Tragicocomedia

This is a copy of an e-mail sent out to friends and family after a trip through the Balkans in the northern summer of 2006. As age does not seem to diminish my enthusiasm for archiving my life, nor for serialising my autobiography, I decided to include it here…

Balkans: June 8-15, 2006 (Part 1, June 8-10)

By way of an introduction…

“The Balkans” as a geographical idea did not really exist before the nineteenth century. The region was, prior to that, referred to largely as European Turkey, as it constituted all the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The word “Balkan” actually refers to a type of mountain. It was only as western European geographers began to penetrate into the region to conduct surveys that the term “Balkan” came to be applied more generally. It was chance more than anything else that the name stuck, as a consequence of the distinctly mountainous nature of the terrain.
When not thinking of their fabulous sausages, we tend to think of the Balkans as a place that has suffered dreadfully from conflicts driven by competing “nationalisms”. This is, however, only a relatively recent phenomenon. No such conception of nationhood existed prior to the end of the nineteenth century amongst the different ethnic groups, who did not use contemporary national identities to define their ethnicity. From the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of Byzantine rule, “European Turkey” lived in relative harmony under the tolerant umbrella of Ottoman rule. The universalism of imperial rhetoric and the higher allegiance to Constantinople was replicated under the Ottomans, so that Bulgarians and Serbians saw themselves rather as Orthodox and were more worried about the infiltration of Catholic missionaries and Venetian inquisitors than being ruled by an Islamic dynasty. Indeed, religious tolerance and diversity was a financial necessity for Ottoman rule since non-muslims paid higher taxes to the Sultan.
The rise of national consciousness amongst ethnic groups was sparked largely through agitation from Western Europe. The goal was to incite these populations to assert their right to national status against Ottoman rule. This long, slow and initially fruitless agitation began to produce results towards the end of the nineteenth century. It was greatly exacerbated by the political boundaries drawn around and through these ethnic groups by the Great Powers at the end of the First World War. In Romania only seventy-two percent of the population were ethnic Romanians, whereas in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, around fifteen percent of the population, such as the Bosnian Muslims, did not belong to any of these three dominant ethnic groups. The situation was unsatisfactory for both minority and majority – to quote Mazower, “The former found that their complaints fell on deaf ears… the latter were irritated by an arrangement which allowed other states to intervene in their internal affairs… Balkan states were, in effect, free to treat their minorities much as they wished.”
What a pity that the old indifference to “nationhood” was not replaced by a secular universalism instead of the creation of a bigoted cluster of nationalist ideologies with often falsely exaggerated historical and regional claims!
In the 1990s, the most significant minorities were the ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. When, in 1992, following in the wake of Slovenia’s surprisingly peaceful secession from Yugoslavia (six day war, only 66 dead), Croatia declared its independence, it suddenly found itself not only involved in a civil war against its ethnic Serbian population, but also in a full-blown war against the bulk of the Yugoslav army, the majority of which was commanded by Milosevic in Belgrade. Bosnia’s declaration of independence soon after led to a similar civil war with its ethnic Serbian population, neighbour against neighbour, town against town, the invasion of the Yugoslav army and the previously unthinkable situation of the siege of Sarajevo which was to last longer than any other siege in modern history (ie, longer than Leningrad) ; more than four years in total.
Of course, it was only after years of dithering by the international community during which time many terrible atrocities were inflicted on ethnic minorities that the conflict broke from its murderous stalemate with a 300-odd tank driven thrust by the Croats and Nato airstrikes against the Serbs. It had been a long time coming, particularly for the Bosnian Muslims who suffered the most. But more on that later…

