly enjoyed our 2 hour walk. At the end a little shuttle boat takes us across the last lake to the beginning. Like in Postojna where the stalagmites and stalactites go on and on, Plitvička Jezera had an embarrassment of riches of beautiful waterfalls.

We got on the highway late afternoon and returned to Zagreb, where our hotel is directly across from the train station for easy access tomorrow and back to Novi Sad.

Croatia and Slovenia

Zagreb through Daniella’s eyes, October 9, 2007

We had booked a room in a hotel by the train station, recommended by one of Mirko’s friends (of course). The best part about the hotel, as we quickly discovered upon registration, was a free internet connection in every room, although we had to change rooms because the internet plug was broken. Our new room was smaller and with 2 single beds put together, but our priorities are obvious at this point! After plugging the computer, 10 minutes walk through a mostly deserted street led us to a large square full of people of all ages. Bernard was worried that the cafe culture has not reached Zagreb, but as we reached the main square, in every direction, except the one we came from, there were streets full of cafes, and people sitting outside in spite of the cool weather. After dinner and a stroll we went back to enjoy the pleasures and freedom (or is it slavery?) of the internet connection.

Yesterday, Monday, October 8, was Croatia’s Independence Day. Everything was closed, including the market. However, only in the afternoon we discovered that the Tourist information office was open until just a bit longer after we arrived. We spent the whole day walking in the centre of town, covering the main attractions of Zagreb with a pamphlet.

Zagreb is very European. The buildings are old and formidable in the centre of town. The stores are modern, and the merchandise plentiful and attractive. It is clean, pleasant, and comfortable. Many locals speak English. We saw many tourists, mostly German, but also English speaking, and a few Israelis.

It is sad to me to see how thriving Zagreb and Croatia are, and how poor Novi Sad seems. The streets and roads are well maintained in Croatia. Some of the newer trolley buses look like those in Switzerland. People look better dressed. The buildings are in good repair. Very few cars are old. Most seem to be newer models of German and French cars. Not many cyclists, for some reason, but even the bicycles were newer.

Zagreb does not have a synagogue like Novi Sad even though there was a Jewish community there since the 19^th century. Currently there are about 1400 Jews, according to its president. We found the building which houses the community office, and a chapel on the second floor, but it was closed because of the holiday.

My grandfather, who grew up in Croatia, started university in Zagreb, but did not complete it because he had to support his widowed mother and his younger sister. My cousin Dina from Israel was born here. The family moved to Israel when she was 8 months old. Last year (2006) Dina returned for the first time and found the house and a couple of old women who remembered her, or more precisely, remembered that the family had a baby.

Cemetery

One of the attractions recommended by the Tourist Info was the Mirogoj [Mirogoy] cemetery. It is a multi denominational cemetery, of Jewish, Christian of every denomination, Muslim, and other religions. We found the Jewish area, and to our surprise it was predominantly Jewish, but not exclusive. I will let Bernard tell this story.

Bernard

They told us at the tourist office that the cemetery was one of the attractions of the city. We were surprised but decided to have a look (everything else was closed anyway). We got on the bus and the stop where we saw the cemetery was not where they let us off, it was the next stop. The reason I mention it is because on this bus route, the main entrance to the cemetery is the middle stop of 3 bus stops, so large is the cemetery. It goes on for 750 or 800 meters along the road and is 300 or more meters deep. There are well kept walkways between all the sections, the gravestones are in very good repair and there are flowers on most of the graves! At first we thought that everybody comes to visit the graves weekly or more, but I later surmised that the cemetery keepers must put flowers on some or most. Where there weren’t real flowers there were artificial ones.

In a place this big, how would we find the Jewish section where Daniella might have some ancestors or distant relations? Somehow, after a few minutes Daniella said to go a certain way, and sure enough, we got to where we were heading. Her nose for this is incredible, but she says don’t ask her how she does it. Before we got there, we have both noticed that on most graves there were more than one name and date of death, sometimes up to 8. Were all of those people buried under the same tombstone and in the same grave? It certainly appeared so. When we got to the Jewish area, we were astounded in 2 ways. First, the area was very mixed; Jews and non-Jews buried side by side, and this had been going on for more than a century in Zagreb. This does not happen in North America or Israel or even Novi Sad, there are segregated cemetery areas. Secondly, on the same tombstone there would often be a Star of David AND a Cross. That meant to us that both Jews and Christians were buried in the same grave! As I saw this phenomenon over and over, I thought that the Zagreb Jewish community had been extremely assimilated and well integrated into the general community; they must have been very much a part of society here since the 1800s. Then I thought about WWII and how the Croats had been very much on the Nazi side, and happily betrayed their Jewish population and perpetrated massacres themselves. How can an integrated and assimilated population that is different only in their nominal religion (many were quite secular) be betrayed and hated so much by their countrymen? It is chilling and sobering to me but I have no answers.

