REFLECTIONS OF A LIFE, Chapter 12: Overseas Adventures

Chapter 12

Overseas Adventures

 A UN Project at Cambridge University, England

            In 1986 and 1987, I spent three weeks both summers in a rather prestigious project sponsored by the International Trade Center, UNCTAD/GATT, Geneva, in collaboration with the Export Promotion Bureau, Karachi, Pakistan, and funded by the United States Development Programme. I joined a select group of American and European marketing and business experts, as well as academic and government officials from Pakistan.  We met in Cambridge, England to discuss how we could assist the export activities of the small businesses of a developing country, Pakistan, and help them become more profitable and better able to compete in the increasingly competitive international economy. The end product was to be a series of books designed to give practical advice to these entrepreneurs as they sought to export their wares.  Each of the “experts” was challenged to write a book that would engage the attention and interest of unsophisticated business owners, as well as be suitable for diploma courses on export management.  The UN deemed this a very hot topic for developing countries to jumpstart their economies.  We, of course, could hardly finish the books within the three weeks.  But we came away with a desired structure for the various topical areas that would result in books published in each of the thirteen different aspects of exporting for a third world country.

            My experience with writing academic books that were very readable and interesting to students, and that were replete with cases and exercises to stimulate discussions, was deemed very desirable by those administering the program. Consequently, I was the only person invited back for the second year and for a second book project.  My two books were Export Channel Management and Pricing for Export, and I completed both very satisfactory manuscripts within the desired three months after the conference ended.  So I guess I was a success, but I never heard any more about the project, and what impact, if any, it had on Pakistan’s export efforts.  A shame, not to have such feedback.  But the experience for me was rather profound.

            Being more than a tourist in Cambridge was a rare treat.  Our dormitory rooms were modest, and did not come with private bathrooms.  However, this being summer not many students competed with us for toilet facilities.  We had breakfast and lunch the university; for dinner we would wander the town to get acquainted with English food and pubs.  It was during this time that I learned to drink beer the English way – warm and not chilled.  To this day I do not like cold beer, which deadens the flavor.

            Three weeks were the longest Dorothy and I had ever been apart, before or since.  I suspect this bothered Dorothy more than me, since I was kept fairly busy and intellectually stimulated.  I developed several close friends, including Neil Costello, the managing director of this project.  He lived in a nice house in Cambridge, but in no way did it compare with American middle-class homes, being much smaller and on a pint-sized lot.  He explained that land was “more dear” in England than apparently it is in America.  Neil was pleased to discover that I was a runner, and invited me to run with his group of serious runners.  A year later, the Costello family visited us in Shaker Heights, and Neil and family were profoundly impressed with the size of our home and the others in the neighborhood.  He also found the hills more strenuous than the flat country around Cambridge.

            During my stay in England, I went on sightseeing trips around this central part of England with another new colleague from Thunderbird University in Phoenix, Arizona.   In particular, the area around Cambridge had been a locus of a number of airbases during World War II because of its flat land and proximity to London and the coast.  We visited the vestiges of some of these, as well as a huge airplane museum of those days.  Perhaps the hidden highlight of these stays in England was the three days the group spent in London each year.  I walked all over downtown London and its parks, and ran many of the streets in the early morning before much traffic.  Those were the years that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats had just come out and was playing to sellout crowds.  With some other members of our group, I stood in line for two hours one afternoon in a futile hope for enough no-shows.

            I thought those weeks in Cambridge might lead to an invitation to go to the home offices in Geneva for consultation and perhaps another project, but nothing materialized.  However, the next year was to prove even more momentous in foreign travel and living in a new and different environment.

The Sabbatical and Fulbright to Yugoslavia

 

            The year 1989 turned out to be one of the more momentous years of our lives.  I was due for a sabbatical, and Ram Rao, the department chairman now that Scotton had retired, and Ephraim Smith, dean of the college, suggested I apply for a Fulbright, a prestigious award that paid a nice stipend and expenses to those candidates selected for assignments overseas.  Cleveland State would benefit from having a Fullbright scholar on the faculty.

            The choicer assignments, those in western Europe and Australia/New Zealand, go fast, leaving Africa, Asia, and South America more likely for most applicants.  At that time, the Cleveland State Business School, through the efforts of Dean Smith and Rao, had a major contract with Yugoslavia.  Selected executives from there would come to Cleveland for a six-week training program, with lectures by faculty members including myself, and field trips and contacts with business firms both local and in nearby major cities.  Rao and Smith thought I should seek a 4-month Fulbright at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, the northernmost province of Yugoslavia bordering on Austria and the southern Alps.  

            The University there was glad to have me, and with some nudging from Cleveland State I was selected for a senior research position in Slovenia.  This was a considerable coup, since most Fulbright assignments involved teaching positions, and not research.  But I would have no teaching duties, although occasionally I could be a guest lecturer, but primarily would conduct research on marketing mistakes of Slovenian firms.  I also found myself doing a fair amount of consulting and speaking to various business groups, often with an interpreter.  The University supplied an office, secretarial help, and any other particular needs.  They also assigned one English-speaking professor to be my liaison, as well as several graduate students who had fair facility in English.  During these four months, I developed some good friends, including one Englishman living in Ljubljana, Lionel Titman, who was on the parttime faculty.