So, in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday the 8th of June, I flew into Trieste with my old friend and travel companion Lizzie. We took the bus into town and made straight for the ticket offices once we arrived at the bus station. We were keen to get into the Balkans. After scanning the options, we decided to take a bus that was leaving in an hour, at 1700, heading all the way down the coast to Dubrovnik and stopping at Split at 0400 in the morning. It was at this point that we decided to switch to potential itinerary number three, and bought a ticket, then got ready to split for Split (sorry, had to be done.).
After a dash through the sottopassagio to the supermercato for supplies and back to the stazione, we soon found ourselves at the beginning of rather a long ride. It was always going to be a bit of a trial, but could have been a lot worse. Indeed, it was a spectacular and beautiful drive made all the more memorable by the rather inconvenient placement of the main highway right at the edge of the coast and the subsequent need for drivers to negotiate a seemingly endless sequence of hairpin turns. This road ran at times within only feet of the water and that night we were blessed with a full moon over the sea. Thus, contrary to what is often the biggest drawback with long night rides, we not only did not miss the sights, but saw them in the mesmerising silver glare of the moon.
In Rijeka, about two hours in, a chap called Irwin, an affable banker from Chicago, boarded the coach, sat in front of us and immediately engaged us in conversation. He was on his way to Dubrovnik and, despite looking forward to a twelve-hour ride, was in good spirits. The rest of the trip was interspersed with conversations with Irwin that kept us all in a positive mood. We swapped ideas, travel tips and stories amidst the banter. When we finally arrived in Split at four A.M., sore-bummed and legged, we joked with Irwin that we might bump into him in Dubrovnik later that afternoon…
So, there we were, in Split, at dawn. It proved a pretty enough harbour like so many around the Mediterranean and Adriatic littoral, providing spacious safe anchorage for the fishing fleet and passenger ferries. What had drawn us here, however, was the fact that Split is the site of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian (AD 284-305).
Its dimensions are worthy of note. The north-south walls extended 705 feet (215 metres) and were 7 feet (2.2 metres) thick and 72 feet (22 metres) high on the Adriatic side and 60 feet (18 metres) high on the north. There were 16 towers (of which 3 remain) and 4 gates at the compass points. Like so many monumental Roman complexes, when the Dalmatian provinces were overran in the seventh century and the nearby regional capital of Salona abandoned, the inhabitants grouped themselves around this handy fortification, building houses and workshops into and against the then largely intact Roman structure. Consequently, in the early middle ages, the site of the palace became a town in itself from which Split (Spalatum) has since expanded.
It was a gorgeous day that was dawning and a fine pleasure to walk through this chic old town with no one about but the cats. The pale blue of the brightening sky leant a tawny softness to the blocks of the palace walls and a pale, bone sheen on the smoothed stone pavement. For two and a half hours we wandered up and down before grabbing coffee and spending another hour watching peasants. The local markets had begun setting up their stalls at around five o’clock and by six thirty were in full swing. The ubiquitous Balkan peasant, something of an outmoded and clichéd rubric for the agrarian population, were in full swing – the heavyset, cankled women in black sporting winning (if toothless) resilience from beneath their headscarves; the men, lugging and toiling and permanently huffing on cigarettes. Vast piles of cherries and strawberries predominated, for the region is known for its soft fruits and berries. On the whole, however, the Dalmatian coast is a hot region sprouting palm trees, agaves, cacti, with pristine beaches, fjords and inlets and over a thousand islands in an archipelago stretching all the way down the Adriatic seaboard.
At around eight that same morning we boarded another bus for the journey to Dubrovnik and this time were able to view the coast all the way in glorious sunshine. Owing to the way the political boundaries have been drawn, with Bosnia and Hercegovina having been given a corridor through the tail of Croatian coastline stretching south from Split, we passed through four passport inspections in the one trip as at both checkpoints we were stopped first by Croatian then Bosnian officials, and vice versa at the other end.
We drove into Dubrovnik at around 1300 and immediately took up an offer of accommodation from a welcoming old gent. He drove us to a nice little flat and there we met the real proprietor of the business, his wife. Having shown us to our room, she then proceeded to talk us through a map of the old town and surrounding beaches. As she did so, a military helicopter flew overhead. All the blood drained from her face and her breathing became laboured, after which she began apologising for her “turn” saying that having endured so many bombing raids during the conflict in 1992 and 1993, she was still terribly unsettled by the presence of any aircraft. It was our first taste of the impact of the conflict, since everything we had seen so far had been either restored or remained undamaged by the conflict. Dubrovnik, however, was hit very very hard.
They say of Dubrovnik that you can estimate the damage to the old town by counting the number of new rooves. As we walked down to the old town from our flat on a hill above, the startling number of bright new terracotta rooves became immediately apparent. Dubrovnik was once known as Ragusa and had been a Venetian settlement and coastal stronghold, which broke away from Venetian rule in the fifteenth century to establish itself as a rival trading town in the Adriatic. The influence of Venice is most prevalent in its architecture, and as we walked through the huge fortified and crenulated gates leading into the old town, the stonework looked very familiar indeed.
Dubrovnik is something of a theme park these days in my opinion. It has been so perfectly restored, scrubbed, patched and scoured and, with polished marble streets, it gleams blindingly in the glare and seems only to exist for tourists to walk through. It is undeniably beautiful and situated at the end of a peninsula with a number of wooded islands off in the sea nearby. There was, however, no real sense of anyone doing anything other than catering for visitors. The Croatian tourism industry has been booming for years and this combined with the country’s fertility has enabled it to recover both very rapidly and very prosperously.
We were strolling along the main promenade when we were both surprised to hear our names called. Upon turning around we saw none other than Irwin rushing towards us, waving his hands and smiling like a garden gnome. This re-union, only ten hours since we had left him, called for a celebration of sorts, so we went straight to a restaurant and dined alfresco on mussels, squid, and squid-ink risotto with clams. These guys do a great line in seafood and the meal, washed down with plenty of mineral water and wine, came to around four pounds a head.
After lunch, fighting hard against the consequences of not having slept the night previous, we took a tour of the town and went up the battlements to walk the walls. The walls have remained completely intact and it is thus possible to make a circuit of the entire town, which we did, in around two hours. By the time we had finished it was around seven in the evening and Liz and I were so exhausted that we decided simply to go back to our hotel and get some sleep. We did this, farewelling Irwin again and expecting we had had our last encounter.