As for Daniella’s ancestors, we saw the name Kraus, her mother’s maiden name, repeated many times, but none seemed to Daniella to be a relative.

Two quick points about Croatia. First, lots of flags everywhere. It seems very nationalistic. Second, there is absolutely no remnant of the fact that it used to be part of Yugoslavia. For example, in Novi Sad you could see on old ads or buildings the url dot YU (.yu), but not in Croatia. Every company name, bank name, website address, everything was cleansed of the word Yugoslavia. This is clearly a proud nationalistic people.

Ljubljana

On Tuesday morning we rented a car and started toward Slovenia. We chose this route so that we could see Ljubljana (Lee’ooblyana) and go to Postojna, one of the largest stalagmite and stalactite caves in the world. We crossed the border to Slovenia and after stopping at several toll stops on the highway, arrived in Ljubljana late morning. We immediately loved the quaint, pretty town centre build on 2 sides of a small canal or river. There was a colourful market, some great cobblestone pedestrian only streets with cafes and of course, the impressive dominant churches. We could walk around much of the old town in just over an hour and really enjoyed it. We bought some provisions and headed to the cave.

Postojna

Incredible! I have been in stalagmite and stalactite caves before, but never one that was 20 kilometres! We got on a train (benches on a platform pulled by an engine) and drove 2 km within the cave to a stop where we walked around 1.5 km to many different open areas with incredible and amazing shapes and colours. The stalagmites and stalactites were so plentiful and each time we turned there were amazing shapes and formations. It is truly one of the natural wonders of the world. We spend an hour and a half inside the cave and really enjoyed it.

Poreč [Porech]

The trip from Postojna to Poreč on the coast of the Adriatic was smooth in our brand new 1.2 litre Corsa, a small Opel. The map shows a major highway and for most parts of the road it is, but you cannot make time like in Canada on a highway. Here, there is a toll booth every 20 or 30 Km, there are border crossings, there is road construction or some other reason to slow down or stop. Cars drive very fast when they can, the speed limit was 100 but many went up to 160 or so. We were happy going 100 and were able to keep that speed most of the time. We found our accommodations (of course belonging to a friend of Mirko) in Poreč easily.

We drove into town for dinner and a walk. The town centre is from the middle ages and is a small peninsula about 8 blocks long by 3 blocks wide. It is surrounded by the sea on 3 sides, and it is like a bit of heaven. The town Church, built in the 6^th century, is protected as a historical site by UNESCO. Our host is an artist, working on the glass windows for the chapel in the Novi Sad cemetery, a fisherman, and has a house with several apartments for tourists, as Poreč is a tourist town.

Wednesday: Biking around Poreč

We went out exploring on bikes lent to us by our hosts. There are well defined bike/walking trails along the coastline and we followed in part printed bike maps. The coast is beautiful and the bike path for the most part follows the water. I must say that when I heard about how beautiful the Adriatic coast was, I thought that it would be very similar to BC’s coast. In fact they are quite different. BC is rugged. Here I would call the coastline “wise”. Every step has been travelled for hundreds of years, people over the centuries have figured out where to put the walking paths, the roads, the cafes, the attractions, the lookout spots. All along the water there were places to get into the inviting Mediterranean, beach or no beach. You could see rugged rocks beside the path and a ladder in the middle of nowhere to help get into the water. Also the path was not straight and made for rollerblades: if you want to walk along the water, it took effort, up and down, using the natural rocks for steps and augmenting the natural path with manmade portions. It really went together well. Along the bike path we passed miniature golf (no big neon sign, just there in the open next to a hotel), diving centre, tennis, swimming pools. All along the beach there are hotels and apartments but they seem to be part of the scenery and blend in to the coastline much more than what we are used to. Possibly because they have been there for so long and learned to build in a way that feels right. We had a great ride and finished with a late lunch at a fish restaurant on the water, with cats begging us for our leftovers. It was exactly how we imagined the scene and even better.

