Last night I took some time out from my hectic school schedule and packing, to go for a bike ride with my son Owen. We did a big loop through Topčider Park, to Rakovica, and up Dedinje Hill behind the Royal Palace. It was such a refreshing break and a good bonding experience with him. As I get older, I appreciate the simple things in life and a bike ride through the countryside with my son on a beautiful late spring evening, nothing better! We are in the process of closing our family’s time in Belgrade and these kinds of activities help this sense of saying goodbye. I will certainly miss the parklands of Topčider, Košutnjak, and Haid, all near our home in Senjak.
This is a special day for the ex-Yugoslavia because it was the Day of Youth and the celebration of former dictator, Tito’s birthday. It is also my birthday so I always try to do something with the family with a Yugoslavian theme. This year since we are leaving Serbia, I wanted to get a family photo with the traditional national costumes of Serbia.
Rural people actually wore these clothes into the 20th century, but like all traditional, locally made clothes, modernization has homogenized clothing for much of the western world. In some ways I see why people don’t wear these. The course woolen fabric of the pants is a bit uncomfortable and on this humid, early summer, day, it was difficult to get the kids to cooperate. The shirts had intricate embroidery, the red stitching symbolizing the blood lost in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. A distinctive feature for both men and women is the jelek or waist coat, which looks good, even today. You can’t see in the photo above, but I am wearing opanci, which are leather sandals with hooked toes that the peasants wore for climbing. They are similar to North American Indian moccasins.
My favorite part of the costume is of course, the national hat of Serbia, the Šajkača. The hats originated with Serbian soldiers, stationed on the Danube and Sava Rivers by the Austro-Hungarians to protect the empire against the Ottoman Turks. The hats are in the shape of an overturned Serbian boat, a šajka. The hat eventually became popular with the rest of the Serbian army and also with non-military farmers. The Bosnian Serb army during the wars of the breakup of Yugoslavia brought it back into popularity. Today it is only worn for special occasions, like Serbian national soccer matches or by folkloric dance troupes. I think they are very hip and would like to see them made popular again. They are very distinctive and instantly recognizable as Serbian.
This morning Owen, Oliver and I completed a 5 kilometer run with the school’s Boys On The Move program. My wife Nadia for years has done the Girls on the Move, which is similar to Girls on the Run, with her elementary girls. One of the elementary male teachers did Boys on the Move this year so Owen was able to participate. We ran the approximately 5 kilometer course in 25:00 minutes, which was the second fastest of the group. Oliver also got in the action and ran was well, finishing the course with our school’s Athletic Director, Damian Hart and his daughter Abigail. Nadia was busy with her running buddy and organizing the whole event so I didn’t get a picture with her.
I didn’t want to have Ocean miss out on this blog post, so she is shown below riding a horse at the Belgrade Hipodrom. She has expressed an interest to ride horses to I took her down to the race track. It is a really nice setting near our house and is the oldest sports venue in the city. They hold harness racing, or the trots as they say in Australia, on summer Sunday afternoons.
Ocean in Revolution Square in Bucharest where two Romanian rulers (King Carol II and Ceausescu) were forced out of office.
Ocean is pictured above in Revolution Square in the center of Bucharest. This is the large plaza where KIng Carol II abdicated in 1940 and dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu fled from in December of 1989. Bucharest has many large, open squares, and beautiful, old architecture. You can see the famous World War II-era Athene Palace Hotel in the background. We walked around the center at night are were very impressed with the palaces, theatres, etc. One bad point is the Romanians drive very fast.
We have a four-day weekend with the Serbian government declaring the May 1 Labor Day on Thursday a national holiday along with the Friday as well. We took the opportunity to visit my close friend Claudiu Fuiorea and his family in Bucharest. They are Romanians who used to live in Belgrade and last year they moved to the Romanian capital. We visited them at their home in Transylvania during the winter break of 2009-2010 and traveled with them to the Carpathian mountain resort town of Baile Herculane in October of 2009. We were supposed to also travel with them in October of 2012, but Ocean’s passport was expired so we had to stay in Serbia. We also made many shopping trips to Timisoara, the most western city and a short drive from Belgrade. Claudiu’s wife Vesna and children, Tudor and Mark, are also close to my family and through the years, we have had many good times together. As we leave Europe for Japan next month, we really wanted to see them one more time before we go.
