Yugoslavia, dying and falling

I've finally gotten around to watching all the episodes of The Death of Yugoslavia. Seeing as how there were only six and it aired 14 years ago, one would have thought I'd have gotten to it in better time, but hey, I have a backlog. Part of what made me want to watch it was reading Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, which apparently outside the US had the same title as the BBC series. Why the US must rename books is beyond me, but the fact is that these two items form an incredible medium through which the war in Yugoslavia can be told and understood.

But, while the series is good, the book is a great deal better in that it reads a lot like the War of Roses. There are a lot of characters in the narrative, but they are convincing people to say the least. Unfortunately it's sad that 250,000 people had to die in order to make the story come to life. The book really talks about each person in greater detail, but it is true that in the series they have actual interviews with the actual heads of state during the war. They decided to avoid the use of talking heads "analyzing" the war and instead use the real participants which definitely brings the situation to life. Still, the book is more convincing and if you have time to read all 300 pages, do it.

I do agree with the note on the Wikipedia article which mentions that some of the BCS was translated in a misleading manner in the series. Of course, you need to actually speak the language to pick up on this, which is unfortunate. Still though, they don't take sides and give a quite honest account which is amazing given that the British largely sided with the Serbs through the war.

23 06 2010      22 comments

Tags: bbc, history, yugoslavia

Timely desires

For the last several years I've realized that if I were to die tomorrow I'd really have no regrets as to what I did during my time on the planet. Obviously given that I'd like to do a great deal more, I wouldn't particularly enjoy waking up dead tomorrow, but even still, I'm generally pleased what what I've accomplished.

There are however what I shall call "desires" that, if I were given the chance, I would gladly take them up. By no means are they regrets because to a large degree, they're outlandish and seem to mostly revolve around time travel.

Absolute Polyglot

For some time I really wanted to just wake up one morning and be able to speak and write in any language in the world. In time however I've found that this would actually be a hollow thing to have as it would render the world absolutely flat. The character that exists in other languages would be gone if you knew them all in absolute terms. Also, as I've learned, the only way to truly learn a language is through immersion and within that process, you learn about the culture behind the language and why people say things they way they do. It must be said though that I'll never understand "of the mother whore" in Spanish other than to know that it means exactly the same as, "the shit". I'm sure Spaniards are equally stunned as to how "the shit" can be both good and bad, donc c'est la vie.

Meet my Great-Grandfather

My father's family is complete shit when it comes to family history. I've pieced together a decent amount of it, but my great-grandfather, Joseph was the missing link to all of it and he died a decade and a half before I was born. The chance to sit down with him and chat for a day over his favorite wine, Zinfandel (because it was the same red that he drank in Croatia without knowing it) would be one of the most priceless things I could ever think of being allowed.

Seeing my Neighborhood in the Later 19th Century

I live on the fringe of, or actually in The Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco depending on who you ask. This is a pretty wacky hood that I really have gotten to love in the nearly a decade that I've lived here. It wasn't always as it is today (many, many less tranny hookers in the past) and it was actually know as St. Anne's Valley a long, long time ago. To see it during that time would be ever so cool. As it is, I am stuck living vicariously through old images.

12 06 2010      8 comments

Tags: history, san francisco

Castell del Montgrí: Throwing in the towel, in 13th century style.

Driving around both Alt and Baix Empordà there is seen, off in the distance this small square structure that rests atop a decently tall mountain. If you stay to the main cities of the region, rarely do you ever get close enough to see that it is a small castle called, Castell del Montgrí. A structure that had construction started at the end of the 13th century, it sits alone atop the mountain. A defensive structure for a battle that never came, its construction was abandoned in 1301, just seven years after it was started. And there it was to sit since that day, beckoning to me to come for a visit. When I was at Quermançó Castle I saw it off in the distance some 60km away and it reminded me that I still had yet to make it up there. After all, it isn't just a hop off the road like Quermançó. It's a 300m climb that take 1-2 hours to reach the top of. While not the most arduous thing I've ever done, it isn't the most easy climb in the world, but the top is well worth it.