Food

A quick word about food. It is excellent and plentiful and I have no problem getting vegetarian choices, contrary to what the tour books have warned. Today I had for lunch an excellent salad nicoise and French boiled potatoes. Daniella had cabbage salad and grilled mackerel. As I said, we ate on the water in a very touristy city, albeit a little off the beaten path here and not in tourist season. Total bill with tip $30.

Action in Novi Sad

 

Bernard’s Blog

October 7

We just boarded the train from near Novi Sad to Zagreb to start our trip to the Adriatic coast. The reason we are taking the train to Zagreb and renting a car from there rather than from Novi Sad is because people who see a Serbian license plate in Croatia may vandalize the car or worse. The 2 countries are no longer at war but there is a lot of enmity. Everything has extra layers of complication in Serbia, and the reasons are not always evident but are logical in some way that makes sense to them at least. The train to Zagreb does not go through Novi Sad so Mirko and Vesna drove us to Ruma, a town about 40 KM away. Mirko is treating us like he would his own children: provided us with some Croatian cash to tide us over until we get to a bank, gave us his Croatia SIM card so we have a Croatian cell number, and sent us to his friend’s resort on the coast, in Porec, Wow, I have never had this kind of amazing hospitality, it is hard to know how to handle it. So far we have accepted it and just taken the family out for dinner as a small gesture of reciprocation, but we feel it is inadequate, Mirko wants to pay for everything, to carry the bags, etc. The average wage here is 300 Euro a month and Mirko and Vesna do better than that, but I don’t want our visit to bankrupt them, yet they insist on paying (or pay when we don’t even know) for many things. This is a dilemma yet to be solved.

Santa

A word about Mirko. Walking around town or being anywhere with him is like being with Santa Claus, minus the red suit. He as a mostly white beard, a wide smile and a deep, hearty laugh that is bestowed on each person he greets. Everyone knows him and loves him, and he knows and loves everyone. We walk down the street, he meets and greets 10 people in every block. We sit in a restaurant, 5 or 6 people know him and stop by to say hello. And he greets them with genuine joy, hugs them or kisses them 3 times (right left right cheeks as is custom here), then holds them as he looks into their eyes and talks or listens. We are starting to call him Mr. Novi Sad, and he humbly poo poos us. “Novi Sad is a small town (actually it has 350,000, not so small) and everybody knows everybody.” Maybe, but it is quite amazing what a people magnet he is, but it is clear why.

Land of Wine and Honey

Yesterday was quite a day. Mirko and Vesna picked us up in the morning, helped us arrange today’s train tickets, then drove to Sremski Karlovci, a town about 15 KM from Novi Sad. In that town, Mirko has a friend who owns a winery and is a beekeeper. The man’s grandfather was sick in the late 1800s and believed he was cured by taking honey. This “cure” was so miraculous that the grandfather dedicated the rest of his life (40 years) to studying the medicinal properties of stingers and honey and royal jelly and all aspects of bees. He was so convinced that honey was a cure-all that he persuaded the government to pass a law that every home in the region must have at least 10 hives, and that law was on the books for years in Voivojdina, this province of Serbia. Mirko’s friend has a small museum dedicated to bees and the history of beekeeping. He could have talked for hours about the bees, and in fact did, while Mirko translated. It was interesting for the first 2 hours.

What this man also has is a winery, one of the best in Serbia. They have a drink that only they make, called Bermet, which is a variation of Vermouth. We tasted both the white and the red, both were truly amazing. There was the familiar flavour of vermouth but much lighter and a touch sweeter and truly refreshing. I would have loved to buy some for home, but flying with bottles is such a pain now. I may yet figure out a way. This winery has been discovered and is visited by some tourists, and the wine is in much higher demand than the winery can accommodate. In North American this place would have tours and wine tasting rooms, etc. Here in Serbia, the family seems to live reasonably but that is all, we peaked into the home of the owner and the kitchen was really primitive. Labels are pasted on the bottles by hand, by a woman who is also taking care of the owner’s 4 year old granddaughter. Age old wooden wine presses that in Canada would be in a display case proudly boasting the winery’s heritage are here used as garbage cans or storage bins.

