The Ghosts of Gorlitz

"There's an old piano. And they play it hot behind the green door. Don't know what they're doing. But they laugh a lot behind the green door. Wish they'd let me in so I could find out. What's behind the green door."

We did the Pack Up and Make the Bus dance like professionals. It felt, in a way, like we were a touring rock duo. Every night a different city, every night a different venue. And here we go, on the road again, and here we go, up on the stage...

Prague let us go easy. It knows there are plenty more just like us scrambling up the ladder, hungrier, younger, faster, more willing to pour money into Mozart-themed puppet shows. Into the station and onto the train. A train this time! We felt like royalty. Choo plus choo, y'all.

The connection city was Dresden, a city forever associated in my mind with Slaughterhouse Five, of course. We made a dumb joke calling the Firebombing of Dresden the original "f-bomb." It's the sort of thing sleep-deprived train people like to giggle at between chocolate bars and dishwater coffee.

                                                     

After Dresden, we had to switch again at something called Bischofswerda, a small town with a great water closet. And then... we were on our way to Gorlitz! For realz.

It's a "secret" little German town that didn't get f-bombed and is known around Germany as "Gorliwood," since it's been used by location scouts as a kind of "Every-Europe." The Grand Budapest Hotel was shot here, sections of Inglorious Basterds, The Reader, etc. Picturesque and "preserved."

I wanted to see it on my birthday, but we worked it into the back end, and that was the wise choice weather-wise. Blue-ass skies. The entrance hall at the train station was one of the highlights of the trip. Spectacular vaulted-ass ceiling with stunning cerulean-and-gold-inlay patterns and an old-school clock. Thrilling, really.

                                                
We got a taxi from a slovenly German Cabbie from central casting. Fitting for a movie town. Sandwich stains on his shirt. Maybe he was looking to get some work as an extra. He drove us past an insane statue of a woman with hooves wearing a gas mask. I was in heaven.

We had to hotel it for this leg, since (for some reason) there wasn't a single airbnb being offered. In hindsight, we should have seen it as a red flag, but we're fore-sighters! Reasonable enough place, but the concierge told us right away that the place was cash only. Cash only, he said. Ok.

We were out of cash by now. Just one day left. So, ok. We'll get some more. s'cool. In hindsight, we should have seen this as a red flag.

s'flag.

After a quick "Slovenian Bath" in the sink, we got out into it. Plenty of daylight hours available. Our place was, it turned out, preeety far from the action, but no matter! We were in Gorlitz, on a beautiful day, a day blessed by the Lord, and... why were all these shops boarded up with plywood? No matter, the autumn leaves drifted in a riot of color, and why was building after building abandoned and in a strange state of disrepair? Did that cat in the window have a human face?

The whole place felt kind of... haunted. But, no matter. Plenty of daylight hours available. We delighted in an old brick cathedral, surrounded by trees and framed by bright orange and yellow branches. A cheerily painted sidewalk called attention to a green door with intricate carvings.

Green door, what's that secret you're keeping? Knocked once, tried to tell 'em I'd been there. Door slam (hospitality's thin there). Wonder, just what's going on in there. 

Made our way through a pleasant little park and toward the Scenic Downtown. And here... this was the Gorlitz of Legend!

Cobblestones! Towers! Mysterious clocks! Museums! More Museums! Taller towers! Seriously insane clocks! One of the clocks had a face on its face, and the eyes glowed red and the mouth opened whenever the minute hand moved forward. It was wild. Huge orange buildings festooned with stag's heads! Serious details and color! Magical doorways! A bridge! A huge church with twin Teutonic spires. 

We celebrated with pierogies and tomato soup on the patio of a little cafe. They were filming something in a plaza across from us, but everyone was on break. Gorlitz is Gorliwood! Just like we'd been promised. 

Tooled around in the gloaming, enjoying the weirdo vaulting and architecture and towers, towers, towers. I stalked a tuxedo kitty into a private garden. 

A woman on crutches approached us and told us all about a secret church that "tourists always miss" and that her son has an American girlfriend. It took me a few moments to realize she had spoken in German the whole time. And I had understood. It only took two weeks, but my old high school skills were BACK, baby!  

And those magical moments were what we wanted from this interesting quarter of this interesting place. It would be... the last of the magic. Gorlitz soon became a Sartrean place of strangeness.

Headed back to the room, figuring we'd rest a little before heading back out for dinner. But the walk back.... took a long time. It took, I suppose, the same amount of time as it did to get out there, but everything seemed even more haunted and deserted and boarded up and abandoned the further we got from the Fancy Filmin' spot. 

I reckon we were off-season and the place is kind of in a downturn. It probably gets bursts of cash from random film productions, then turns back into a gritty concrete pumpkin. It started to feel sort of.. depressing. I recognize the privilege inherent in that. Like, it's not cool to parachute into a place and expect it to cater to your tastes. 

Pardon me, does your fernet have wi-fi? Ok. Can you please bring us a jar of hazelnut butter? With wi-fi.

I glanced into a bar and thrilled to see broken-nosed roughnecks crowding the counter. One dude even had tape across the bridge of his nose. Eeeee. s'tape! 