I am in front of the Arc of Triumf, erected in 1878 to celebrate Romania’s Independence
This is my second visit to Bucharest, the first being on business in October of 2010. Through our friendship with Claudiu’s family, we have really come to know the country and culture of Romania. After Poland, it is the biggest Eastern Europe country, and with the Carpathian Mountains, Black Sea Coast, and western Pannonian plain, it is the most diverse. It also differs from the rest of Eastern Europe due to its Latin root language. This is a fascinating country regarding folklore and legends, and it has been pleasurable learning nation’s history.
The next day I went for a run around the National Arena which was constructed in 2008 and is located close to Claudiu’s apartment in the suburb of Titan. Soccer is very popular here as in all Latin European countries (Italy, Spain, France). The suburbs remind me of many Eastern European capital cities because of the communist architecture of the apartment buildings and offices. We then ventured out as a family and had a great afternoon, seeing the sites and soaking up some perfect spring weather. We first visited the Natural History Museum, that had a large and varied collection of stuffed animals from all around the world. It was started by the Romanian naturalist, Grigore Antipa and was set up very well, with it being entertaining and educational for the children and adults. We then walked through the massive Herăstrău Park for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. Bucharest has several lakes and parks around them and they are well-maintained. This was something I was not expecting. I also was impressed with the city’s subway, that was clean and organized. It was very convenient to travel downtown and back to Titan.
The kids in front of an extinct elephant species at the Natural History Museum
We had a special day on Wednesday to mark the ninth anniversary of Oliver’s birth. He invited four friends over for a Nerf gun extravaganza! There were bullets flying all over the house and the kids had a great time. A highlight was the weekly radio check to the US Marines at the embassy. We walked to Ollie’s favorite restaurant, Quan Du Je, in Senjak. It is a nice thing about Serbia is that they love kids and chaos, so no one was bothered by the boys chasing each other and being loud in the restaurant.
We finished the night by watching World War Z and reading a bit of the Zombie Apocalypse Handbook. It was a total boy’s party. Another interesting moment was the candle explosion during singing Srećan Rođendan (Serbian Happy Birthday) and you can see the video here.
Happy Birthday to our charismatic, high-energy, mischievous, boundary-testing, curious, knowledgeable, warm hearted, loving little guy! We love you and enjoy your tenth year!
Last week we were in Cyprus for our Spring Break. In the photo above, we are near the city of Pafos, on the far western part of the island in front of the famous Aphrodite’s Rock. Greek mythology tells the story of Cronus, the son of the Godess Gaia, under orders from her mother, cut off the testicles of his father, Uranus (Sky), and threw them into the sea. A white foam appeared on the base of the rock and thus rose Aphrodite, the Greek Godess of Love, Beauty, Pleasure, and Procreation. Legend has it that people who swim around the rock, which we did, will be blessed with eternal beauty. I am hoping it works for me, as I am approaching 50, I need a comeback in the looks department!
We had a relaxing holiday staying at Le Meridien Resort. Two other family friends came with us, and the kids had a great time with their friends and the adults enjoyed ourselves. I am not totally into the resort scene, as I prefer a bit more active holidays. The boys learned a bit about scuba diving and I am always amazed at how long children can stay in a pool. They were in and out of the various pools and the beach all day long. The hotel also had a great breakfast.
It was also my farewell (for now) to the Mediterranean. This school year with visits to Trogir and Novigrad, Croatia, Valencia, Spain, Malta, and now Cyprus, I got a good feel for the lifestyle. The people of the Mediterranean are blessed with such beautiful, clear sunshine, turquoise waters, green pines, dramatic cliffs in addition to the distinctive pleasant odors of the sea breezes and plants of the biome. It is one of my favorite places on earth and I feel lucky to have lived so close to the sea for this many years.
This afternoon we made traditional Serbian Eastern eggs. It was a special occasion today as the Western Christian Easter and the Orthodox Easter fall on the same day. This happens every so often, the next two occasions will be in 2017 and 2025. We went “old school” and got onion skins from the market and boiled the eggs to get the nice red color. If you look closely, I drew a cross and X.B. on the front egg in wax before putting them in the onion dye. X.B. in Cyrillic means “Hristos Vaskrse” (Christ Has Risen). Serbs say this on Easter and one must reply, Vaistinu Vaskrse! (Of course He has Risen!).
Nadia is boiling the eggs with the onion skins.