The following morning, having decided to leave town and get to our real target, Sarajevo, we got up at six and walked through the rain to the local bus stop. I should perhaps have expected it to happen, but sure enough, who should also be waiting at the very same bus stop, but Irwin, on his way to the coach station for a day trip to Mostar.
“Ha,” we said, “we’re off to Mostar as well. Perhaps we shall meet there too…”
Under normal circumstances it would have seemed unlikely…
We took a coach from the bus station and travelled back up the coast to the Bosnian corridor, at which point we turned inland. It was not long before we had passed through the rocky hills that line the coast and entered a broad, flat plain full of lakes and emerald rivers. The transformation was dramatic and the fertility of southern Bosnia was immediately apparent. The distinction was made all the more clear once the sun returned in full force. Bosnia is only about one tenth the size of France and with the exception of its corridor to the coast, it is embraced on the west, south and north by Croatia, with Serbia and the newly independent Montenegro on its eastern flank. In shape it is rather like a landlocked Tasmania. Whereas the north is mountainous and covered in thick forests, the south is flat and is ideal for cattle, wheat and fruit orchards. It was through such fields and orchards that we drove for the bulk of the morning.
On the road signs we passed were many familiar names from the war. Banja Luka, Bihac, Srebrenica, Gorazde, Tuzla, Jajce, and of course, our main destinations, Mostar and Sarajevo. As we began to enter more mountainous terrain, the view became increasingly beautiful. Thoughts of the suffering of the people and land were paramount and came to us continually, so that in a moment of optimism, Liz and I decided upon “Here comes the sun” as our anthem for Bosnia Hercegovina. It was heart-warming to know that this place was on the way to recovery, if in a rather stop-start fashion down a long, slow road.
As we neared Mostar, the devastation that had occurred here became immediately apparent. There were almost no houses at all which did not bear some visible scarring. If this was not moving enough in itself, as we entered the town proper, I found myself gasping at the state of the buildings along the main road. Hollow shells and bullet-riddled walls lined the way – dry and overgrown ruins, piles of rubble, burned out buildings, and a once towering hotel, with every level shot through, dominating it all. It was too much for the man in the seat behind us who began sobbing and then crying aloud as we passed through.
Still, once we were further into this small town we could see to what degree people had picked up the pieces and were getting on with their lives. The minarets on all the mosques had been rebuilt, having been shot down in 1992 and ’93; small businesses were open and lively along the main streets; and busloads of tour groups were rolling on in to see the famous bridge.
Mostar had it worse than most places during the war. After Bosnia declared independence, Mostar was first attacked by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in April of 1992. They were met in defence by the armies of Bosnia and Hercegovina (Armija Bosne i Hercegovine, ABIH) and the Bosnian Croat founded Croation Defence Council (Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane, HVO). Thus began an eighteen-month siege. The forces of the Yugoslav army shelled and bombed the town repeatedly, destroying most of its buildings and killing thousands of civilians. Thirteen mosques, the Catholic cathedral, the Bishops Palace, a Franciscan monastery and almost all secular public buildings were destroyed. Half of the town was captured by the JNA after fierce street fighting and it was not until June 12th that they were driven out, only to make further use of the surrounding hills to enforce the long siege of the town. Mostar had previously been a mixed community of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, but with the commencement of the conflict, the latter of the three main ethnic groupings turned against the other two and bitter fighting took place between the civilian population whilst the siege was underway, leading to thousands of killings. Bosnian Serb forces soon joined the JNA on the mountains to the East and contributed to the regular bombardment of the town.
Things became worse when the HVO turned on the ABIH in anticipation of a Bosnian Croat secessionist campaign, and the two principle forces defending the city began fighting each other. This resulted in the division of the city into two distinct halves on either side of the Nevetna River, with the HVO on the western side. The HVO then commenced their campaign of systematic “ethnic cleansing” involving the rape, murder and dispossession of the Bosniak people on the western side. The fierce shelling and fighting across the river resulted in the almost complete destruction of the old town, which had been largely built in the 15th century. After a year of conflict, Mostar’s famous, world-heritage protected bridge, constructed in 1566, the beauty of which had been commemorated in songs and poems from the time of its construction, collapsed after repeated shelling. All the other bridges had already been destroyed and, with its collapse, the last link between families on the eastern and western sides was cut.
Though all of Mostar’s bridges have since been reconstructed, there is certainly much suspicion remaining between the main ethnic groups in the city. Mostar still contains peace-keeping forces from Eufor. Shortly after the war ended in 1996, the reconstruction of Mostar’s old town began. The buildings were rebuilt exactly to their original specifications, using stone quarried from the original quarry. The reconstruction of the old bridge (Stari Most) was finally completed in 2004 and has once again become a huge tourist attraction. It had always been a draw-card for Mostar. People had for centuries come to admire it, and when it was gone, they came to try to fathom how it could not be there anymore. It was a terrible wound, which has, thankfully, been healed as well as it can be.
It was a stinking hot day when we stepped off the bus. We set off through the ruined and the new, amazed and disturbed by the great holes blown through walls and the omnipresent bullet pocks. Mostar is a beautiful town and wonderfully situated on a rocky plain above a bright turquoise river. For a long time we were too moved to speak a word but as we passed through the gorgeous old Islamic quarter, in anticipation of the coming bridge, we began to sing a combination of “Here comes the Sun,” and an alternate lyrics version of Don MacLean’s Vincent which began “Stari, Stari most…”
We walked along rough cobbled streets through a crouching, close-packed bazaar selling copper ornaments, carpets, pottery and other handicrafts, and just as we rounded the corner to get our first glimpse of the bridge, we ran straight into Irwin.
He only had another hour and a half before he had to leave, so we wasted no time and went straight to the nearest restaurant. We were well up for another Balkan feast and this time we didn’t muck around with things that swim, but went straight for the hoof and the trotter. Pola pola, cevapcici and raznjici, all served up with lashings off raw onion and washed down with… mineral water, as we were in a Muslim establishment.
After lunch we toured the bridge and the old quarter more fully, then sat by the river watching the Icarii. These are men who hang around in Speedos waiting for someone to offer them enough money to dive off the bridge into the river below. It is a long-standing tradition, highly regarded as a great display of manhood. Sadly, only registered people are allowed to jump as it would be rather risky for some.
It was not long before we found ourselves farewelling Irwin for what was to be the final time. He was off to Montenegro and there was no way our paths would cross again. Off he went, and off went Liz and I to a bar. After sitting and drinking for an hour, we made our way to the decrepit train station to wait for our ride into Sarajevo. The air about was dusty, and soon a light rain began to fall…