            Now Dorothy and I faced the signature adventure of our lives, to live in a foreign country, one where few people spoke English, and we certainly did not speak their language.  What a grand affair it was, especially in retrospect.

 

            Getting there. -- Before we left, through contacts with Slovenian visitors to Cleveland, we had rented sight unseen a small apartment in a high-rise communist-style building within walking distance of downtown, and when it wasn't raining, walking distance to the campus.  It also turned out to be close to a park, and to a wilderness area criss-crossed with trails that led around a sizable hill that had a military observation post at the top.

            We took a plane to New York City and then a nonstop PanAm flight to Frankfort, Germany, the hub for most destinations in eastern Europe.  There we changed to a Yugoslavian airliner that took us to Zagreb, the capital city of the Yugoslavian province of Croatia.  As the plane descended into Zagreb, I was struck by the prevalence of red roofs:  it seemed every dwelling had such tiled roofs.  We came to notice the same in other parts of Yugoslavia as well, and this reinforced the foreignness of the country.

            A student from Ljubljana University who spoke passable English waited at the airport to drive us 120 miles to Ljubljana and our apartment.  He drove like a demon possessed on the two-lane highway.  "Don't you have speed limits in Yugoslavia?" I queried, trying not to show my trepidation.

            "Not very many, Professor," he said.

            "Are there many accidents?"

            "Oh, yes.  But you get used to them."

            Well, I certainly didn't want to distract him in trying to talk English with us, so didn't attempt any prolonged conversations.  His last name was Starman, but I never found out to my satisfaction how a Slovenian wound up with such a name.  I hoped we weren't riding with an alien.

            Occasionally Dorothy and I would ooh and ah at the passing scene, for the country had a wild beauty with hills and trees, and occasionally the land flattened out for small farms with more red-tiled roofs.   

                  

            Our life in Ljubljana. -- Our four months in Ljubljana, the first extended stay we had ever had in a foreign country, were days of great interest and wonder, and also of utter boredom.  The weather was lousy when we got there early in March.  I don't remember any snow, but our memories are of wind and rain practically every day in March and April, and leaking into May. 

            From our tiny apartment we looked out at the side of the small mountain, or big hill.  Below us, we could see cars parked diagonally off an alleyway.  Directly across on the hilly slope we could see small farmers taking care of their property, weeding and whatever every day, rain or not.  But after observing their diligence for a few days, we had  little else to look at, and the scene became boring.

            A small black-and-white TV was furnished, but we could get only a few stations and, not surprising, none of the programs were in English.  We sometimes would watch an orchestra playing classical music, and sometimes a soccer match between teams we could care less about.  We did get somewhat interested in a German soap opera involving the misadventures of a family in the Black Forest, and we occasionally got the drift of what was going on by concentrating on the characters' gestures and facial expressions.  Our news came from the BBC that we heard on a small radio.  An American Centre with a library was downtown and there we could borrow books in English and read newspapers, and we did a lot of reading although the lighting wasn't very good in our small living room that doubled as a bedroom when the couch was unfolded.  After a while it would become quite uncomfortable sitting, and in nicer weather we would walk the city streets until dark to ease the discomfort of another boring night.

            I remember the apartment well.  It was no bigger than 24' by 10', including a small kitchen and eating area, and a bathroom that also had a washing machine and dryer.  Still, the place was snug and warm, a considerable asset in those weeks of cold dampness.  It was on the 9th floor of a high-rise building with two elevators, and often we encountered other people in the elevators and exchanged greetings:  dober dan for good morning was about all we knew.  At first, the people in the elevators and hallways would look at us strangely.  We obviously were foreign, and they must have wondered why we were living in a working-class apartment like one of the masses.  I wonder whether any suspected we were spies.  We did have two episodes where we found eggs splattered on our little balcony, and wondered if this gentle episode of prejudice presaged more to come.  But it never did.

            I'm still amazed how well we got along with practically no knowledge of the language.  Of course, some people knew a bit of English, especially those at the University, but the tradespeople and shopkeepers, and our neighbors, mostly had never been exposed to it.  Still, with sign language and memorizing a few words, making no attempt to put these in sentences, we were able to communicate.  We did try to learn the basic numbers for the market and restaurants.  But I found at my age that this strange language was beyond me.  Dorothy had studied German for a few months before we left, and could communicate a bit better since more people knew a little German than English, but she still had to resort to sign language most of the time.

            We walked almost everywhere.  The city was more compact than U.S. cities, and we would go downtown almost everyday.  On rainy days we would take the electric buses, but they were almost impossibly crowded.  Since our apartment was near downtown, we had trouble both getting on and getting off.  It didn't take long to realize we had to station ourselves near the exit if we were to get off at our stop.  Public transportation back in the States would have salivated at such patronage.