3 Hours in the Dungeons

At 4 pm we were to meet a scheduled group to go into the tunnels under Petrovaradin, the hundreds of year old castle on the hill overlooking the Danube that I mentioned before. The castle was built over 90 years starting in 1692. It was to be the buttress of the Christian world against the northern marching Turks. The castle was besieged twice but never conquered. One main reason for its strength is the 16 Km of tunnels under the castle that can hold and provide secret passage for up to 10,000 soldiers. It is a very complex maze built on 4 levels, and was built specifically expecting that invading armies would get in, in which case they would be trapped in dead ends or otherwise die trying to find their way out. The tour started with about 80 people, we went into the main arteries and would stop for the guide to tell us about the history of the tunnels or the castle. I was feeling good: the guide explained that the soldiers who were chosen to defend in the tunnels had to be 165 cm or less. I am 171 cm. It was the first time since I visited China that I felt somewhat tall! We went through some smaller tunnels, but all allowed for the general public to participate. Mirko did as good a job as can be expected simultaneously translating but there was lots of info I didn’t get. The only negative was that it was pitch black in the tunnels and I didn’t have a flashlight, but many others did, including Mirko.

After an hour and a half, we came out of the tunnels and the young guide announced something, at which point a very tall bearded man (about 50 years old and somewhat shabbily dressed) boomed something in a deep voice. Mirko said to Daniella and me, shall we do a bit more? Come on, let’s go, at which point about 10 or 11 of us followed this tall man into the tunnels again. I learned later that the official guide had said that we are now going at our own risk, that the tall man was not an official guide. The tall man, once we were deep enough inside that one couldn’t find their way back, announced that we were going deeper than before to level 3. The tunnels got smaller and narrower. It started to feel like a giant snakes and ladders game, up some iron bar ladder then down a tunnel as we got deeper and deeper. Some places were only a meter high, some narrowed to 35 cm or so (just over a foot wide) so you had to turn sideways to get through the passage. The tall man stopped every few minutes to tell us a story of how people have been lost in the tunnels, or legends about treasure, or ghost stories. Before, with the official guide, people had been joking and interrupting the guide’s talk and Mirko had translated for us, but our unofficial guide wanted complete silence when he spoke. Of course, during his 3 or 5 minute stories all I heard was Serbian, so my mind started to wander. Who is this guy? How does he know the tunnels so well? What kind of person spends his time learning these tunnels? Believe me, there were dozens and dozens of tunnels, each going in a different direction, and there no way to know which goes where and how to get out. And I shouldn’t forget about the penalty holes. The penalty holes were slightly smaller than today’s manhole covers, round and very deep, some you couldn’t see the bottom. They were there for 2 reasons. One is ventilation, the other is to catch enemy soldiers who might have chased after the home army and who were not familiar with the tunnels. So you absolutely needed enough light to take the next step. After about an hour, we were deep deep inside and the tunnel started to get very low and narrow. At this point the tall man talked to Mirko for a while, then Mirko told us to follow him. The tall man was going a different way. I was not happy; our guide (who no one of our smaller group had met before this tour) was going one way and we were going another. Was he a madman? Was he setting us up to extort us to get out? We continued down the narrow tunnel, me thinking about preservation of batteries, would my cell phone or digital camera light be enough to see my step if necessary? How could I communicate with most of the other victims in the dark (no sign language) if I had to? Should we wait until morning before searching, that way any light we might find through a ventilation hole would be a direction to follow, etc, etc. But none of that was necessary. The tall man had gone around through a place that was big enough for him to pass but a bit harder going. We met up with him after 4 minutes or so, but it felt a lot longer. This man was truly passionate about these tunnels, he knew them well, and eventually, 3 hours after entering, we emerged. It was 7 PM and dark outside. I was ecstatic. The tall man hinted that he wanted a tip, and Mirko obliged with a generous one. Daniella told me later none of my morbid thoughts had occurred to her, thank goodness.

Gypsy Music Extravaganza

That was not the end of our exhilarating day. We had 9 pm tickets to a dinner club where a famous Gypsy band would play and sing. I know it is not politically correct to call them Gypsies, the PC term is the Roma people, but here people seem to be quite comfortable with the word as non-pejorative. There are a lot of poor Gypsies here and from what I understand they have many of the same problems as aboriginals in Canada: their way of life is not conducive to getting a steady job and academics. But like aboriginals, they are slowly making progress (if that is what you call the 21^st century, and in this blog I am not going there). Gypsies are well known, however, as artists and particularly musicians. Our seats were right in front of the band, I could reach out and touch the 2 female singers. I was worried that we would be blasted out of our seats, but no, the music was just the right volume and it was so passionate and melodic, it was incredible. We recognized a couple of the tunes (not the words) “Ochy Chornia” and “Those were the Days” but the rest of the songs were as good and catchy. It was a real pleasure and even though we were dead tired from the day’s activities (and the Bermat was also working on us) we truly enjoyed. We left after 2 sets of the band after midnight (and between sets, a 5 man Voivojdina band sang and played string instruments, no canned music in this class establishment) but he show went on for hours more without us. We sunk into the sleep of the dead while Novi Sad fiddled on.