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Thursday, November 8, 2007

I’m in Salzburg, snug in the soporific warmth of the Gasthof Hinterbrül. I flew in on the 0635 Ryanair flight from Stansted this morning and was in my hotel room by ten thirty this morning. Owing to the need to catch a 0340 bus, I didn’t sleep last night and fell asleep the moment the plane took off. It was a marvelous little snooze that only ended when the wheels hit the tarmac and I was jolted awake. Next thing I knew there was a terrifically loud fanfare, followed by a recorded announcement that this was another “on-time flight,” giving Ryanair the best record around. In the dizzy aftershock of such volume, I found myself thinking I ought to blow my own trumpet more often… No pun intended.

So, I was in Salzburg, in the old town, and it was cold, grey and wet. I had a good look about on the way through and was quite excited by the Festung overlooking the town. I would have to be strong in such conditions to avoid being lethargic about getting out and about and seeing a thing or two. Alps! Old stuff! Yet, upon opening the door to my bedroom and seeing my bed, I had such fond recollections of my recent snooze that I decided to go straight to sleep. I set my alarm for two and a half hours later and off I went.

I can’t say I felt any great hurry when I woke up. I did feel a good deal better, but outside nothing had changed. Indeed, it had gotten worse. The rain was coming down harder. So, I asked myself once, what the hell was I doing here?