            One aspect of the traffic conditions took urgent learning and adjusting on our part.  Life and limb were involved.  A narrow lane for two-wheel vehicles was painted on the sidewalk alongside the main roadway.  We had to step over this lane to board busses or cross streets or simply to dodge pedestrian traffic.  To do so was life threatening, for motorcycles roared down the lane apparently heedless of any pedestrian--pedestrians seemed to have no rights in this country.  Smaller motorbikes also used this lane and the faster cycles would swerve wildly to avoid them.  Dorothy and I quickly learned to look both ways before putting a foot into this damger zone.  I asked several people (those who could speak some English) if there were ever any accidents with these virtually unchecked vehicles.  "Oh, yes," they would say.  "But such accidents are not publicized."

            "Aren't there any speed limits?" I would ask.

            "Oh, no one minds them," confirming what graduate student Starman told us about the highways coming from Zagreb.

            Dorothy and I shook up the natives. -- I'm sure they must have commented among themselves about those "crazy foreigners."  "Could they be Americans?"  We had long been serious runners, and were not about to give this up for four months.  Besides, we had thought that Slovenians had runners too, as England and most of western Europe did.  But the popularity of running had not reached this far east.  I sometimes wondered whether we might have stirred the pot a little, and maybe stimulated some interest in running.  Who knows, maybe they have even raised a statue of us in midstride.  We ought to go back and see.

            It was about a half mile from our building to the big park that stretched along the north side of the city center and that encompassed the estate of Tito on the edge of the small mountain that we looked out on every day.  Tito had brought the diverse elements of Yugoslavia together after World War II--the great unifier he was--but with his death a few years before we came, the confederation was beginning to fray, culminating in the chaos in Yugoslavia by the middle and late '90s that was formented by Milosevic and his pursuit of a Serbian Nation.

            We would run out from our building, down the alleyway to a path that led past an old lodge that overlooked the park and the city center, and then come on to curving paved pathways, past old men playing checkers and shuffleboards, to mothers pushing baby carriages and lovers walking hand-in-hand and an occasional bicyclist, and a few drunks lying in the sun.  All would turn to watch us running past.  But Dorothy more so than me.  For it seemed that women did not bare their legs with shorts in this part of the world.  Well, with our attempts to run most days, Dorothy began to attract less attention, and we became inured to any stir we might be causing.  I never ran to the University, not because of timidity but only because running generates so much sweat that a shower and a change of clothes was necessary after a serious run, and these facilities were not readily available there.       

            Our mountain neighbor. -- With the small mountain that  dominated the view from our apartment, it was not long before we wanted to explore its trails.  It didn't even take good weather, just so it wasn't pouring, for us to get out of our cramped apartment.  With its proximity we could make such exploring an easy afternoon, and we soon became acquainted with most of its trails, although we kept extending the reach of our exploration, until one day we had our comeuppance.  We had known from previous efforts that one trail led around the mountain to a gravel road that wound its way to the top where we could see antennas.  There were signs posted along the road, but we couldn't read them.  

            One fairly nice afternoon, I said to Dorothy, "let's

see how far we can go up that road.  Maybe all the way to the top."

            "Don't you think those signs are warning hikers not to?"

            "Maybe they are.  But maybe not.  At worst, we may come up against a fence.  If so, we'll turn back."

            "I don't like it, Bob."

            "Dorothy, where's your spirit of adventure?"

            "I had all I could handle when I married you," she said trying not to smile.

            Well, we went up the road, wondering what we would encounter around each turn.  Finally, as we rounded a curve the road straightened, and just ahead was a high fence with barbwire on top, and a gate.  Uniformed men with rifles waited for us at the gate.

            "They don't look friendly," Dorothy whispered.  I could feel my pulse racing, as they approached us, guns raised in alert position.

            One started shouting in incomprehensible language.  I shrugged and opened my arms wide hopefully to show bewilderment, and kept saying "American," "American."

            "Can't we turn around and go back down?" Dorothy whispered.

            "I don't think they're going to let us," I whispered back.  "But let's try it."

            We turned and started to walk away.  Immediately they blocked our path, with guns leveled.  Dorothy and I looked at each other.  I took her hand, as we waited our fate:  Were we to be thrown into some Yugoslav prison?  Would our neighbors in our apartment building testify that we were indeed spies?

            At last several other men, officers it looked like, approached from the other side of the gate.  One understood a little English.  "You are not . . . to be here.  This is  military . . . installation.  Understand?"  We nodded.  "Identification?"

            We tried to explain that we were just hikers and hadn't brought any billfolds or passports with us.  "We're very sorry," I said.  "We didn't know that we shouldn't come up this road."  As the officer looked at us skeptically, I said, "We couldn't read your signs . . . we didn't know."

            "Where you from?"

            We tried to explain that we lived at the foot of the mountain in an apartment building.  He wanted to know the address, and wrote it down.

            At last he motioned for us to go back down the path, and the soldiers with their leveled guns moved aside, and we walked as fast as we could down to the bend in the road.  As we made the turn, we looked back.  They were still watching us.        