It really felt like the walk back was almost thirty minutes longer, as if the sidewalks had... elongated somehow, like we were being... mystically delayed. Maybe I HADN'T understood that woman earlier. Maybe she spoke in some sort of fairy every-tongue. Maybe the Hoof-Person statue had trapped us in a snowglobe where we were doomed to forever walk the half-charcoal streets of Shadow Gorlitz.

Hotel finally showed up, and we realized we'd never seen an ATM (or bank). All right. All right, we would find one at dinner. Right? Surely.

In the room, I did some writing while Sara rested. Earlier, I had written a confessional post on social media about the misogyny I've exhibited in previous relationships. I was moved to talk about it as part of the metoo movement.

Some folks interpreted it as maybe "too confessional" or as further misogyny in the form of a dude trying to hijack the stage of what should be a women's movement. And several people thought it may be representative of the person I am now.

So, there was some social fallout, and I don't bring it up now to re-litigate it but because it put a kind of weight on our energy and colored our mood. I responded to a few messages and privatized the post.

I don't regret it. It was honest, and it was my life. But it wasn't entirely my story to tell.

While I was cleaning that up, Sara went out in search of food. She was... unsuccessful. When she returned about 45 minutes later, it was only to say she had done blocks and blocks in the dark finding only closed restaurants and a witch-wind whistling through the windows of long-empty row-houses.

Were we in Innsmouth? Was Dagon going to rise from the river? Was the Doom that came to Sarnath to be the Doom that came to Sara and Simon? I pictured shutters closing and cloaked folks hurrying away with sad bundles held tightly in their arms.

She said she had only come back to say she was going back out again and that it might take another hour, but two hours was too long to stay away. Thus the check-in. Cool.

I asked if she wanted me to go with her, and she said she wanted to see it through herself. Which I respected. She left, and I cleared some sparkles.

Ten minutes later, she was back.

The dudes from the Broken Nose Bar had started shouting at her, the moment she walked by it alone. So.. continuing along an endless stretch of squatter's warrens and the occasional foodless Jagermeister factory felt...unsafe. s'dangerous. 

So, we ate some cashews and raisins and called it a Gorlitz. 

In the morning there was a free breakfast of cold cuts and cold cuts. I had the cold cuts. While she took the hottest shower in showerdom, I went off in search of an ATM. I was walking for a long time. It felt almost like that labyrinthine medina in Fez. Disorienting high walls and nothing resembling an ATM or... civilization. 

I eventually came to a crossroads and saw a casino. Surely such a place would have a cash machine. 

Inside... it was a surreal climb up dark stairs and a weird wandering in what felt like a purgatory of empty rooms and slowly blinking slot machines. It was like moving your character in a video game through a map in which you've already cleared all the monsters. 

Found an ATM, swiped my card and prayed to the Gorlitz God that the bills that came out would be spendable money and not Casino Cash. Here you go, hotel man. I know it's not the Euros you asked for, but it's something better. Something worth a lot more, potentially. 

OH, we saw signs for the Slovenian lottery throughout the trip,  and it never failed to crack us up that the logo was a three-leaf clover. It was like the message was: "Expect normal results. You will probably lose. Why would you think your experience would be exceptional? Are you an outlier? Almost certainly not. 

Go ahead and buy a ticket but, you know, the result will be very common. Maybe look at it as confirmation that you are normal and connected to everyone else in your un-exceptionalism. 

Also, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one being. But they are unlikely to assist you." 

Anyway, the money never came out! Instead, a message popped up in English that said: "ATM Coming Soon to This Location." On the screen of the ATM in that location. Lunacy. I got the fuck out of there. 

So, I had struck out and had to go back to the hotel. I had been gone about an hour and returned empty-handed. It was the same as she had experienced the previous night. So, I was like, I have to take a different road now. Brb.. maybe. So, off I went back to the train station. I prayed to Hoofzilla on the way, and she blessed me with a functioning machine in the corner of the platform. 

It had taken almost ninety minutes to get the money. Kee-rist. Paid the dude and got the hoof out of Gorlitz. I won't forget the charm of that movie set they call downtown, but nor will I forget the creeping dread of everything around it. 

A fascinating contrast and a strange climax to what was a remarkably fun trip with many beautiful sights. 

It was also a great enhancement of our relationship. It's rare to find someone who likes to travel the same way you do, someone happy to swing and miss with the knowledge that even if you strike out, there's another at-bat coming, and now you know what the pitcher has. He's shown his cards, and now he's yours to toy with. 

The rest was 36 hours of logistics. Planes, a clip-shop called the Ibis hotel, and coloring books. 

A very fine trip, and I was promoted at work while I was away. I should leave the country more often. Kyiv next time, Gorlitz willing. 

So long, sacher tortes! 

Pilgrim's Pragueress

'There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.'

There was a mouse on the stairs at the home in Graz. It ran across my path, and I gave a human scream. Sara asked me what was wrong, and I said, "A mouse," and she said, "This is the kind of place where I would expect to see a mouse," and I thought my scream, if slowed down by a computer, would be understood to have said: "Sara, your having imagined a mouse here has, perhaps, manifested one. It has startled me on the stairs."

Most of this day was spent on a bus from Graz and toward Prague, a lengthy-but-by-now-familiar trek. This second half of the journey was all about deciding what we wanted to read and where we wanted to sleep and aiming ourselves in that direction. If we were going to make Gorlitz in time, we would need a Big Push, and this was it.