Train trouble

In the middle of this blog, I was getting very comfortable in a quite nice second class car. About an hour after we left Ruma, the train stopped at the border and everyone started getting out of the car we were on. It turns out there was a problem with that car (what problem? What Problem?? I WAS HAPPY!!!) and we all had to find seats in other cars. Of course there WERE no seats in other cars. Then I figured we should sit in the restaurant car. NO DICE. Not until something something something, which Daniella’s Serbian was not enough to understand, so we ended up standing for a while, me eating my sandwich and Daniella talking to a young man from Slovenia in broken English. Eventually, as we made stops and people got off, we found seats and now are even sitting together. Off to Zagreb. Let the adventures continue!!!!

Our hotel in Zagreb has an internet connection in the room, therefore lots of updates today. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

Shopping and Eating

Daniella October 5

Shopping and eating

You can get everything here, the latest fashion in clothes and shoes. In the downtown area the stores are fashionable and expensive. There are several new malls, and I have the impression that they multiply as I write. The young people are as stylish as everywhere in Europe. Some of the older people look like they live in an East European country as we saw in the old movies. Out of the downtown area, you can have modern stores, and you can have literally holes in the wall. A sign over a door may denote the name of the store, and what it sells: bakery, Chinese imports, cafe… Otherwise, you would not know what is behind it.

Food can be bought at the supermarket, the newest looks the same everywhere in the world (except smaller), or in small grocery stores, or in the market. We found a smallish supermarket 5 minutes bike ride away, where we are comfortable shopping, although we also shop in the market for vegetables and cheese.

Our apartment came without a washing machine (we still don’t have a kitchen sink but we are getting good at washing dishes in the bathroom).  Today, after some efforts, we found a pay laundry. Mirko gave us the name and address, but when we got there, it wasn’t it. We got back on our bikes, and cycled to the four star hotel Alexandar, near us, to ask for information. They sent us to the place where they get their uniforms and other hotel items laundered. We found it a few doors away from the place we had been to. With a great sense of satisfaction for mission accomplished, we cycled away to the hotpoint cafe to get internet, only to find that it wasn’t very hot.  The wireless internet did not work there.  Back to the hotel Alexandar, where we could get an internet connection by some pleading  and agreeing to order some food and drink.

There are about a million cafes, and bakeries, car garages, and pharmacies. Sitting in cafes is part of the culture. In the morning, it is mainly men who sit around. Closer to the centre, women may sit in cafes in the morning too. By 11am the cafes are well inhabited. Lunch is around 2pm, and it is usually the big meal of the day which are served in restaurants, not in cafes. So if you go by a cafe at noon, everyone is nursing an espresso, or a soft drink, and maybe a piece of cake.  There are relatively few real restaurants; people can afford a coffee out but not a meal.

The reason there are so many car garages is that most cars are very old. They may be 15-25 years old, and even older. The reason for so many pharmacies?  Not clear, but maybe after the civil war everyone is a hypochondriac… There are also many flower shops and newspaper stands, where we can buy time for our cell phone.

We bought the cell phone in the centre of town, on “Jewish” street. The street where the synagogue is located is officially called Ulica Jevrejska, (oolitza – street, yevreyska – Jewish). I am tickled pink. It is a bustling street downtown and the synagogue is one of the attractions of the city, so lovely is its architecture.

The cell phone culture is as developed here as everywhere, and more so. It is easy to get a cell phone. They are not locked to a provider.  Everyone is connected all the time.  Many businesses use cell phones instead of land phones, so people have 2 and three numbers by which to reach them. Mirko checks his phone constantly, and at every free moment he returns calls. I asked him what he did before, and his answer was that he dreamt about such a device.