You see, the truth is that I almost didn’t make it to Salzburg today. There were no great obstacles or terrible mishaps, no technicalities or legal complexities, but rather, I wasn’t exactly sure I could be bothered. The doubts began to set in on Tuesday when I looked at the BBC’s five day forecast. It was heavy rain from Thursday through Sunday. On the unlikely chance that this might be some freak local weather pattern, I thought I’d better check a few neighbouring cities. Unsurprisingly the forecast was precisely the same for Linz. I tried Vienna – the same. I look at Bratislava – the same. Indeed, it seemed pretty well everything north of the Alps, including most of central and northern Europe, was under a huge mass of stormclouds. Gale force winds were sweeping across Scotland and the North Sea, blowing through Scandinavia, across Germany, hitting the alps and driving a great storm pattern on the northern side. It didn’t bode well for my holiday.

Being November, such things are perhaps to be expected, yet somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that I would encounter bad weather. My head was full of crisp blue skies and pristine snow-caps; low temperatures yes, but not heavy rain. Where was the fun in that? Whilst heavy rain is undesirable for anyone going on holiday, it is particularly annoying for me because of the way I like to travel. I tend to move quite rapidly from one place to the next. Arrive in a town, hit it hard for three hours, photograph the living hell out of it, then move on to the next one. I often don’t arrive at a hotel until late in the afternoon or the early evening, by which time I’ve been marching about all day with my pack on and am quite understandably exhausted. Such a strategy is highly dependent on good weather for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that it is very difficult to change lenses in the rain, and taking photographs is made much more complicated by the need to protect the lens. It requires an umbrella, which is a terrible drain on dexterity and, makes it nigh impossible to opt for my standard deployment of feedbag[1] and spare lens in one hand, camera in the other.

It didn’t look good at all. Indeed, it looked decidedly as though there might be a repeat of the Bruges / Brussels debacle of February ’07, where I nearly froze to death on magic mushrooms and was left cowering under the duvet in an unheated hotel room whilst rainbow Mandelbrot sets unfurled and multiplied behind my eyelids. But that is another story. Despairing thus for my holiday, I began to consider other options. Rather than flying out of Bratislava, perhaps I could book a flight back from northern Italy and head south fast like a duck on steroids. The problem was, however, that I’d only recently been back to Venice and Verona and the cities of the Po and felt this was something of a cop out. It was then that I began to wonder whether or not this weather pattern had actually penetrated south of the Alps. Perhaps south was the way to go – but the question was, how far south was far enough? Well, what do you know, I took a look at the forecast for Klagenfurt and Graz and it was a completely different story. Sunny intervals, warmer days, but freezing nights. It seemed a much better option. Screw the Danube valley, I was taking the southern route. I was crossing the Alps!

Despite this new hope, I still despaired for my trip. Was it really worth it? To go and shiver my way through Austria, take second-rate photographs in dim, low-contrast conditions and miss most of the scenery as it crouched behind a wall of gloom? The night before I left I was entertaining healthy thoughts of pulling out and had not, as a consequence, made any arrangements whatsoever re. hotels, or even the basic step of planning an itinerary. I decided to go for a run to mull things over and set off out into the cold Cambridge afternoon, ears plugged with iTunes. Now, I have always sought a narrative in the selections thrown up by random play, in the hope of divining some form of prophecy to help with my decision making. This time I was blessed with an immediate and clear sign. The first song that came up was A Soldier is Always a Soldier, sung by the Red Army Choir. This song has long been interpreted as a sign to “stick with the plan” to forge on regardless of doubt or fear. Indeed, the only other song that ranks alongside it on this plane is The Cutter, by Echo and the Bunnymen. It’s exhortations to “spare us the cutter” who “couldn’t cut the mustard” have got me through many a wavering moment, most particularly saving me from the psychedelic maelstrom of Rotterdam by giving me much needed confidence and strength at a crucial brink. Arnold Rimmer once said of a dice-roll in a Risk game, “well, it got me into Irkutsk,”. The Cutter got me safely to Breda.

The Red Army seemed to be a pretty clear sign, yet the doubts had not gone away altogether, and I was still looking for anything faintly prophetic. Then, sure enough, another sign was sent. Only two days before, in discussing my prospective jaunt with my Irish housemate, he told me that he had visited the fortress where the film Where Eagles Dare had been shot, having been in the area looking at ice-caves. Apparently it was not far from Salzburg and I rather liked the idea of going there myself. Well, the night before my expected departure, I returned from my run to find my German housemate watching, of all things, Where Eagles Dare, which just so happened to be on the television. Despite the fact that this was amusing enough in itself, it was clearly another sign. To misquote David Gilmour, it seemed the hand of fate was fitting just like a glove, albeit, the left glove on the right hand. Surely I had to go now?