Prague was the best choice, since we knew our way around already and wouldn't feel pressure to run around lest we "waste it." There was some sense we could have squeezed a little more out of Graz, but we had bigger chops to hang from even brighter-burning gallows.

A peaceful drift. Autumn colors streaked by outside. MacArthur Park melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing flowing down. I cracked open What is the What, a 500-page novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan. It was to be the last thing I started and finished on the trip. The books were all politics, travelogues, and fictionalized politics. I reckon these are the things I don't have the patience for at home, but with the Patience of the Road, one can achieve great things. 

Or be driven to them. On a bus. 

The German word for "rest stop" or "break" is "pause," and is pronounced "powza." It became a great favorite of ours, and every time a driver mumbled that he was pulling over to smoke, ("pause, funf minuten") we mouthed the word "powza" to one another. 

We adopted it ourselves, and on the long walk from the Prague train station (past the Benches of Experience), whenever Sara wanted to rest, she would say, "I need a powza," and I would know what she meant. 

The overnight place in Prague 2.0 was in the ass-end of town, because we didn't need anything special. Got to the building, and the host's name wasn't on the buzzers. So, I played the ignorant traveler card and mashed all the buttons. A dude answered:

"Ha lo"

Hey there. Is this Adam?

"No." 

....

"..."

Do you... know which apartm....

"No."

...

"I think he lives on two. I will open the door and you will go to two." 

Thank you. 

"..."

(Door opens)

I loved the strange stillness of that. The finality of his "no" followed by the expectation we would ask a followup, but... waiting for the followup to be asked before acting. A strange formality.

Adam was on Two, just as the Formal Faceless Man had prophesied! Adam was baking a sweet-smelling bread. "Well done," he said, "Many do not even find the building, but here you are." Here we were. Dumped our bags, threw a load of laundry in the hopper, and without further powza hopped on down to a fancy burger joint. 

Fries with mayonnaise! Burgers with harissa! Twenty years ago, I got a steak with a baked potato and broccoli with two beers for under five bucks. That Prague don't exist no more. But this one is nice. 

Burger joint was packed with moon-eyed couples making moon eyes at one another. A very fine meal and an easy exit. Clothes were mostly dry. We draped them on plastic furniture on the balcony and let the night air do its worst. In the distance, the spires of an unnameable church loomed and sent, we hoped, drying energy. 

Slept in the Sleep Republic.

In the morning, I wrote at a little desk while Sara made the coffee-hop. I reflected on the makeshift desks and the discipline to write on them. I sure eat less and write more when I'm on the road. It reminds me of that awesome ending to that Flannery O' Connor short story:

"She could have been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life."

At home, I need, like, a fancy desk and the "right" music on and the "right" balance of drinks and temperature to get a few lines down. On the road, I produce volumes while waiting for coffee and balancing the laptop on an ironing board. If only it had been someone there to shoot me every minute of my life.

We made the walk back to the Train Station with almost no powzas. Health had returned to her powerful frame! How powerfully she now strode the ragged streets of stone! This place had been the site of our Escape Room-style puzzle hunt to find the bus to Munich, but finding the platform to Gorlitz was no problem now. Not this time!

Just try to keep us off. (You can't). As the train pulled away, it felt like a victory. After the failure to navigate passage to Gorlitz a week ago from Berlin, we had made it happen. It meant there was only one Pula in my life. Gorlitz wouldn't be a Pula!

And for that, I was very grateful. Great chunks of What is the What broke away as the Czech Republic released its hold. Farewell, Old Girl. Farewell, City of Towers, City of Faceless Prophets. Farewell.

You were the launching pad a pair of nesting eagles needed. Be the powza you want to see in this world.

The Graz is Always Greener

"Everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.”

Around this time, Sara was fighting some flu symptoms. There's a lot of go go go on these trips, and rubbing on surfaces on public transportation and different pollen and radical changes in temperature.

I can only handle it, because I use the British colonial exit-strategy and keep all of my diseases fighting one another. Until they completely eradicate one another, they'll be damned if one gets the upper hand and the honor of getting me sick. 

But she is a healthy person, so it's normal, and she plans ahead and packs medicine. Like, a whole mini-pharmacy of ibuprofen and anti-radiation pills and mosquito netting and a flak jacket. It put the three-year old unwrapped Ricola lozenge I found in a pouch of my backpack to shame. 

This comes into play a little, because we found ourselves sniffling on the streets of Trieste with her meds on a luggage rack back in the bahnhof. 

But why were we there?

The original plan, of course, had been to fly from Berlin to Ljubljana and back, branching out with day-trips, but when this proved unsuitable (expensive, weird schedule), we worked out the whole Prague-stop 14-hour bus-push. Now it was time to head back, and we wanted to break the 14 hours up into three days instead of two. 

So, with a golden compass and an aluminum astrolabe, we worked out a series of local trips to Trieste, a city called Graz in Austria, and back to Prague, with the goal of making it to Gorlitz for Day the Last. 

Ambitious! But we thought we had the stuff to make it happen. The trip to Trieste involved entwining our pale fish fingers with rosy-fingered dawn's and high-wiring it down Tetyana's bannister-less wooden spiral. Made it to the quiet, quiet seaside bus stop with no problem. 

Later Tetyana would say of us:  

"Very nice and great guest. They was calm and good communication all in superlatives."

