I had to leave a few days early to get back to Budapest to apply for a Russian transit visa. So one Saturday afternoon, Olga and Mila accompanied me to Split. We spent a little while in Diocletian's Palace, stopped by a 'Konzum' for some train-going provisions, and they accompanied me to Split's strangely tiny train station.
It turned out the train was undersold, and I had a compartment to myself, which truly must rank as one of life's best unpredictable joys. On the way up, I stared out the window. The train crawls up the hillsides in such a way that it feels almost designed like some sort of tourist attraction. Each turn presented a new angle on the city, and the island of Ciovo and the Adriatic in the distance. Unfortunately, I left the camera with the family, so all I have is what I remember. As we pulled into the mountains, and the sea left, I had to leave the compartment because it faced the sun and was just too hot. For a long time, I stayed in the corridor, leaning out the window, watching the scrub-covered rocky landscape whiz by.
At one point, the train stopped at a place called Primorsky Dolac to let another southbound train pass. After all the heat, the light, the train's noisy movement, it was surprisingly pleasant to be stopped for a moment. Directly in front of the window there was a building, or rather, the ruins of one. Four sturdy stone walls in place, with a roof collapsed in, the doors all pushed in, the windows gone altogether. But on the outer wall, high up above the level of the windows, there was some sort of monument marker. It was a Catholic cross inscribed above an inscription, which for the life of me I couldn't make out from the distance we were standing (it was also in Serbo-Croatian). But it had a date, 1914, which got me thinking. What was this thing? One would assume, at first, this must have something to do with the Great War, with the terrible events of that summer not half a days drive from there that changed the world forever. When men of that village would have marched off to fight their Serbian neighbors. Or perhaps, it was about something else, something that could have happened in any other year ahead of then, but simply happened to have happened the same year as the single turning point for the Western world.
The whole trip was full of those kind of moments. Eventually we came out of the parched mountains and into a broad, green valley. The sky had turned grey, and as if on cue, it began to rain. I hadn't seen rain in weeks, and it was strange to not see a blue sky overhead. Outside there was a wide valley, and I realized that the mushroom-like structures placed near each railroad trestle appeared to be machine gun emplacements. The tracks run not far from the Bosnian border, through the heart of what would have been the Serb parts of Croatia, and which were the scene of great fighting during the war. It was raining when we came into Knin, the city that had been the capital of the breakaway Serbian Krajne Republic. From the station, you could see the fortress on a commanding hill above the city. That day there was an enormous Croatian flag flying from the fortress, and it was clear to see that there was a lot of work going on up there. The walls and ramparts were being repaired, but there was nothing about historic preservation in the work -- it was a functioning military outpost on the edge of a state that still didn't really trust its neighbors. Through the hills the train continued, and you began to see abandoned houses and farms and villages. Trashed houses, and barely overgrown orchards and fields.
The sun was going down already by the time we got closer to the heart of Croatia. And there were many things I saw that have stayed with me. Among them was a view of a long valley just as the sun was casting its last rays on the valley. It was impossible for me to retreat to my compartment as long as there was light. In the distance there was a small, narrow hill, and on its crown was a bright white church, which seemed to light up above the valley like a sort of beacon. It seemed like it had been there like that for who knows how long, and that every evening the light hits in the same way, for whoever happened to be around to see it. That day, Aug. 8, was my day to see it. And tonight and tomorrow the same image will appear for someone else.
I eventually feel asleep, waking occasionally when the train lurched to a stop, including one spot somewhere in Hungary in the early dawn hours, when I was awoken by a mob of young people at the station wrapping up a warm summer night, presumably trying to get home. We arrived in Keleti Station in Budapest in the bright early morning hours. It's difficult to explain why certain experiences move you in certain ways. I suppose for me this trip was about going to a place where I never thought I would go, and seeing up close what history looks like. That it isn't a slow sluggish march, but something that loops around and refuses to sit still.
It turned out the train was undersold, and I had a compartment to myself, which truly must rank as one of life's best unpredictable joys. On the way up, I stared out the window. The train crawls up the hillsides in such a way that it feels almost designed like some sort of tourist attraction. Each turn presented a new angle on the city, and the island of Ciovo and the Adriatic in the distance. Unfortunately, I left the camera with the family, so all I have is what I remember. As we pulled into the mountains, and the sea left, I had to leave the compartment because it faced the sun and was just too hot. For a long time, I stayed in the corridor, leaning out the window, watching the scrub-covered rocky landscape whiz by.
At one point, the train stopped at a place called Primorsky Dolac to let another southbound train pass. After all the heat, the light, the train's noisy movement, it was surprisingly pleasant to be stopped for a moment. Directly in front of the window there was a building, or rather, the ruins of one. Four sturdy stone walls in place, with a roof collapsed in, the doors all pushed in, the windows gone altogether. But on the outer wall, high up above the level of the windows, there was some sort of monument marker. It was a Catholic cross inscribed above an inscription, which for the life of me I couldn't make out from the distance we were standing (it was also in Serbo-Croatian). But it had a date, 1914, which got me thinking. What was this thing? One would assume, at first, this must have something to do with the Great War, with the terrible events of that summer not half a days drive from there that changed the world forever. When men of that village would have marched off to fight their Serbian neighbors. Or perhaps, it was about something else, something that could have happened in any other year ahead of then, but simply happened to have happened the same year as the single turning point for the Western world.
The whole trip was full of those kind of moments. Eventually we came out of the parched mountains and into a broad, green valley. The sky had turned grey, and as if on cue, it began to rain. I hadn't seen rain in weeks, and it was strange to not see a blue sky overhead. Outside there was a wide valley, and I realized that the mushroom-like structures placed near each railroad trestle appeared to be machine gun emplacements. The tracks run not far from the Bosnian border, through the heart of what would have been the Serb parts of Croatia, and which were the scene of great fighting during the war. It was raining when we came into Knin, the city that had been the capital of the breakaway Serbian Krajne Republic. From the station, you could see the fortress on a commanding hill above the city. That day there was an enormous Croatian flag flying from the fortress, and it was clear to see that there was a lot of work going on up there. The walls and ramparts were being repaired, but there was nothing about historic preservation in the work -- it was a functioning military outpost on the edge of a state that still didn't really trust its neighbors. Through the hills the train continued, and you began to see abandoned houses and farms and villages. Trashed houses, and barely overgrown orchards and fields.
The sun was going down already by the time we got closer to the heart of Croatia. And there were many things I saw that have stayed with me. Among them was a view of a long valley just as the sun was casting its last rays on the valley. It was impossible for me to retreat to my compartment as long as there was light. In the distance there was a small, narrow hill, and on its crown was a bright white church, which seemed to light up above the valley like a sort of beacon. It seemed like it had been there like that for who knows how long, and that every evening the light hits in the same way, for whoever happened to be around to see it. That day, Aug. 8, was my day to see it. And tonight and tomorrow the same image will appear for someone else.
I eventually feel asleep, waking occasionally when the train lurched to a stop, including one spot somewhere in Hungary in the early dawn hours, when I was awoken by a mob of young people at the station wrapping up a warm summer night, presumably trying to get home. We arrived in Keleti Station in Budapest in the bright early morning hours. It's difficult to explain why certain experiences move you in certain ways. I suppose for me this trip was about going to a place where I never thought I would go, and seeing up close what history looks like. That it isn't a slow sluggish march, but something that loops around and refuses to sit still.