            "Is that enough adventure for you," Dorothy asked as we made our way to familiar territory.

            "I guess we must have looked innocent."

            "Or dumb."

            We never heard any more about our escapade, though we wondered whether they had checked up on our story.  The old communistic suspicion was apparently slow in dissipating.

           

            The country. -- Slovenia is a beautiful country, a little smaller than Massachusetts in area but with not even half the population.  It squeezes between the snow-covered Julian Alps and the warm Adriatic Sea.  Slovenians promoted this location as the "Sunny Side of the Alps."  When I would speak to various groups, whether at the University or elsewhere, I would compliment them on their beautiful country, and then tell them, "I grew up in a land where snow-capped mountains were almost a thousand miles away and the nearest large body of water, Lake Michigan, was 500 miles away.  Here, you're only 30 miles from the Alps, and about 60 to the Adriatic.  What a wealth of beauty and recreation you have so close at hand.  My congratulations."

            When I first went to the campus to get acquainted and find my office, I looked north where I had been told the mountains were within sight.  But visibility the first week  was so poor because of rain and fog they might as well never have existed.  "Are you sure you can see them from the campus?" I asked several times.

            "Oh yes, just wait," they told me. 

            "Will they be snowcapped?"

            "Indeed they will be."

            The sun came out one day toward the end of the next week, and I could see the glistening tops of snow-capped jagged peaks rising abruptly from the level plain, much like our Tetons do in Wyoming.

            Because of the poor weather in March, we did little sightseeing outside of Ljubljana, and we had no car to encourage the getting around.  As Spring matured we eagerly began to explore this delicious country, doing so by bus and by train.  I will talk more about this a little later.

           

            Ljubljana. -- Ljubljana is the capital and largest city in Slovenia.  While its population was only about 300,000, its business district was that of a much larger city, reflecting that it drew from a large area with its commerce, culture, and government.        The edge of downtown was about a mile away, and from there we might visit the large outdoor market, the old cathedral, some of the shops or larger stores, the American Center, or the bus and train depot.  Or we might climb a steep hill on the far side of downtown.  This pathway started near the cathedral and led to an old castle in the process of being rennovated.  From the top in two directions we could look down on red roofs, and to the north on modern office buildings partially obscuring the mountain panorama, and to the west lower but closer hills loomed blue and green.  Broad avenues stretched in several directions, straight and bordered with office and apartment buildings.  To the north toward those Alps, and beyond the taller buildings, could be seen the green campus of the University.

            Ljubljana was a clean and pleasant city, with no apparent slums, certainly not around the downtown, unlike many U.S. cities.  There were no panhandlers, only a few sleeping drunks, maybe reflecting a communist society only beginning to unravel to capitalism.

            Vestiges of this communist society still predominated and contrasted sharply with a capitalistic society.  For example, far more workers were used for most operations than would ever be used under capitalism.  Most businesses were still state owned, and shopping in a downtown store involved several steps and queus, from a clerk, to an order getter, to a bagger, to a cashier, with employees outnumbering customers.  A padded work force was not the only inefficiency of state ownership.  I could detect a paralyzing mindset content with sameness, that was without creativity, efficiency, and with no concern for customer service.  Interesting displays, advertising, innovative promotional efforts, attempts to make shopping easier--all  were lacking in this communistic economy.

            Now I could understand why the Slovenians were so eager to have me come.  They were striving to escape the communist smothering and thought I could be a source of fresh ideas.  As I tried to be, but it would take more than myself and four months to turn around a communist system to capitalism.  Yet inroads were already starting to show.

            The legislature had recently passed a law permitting small businesses to be independently owned.  Rather stringent were the requirements on size, but the success of these embryonic efforts were soon to sweep away the rest of the communist society.

            Just a block from our apartment was a small independent grocery store.  It could not have been bigger than 20' x 20.'  But people crowded this store to buy fresher goods than could be found in state stores, at better prices, with the owner and his family exuding the best of customer service.  An ice cream shoppe up the street was similarly privately owned, as were several dress shops and eyeglass stores.  I could witness the irresistible pull of entrepreneurship--like a volcano, long dormant, then oozing, now ready to explode.  In some of my consulting with larger firms, manufacturers mostly, the managers talked with great anticipation of the time in months rather than years when the restraints of state ownership would be lifted and they could be competitive in world markets.  I was surprised that the pay of top executives of these firms was capped at no more than four times the pay of the lowliest employee.  I told them that Lee Iacocca's compensation (surprisingly, they had all heard of him) was 100 times as much.  Perhaps I was formenting revolution.

            When I walked to the campus, as I did almost always weather permitting, I passed a tavern, only they called it a "bife" in Slovenian.  No matter the time, 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning, it was always full of men in working clothes.  With the low unemployment of which communism boasted, I marveled at this seeming abuse of the system.