A lot less drama here. The bus pulled up with zero mystery. We got on and chugged a backward farewell to the Port of Piran. A few blinks later, we were in Koper, a ghostly town where we were to make our Trieste Transfer. 

Here there was some ambiguity, but we drowned it in coffee. The sugar packets had playing cards on them. She outdrew my two of diamonds with... well, everything beats that. We positioned ourselves in all kinds of ways to intercept the bus should it choose to dodge us. A fellow traveler from Toronto waited with us. Her app had lied to her about an approaching bus. Would ours?

Ours proved true! A big old, green Flixbus came whirring up. Take us to Trieste, my good man. But the driver said "nope." Noper in Koper! But you must. Sorry, he said, you have to buy tickets online. His bus had a wifi signal, so I went through the motions, and he was like, "Alas, you get locked out ten minutes before the bus leaves, and this bus leaves in seven minutes." I was like, "Is there something I have in my pocket that would be of better use in your hand?"

And he was like, "All aboard!" 

That corrupt old rummy let the three of us ride for just five Euros each. Cash. My backup plan was to get him to gamble the bus in a game of "Highest Ranking Sugar Packet" 

So, Trieste was next (short ride!). I gave the guy his bill, we dumped our bags at the bagdump and went out for a trip around Italy's best-kept secret. And soon we were far from the station, eating croissants and marmalade by a canal, when the flu shudders started. 

It was Sunday, as the swinging and the ringing of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells of the molten-golden notes of the bells told us. So the "drugstores near me" were all closed. 

We went for a wander and found a little cigarette store. Dude popped up from behind the counter like a mechanical Pulcinella and spoke zero English. We got as far as him trying to sell us kleenex, before I channeled my best commedia dell'arte impression and mimed out "the lady, she sick. The lady, she nose, she head, they no superlative."  He got it and mimed back: "Steer ye widdershins, mate, and keep your eyes keen for the sign of the green cross." 

A block later, we were in the pharmacy. 

When Jen was sick on the UK trip, we discovered it was illegal to sell sleeping pills over the counter, and none of the cold medicine had sleeping powers. But here... it was the opposite. Every pill is sprinkled with the Sandman's dust before they put it on the shelf. The aspirin is like a hit from an opium pipe, the band-aids drip with morphine, and the cold medicine is a boxing glove on a spring that knocks you the fuck out. 

Not so hot when you want to see an Italian resort-town that James Joyce used to jerk off in, but... any pill in a port, so... down the hatch and we were on borrowed time. Speeding through the plazas! Quick-march past the fountains! We lingered only for me to photograph a marvelously preserved Roman theater. Broken columns were arranged just so.  

Then back, back, back to the bahnhof for some private dozing, a place safe to be on The Drowse. We positioned ourselves in front of an enormous collage of underwear packages. Italy!

The station there was set up with minimal signage and strange unmarked red doors that seemed as likely to have slavering gazelles behind them as buses, but we solved the Riddle of the Crimson Portals and were soon on our way Grazward. 

Finished Suffled When it Gush on the way. Third book down! The first was a travelogue, the second was political history, and this was a political history travelogue. I vowed to make the next one fiction. God bless long bus trips. 

After an uneventful four hours or so, we were in Austria. There was a national election this day, but we were completely oblivious to it. We saw election posters everywhere but thought they were advertisements for a bank. Apparently some super-young anti-immigrant dude won. Guess it's cool we sneaked in under the wire. 

Our hosts here were aggressively fit. Yoga martial-arts bodies. Nice people, and I felt guilty that I'd asked them where we could find the best Wienerschnitzel in the neighborhood when I saw their vegan buttons and slogans on the walls.  

The place they steered us to was truly memorable, however. A block from their home. The featured menu item was "The Burning Gallows," a tall iron structure brought to your table featuring three pork chops dangling from hooks.

These chops were then doused in brandy and set on fire. You got to watch them swing and burn while you dipped fried potatoes into mustard. Both were in tiny bowls at the base of the gallows.

This wasn't a tourist place or a theme restaurant, just a normal, Austrian corner dinner place. The menu had gluten-free options. These included The Burning Gallows.

I had the pumpkin-seed crusted Wienerschnitzel, the lady had the wurst.

And because of timing...that was Graz. The second-largest city in Austria was just a meal and a sleepover for us. We didn't even need to break out the anti-radiation pills.

In the morning, Sara felt like a million koruna and SHE got the coffee. I felt like I'd slipped the noose on the burning gallows! Plenty of time to catch the train to Prague.

The Port of Piran

"The sea complains upon a thousand shores."

To make Piran happen, we had to wake up very early, both of us together this time, and get out the door. The bus that takes you there on a Sunday doesn't pick you up at a central station, it picks you up in the middle of the street, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. But it was a nowhere within walking distance, so we gave it a shot. 

Hushed final packing and face-washing. It was the dawnish magic hour. We had done laundry the previous day and a few items were still a little damp, but no time (no time) to see them fully dry. Into the bags they went. Everything charged, everything out the door. 

Out into the street, out into the thick mist of the stone streets of Ljubljana. 

It gave us yet one more opportunity to appreciate the many many secret details and special touches this city has to offer architecturally. It can be subtle (curling flowers around a window frame) or make grand gestures (an explosion of relief figures surrounding a door frame) at any moment and around any corner. A magical place for wandering. 

