Here's my first piece on the Austria presidential elections Sunday. And here's the second.
Not much of a backstory, except my car is still in the shop, so getting to and from Vienna on these old, ambling, countryside trains takes more than three times as long as it normally would.
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A few years back, I flew into Zagreb from Bratislava. The plan was to be picked up at the airport by the group I was working for, and then ferried over to the coast and deposited on a little island called Mali Losinj ("mali" means "little" in Croat, so I mean LITTLE island!).
No one was there to pick me up. I checked the bus schedule, and who woulda thunk? A bus goes directly there, but I would have to run my ___ off to catch it, because it was departing in 15 minutes. I ran and ran and ran. Made it.
As I remember, it was something like a two hour trip. Three hours? I really can't remember. But I do remember that along the way, it started to rain and the brakes failed on the bus, hitting a little car heading in the opposite direction on the single -- and I mean single --lane road, high up in the mountains on a wicked switchback. It wasn't a serious accident, but we had to wait about an hour or so before we were on our way again.
Out my window, all I could see was a straight shot down the mountain. No guardrails, no brush or bracken, no slope. no one-foot soft shoulder, just a freakin' cliff.
I'll never forget it. Unfortunately.
I was farther north on this Croatia excursion. Here's a tiny snippet of some of the mountain travel, although unable to capture yet more of those dramatic drops.
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Istria, Croatia
Brioni Island was a favorite getaway spot of Austrian royalty during the empire. When Tito came to power, he used it as a type of Camp David/weekend retreat.
There's a museum there that would make Norman Bates choke with prideful tears. It seems it was customary for visiting heads of state to show up with a llama, or a black bear, or maybe a golden eagle. You know, as a gift.
Being the sentimental man he was, when the animal died, Tito had it stuffed. This means you walk through the Pseudo Zoo, with the still-living gifts, and then later the Dead Zone zoo, among gifts of visits past. In this part, I felt like I'd climbed inside a ViewMaster.
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Porec, Croatia
The following little story does not make me look good, so I hope I get some credit for sharing it:
At the hotel in Porec, I awoke Day One in the wee hours to the sounds of pleas. Sounded like someone saying "help. help." I strained to listen more. "Help. Help. Help." And then I promptly fell back asleep.
So there you have it. Don't count on me in an emergency when sleep is pulling me back to its chamber.
In the morning I took a walk in search of (what turned out to be) six dollar tooth paste, and heard where the real cries of help were coming from. Take a listen. Doesn't it sound like "help. help. help."?