You arrive in Torroella de Montgrí to park. This town sits at the bottom of the mountain, with a constant view of the castle. It looks almost ridiculous, like something from a movie set seeing as how it's the only thing on the top of the mountain and it's just the outer structure of the castle. The initial park of the hike is quite easy, winding up gentle trails that pass through the rocks. You reach the cross and suddenly things get a great deal harder. It's advisable to a break and take in the view of all of Empordà as it's quite stunning, especially if you go up just after it's rained like I did.

Then the fun begins. The trail falls apart quite quickly and has numerous dead-ends that I'm not sure if they're natural or something that was devised to fool potential marauding armies. But as I scrambled up the rocks, I was thinking that this must have been all kinds of fun for the guys working on this thing back in 1294:

"Hey, Jaume."

"Oh hey, Josep. What's up?

"Nothing much, just a Monday. Scrambling up the mountain again to quarry some rocks and then scramble back down tonight. Same shit, different day, but always from from the caganer."

"Beats farming."

"True, and drywalling."

After a lot of twists and turns, I finally did come to the top. The view is nothing short of amazing. You see out to all of the mountains that border the Empordà Plane and across to the Mediterranean Sea. And then, there's the castle itself. It's basically the most impressive half-assing I've ever seen and this is 700 year-old half-assing at that. The walls are all there and can be walked around, which is quite cool as they're 31m high. But beyond this, you can actually see all the structures and initial supports that were to frame in the rest of the castle interior. Typically, these are encased in a well-preserved structure or they're demolished in ruins. It's quite interesting to see how it is that they built a castle and all the planning that went in to the engineering of it.

Then of course walking around the back shows the moat. Why on earth a fortified castle 300m above the closest building on the top of a barren mountain peak needed a moat was beyond me.

"Jaume, we've got the towers in place. The crenelations are pretty solid. The interior cistern is capped off. We're sitting on the top of a barren mountain that we made incredibly steep while quarrying the rock for the castle out of it. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Josep, if you're thinking, moat equals molt chulo, then yes I am!"

"Ah yeah! This is why my daughter is marrying your son."

"That and the dowry."

"Ah yes, the dowry..."

And that's about it. You walk around this castle that they stopped building because the Counts who decided that they needed it realized that it was freakin' insane and not worth the cost. Of course you can't just go, "Stupid castle! Why must you be so unnecessary?!!" and then proceed to kick it down. No, you just leave it and leave it they did for all of us to see and enjoy while taking this great hike up above this little piece of Catalonia. Oh yeah, pick up this bread as you're heading out of Torroella de Montgrí on the way back. It's the ultimate in convenience and taste.

04 11 2009      0 comments

Tags: castles, catalonia, history, spain, the europe

There is more and more to know about Quermançó

Whenever I come to this little piece of Northeastern Catalonia and the weather is favorable, I make a trip to the beach. It's a tricky proposition as this area is massively touristic and most of the beaches are dreadful; full of drunken, ruddy people hailing from France and Germany. But, if you take the time to drive up the N-260 out of Figueres and head towards Llança and the "hidden" beaches up there, things get a great deal more tolerable and one can have a nice day out under the sun with folks that are more often than not locals.

It just so happens that as you wind your way over the mountains that border the Empordá plane, there are these castle ruins up on a rock, standing by themselves. I asked #1 Fan about them as, like most who grew up in the US, I have a large fixation on castles. I didn't happen to have one on the hill above my childhood house like #1 Fan did when growing up, so I didn't really get my fill of them. So she said that the castle is a ruin which mostly serves as the backdrop for local heavy metal bandmembers wanting to go pose for group photos and get their proper "Iron Maiden" (still huge in Spain) portrait taken. There are a great many places like this (ruins not Iron Maiden sets) around the area, so we've never bothered to stop at this particular one to date.