Eventually our mystical meander took us to a slender strip on the side of the highway. We had to walk single file like Tusken Raiders. Visibility was poor due to what was now seeming more like fog. We pressed on silently, slightly nervous that a misstep would pitch us into the road. 

I have often, while driving, passed people who looked like us and wondered about their circumstances. Tired souls with too too many bags, walking where no one should walk, one ahead of the other, silently moving with purpose.. but to where?

As the hour got later, there was more and more traffic. We paused to rest at a bridge. We paused to marvel at a mural on an abandoned building. It showed a bear commuting to work on the back of a pigeon. A delightful surprise. 

We found our street and turned off the highway. We eventually found a bus shelter, but... was it the the correct one? There was no signage.

It was also supremely unclear which side of the road to be on, which way lay Piran (which Sara taught me is pronounced "Peer On" as opposed to Peerin' (which is how I had been saying it)). We tried one side and then the other. We weren't panicking, but we were... serious. This was probably the only bus going there on a Sunday. 

It was a local bus stop and there was no indication country-crawling buses stopped there. But we had seen a few. But they were irregular and we could get no information from them. Nor discern any pattern. We asked a lady who was waiting for her bus to work. She told us we were totally in the wrong place, so we waited for her to leave, since before we'd spoken to her we'd had hope. 

When she left, hope returned, and we switched sides of the street to change up our luck. Sara felt that the other side was the way we'd taken to Lake Bled the previous day, and I figured why not, so... we did that median dance one more time. 

The appointed hour arose, and... no bus came from either direction. Figured we'd give it five minutes to be late, then find a taxi and figure out how to live our lives as losers. 

Five minutes passed and we voted to give it five more. 

And then...oh, and then (and then and then and then) bursting through the clouds like Iron Man, like Astrea returning to Earth, a massive cross-country bus with "Piran" on the front. Oh, how we hailed it, lustily waving our arms. And then we were aboard, and then we were moving coastward. It seemed and felt like the miracle it was.

A giddy two hours that felt like a bonus pour from a gravy boat. I read more from Suffled How it Gush, she read more Chekhov. We passed through places called Koper and Izola, saw flashes of Adriatic turquoise as we slithered between the borders of Croatia and Italy, staying pure along this strip of Slovenia.

Then... Piran. Such a place. Enchanting little sun-slapped seaside town. Starving, we threw ourselves into the first open restaurant. It was Bosnian cuisine. Hilarious. One wants fish in such an environment, one expects sardines, but one gets hard sausages in bread. One orders Greek yogurt, and one is served drinkable yogurt in a cocktail glass.

And excellent coffee.

Fortified, we found our home. Tetyana let us in. Her husband rose from his kingdom of vinyl recliners to shake our hands, and we were led up, up, up to our little room. She gave us a key with a Nerf-Dolphin key chain, pointed out some extra blankets, and wished us well.

We tossed our stuff in a pile, high-fived, and fell into an old-fashioned early-bus-Bosnian-breakfast coma.

Plenty of light remaining when we denapped. Washed our faces, cameraed up and headed out. A darling slice of Istria meeting all the expectations of a seaside soft-port. It gets it's name from a lighthouse that used to guide ancient sailors (Pir from Pyr from fire). Teasing little breezes and a sturdy church tower standing guard over a delightful oval plaza.

This smooth plaza had the strange effect of seeming to us like an ice-skating rink.

We got gelato, because it's the law.

Down crooked little stone-road alleys, past the naive paintings of local artists, past mannequins dressed in the same blue and white striped navy shirt I wore, past tangerine cats and weathered doors and into the courtyard of the St. George church.

Up the creaking wooded stairs, past the foreign children, flattening yourself to allow the Korean women to pass, and The View is yours. As spectacular a sight as any I've had the opportunity to enjoy. From the bell towers of Split, to the hills of Ha Long Bay. A bracing, restorative gift of laughing light from the Gulf of Trieste.

Sailboats promised another universe. Red-tiled roofs promised another home.

Fortified again, in a different sense, we followed the echo of the bells back down.

Home again to write and read. Home again with coffee. We spent the hottest part of the day tending our separate gardens.

Out again at twilight in search of the perfect pasta. A gang of bikers descended upon the town. We heard and saw hundreds. Sturgis by the sea. How their engines echoed in that marble-walled fishtown. How Neptune's beard shook.

In the plaza an orchestra of twenty accordion players welcomed them with polka-soaked covers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' greatest hits.

We found our meal just past the grilled-fish place playing Hotel California and just next to the fried-fish place playing Hotel California. Blessed silence in an outdoor courtyard and the freshest best food we've had this whole journey. A salad straight from the rabbit's jaws. A pizza hot from the rabbit's warren. Angel-hair pasta straight from the rabbit's microwave.

A tall Campari and soda on a moon-stained night. The lapping of waves, the songs of eels, the sighs of accordions breathing out contentment. The warm smell of colitas rising up through the air.

The Curse of Pula

“You know, in Romania, trees are really important. In some places, when a child is born, you still plant a tree. The two grow up together, like one being. If you want to propose marriage, you have to ask the tree too. If someone dies at sea they bury the tree instead.”