            A few words about the teaching mode.  It was a world apart from the U.S. methodology, and people assured me that it was the custom all over Europe, not just in eastern Europe.  The professors would sit behind their desks and read their lecture notes usually in a stultifying monologue, while students took notes, some diligently, while other dozed trying not to be too obvious.  There was no discussion, no questions, no participation whatsoever.  When I first encountered this, I thought I was seeing a rather inept teacher, but even the dean conducted classes in the same way.  When I occasionally was a visiting lecturer I really shook up these classes.  I forced students to participate, to show their understanding of the topic, to express their ideas, and to question traditional concepts.  At first, students were timid and had to be forced to participate; but they soon got the hang of it.  And my classes were so stimulating that other professors sought me out for this innovative teaching method that they had never experienced before.  "This is the way we teach in America," I would tell them.  "For we find that participation is the key to better learning, as well as stimulating ideas and interest."  I sometimes wonder whether teaching methods have really changed there.  If so, then perhaps I was one of the instruments of such a change.

            Our journeys. -- As soon as the weather improved, Dorothy and I became inveterate travelers.  We had been here a little more than a month, and had gotten over the scare at the top of our neighboring mountain, and were eager to expand our adventures.

            Our first effort was rather trying.  We had heard about the hiking trails and the inn at the summit of another modest mountain that loomed just beyond the city to the north.  The trailhead started a few hundred yards beyond the last bus stop.  With this day sunny, after days of relentless rain, Dorothy and I undertook what should have been a nice half-a-day exploration. 

            It being a Sunday, we took the bus right after church and headed north toward this tantalizing uplift we could see ahead.  We left the bus, and the day still looked great, and we were rather excited. 

            The ascent would not have been difficult, but after all the rain it was wet and slippery, and we had the wrong shoes.  The soles of our everyday walking shoes were too smooth for good traction; we should have had hiking shoes or even our running shoes.  In places the incline was quite steep, but still should have been managerable without any special equipment.  We finally reached the top, and surveyed the view and had something to eat and drink along with hundreds of other hikers out this first nice day of Spring.  I was a little apprehensive, though, when I saw menacing clouds gathering in the western sky.

            I feared the descent with our shoes, so when we saw a service road that led down the mountain from the Inn we decided to take it.  We did not reckon with the much greater mileage this would entail.  Still, the risk of a fall on the shorter steeper decline, especially if it started to rain, made this decision prudent.

            When we finally got down the mountain we were confused as to just where we were.  At a village we tried to ask directions to Ljubljana.  Nobody spoke any English, but by saying Ljubljana and shrugging and throwing up our hands to show our ignorance, they got the drift and pointed the way.  We had come out on the far side of the mountain and now had to go halfway around it to get to the bus stop.  But at least we had a level road.  As we walked as fast as we could, the rain came, and in the dusk now we could see the busses still a mile or so away.  Then one of the few cars on this stretch of road stopped and gave us a lift.  The man knew a little English and was going to downtown Ljubljana, so he took us all the way to our building.  He seemed rather in awe of our accomplishments that day.  He said it was about ten miles around the base of the mountain. 

            A few weeks later we took the train to Vienna.  The trip was about five hours, but it gave us great views of a foreign countryside at first wild but then more gentle as we came into Austria.  We stayed several nights at a small  hotel, and explored the downtown, the museums and concert halls, and took a bus out to the tragic Franz Josef's huge castle.  One evening after a vigorous day, we ate a big meal at a nice restaurant and ordered a liter of wine to go with it.  In our ignorance, we didn't realize how much larger a liter is than a bottle, and we floated back to our hotel room.  The weather was cold, windy, and rainy most of the time.

            We took the train several times to the Adriatic coast and the hotels that lined the shoreline.  We walked everywhere, had never done so much walking in our lives, but found it intriguing in this foreign environment.

            As Spring matured, we explored more of the beautiful country around Ljubljana that we could reach by bus for one-day trips.  One such was to Lake Bled at the foot of the Alps, a major tourist attraction for Slovenians and a site of many weddings in the chapel on the island in the middle of the lake.  A weathered castle on the side of the mountain looked down on everything.  At the village, we ordered a pizza for lunch, and found a sunnyside egg perched on top of our pizza slices.  I don't like eggs with oozing yolks, but we didn't have the language to convey our wants, so I gritted my teeth and ate the yellow mess.  

            Another memorable one-day outing was to Smorna Gora, a popular ski resort in winter about 30 miles from Ljubljana. 

It was another nice Sunday in late April, and we took the bus northward hoping that we had communicated to the driver where we wanted to get off.  We watched anxiously for the right stop, knowing that if we missed in communication we would be stranded in the hinterland for four hours until a bus returned.  Fortunately, a few other people were also going to the same destination, and we got off with them and walked up a wide graveled road to a substantial lodge at the foot of the looming mountain.  While the lodge was open, it was mostly deserted.  "I'm sure this is a beehive of activity in the winter," I told Dorothy.

            "I'm surprised it's open," she said.

            "Maybe they're getting like Americans, thinking that there might be market opportunity in convincing people that they can enjoy this in warm weather, too."