As I'm here by myself and #1 Fan is off in Côte d'Ivoire, I took the time to visit Quermançó Castle (pron. 'car-man-so') as it is actually called. Well, it was also an excuse to buy awesome bulk wine. But, I was expecting something along the lines of my experience with Dvigrad, a dead city in Croatia that has some history, but is more just old ruins. It turns out the ruins of Dvigrad were actually a great deal more interesting than Quermançó, but the history of this castle is by far much more detailed.

I don't really need to go in to every historical detail as it's mostly here and what I cobbled together for the Wikipedia article above. It's more the cultural references that I find interesting. For instance, Savaldor Dalí was nuts about this place, wanting to do a number of things with it, but most oddly was to create a gigantic pipe organ that would be powered by the Tramuntana (the devil's fart). This video is on the official site here and while sped up a bit, it shows the voracity of this wind in the area. With wind like that, the pipe organ idea might have just worked and the folks who own the castle currently wanted to make it happen in 2004, although that's never come to be.

But what I really love are the local legends that have popped up around the castle. You can read a few of them here. In summary, The Countess of Molins would make a pretty fun film and The Lady of Quermançó has many different versions, including one where she would only eat the hearts of goats (my brother in-law's girlfriend knew that version.) The Golden Goat is actually interesting for more reasons beyond folklore as there was a lot of fascination with the Jews who used to live in the area prior to the 1492 "eviction". In fact Vilajuïga (the town that sits very close to the base of the rock for the castle) can be interpreted as, "The Jewish Village". And lastly in the legends, there is of course a mention of the Holy Grail, because hey, why not.

Given that the castle is about 1,000 years old, it's no wonder it's found its way in to so many aspects of stories and legend here in Alt Empordá, much more so than Castell de Sant Ferran, which while in much better shape and massive in size to Quermançó, it's only about 250 years old and just doesn't have the air of mystery that a castle up on a rock, deserted for 200 years gets.

You can see a few shots I took up at the ruins starting here.

27 10 2009      0 comments

Tags: castles, catalonia, history, the europe

Found amongst the digital rubble

While out of town for last Christmas, I spent a few days in Barcelona (my wannabe home) and I cleaned up pretty much everything on my last tourist to-do list, including seeing these Roman columns. That was back in January. It's just today that I finally dug through all the scraps of picture and video on my Spanish mobile and I found that there was a video to go along with the photos. I present it to you below in all its pixelated glory. Still cool columns though despite the quality.

14 05 2009      0 comments

Tags: barcelona, catalonia, history, spain, video

Barcelona's City History Museum is Timewarpy

Much like the Roman Temple, Barcelona's City History Museum is one of those things in the town that I've missed multiple times. This is mostly due to there being a lot to do in Barcelona and I just had never made it a priority. Well, shame on me and everyone else who made the same mistake.

The museum is less a museum and more an interactive self-guided tour (there are audio guides included with the admission) of the old Roman city that was Barcino and is now Barcelona. Yeah, some 2,000 years ago, those crazy, wandering Romans decided to build an outpost here that grew up in the town we all know and love today. True to European custom, the oldest part of the modern city sprang forth from the foundations of Barcino. You can see this on the ground level with various chunks of the old city wall still standing and incorporated in to other buildings as well as parts of the old city aqueducts.

The first floor of the museum is a good showing with artifacts from various periods of its existence as well as maps of the region at the time. It initially seems like that's about it, but it's only once you step in to an elevator at the end of the floor, that the cool juju begins. At the top o the elevator is a display that says, '2009'. As the doors close and the elevator descends, the display starts to tick off the years and it ever to slowly comes to a rest many meters below the ground in what is the original Roman town. Now, they haven't excavated the entire old Roman city or anything like that, but they have unearthed a massive chunk of buildings and elements that were everyday life for the Barcinians that lived there. You get to walk through a clothes dying shop, a fish salting shop, and most importantly, a winery (yeah, yeah, "What did the Romans ever do for us?!!")

The details are fantastic and I spent two hours meandering through all of this. I would have spent more, but I was (and pretty much still am) in the midst of a cold that makes meandering through ancient ruins not as much fun as usual. Even still, it was quite impressive and they're even working on a whole new chunk, which makes me realize that my next trip to Barcelona should include seeing what's "new" at the Roman ruins.