 

 

We are starting to get familiar with Novi Sad

Daniella’s blog

Jewish Community in Novi Sad

In January 21-23, 1943, the Hungarian fascists who occupied this part of Serbia went on a killing rampage, and murdered 900 Jews and  400 other Serbs.  They threw the bodies into the frozen Danube. When the ice melted in the spring, bodies surfaced. A monument was erected on the Danube, commemorating the event. All the names of the dead were inscribed. My great grandmother’s name is there. For the last many years, a ceremony has been held on the anniversary of the event, officiated by a rabbi and an Orthodox (Russian Church) priest, to remember and respect the dead. The Jewish Community choir of Novi Sad, Hashira, takes part in the ceremony. My cousin is one of the singers.

Hashira is a very good choir, practicing twice a week in the Jewish community centre, but very few of its members are actually Jewish. The community shrank 10 fold as a result of WW ll, and again in 1948, when many left for Israel, including my parents and grandparents. It went down to 200 souls, but now boasts 600 according to some. This may be due to the generosity of JDC, providing food and other necessities to the poor.  The community celebrates major holidays together, with the rabbi from Belgrade coming up a few times a year. My cousin Dijana (Diana) teaches the “Sunday school”. The day we arrived she erected a succah with the children, which looked more like a tent than a “kosher” succah, but who cares… and got Bernard to help her with the lesson.  I am very surprised at the community life here. During the communist years it was reduced to barely a flickering light.

We visited the Jewish cemetery.  Most of the graves are pre WWll, but a few are even current. It was sad for me to see a grave of an Israeli soldier from 2004, with the army emblem. He died in Gaza, and buried here. I found my paternal great grandmother`s grave, who died here in 1933. It was quite an emotional visit.

Bicycling

Bicycles are a mode of transportation.  Young and old ride them. Like the cars, most of the bikes are old. Nobody wears a helmet. We saw on young man with a cycling outfit and a helmet, which would look just right on a Vancouver street, but was soooo out of place here. He definitely looked like he put on airs. For my part, I am happy without the helmet. There are special bicycling paths next to the pedestrian sidewalks on major streets. And you better use them, even when the pavement is broken, because drivers are unpredictable, and it may be very unsafe to choose the road. For that reason even scooters use the bicycling paths. When there are no special paths, one can use the sidewalks, even the narrowest, and pedestrians do not mind sharing. Novi Sad is flat, as the whole region, and cycling is easy. We borrowed Mirko’s and Hana’s (his daughter) bikes. His wife, Vesna, uses hers daily to go to work. She is Bernard’s soul mate. She rides the bike to work and she is vegetarian…  

Bernard`s blog

Just to add to the bit on biking. Every road is supposed to have a bike lane beside the sidewalk but in most places it either doesn`t exist, is under construction or people are using it to walk like the sidewalk. It is a navigation challenge and we certainly have to go very slowly. We are loving getting around the city by bike, because the city is flat and relatively small.

 

 

Oct 1-3 Arrived and Welcomed

October 1, 2007

Arrived and Welcomed

The flights to Belgrade were relatively uneventful, and we came out of the Belgrade airport about an hour later than scheduled at around 1 PM Sunday. Mirko, Daniella’s cousin, and his wife Vesna were waiting for us. They spent the rest of the day with us and showed us around, took us for lunch and were amazingly hospitable. Mirko seems to know everyone in Novi Sad, a city of about 350,000, and everywhere we went people were warmly greeting him and Vesna. The both of them have an incredible “joy de vivre” and it is infectious.

Mirko showed us the synagogue, which now only hosts concerts and other events for the general public. It is a magnificent building, and on each of its sides there are complementary buildings, one of which was the Jewish day school before the Second World War and the other was community office and recreation space. The community is now one tenth the size that it was before WWII and so it now uses only about half of one of the side buildings. The small community continues to be active, with a Jewish choir, art clubs, and a kitchen where food packages are distributed to the hungry. This latter program is being done in conjunction with other ethnic communities. We walked around downtown, stayed up to 10 PM and slept pretty well considering jetlag. We rented an apartment (part of a house) on the outskirts of town in a quiet area. It is a bit isolated but there is a bus line not far away and it even walking distance to downtown, albeit a long walk.

Monday morning we walked all the way downtown to see what was around. Novi Sad is a city on the Danube river, flat, with a mix of Soviet style old concrete buildings with some very modern attractive ones. There is lots of construction going on. Most people look “Serbian”, wide faces, very white, darkish hair. There are very few people who don’t look like they fit in (although we did see a few Chinese) and in our short experience, most of the people do not speak any English. Daniella’s Serbian is rusty but it and sign language will have to do for now.

