A place in history

Posted on May 8, 2014 by johnageddes

The hotel in Sarajevo where I am staying this week (Hotel Old Town) is about 50 metres from one of the most historic sites of the 20th century. But you would never know it.

In June 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria as his motorcade stalled at a corner on a Sarajevo street. This event is seen as the trigger that set the path to World War 1 in 1914 and shaped political events in Europe for most of June 20th century.

Taken from near the spot where Princip stood as he fired the two shots that led to the First World War.

The corner is unremarkable. There is a small museum, now covered with scaffolding, in the building that was once Schiller’s store where Princip ostensibly had just purchased a sandwich, thinking that his chance at assassination had passed, when the Archduke and his wife, Sophie rounded the corner in an open car. The driver had made a wrong turn and when he stalled the car in an attempt to back out of the little street, Princip seized the moment to draw out his pistol and shoot both Ferdinand and Sophie dead.

This June will mark the 100th anniversary of that event and the start of the war. I am sure that you will be reading more about this event as the anniversary approaches. It is interesting to be so close to the spot where this event occurred. I took a photo of the street and matched it with one taken on that fateful day in 1914 moments before the assassination as the motorcade reached the corner. You can still see some of the landmarks today that were in that 1914 photo.

Photo of Ferdinand and Sophie in their motorcade as they approached the corner in Sarajevo where they were assassinated in June 2014

I have written more about this here … http://wp.me/p2wvIq-16T

Peacocks

Posted on May 7, 2014 by johnageddes

Add a dash if colour to your day with these photos of peacocks on the island of Lokrum, just off the coast from Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Dubrovnik – Orange roofs

Posted on May 5, 2014 by johnageddes

Dubrovnik is famous for the Roman wall that is almost 2km long and surrounds the old city. From the wall, you can look down into the city and over the orange tile roofs that make it a spectacular view. Lots of laundry hanging out in the little alleyways. Churches and homes and restaurants and people. A fascinating way to spend the afternoon.

i have put together a little 2 minute Youtube video of photos of the roofs of Dubrovnik. I hope you like orange.

Gathering rosebuds

Posted on May 4, 2014 by johnageddes

In some ways, my visit to the island of Lopud, a 50 minute ferry ride from the Dubrovnik port, was a bit of a pilgrimage.

With Sue and Jim on Lopud, May 2005

I was last there nine years ago with my friends Sue and Jim. We walked a lot, drank a lot of cheap red wine, ate seafood and laughed. I was younger and Jim was healthy.

Today when I visited the island it seemed not to have changed much. But I was aware that I was nine years older and ten pounds heavier and Jim …well, Jim is gone.

Pretty much the same spot, May 2014. I was likely standing on the rocks we were sitting on in 2005 to get this photo in 2014.

I spent six hours walking around the island, on familiar paths up hills, to the beach and past the ruins of centuries-old churches. I took lots of photos but probably didn’t need to since not much has changed and I suspect I have all the same photos from previous trips to the island.

All along the pathways were wildflowers of different colours but the most prominent ones were wild roses. As I walked, I kept thinking “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

The 1909 John Williams Waterhouse painting, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

I wondered as I left on the ferry if I will ever come back to Lopud. I have visited the island several times, always with friends. Good times past. The island is the same but time has rushed on and those good times are now fond memories.

I also know that there is still time to create some new ones – but on some other island.

Note to self, and to everyone else as well – Get out the shears and keep gathering those memories.

Feeling bloody ridiculous

Posted on May 1, 2014 by johnageddes

The host where I am staying near Dubrovnik suggested a restaurant for me to have my dinner last night. Konoba Rozario is a nice little trattoria on a narrow alley just up from the main square in the old city.

I plunked myself at a table that was quite near the street. They are all quite near the street that is actually an alleyway with crooks and curves and stone floor.

As I ate, there were lots of people wandering by and some were stopping to look at the menu that was posted near me, occasionally booking a table for later in the evening or snapping a photo of the cat that was curled up on on of the chairs of an adjacent table. One group was looking over at my food to get a glimpse of the fare. I gave them a big smile and thumbs up on the food but they glanced at each other and moved on. I wondered why my enthusiastic recommendation had almost the opposite effect.

I felt that I may have some dinner stuck in my mustache so I took the white linen napkin and politely blotted my lips and mustache. I was horrified to see that what I blotted off was blood. This week I have had a sinus infection following a cold and occasionally am getting bloody mucous from my nose when I blow. But I did not realize that I had been sitting there smiling like an idiot and recommending the food to passers-by with blood trickling from my right nostril into my white mustache. I hope that I didn’t scare too many away.

The food, by the way, was indeed excellent. I had a delicious olive spread on crustini followed by pork medallions with gnocchi in a tartuffo sauce. Local red wine. Ice cream with hot chocolate sauce for dessert.