Exiting the museum isn't quite as cool as the entering and meandering, but on the way out, they've displayed a number of old documents from various periods as well as two scale models of Barcelona at two points in its history. The bigger model is about three by three meters, so it shows a grew wealth of detail as well as the second set of city walls that were build at some point in the Medieval period to protect that city that outgrew the old walls of Barcino. That was news to me and something I now need to scout out as I have a real old city wall fixation.

Anyways, go check out the museum if you're in town. About the only downside to it is that they don't allow photos at all, even without flash for some ridiculous reason. This is why there there is no illustrative photo for this article and why you'll just have to "unfortunately" see it for yourself.

12 01 2009      0 comments

Tags: barcelona, catalonia, history

And then Bam! Roman Temple in the Middle of a House

This is my third (technically fourth) trip to Barcelona. It doesn't get old. Someday I hope it will serve as a new home once San Francisco has played its purpose for me. Due to the whole Christmas holiday, I haven't really spent all that much time in Barcelona proper though. There were only two days this week that I really got to wander around and take in the sights. This wasn't too much of a big deal as I was pretty sick during this time and like I said, I'd also been to Barcelona before, which means that I've covered all the main touristic attractions.

There is a wonderful secret beauty in visiting a city that's been in existence for over 2,000 years in that hidden gems are are always waiting to be discovered for the patient wanderer. While it's very easy to see the old traces of Barcino in the old Roman Wall and chunks of aqueducts that still exist, the hidden parts can be a bit tougher to find, or so I thought. Upon having breakfast with a new acquaintance, I found out about a Roman temple that was inside another building. This didn't really sound very impressive as there are old chunks of the old city embedded in nearly every house in the old town. Regardless, I set out to find this place.

Down on Paradís, 10 you see a sign in to Centre Excursionista de Catalunya. There is also an older sign that says something about Roman columns being there too. You head in and instead of making a left in to the offices, you make a right in to a room that suddenly opens up to a 15 meter skylight ceiling with four massive Roman columns in the middle of it. It's wild and almost seems like a college prank until you read the history on the plaques in the room.

It turns out that these columns are real columns that have been in the exact same spot for about 2,000 years, built as a tribute to Augustus. They were part of the original Roman temple that stood in that very place. The building that you stand in was actually completely surrounding the columns and had encased them until an innovative fellow carved the columns back out a few decades ago so that they would be seen again.

Sure, in reality, it's a few old columns standing in a room, but what's cool about it is that these columns are presented in a way that is really impressive, it's free to see, and it's quite free of tourists. Sure, a few people pop in, look at them and then take off once they've checked this item off their to-do list. But as you can tell in my writing an entire article about them, they're still quite impressive if you happen to like history and Roman shizbang presented in a classy manner.

27 12 2008      1 comment

Tags: barcelona, catalonia, history, spain

Seeing Milk where it Happened

Last Tuesday, we went and checked out the premiere of Milk at the Castro Theatre. I mean, if you're going to see a movie that documents such a hefty chunk of San Francisco history and you happen to live in San Francisco, then you should go see it where it happened.

The scene was to be expected, although it was interesting to see that the 19:00 showing was much more massively packed with gay couples than the 22:00 showing, which seemed to be a lot more mixed and mostly straight couples, unless it was a lot of single girls with their gay male friends. I don't know. My Homometer ain't really all the fine tuned.

Once seeing the film, it was indeed fun to sit there with a highly reactive crowd. When those who were loathed came on screen such as Anita Brown. People even laughed heartily at jokes that they surely had seen many a time in the previews for the film.