Some clean-up work from Bled: There was an animatronic bear with an accordion outside one of the gift shops. He swayed back and forth and soundlessly squeezed his instrument. He wore a funny “Gandalf hat” and Tyrolean costume. I took a little video and sang “Work Song” to get it out of my head. When I finished, a family of four came up, a mother with a young son and the father holding an infant in one of those chest slings.

Mutti gave the boy a 50-Euro coin and said to me, in English, “Now you will make better video.” He put the coin in the slot and the bear swayed faster. Some wild Balkan cover of “Take Me Home Country Roads” blasted out, and the family went nuts. They knew every word, and Mutti grabbed her son’s arms and made him do the Hully Gully. 

The dad softly took the infant’s arms and made it dance as well. I turned the camera toward them, and they stopped dancing. I left so they could Hully Gully in peace. The lesson is clear: “Keep it on the bear, kid. Keep it on the bear.” 

On the bus back, two Australian teens were gushing about poker and how much they love poker and how the poker scene in “Casino Royale” is amazing and how women are better at poker because they are better at lying and how you can make a lot of money at poker and how James Bond is amazing. 

I couldn’t tune it out, because the ear goes to a known language as the eye goes to light. I love the soft wash of foreign words while I read or sleep, but when I’m traveling, my English-starved ears lock right in on sounds I understand. I tried to read, but I couldn’t keep it on the bear. 

End Lake Bled flashback. 

  

The plan on this day had been for me to take a day-trip to Pula, a Croatian town on the tip of the Istrian Peninsula. Maybe two hours away. It has one of the largest standing Roman amphitheaters in the world and the ugliest statue of James Joyce ever sculpted. I am dying to see it. But some ancient curse has now thrice kept me from it. 

In the 90s, my brother and I wanted to see an industrial noise concert there but were too afraid of the buses. Tried to make up for it two years ago, and I was ON a bus TO PULA from Zagreb when a blizzard arose and the bus turned around. This really happened. Trying for a third time to get to Pula was a big part of this particular trip, to get Pula off my back, the great Unvisited City. 

But.. it was not to be. 

No buses were going there in anything considered reasonable time. There was a 7-hour bus that went all the way to Zagreb first and then took you to Pula. But then the only bus BACK left 30 minutes later. So, if I didn’t want to stay in Pula, I would have to be on a bus for 14 hours to see it for half of one hour. Such is the Curse of Pula, I considered it. 

Sara suggested I could just stay there and meet her in Piran (our next destination) but there was only a single bus over the weekend from Pula to Piran, and it left at an inconvenient time. There was a private car, but it wanted $280. So, no Pula. One day. Maybe on a trip that includes Venice. Or something. Or if I ever try Zagreb again. 

God. I’ve been two hours or less outside of it three times, and the reasons for missing it have been: fear, weather, and logistics. So, boo hoo, I’d have to spend the day in Ljubljana, one of the nicest, cleanest, most-interesting small capitals in all of Europe. We decided to have separate adventures this day. She went in search of tea and castles, and I went to a public market and to some old army barracks that have been taken over by punk artists. 

Once outside the marble streets of the city’s core, I got to some cool, gritty little alleys dotted with boutiques and cafes, then out to a more suburban-seeming area, then to the co-op masterplace the art-kids had commandeered. Big wooden spiders made out of junk, amazing benches made by welding wood planks to old machine parts. Just an awesome reclaiming of industrial junk. 

A bunch of kids were skating and a bunch of slightly older kids were passing out food from a cardboard box. Total commies! It was glorious to see. They ate their rice and beans from compostable paper plates; I half expected them to use spray paint as a condiment. 

It was comparable to the radar station back in Berlin, of course, but people can live in this one. I quite like all these abandoned military places being put to good use. Coffee for lunch and a nice walk back.

 The place in which we were staying was run by a sweet old grandmother, whose name was the Slovenian word for “Grandma.” Interesting curated art on her walls, mostly signed by the artist. She’s probably had an interesting life.. or been in the orbit of those who’ve had. Rested and wrote until Sara came back.

Such tea she’d had, such castles she’d seen! We compared pictures and napped.

Worked out our passage to Piran. Transport on the weekends can be dodgy (as Pula taught me) but Piran is in Solvenia, so no borders to cross, so a little bit easier (Pula is in Croatia). It looked like it would work. Booked a room. Went out to dinner.

This time it was a successful version of what the previous evening had promised. My theory was that if we ate someplace a street away from the riverside it would be better, because it would have to be to compete. 

Small sample size (one meal!) but the hypothesis held. 

Drank some insane local herbal thing that burned its name out of me after two sips. Some very fine house-made pasta and dumplings. An elderly couple from Texas or Oklahoma argued about the prosecco and how and when to tell their children from previous marriages that they were engaged. 

No nightcap. Just night. 

Dark walk across the river and through a delightful park with tall leafy trees. Home and sleep. 

In the morning, we would take a bus to the sea. 

But not to Pula. 

Never to Pula. 

The Lake That Bled

"Once I was hitchhiking, and finally I got a ride from a nice guy who didn't have a gold chain around his neck or anything, kind of a hippie type. He pulled over and bought a Coke bottle of gas from a kid at the side of the road -- the black market was the only way to get gas at that time. We had just got out of town when the engine started clattering, asphyxiated. We realized the kid had sold us colored water."