            The ski lift started there, and we took it to the top of the mountain, watching the country falling away below us.  At the summit in the thin air, Dorothy and I wandered the high meadows in delight, for the land was beautiful and easily traversed.  We walked among fields of flowers where cattle with deep-sounding bells grazed in contentment.  The air was light and clean, and great views of mountains and valleys were a joy to see.  Vacant luxury vacation chalets marched across the mountain side.  "I bet these are all fully occupied in the winter," I told Dorothy.

            "What a shame for them to waste a beautiful day like this," she said.  And she was right.  This was the warmest and driest day we had seen in our stay in Slovenia.

            Rather than take the ski lift back down, we decided to walk it.  After all, it was all downhill and the terrain appeared not difficult. 

            The task turned out to be far more formidable than we expected, but we made it and felt good about this challenge, although we missed the bus we had planned to take.  The next one was two hours later.  The time went fast though, as we indulged our by-now raging appetites at an inn near the highway and bus stop.  With a few drinks it was easy to reflect pleasantly on our escapades on the mountain.  So, we got back to Ljubljana after dark.  It was a good day.

            The trip to Rome. -- Near the first of May we arranged with our travel agent to go to Rome for five days.  For some reason we didn't fly from Ljubljana to Rome, but rather took a bus to the Italian border and customs, then another bus down the hill to Trieste and the bus depot, then another bus to the airport, and finally the plane to Rome.  All these connections were made complicated since we knew no Italian and most people around Trieste knew no English.  We hoped Rome would afford better communication.

            We had reservations at a small hotel in the heart of Rome, and while the room was small it had a private lavatory.  And the location was great.  More luxurious hotels were close by and I envied those smartly dressed people we could see patronizing them.  We on the other hand had to husband our resources.

            In so doing, we walked almost everywhere around Rome, only occasionally taking a bus or going with a tour group.  But the weather was cold and rainy, and in my ignorance I had assured Dorothy that Rome being farther south should have much nicer weather than around Ljubljana.  So, we brought only light jackets and no rain gear.  The day we visited St. Peter's and the Vatican was our worst experience with the weather.

            The day was cool and cloudy but dry when we walked the two miles to St. Peter's in the morning.  We toured the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel gazing at world-famous art, but maybe not appreciating it as much as we should have.  Amid the profusion, it is easy to become calloused.  We had  the same reaction at the Shonnenberg Castle in Vienna.  I guess Dorothy and I are not art aficionados.

            Afterwards, an English tour guide named Penny led our English-speaking group around the Cathedral.  Unfortunately, she gave a 15-minute talk in the vestibule with the huge doors opening and closing while a cold wind blew fitfully on us in our lightweight clothes.  The major impression I have of St. Peter's is its huge size.  We were told that the main altar alone was the height of a ten-story building, while the dome went far beyond that.   

            As we prepared to leave St. Peter's, a steady rain was beginning to fall and the temperature was about 50.  It was not fit weather to walk back to our hotel, so we took a bus.  We boarded with some trepidation since we had read that this particular bus from St. Peter's had the highest incidence of pickpockets and purse snatchers in the whole city.  The bus was crowded and we had to stand, and with the windows fogged up we got off a stop too soon and had to walk six long blocks to our hotel.  We both came down with colds a few days later.

            Our impression of Rome was that it was not particularly hospitable to tourists, that many establishments and taxi drivers were out to gyp tourists, while petty theft abounded.  A day earlier we had witnessed two instances of such theft.  The first we thwarted, and the second we witnessed the dismay of two Americans in our tour group after they discovered their billfolds and passports were missing.

            Dorothy and I both carried our valuables in money belts inside our clothes, so we faced less danger of such theft.  Still, that morning as we were walking down a side street in the middle of downtown, suddenly a half a dozen children and an older woman surrounded us yelling and groping us.  A man across the street shouted at the gypsies, and they disappeared as quickly as they had come. 

            This incident reminded me of something similar in a Paris subway when we were in Europe with Connie and Matt, then teenagers.  Suddenly about five young girls, gypsies again, surrounded me and wrapped a piece of aluminum around me while yelling in some incomprehensible language.  In those days we were not the sophisticated travelers we were later, so had no money belts.  But I had my billfold in my shirt pocket and instinctively folded my arms to protect it, and they took their aluminum and quickly departed.  We learned later that this was the latest technique of these pickpockets, to surprise a tourist and get his or her attention on their wrapping and forget to guard a wallet or purse.

            Our last day in Rome, a Sunday, we visited half a dozen churches within walking distance of the hotel.  They all were ornate, but each was different.  We passed one Polish church and were puzzled at all the men milling around outside.  Over coffee in a nearby restaurant, we asked an English-speaking waitress about this.  "These Polish men, they bring their women to church, but then they wait for them outside.  They believe the women should do the praying."

            "Are the Italian men the same way?" I asked.

            "Oh, they don't even bring their women to church."

            This day was the first one that was sunny and warm, and we relished it.  That afternoon we sat on the famous Spanish Steps and people watched, and nursed our colds about to happen.