As to how was the film? It's good. It's one of the rare occasions where I agree with the otherwise 100% ass, Mick LaSalle in saying that it portrays Harvey Milk as an American Hero, which is not something that most folks would ever want to believe. It also shows him and all the gays in the Castro as leading relatively normal lives despite the circumstances and the fact that they have a sexual preference different than 90% of the population. Of course, it does get in to the fact that a lot of them have a lot of baggage that they have to deal with because of those back home not accepting them. But, while LaSalle, gives the film the little jumping man (basically a 5 out of 5), I would probably give it a 4 out of 5 or a 8.5 out of 10. It's a well made film that tells a good story, but I had trouble really getting engrossed in it. Of course, maybe this was due to a boisterous crowd in the theater, but I think that would only help one to delve in to it. Oh, Sean Penn will most likely get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Milk. His is actually acting in this film and not just phoning it in.

28 11 2008      0 comments

Tags: film, gays, history, san francisco

Understandering Democratic Republic of the Congo

DR Congo is in the news a lot lately. Rebel General Laurent Nkunda has been firing up the warfare again in the eastern part of the country, a bit to the north of where I visited a few months ago. This history behind all of this is complex. I thinks it's about as complex as the Yugoslavian wars, except with a helluva lot more acronyms and long names to remember. So, it's probably worth clearing up a few things. First, if you hear 'Congo' in the news, it is always DRC. The other Congo is much smaller, to the north of the big one, was a French colonial, and has Brazzaville as a capital, not Kinshasa. It has problems as well, but nothing to the scale of big Congo, which was also the Belgian one by the way.

With that out of the way, it's probably best to kick out a few links that do a much better job of explaining things than I could ever hope to. I think that my Yugoslavia explanation is pretty tight at the moment, but Congo is just too twisted up for me to break down succinctly and I feel like I'd be doing a massive disservice to the millions of people who have died in this devolving twistedness. If you do want something that's a quicker read though, take a look at this BBC article. It doesn't cover as much history as needed, but it gives a decent rundown for someone who wants to be a little more knowledgeable, but not annoyingly so.

For everyone who wants to really bug the crap out of people with details at your next soiree, yet offer a solid alternative to US political discussions, I turn to Wronging Rights. Their shit is in depth and I'm told they hold their liquor like coal miners. They also happen to be that rare example of the "good lawyer" that works in human rights instead of digging around in the pockets of insurance companies. So if you really want to dig in to Congolisciousness read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. They infuse a good deal of sarcasm in there that makes the reading not just an endless rant of dates and biznak. Party, party!

This article is cross posted on Subsaharska

28 10 2008      0 comments

Tags: dr congo, history, in to africa

An Impressive Retrospective of Rijeka, Croatia

It's usually the case the proper names of places get squat upon on the internet quite quickly. For instance: unitedstates.com, congo.com, and spain.com are all crap sites that someone is sitting upon to collect advertising money or until they get the right offer to buy it off of them.

So it was the other day that I was bouncing around various Croatian city names to see what came up. Much like the examples above, the variety of names that I tried were all being held by cyber squatters. For kicks, I tried rijeka.com which forwards you to this gallery page. While the gallery takes and insanely long time to load, it's worth it as it's one of the most comprehensive collection of old photos from Rijeka that I've ever seen. If you're feeling bored, got to the page, get a cup of tea/coffee, come back, and give it a look.

To give a little history, Rijeka is Croatia's most northern coastal city east of the Istrian Peninsula. It also happens to have one of the most boring names in the world as 'rijeka' simply means, 'river' in Croatian. This was derived from the original, Italian name for the town which was 'fiume', that also means, 'river'. Visitors to Croatia will know Rijeka as a northern hub for trains connections to the interior, buses to Istria (probably Rovinj or Pula), and the end of the line coming up from Dubrovnik. I've been there twice although my gallery is pathetic at the moment. Despite its grunginess and overall aura of being a port town, I quite like the place. I don't know if this comes from the fact that until the last century, it was a crossroads between Romance language and Slavic language speakers, as well as serving as the main port for the Austrian Empire, but there's something to it. Croats often call it a feeling of "rock n' roll".

If you ever pass through, spend a day checking out the few sites and getting in to the vibe of the town, which I like a great deal more than Split. If you never fancy yourself hitting up Croatia's main port city, then just enjoy the photos of the link above.

18 10 2008      0 comments

Tags: croatia, history, photography, the balkans