The scenic route into Montenegro

Posted on May 1, 2014 by johnageddes

We took the scenic route from Mostar in the Herzegovina part of Bosnia to Kotor, Montenegro over very winding roads, up and down. Over (and in some cases, though) mountains and into valleys, eventually ending up at sea level.

Sometimes we were in sunshine, other times pouring rain or more accurately in the middle if a rain cloud, high in the mountains. We passed through the spectacular Piva canyon and over a series of narrow hairpin curves on the mountain above Kotor. I took advantage of any moment of clarity or light to get some photos, which were probably made even moodier by the unpredictable visibility.

A beautiful day’s drive that ended us in the old town of Kotor, snuggled into a fiord that fingers in from the Adriatic.

We emerged momentarily from a cloud and pouring rain to catch a glimpse of sunlight reflecting from water in the fiord below us like a mirror. I thought the prospects of getting any photo were slim but life is full of surprises. This turned out to be one of my favourites of the day.

Dobro došli u Bosnu i Herzegovinu

Posted on April 29, 2014 by johnageddes

I have switched countries. Now on the east side of the Adriatic in Bosnia where I worked for several years between 1998 and 2009. It is nice to be back. My friend Saša picked me up at the airport and we headed along one of my favourite drives from Sarajevo to Mostar. A twisty road lined with mountains and following the Neretva River.

The weather was threatening rain but the sky was dramatic and there were lots of bursts of sunshine to give great light for photography.

“Treno kaput.” Now what?

Posted on April 27, 2014 by johnageddes

I planned ahead. Train ticket bought. Researched the town of Aosta online. Arrived 15 minutes early at the station to be greeted by the conductor with “Treno kaput.” I didn’t need a translator to understand that one. Now what?

Three Italians waved their arms and yelled at each other to try to find me an alternative route. They suggested I get on the train to Milan and change at Chevassa to take an electric train to somewhere close to Aosta. I thought of the Marx electric train I had as a kid. It wasn’t very big. Time was short. They all hustled me onto the train and it soon started moving. Unfortunately they had put me on the wrong train heading in the opposite direction.

Whistle stop at Chiomonte.

There were no signs or announcements on the train. I had no idea where was going. When the conductor arrived he spoke no English. I tried to explain but he just looked at me like I was stupid (maybe I was) then wondered if it was Chiomonte where I was wanted to get off. It sounded vaguely similar so I said OK rather than provoke him further. He handed me a little paper on which was scribbled “Chiomonte 9:17”

When the train stopped briefly in Chiomonte I was the only one to disembark. I soon understood why. The station was deserted. Doors locked. Ticket machine broken. No one in sight. I really didn’t know where I was but it was certainly a beautiful setting. I considered just waiting for a train back to Torino, but I knew I was already heading into the Alps and I wanted to see the mountains. An hour later a train arrived heading in the direction of the mountains. I got on.

The last stop as a little town called Bardonecchia. It is the most westerly town in Italy and about 5 km from the French border. In 2006 it hosted the snowboarding events for the Winter Olympics.

I meandered up the Main Street and at the end of it found a path that appeared to be heading up. I remembered an old slogan, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

For the next two hours I headed up, and up, and up, until I was at the snow line in the mountains. There was no one else around. It was absolutely silent except a few birds chirping. The air was fresh. I lay down in the sun in a field of crocuses, thinking that if I had a heart attack and died there, no one would find me for a while. But what a great place to go! And obviously I did not succumb to the exertion.

The day turned out to be a complete surprise and exactly the experience I had hoped to find in a day in the Alps. My legs were tired and I welcomed a soak in the sauna in my hotel in Turin when I got back abound 6 o’clock.

Sometimes it is best just to go with the flow.

Go fly a kite

Posted on April 26, 2014 by johnageddes

April 25 is a national holiday in Italy commemorating the liberation of Italy from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1945.

What better way to spend the day than to go to Pinarella, a little town on the Adriatic coast and join thousands if others on the beach to wade in the water, walk the beach and fly a kite?

A little summer retreat.

Posted on April 23, 2014 by johnageddes

I do like Italy. “Why not have a little summer place here?” I wondered. So Luca and Gloria and I headed off to Veneria Reale to check out the real estate. Turns out there is a nice little place there that was a summer residence for the Savoy family for centuries. Nice folks but apparently they left the place in ruins and the EU spent 150,000,000 Euros fixing it up in the late 1990’s. (Were there not some hungry people in the world that could have used that money?)

We we had a look around. It would need furnishing. There are lots of IKEA stores in Italy so that would likely not be a problem.

What do you think? Subject to a home inspection and me arranging financing….