            Dubrovnik and Medjagorie. -- In the latter part of May we took a six-day trip to explore a great walled city on the Adriatic,    Dubrovnik, and from there to go to Medjagorie, a religious shrine where the Virgin Mary reportedly contacted four school children and now was a site attracting hundreds of thousands of Pilgrims. 

            We took a Yugoslavian Airline flight to Dubrovnik and spent two days sightseeing this famous city.  We walked the walls that still encircled the inner city, and wandered down the cobbled streets and lanes lined with buildings centuries old, but most still well kept up.  (In the battles of the late 1990s, Dubrovnik was shelled by Serbian troops in the hills, but the walls and buildings survived most of the damage and I understand have now been fully restored.) 

            From here we took a 3-hour bus trip to Medjagorie, along with other people who were either fervent Pilgrims or  skeptics, including several priests.  The town had been a  country village far from the mainstream of activity, until these children thought they had visions.  Had they really seen the Virgin Mary or were they only impressionable children who desperately wanted to?  Despite a skeptical Church, the devout began flocking there, and finally the Church responded.  A large church had been built for the faithful, and offered many masses.  We were particularly impressed by the outdoor confessionals, in which dozens of priests heard confessions in many languages.

            Along with a throng of people we climbed the hill where the visions were supposed to have happened.  I tried to leave myself open for holiness to envelop me, but in truth, the mass of humanity made it difficult to feel the Lord's presence.  Still, we were awed by the devotion of some who climbed the four hundred feet to the top on a wickedly rocky trail on their bloody knees.  I envied such faith.

            Another aspect of Medjagorie disgusted us:  the commercialism.  The streets near the shrine were lined with shops hawking all sorts of religious articles.  Many of these vendors were Indian or middle Easterners, surely not Christian.  Perhaps Lourdes is the same way, but somehow such frenzied commercialism seemed to tarnish what could be a great religious experience.

            From Medjagorie we took a bus back to Dubrovnik.  For some reason, we were the only passengers on the bus.  It took a different route than we had come up, and reached the coastline fifty miles north of Dubrovnik.  The road was one of sharp curves and with no guardrails it fell away to the Adriatic hundreds of feet below.  As our bus careened around the curves, we could see the remains of dozens of cars and trucks that had not made it.  This hardly promoted peace of mind, especially with a burly driver who spoke no English and seemed intent on proving his machoism.  Well, of course, we made it.  He left us at the top of a ridge above the busy downtown of Dubrovnik, and we dragged our suitcases down 300 or more steps to come out near our hotel.  After the hair-raising bus trip, solid ground felt mighty good.  And Dorothy and I could certainly handle stairs.

            Our adventures were not quite over.  A day later when we were supposed to be picked up at the hotel to take us to the airport for the flight back to Ljubljana, we waited, and waited, but no van showed up.  Our plane was to leave at 11:30 p.m. and we were miles from the airport.  I finally flagged down a taxi and he raced us pell mell to the airport, and--again--we faced curving roads with dropoffs mercifully hidden in the darkness.

            We reached the airport and managed to get seats.  But the airplane was packed, with people sitting in the aisle and on laps, and some even standing like on the crowded buses of Ljubljana.  At first we were shocked at this gross violation of safety, but no one else seemed to think anything of it.  We got into Ljubljana about 2:30 in the morning.  We felt rather pleased with ourselves for having survived the significant adventures of this trip.               

           

            Our car trip to Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.--Near the end of our stay, we rented a car for a week to drive around central Europe.  We particularly wanted to see the town where my mother's mother came from; we didn't know exactly where her father had lived, except that it was somewhere in Prussia.  Then we wanted to see some of Switzerland, Munick, and Salzburg, Austria.  And I wanted to face the challenge of driving the German autobahns, for I had heard ominous things about them, the wild speeds with no limiting laws, and the horrendous accidents.

            "I'm told they drive up to a hundred or more miles an hour," I told Dorothy.

            She shuddered.  "I'm not sure I want to ride with you at a hundred miles an hour.  Surely you'll be content to drive a little slower."

            "I promise just to keep up with the traffic," I told her.  She looked at me warily and winced.

            We were able to rent a mid-size Opel with automatic transmission.  They even gave us a new one, I guess because they thought we were dignitaries.  (They were a little shocked when we paid them off in dinars at the end; they had thought they would be paid in dollars.)  

            Less than an hour from Ljubljana we came to a narrow twisting pass that led over the Slovenian tier of Alps.

            The curves were so sharp that the back ends of trucks coming down too fast from the top of the pass broached on our lane, and we gritted our teeth as we tried to squeeze by and not plunge over the bank or be sideswiped.  Guard rails apparently were unknown in this part of the world.  Finally we reached the highest point of the pass and nosed down.  Now the trucks were crawling up and were not as much of a threat.  Then we were down in a fertile valley and the Austrian city of Klagenfurt.