October 2

The internet is going to be harder to come by in this country that we hoped. So far we found one hotel with internet and we will have to see if we can connect wirelessly at its cafe. If you are reading this we were successful. Mirko tells us that the people of Serbia are poor, and we are starting to see it. On the streets people dress reasonably well and they appear decently fed, but there are few overweight people, many of the cars are very old (besides being very small, European style) and many things don’t seem finished. Roads have potholes, many houses are in a state of semi-finish (our apartment is one of them, we don’t yet have a kitchen sink but it is supposed to come this week) even though Novi Sad is considered to be the richest city in Serbia. It is not all like that, there are some very modern malls and some plazas and buildings that look great. But this is Europe and we are told that the effects of the war of 10 years ago will be felt for a long time to come.

The other crazy thing is that there seems to be no zoning laws. A house will be next to a business which will be next to a distribution warehouse which will be next to a church. A person buys his/her property and basically does whatever he wants. Just as likely to build a henhouse as a restaurant or a house.

GOOD NEWS. We have a phone in the apartment. 011 381 21 467 254 and can get free incoming calls. The time here is 9 hours ahead of Vancouver, so the most likely time to catch us in the apartment is just before people in Vancouver go to bed, we will be getting up. We also bought a cellphone here 011 381 64 981 5277. In Serbia the phones are not locked so we can use this phone and buy a new SIM card (which comes with a different phone number) in each country that we visit. However we will spend most of our time in Serbia so that is the most likely number that we can be reached at.

Oct 3. We borrowed bikes and took a long ride around Novi Sad today. Very few places to connect with the web. We are having lunch at a hotel and they allowed us to connect, which is worth the price of the lunch to us. We noticed that there are more of 4 things than anything else: banks (dozens of different names), small grocery stores (like Canada was 50 years ago), apotekas (small pharmacies) and auto repair shops (old cars need lots of repair). The city reminds me of Tel Aviv about 25 years ago, lots of construction but inefficient. Daniella will later discuss bicycling here.

Posting now to make sure we get this up.

 

 

Sept 29: Reality Check

Saturday, September 29

Reality Check: Why do I need a long break?

Two months is a long time to be away from work, from my home, from my community, from my friends and family. Why did I feel the need to get away? Was I not enjoying my work or my current situation? The truth is, I have a wonderful life and it keeps getting better! I am bursting with pride over what we have accomplished in the Securities Group at CW, going from 2 lawyers in 1995 to 16 lawyers today. We have built a profile and reputation in Vancouver and around the world as a top class securities firm with the dedicated work not only of our lawyers but of our top tier paralegals and staff. At this point, we are better than ever and the fruits of our labour are really paying off in interesting work, attracting good clients and great lateral hires. Much more important, we have tried to build a group where everyone feels appreciated and valuable, where people get as much responsibility as they can handle and where people can find their own ways to flourish. We have tried to foster an atmosphere of respect with as little hierarchy as possible. I want everyone in our group to look back, as I do, after 20 years at the firm and say that they could not have made a better career anywhere else.

On the community front, I was president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver for 2 years ending June 2007. I set as the 3 priorities for my term visibility for federation, cohesion in the community and demonstrating leadership. From all accounts of those who have commented to me, we made good strides in all 3 areas. Certainly Federation’s reputation among both our community’s constituent agencies and our national partners went up. This was not because of me, it was teamwork led primarily by Mark Gurvis, but I did make a positive contribution and the community made positive strides during my presidency.

The truth is, the last 2 years have been thrilling and positive but draining. As more and more work came to us during the securities bubble, I didn’t feel either that I should make anyone else work harder than I do, nor was I able to turn away good work. Therefore as we got busier, I kept more work on my own plate until we were able to hire and train new people. Every time we hired someone new I thought my own workload would decrease, but it didn’t. I put in my normal full year of billable and non-billable hours (hiring decisions, management, billing, client issues, etc) by the end of September. Having this big trip to look forward to kept me going at certain times this past year when the pressure was great.

I don’t really know what to expect from the next 2 months. We have done little planning other than to rent an apartment (actually we know little about the apartment, Daniella’s cousin who she last saw in 1972 rented it for us). We will get to a strange country and figure it out then. The unknown is really quite appealing. Stay tuned.