If it were a sitcom, they would show the credits and play the theme song while I went out each morning to grab coffee and a roll. Since every morning is the same. 

The scenes would alternate between me in the cold streets passing Soviet-era statues and Sara stretching out in the warm room. I'd put Euros in someone's hand and get a greasy brown bag, she'd roll over and pull the soft comforter over herself. 

Then I'd walk back in, place the coffee down on the table and turn the cup to reveal the name of the episode written in barista-script. This week: Ljubljana.

The song would probably be Nina Simone's version of "Work Song" for no reason other than it's been in my head since the plane. At odd moments, the lyrics come out. The part about holding the rock and the part about leaving the grocery man breathing. It doesn't really fit, but we are all servants of the Ear Worm.

I've been here once before, with my brother. It was still Yugoslavia then. On the coffee-run, I'm almost positive I saw the hotel we stayed in. We were in our late teens. We ate pizza with hard-boiled eggs and threw condoms full of water at policemen.

Sara was awake when I got back, and we drank the coffee and ate the yogurt. A fried thing I bought turned out to be an enormous fish stick. Gross. I ate it up.

Fortified, we packed up our action for an afternoon at Lake Bled, a little postcard of a town a few hours West. The weather was ideal for this. We expected castles and islands, boats and mountains. On the walk to the station we passed an hilarious little public sculpture called "A Hologram of Europe."

It was three dozen six- or seven-foot stone slivers arranged in a kind of spiral. We called it "Slav-Henge" since we're hilarious. But we're not funnier than the loons who made this thing. They call it an example of "lithopuncture, acupuncture for the Earth." The idea, I suppose is that the different countries represented by the stone slivers are tapping into ancient energy lines and taking great benefit from it.

Lithopuncture! The "Work Song" lyrics about holding the rock came back to my mind. No escape.

Long line at the bus, everybody wanted to be in Bled on this day. And who can blame them. Pure, blue skies after a week of grey.

We were polite, let all the orange-haired old ladies, anemic young ladies, and hungover dudes board before us; just matadored them right past us, and we paid the price. No seats! Standing room only. A rattling little lurch toward paradise on creaky ankles.

This vantage point let us judge the reading material of the other passengers, many of which were in English. Spy novels, self-help books, and tour guides with pictures of Bled on the cover. I found a way to prop up a book called "Suffled How it Gush." Kind of stuck it in the luggage rack and pinned it there with painfully hooked fingers. Some kind of anarchist's diary about his travels in the former Yugoslavia. He interviews Serbians and throws condoms full of water at the police.

Eventually the crowd thinned enough for Sara to grab a seat and then, oh and then, then then then, (then), I got a seat. Glory! Colorful fields, old church spires, happy little farms clustered around happy little villages. This same soil has been pumping out potatoes and fish sticks since Tito was a pup.

Pulled into Bled right on schedule. It's the off-season, so the little tourist kiosks that hook you into zip-lining or hot-air spelunking were shuttered. Leafy, bright walk past them toward the glittering lake. The sun danced on the water like something from a 70's Summer's Eve commercial.

The closer we got, the larger loomed the pletnas. These are the covered boats that row you across the lake and out to Bled Island. Happy dude in Ray Bans and a black turtleneck beckoned us like a strip of film from one of Fellini's early projects. He was framed by two giant oars.

We just got right on. From bus to pletna. When I asked how much it was, he shook his head and said, "Later you will pay."

Boat filled up with Slavs, and we were off. A leisurely pace. The water seemed thick, and the oarsman grunted in his labors. We were ringed by mountains and in the shadow of a castle. It was exceedingly beautiful and just what the brochures had promised. In the distance, the bell tower of the church grew larger.

Lovers rowed beside us in smaller boats, their orange oars splashing irregularly.

We disembarked at the foot of 99 marble steps that led to the church. But.. before the church... a gelato stand. A holy gelato stand. The body of christ in twelve strange flavors. We got waffle cones and sat on a marble bench in the sun. In our dark glasses and striped shirts, we looked like the label on a bottle of cheap shiraz.

Opted not to climb the bell tower or put money in the "wishing bell" box. Rambled instead in tiny circles and marveled at the distant Alps and the little castle that whispered to be watercolored. A peaceful half an hour. We talked about primeval fish.

Back at the boat, we were asked to pay. So, that's it -- they'll take you out there for nothing but strand you if you don't cough up the dough. We paid, rode back, and we left the oarsman breathing.

Sara pulled some sort of scam at the lotion store while I bought a magnet at a little boutique. When I told the shopgirl the usual California lie, she got very worried and asked if I had fled "the fires." The people in this tiny town are more clued in to the news back home than I am. I'll have to start saying New York or something. Philadelphia? 

Coffee at an outdoor cafe with a bathroom hidden deep in the earth at the bottom of a long spiral staircase. I half expected to find poor Merlin down there frozen in crystal. Easy walk back to the bus stop where the only peril was an old woman smoking a pretty smoky cigarette. 

Seats! Read more of the "a punk travels through Croatia" narrative and dozed. Back home to Laibach where everything was as we'd left it. Took a different way back just for the novelty. It's a really rewarding town for architectural surprises. 

Home to dump our bags. I tried to plan the next day's trip to Pula but kept running into snags. Decided to deal with it after dinner. 