            We followed the valley northwesterly to Salzburg and on to Munich, which we bypassed as we headed west toward Strausburg and Heidelburg.  Our estimates of speeds on the autobahns were too low.  Mercedes, BMWs and other muscle cars went well over a hundred miles an hour.  I had the accelerator pushed to the floor and would approach a hundred, but could see cars rapidly coming up behind us flashing their lights.  Should I be passing slower cars, they would practically crawl up my back bumper, flashing their lights continuously, demanding that I get out of the passing lane and let them pass.  I did not do so with any charity. 

            I must say that I found driving on the autobahn to be exhilirating.  I was driving faster than I had ever before in my life; to do this at home would have brought not only a massive fine but even loss of license.  As I was driving these high speeds I felt at the height of my alertness and good judgment.

            Adding to the challenge of driving on these highways was the variation in speed of cars.  The Mercedes and the like were impossible to keep up with.  But also on the highways were VW Beetles and other small cars, some hearking back to another age.  These might be plodding along at 40 mph.  If you could stay in the passing lane, no problem, but with more traffic and powerful cars demanding the road, you were forced to move out of the passing lane and be prepared to brake down for the tortoises, or else crash into them.  I soon discovered the need for a driver to be able to discern  the plodding cars in time to slow down in safety.

            We left the autobahn around Strausburg, and took two-lane roads to the village my grandmother (who had died when my mother was only a young girl), had come from:  Obergempern.  It was rather hilly, not very big, and sleepy--not even modestly energetic.  We found no one who could speak English, and after a few hours of strolling the streets and visiting the church, we departed for Heidelberg, about an hour away.

            We found Heidelberg confusing with its narrow crooked streets, and we parked on the sidewalk of one such street to examine the map to see how we might navigate to our hotel.  An old car with Yugoslavian license plates stopped to assist us.  We quickly realized that since our car had Yugoslavian plates, too, they must have thought we were fellow countrymen.  Unfortunately, they couldn't speak a word of English and we certainly couldn't speak their language--I don't think they were from Slovenia, but were probably Serbs speaking an entirely different language.  They couldn't understand why we couldn't speak their language, but they decided to help us.  We finally showed them the name of the hotel, they conferred, and then motioned for us to follow them.  Through a circuitous route they led us there and we thanked them profusely, while they still wondered how come a Yugoslavian car didn't have anyone who could speak their language.  Maybe they thought we had stolen it.          

            We found Heidelberg, as many of these European cities, even including Vienna, to be pedestrian friendly, with some downtown streets banned to cars (which caused our problems in getting to the hotel, since the direct route was closed to cars).  We strolled the streets looking for a place to eat, and finally bought several cuckoo clocks and a beer stein to take back with us. Throngs of people, many of student age, filled the streets and the beer gardens until long after we went to bed.     

            The next day we drove into Switzerland and without too much difficulty found our hotel in Lucerne.  The city with its beautiful lake and soaring mountains is a major tourist destination, and the air was light and invigorating.  I thought I had never seen any place quite as beautiful.  "If we were rich," I told Dorothy, "I would like to have a second home here."

            "What about Hilton Head?" she asked.  "I thought that was your dream vacation spot."

            "Well, if we were rich, maybe we should have three homes," I told her grinning.

            The next day we took a boat across the lake to the side of a mountain that rose almost from the shore.  Its name was Pilatus, and a cog railway led to the very top, some 8500 feet.  We waited in line to take it up the steep slope and watched fascinated at the panorama as we climbed higher and higher.  We got out at the top to a cold, howling wind, and hurried inside the buildings.  Through windows, we could see several trails on the top of a ridge falling away from the summit, and a few stalwart souls trudging along them.  "I'm surprised the wind doesn't blow them off," I observed.

            "I hope you're not thinking of us hiking up here."

            "No way," I said.

            But after we had a sandwich and some hot coffee, we decided to venture out on one of the shorter trails, but it was hardly pleasurable and we were glad to get back.  While we could see a great distance, the scenery was not that nice.  The land was barren and rocky--we were well above timber line--and scudding clouds kept fighting the sun.  We decided to take the next tram down to more hospitable surroundings.

            After two nights at Lucerne, we left the next morning for Munich.  We spend two nights there also, roaming the streets and looking in at the beer gardens that in the Octoberfest, a few months later, would be thronged.  But they were still busy with both young and old people.  I was trying to decide who were the biggest beer drinkers of all, the English or the Germans.  I concluded it was a dead heat.

            We left the second morning to drive to Salzburg, Austria, the home of Mozart and the Sound of Music, both playing prominently to the tourists.  Salzburg was a lot smaller than Munich, and had mountains in all directions.  Our most vivid memory was the Sound of Music tour that we took along with hundreds of other tourists.  I still remember the Black Forest cake we had at a tourist stop near the church where Maria's wedding took place.  It was surrounded by mountains, not the stark barrenness of Pilatus, but green and forested, with cheerful people in colorful costumes.     

            A few days later we said goodbye to Ljubljana and were again driven to Zagreb and to a plane that would take us to Frankfurt.  The PanAm flight was nonstop to New York City.

As we landed, I felt like the Pope.  I had an overwhelming urge to kiss the ground of my native land.