We next put on some plastic designs from the company, jaje.rs. They copy designs from Serbian monasteries in the various styles and are very easy to put on the eggs. As you can see below, they are very beautiful. We will do some egg tapping later today and tomorrow, we will complete the Easter celebrations with a chocolate egg hunt.
We are all a bit sad that this will be our last Easter in Serbia, but will definitely pack some more of the jaje.rs monastery designs with us to Japan.
This morning I took the kids on a bike ride around the Sava River. We started on the New Belgrade side of the river and rode across on the new Ada Bridge. After playing in several playgrounds on the island of Ada Ciganlija, we took the famous blue bike ferry from the island back to New Belgrade. There are two boat companies (blue and yellow) that taxi people from New Belgrade to Ada. It is great for kids and they love being on the water. The boat operators say on a hot summer day they will transport between 600-800 people to and from the island. Today we were the only ones on and it cost us 1.50 Euros to make the crossing.
The air was so fresh, cool, with the scents of flowers all around, it really felt like spring. I had a wonderful day with the family!
The View from the Micalet Tower – Valencia Cathedral
I just completed five days in Valencia, Spain. I have been to Spain many times, but only the island of Mallorca, where I did my Master’s degree and a family holiday two years ago. This was the first time on mainland Spain and in a large city. I was very impressed with Valencia, it reminded me somewhat of California. It has the same climate, located on the coast, with palms and orange trees everywhere. I didn’t know that Valencia was such a large city (the third biggest in Spain after Madrid andBarcelona) and that it was part of the Catalan region. This makes sense geographically, because it is located directly due west of Mallorca.
The best thing about the city besides the obvious Mediterranean Sea and sunshine, is what city officials did with the Turia River. It used to flow through the city and in 1957, a major flood made city officials reconsider it. They decided to re-route the river, bypassing the city to the south. They then took the river bed which meandered through the city and converted into a long green belt of parks and sports facilities. There are soccer fields, a gorgeous baseball field, athletics stadium, and hundreds of playgrounds and picnic areas. There are bike and running paths running its length on both sides. Yesterday, I renteda bicycle from Passion Bike (highly recommended) and took the kids from the historic city center, all the way to the beaches and back. It was a glorious, cool, grey day of exercise! Having lived in Venezuela and visited city named, Valencia there, they also have a narrow park in the city, but it is much smaller and smells of sewage. I have to commend the Valencia city officials for this idea. They are also maintaining the park very well and the landscaping and condition of the playgrounds and paths were excellent. Between the beach and Turia park is an industrial area that is really run down. I noticed some of the Formula One race track used to be here. I guess they ran out of money after developing the City of Arts and Sciences, but it is area which could be made nicer.
Bike Ride on Malvarrosa Beach
Near the former mouth of the river is a complex of museums and civic attractions called The City of Arts and Sciences. The futuristic architecture makes it look like the set of a science fiction movie, and it brought back memories of the 1970’s movie, Logan’s Run. We took the kids to the aquarium, the largest in Europe. It costs 27 Euros to enter and featured a dolphin show (lame in my opinion) and large and small tanks of sea life from a range of habitats and oceans. As with all zoos and aquariums, they give me mixed feelings. It is fascinating to see the wonders of nature, but I feel for the large, higher intelligent animals that live in such small spaces. I also prefer to see specimens in the wild to zoos, but it does give access to elderly and the less adventurous.
As with most cities in the Mediterranean, the architecture reflects the long history of different civilization that have called the place home. The old city is quite compact and well-preserved, with a good mix of the old and modern. The Valencianos enjoy socializing and it showed with the numerous cafes, restaurants, bars, located outdoors in the narrow streets. There were many gorgeous plazas and we walked through them daily. There were many tourists, but not an overwhelming number due to it being off season. The beach was very quiet and on the two days we visited, it was overcast. I did manage to get in the water, despite the cool breeze. There is something soothing and invigorating about swimming in the sea.
Soccer is the big sport here and the sports pages and televisions were full of highlights from the Spanish and Champions Leagues. I still don’t understand the appeal of the league without salary caps for teams. Year after year, it is dominated by the big two, Barcelona and Madrid, with only a handful of teams having a realistic shot of breaking through. Valencia is one of those teams, but they are down in the standings this year. (Look up why the theme of the bat). I also heard and saw less Catalan than in Mallorca. I was complemented on my Spanish several times and it is always nice to understand the locals in their native tongue. It made me enthusiastic for keeping my Spanish sharp. I need to look for an advanced Spanish book with tips and pointers to polish my level. I will be spending a couple of weeks in Bolivia and it will be a good opportunity to practice this June.