So, I was going, it was decided, and I hit the internet, confirmed my itinerary and booked all my hotels. This took me so long that I had no sleep whatsoever and grew increasingly fragile as the night wore on; as the time approached for my departure. The time of the lowest ebb, when people pass away in their sleep. I was filling up with doubts as quickly as the drinking horn in that Scandinavian myth. Or was it Hercules? Either way, I was once again wondering if I should not just pull out at this late staged. As I walked to the shower to begin the long, long day ahead, I asked myself, should I really catch that bus, or should I perhaps just lie down, give up, and then accept that it’s too late to change my mind? After all, some friends in London had invited me down for yum cha…

It was Hallstatt that kept me in check. Not the Red Army nor the Bunnymen, not the daring of Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood et al. but the image of this lakeside village at the foot of soaring peaks that got me through breakfast, into my clothes, got my pack on my back and saw me marching across town. But still, it was no flawless buttress, no omnipotent bolster, for, sure enough, at Stansted airport, lying on the floor of the waiting area for gate 34, I wondered if I shouldn’t just let myself fall asleep and miss the flight. What would be the worst thing that could happen? I had no checked luggage. I could slink away without embarrassment. Yet, I began to feel now as though it might, at this late stage, be too shameful an option. What would I say to my friends? My colleagues, my housemates? As with so many things in my life, I was at the brink of something and it was a fear of shame and humiliation that decided things.

And so, it was with no small amount of reluctance that I finally boarded my flight to Salzburg. With such a mix of doubts and signs in the lead up, I felt certain that something significant would come of this decision. Either the plane would crash, or I would get laid in Salzburg.

In the end, neither happened. I finally dragged my carcass out into the streets at two in the afternoon and made straight for a bratwurst salesman. He was extremely cheery, and I ate my first meal in Austria in seven years in good company. Perhaps things would be fine after all. To hell with rain and gloom, surely I was in charge of my own mood? I knew of course, that this was false, for I have never been in charge of my own moods. But that too is another story.

I bought a cheap umbrella (five days later I was to find out just how cheap it was) and walked up to the Festung to have a panoramic view of the rainy rooftops. There was a charge to go beyond a certain point and enjoy a significantly improved view,  but I was quite happy with my free vantage point on the road up the, the… dammit, the acropolis – it’s the ancient historian in me. I noticed that they were replacing the copper roof of the Dom in the centre of town. It was very shiny and, well, copper coloured, as opposed to the older, oxidised sections. It got me thinking of long cherished schemes to clean and fix other famous monuments around Europe. They could set the army to do it – instead of killing people they could make themselves useful scrubbing copper. It might even improve their self defence capabilities – wax on, wax off, a la Mr Miyagi.

Yet, despite my enthusiasm for shining copper, principal amongst my schemes is the re-gilding of the roof of the Pantheon in Rome. I believe it was the Emperor Constans II who stripped the gold off it in 663 AD. Take one look at his portrait and you can see he was clearly a lunatic:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Hexagram-Constans_II_and_Constantine_IV-sb0995.jpg

Re-gilding the roof is of the utmost importance in my opinion, but not quite so important as rebuilding the Coliseum in Rome. I have thought about this at great length. The way to do it is to replaced all the missing blocks with glass bricks which can be illuminated from within at night. This would not only create a completely spectacular display and allow for a clear demarcation of what remained to the present, but it would also return to the building the integrity and functionality of a complete structure. In any circumstance requiring pragmatism, it is best to ask “what would the Romans do?” I have gotten through many tight situations by resorting to this, well, resort, and I highly recommend it. If the Romans were still around and they had the money, and they weren’t Christians, I suppose, then without question they’d either fix the thing up, or rip it down and build something bigger that worked.

Anyway, now I’m rambling. Travel is great for tangents as there is so much time to pursue them. There I was, here I am, in Salzburg. It’s raining, the yellow, copper and auburn leaves of autumn cling all about. Across the way, behind the shining wet roofs and spires rise the wooded slopes, made patchy, quilted, by a mix of evergreen and deciduous. It’s pretty, in a sodden, melancholy way, and I’m happy to be here. Looking forward to another sleep, very, very soon… I must remind myself, perhaps in a dream, that I have been looking forward to this holiday for some time.

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