Wretched meal at a beautiful place by the river. The red wine had been chilled, and that may be all I need to tell you about it. The bill hit the table like a condom full of water. O' that wicked chef. O' that wicker server.

But the evening was very cool, and we were very happy to be out in it. We took a walk in the dark to the famous Dragon Bridge and marveled at the cunning, curling tails of those magnificent beasts.

It's a place of wonders, this city. Large enough to holler in and small enough to hide. Smart enough not to get too bombed in the last few years, and secret enough that few can pronounce it. Hail to thee, City of Dragons, hail to thee City of Day Trips.

At home, I scrapped the Pula plan. Some things just ain't worth it. That place is cursed. I'm like Moses leading the tribe to the promised land but doomed never to see it myself.

I'm basically Moses is what I'm saying, O' Diary.

The Mysterious Case of the Invisible Platform

"In America," asked Sasha, "does everyone really have their own number? Is it true that people keep it secret from one another? If you find out someone else's number, can you do them harm?"

Early morning in Prague. Waking up was easy, the apartment was next to a train station and rattled like a dried gourd full of seeds every twenty minutes or so. We had a nine-something bus to Ljubljana, so we planned to use the knowledge gathered from the previous night's scouting mission to make a sunrise bridge run.

This time we knew to make a left at the darkling towers, not to dip unto the gallery of fake pot lollipops, and to double-time it past the opera house before the trams got restless. It worked like a charm. Ducked under the hanging trdlo signs, saluted the astro-clock, and made it to the Karlov in time to see several Vietnamese couples taking wedding photos.

It was a major production with dozens of photographers, a chilly bride, and a groom all a'beam. The statues were less grim at dawn, the martyrs less smoky. We watched the mist curl away from the gate towers as the good lord slid the "light" bar ever more to the right. 

"You know," she said, "I could be a cruise-ship therapist one semester, and this could be our life. You could come and write, the cruise pays for the therapist's partner...but you have to find something cruise-useful to do. You have to contribute." I suggested I could host the at-sea trivia shows, and it sounded (for a moment) like a plan. 

I asked where the cruise went. She didn't know. "Hmmm," I said. "Hmmmm," she said. 

It's the sort of thing one only thinks about on an ancient bridge surrounded by buildings made from ancient pink stone. We grabbed coffee at a bus station but not OUR bus station, snagged our bags back at the snagging place and headed to where we needed to be. 

Ten hours of busing was in our very near future. We passed the Benches of Experience again on the way in. Will I ever see them again? What will they teach me next time?

Controlled confusion at the station. It's normal when you catch a bus at the train station to find yourself sliding down chutes and spiraling down holes and sneaking into board rooms in an attempt to find the platform, but the Flixbus stop at the Praha hlavní nádraží is another level of complexity.

It was like trying to get the One Ring past the watchtower at Cirith Ungol. A perverse series of challenges, chief of which being the bus was operated by a company with a wildly different name and radically different colors. 

When I found their office to get the platform info (not posted anywhere -- you had to know or ask at the office), it was like I'd ordered a Whopper at Subway and gotten one. 

"Why yes, we do serve Big Macs at this Home Depot. How many would you like?"

Even then, it was a wild scramble underneath a highway to get to the X that marked the spot. Memorably difficult, but we got on and were on our way to Munich. 

Neither of us had previously appreciated how The Czech Republic nestles into the crook of Germany's elbow. 

It soon became apparent that on the food-run Sara made while I was in search of the platform, she had only gotten food for herself. She offered me a raspberry pastry that we called The Shame Muffin, and I ate it to absolve her. 

She's not much to blame. My appetite is much reduced on these trips. I have burek for breakfast and then forget to eat until it's time for another burek breakfast. There was total forgiveness. We dove into our books. I tackled "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter" a journalist's report on the collapse of Libya in the 2011. 

Buses are great for this sort of reading. That stack of impulse buys just melts away. You read the unreadable. You read the things you never thought you would read. It's the realization of the hope you had when you bought them. 

At a roadside toilet stop, the men's room was called a "pissoir," an orderly line of urinals. If Sara had had one of those cup things that let women stand, we would have achieved peequality. But... alas, a long line. A ladder full of bladderfulls. 

Munich! We had a short rest, ate some Turkish food, bought some saft mit chia seeds and some "Nuts for Students" and did our ankle exercises. The bus to Ljubljana was easy to find. It was as easy as finding a bus at a bus station.

Killed the Libya book. Really interesting plain history of recent world events that I was mostly ignorant of. I felt smarter afterward.. or more informed anyway. I can't really USE this info, but now I can be the guy who says, "I knew this would happen!" when Exxon's storm troopers place Seattle under martial law.

Once we crossed over into Austria, the scenery got dramatic. Craggy mountain peaks and villages with tiny castles. The foothills of the Alps. The actual Alps. From the map! But soon, it was dark, and there was only the road and the soft chattering of the driver and his comfortdriver.

Most people slept, but the silence was often broken by the active phone of a woman with a voice forged in the dungeons of Cirith Ungol. A cartoon croak from a dream.

And then... Ljubljana. A tiny station in the dark. We got a taxi and found our apartment. Wide marble stairs, a slender elevator and a soft bed. After twelve hours of buses and platforms, it was most welcome.

There was no question of late-night exploration. There was only a bag of Nuts for Students, a few sips of water, and Slovenian darkness.