Ayuntamiento of Valencia
Overall, I had an enjoyable visit to Valencia and I would definitely come back with my family. The Turia River Green Belt, great weather, beaches, and old city, makes Valencia a premier tourist attraction. I would like to thank my co-chaperone on the trip, Milica Rkulovic, our school’s Spanish teacher, for inviting me to go with the class. She was delightful and I had fun with her and the students.
I had five pleasant days on the island of Malta this week. Our school participated in atheatre festival and I was one of the chaperones.
I didn’t realize how small the island of Malta is. It is one of the smallest countries in the world by area, and with 400,000 Maltese, it is the third most densely populated nation in the world. As with most places in the Mediterranean, it has stunning scenery and a long history. Malta particularly has such a strategic position historically, that many different people fought over the island for thousands of years. The Mediterranean is very narrow south of Sicily and north of Tunis (formerly Carthage) and Malta lies in the center of this strait. It was fought over by the Phoenicians, Arabs, Ottomans, English Knights, Napoleon, etc. all the way up to World War II. Malta received more bombs than most cities in World War II except for London and Berlin. All of these different people had an influence on the Maltese and it can be seen in their faces and their language and architecture.
Marsaxlokk Village – Malta
We got to meet a lot of Maltese because we were hosted by the Verdala International School. The language is strange in that it is Semitic (Sicilian Arabic) but mixed with a bit of Italian and they use a Latin alphabet, with a few extra letters. It is really hard to understand and sounds very Arabic. I learned that Sa-ha means “to health” and it is the “cheers” greeting. Some Maltese look Italian and some look Arabic. They take pride in eating excellent food and having a hearty appetite and it showed with many having stocky or portly builds. The architecture was similar to Bahrain and the Gulf Region, and there were also many beautiful, old, palaces and buildings. There are no wilderness areas as the entire island is pretty much either urban or farmland. There are many walled cities and fortresses, and this reflects the many sieges that took place here. The most recent outsiders to rule the island, the British, left in 1964, but their influence is still seen. It reminded me of Cyprus in that respect.
Walking the Streets of Mdina, Malta
It was the perfect time to be there for the spring wildflowers. In a few weeks, they will wither away and the hot, intense, summer sun will turn the island from green to brown. Everywhere one went, thousands of bushes, trees, and plants were in bloom. I did get a chance to do some sight seeing. The festival organizers took us to the “silent city” of Mdina, a walled fortress in the middle of the island. The narrow streets, high walls, and views to the Mediterranean were an impressive site. Malta, like, Poland, is very Catholic. 500 years ago, the Crusader Knights were sent to the island to defend it from the Ottomans. There were churches everywhere, and the tourist brochures say there are 365 of them on the island. We also saw a site of ruins that looked like a bigger Stone Henge. They were built 3,500 years ago and were located on the cliffs on the north side of the island. We went for a hike through the wildflower-filled cliffs and stopped for delicious fish lunch. On our final day we toured a small picturesque fishing village and walked around the magnificent harbor of Valletta. Absolutely breath-taking is the only way I can describe it. You can see for yourself with the photos.
We stayed the Marina Hotel, in the posh suburb of St. Julian’s. The school’s campus is close by and is an old British fort from the late 19th century. An unique setting for a school, with a large moat surrounding the school and gun turrets in the corners. Probably the coolest part of the old fort are the long tunnels under the fort. The British built 5 forts on the island during this time, and this particular fort, Pembrooke, was never used as a fort because military experts thought it was too exposed. It served as a barracks and supply storage for them. With the advent of modern warfare and the airplane, the fort was made quickly obsolete. The tunnels did come in handy in World War II, where British soldiers and others there took refuge in them. You can still see the names of the families painted on the walls to assign spaces for them. There were still some metal frames of the bunk beds attached to the walls and even graffiti of Hitler.
It is a really nice place to visit. The harbor in the capital city of Valletta is absolutely breathtaking. The narrow streets, limestone walls, the turquoise blue waters, and that Mediterranean sunshine combine for spectacular setting. I would like to thank Daphne and the other faculty members of the Verdala International School for being such fine hosts and showing us the best of Malta.
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