III. Ljubljana

Once you figure out how to pronounce the name of the city, your work is over, for everything else about the city is easy and incredibly enticing. The car-free cobblestone streets of the old town. The many inviting cafes and cool design stores. The great food served by welcoming, English-speaking locals. The shop selling Slovenian sea salt in a range of forms, including, quite deliciously, as part of a dark-chocolate bar. And the picture-perfect castle on the hill overlooking it all. So say it with me: "loob-LEE-ah-na." And check it out if you can.

-- MBB

II. Split, Sarajevo and the Road in between

Whereas in Zagreb sound was the thing -- all those songs that struck personal notes for us -- in Split and in Bosnia it was smell. It started on the small deck off our room in Split, which offered a pretty view of the harbor and, the night we arrived, a spectacular golden orange sunset. It was the smell of burning fires. Judging from all the pizza places in town, it must have been all the wood-burning ovens at work. But as we made our way to Sarajevo, the smell evolved. One element -- the hardest to ignore -- was cigarettes. The driver of our bus, a grizzled veteran with a potbelly, a bald dome and the remaining hair slicked back on the sides, puffed away most of the eight-hour ride, despite the no-smoking sticker posted above him and the many stops we made along the way. On one of our last stops, at a picturesque bend in the road through the mountains, two pigs were roasting on a spit over charcoal, adding another olfactory element. Then, as we passed through small towns, I noticed a haze hanging over several of them. It was smoke from the wood being burned to heat all the homes and apartment buildings, which you could see puffing out of chimneys. It was also a taste -- quite literally -- of what was to come in Sarajevo, where, as the Wikitravel guide for the city warned us, the air is bad. Surrounded by mountains and home to many wood-burning chimneys and cars of varying ages -- from shiny new Mercedes to rattling old Ladas and Yugos (gas, as our driver to the airport on Sunday told us, is a euro per litre, well below Western Europe (though still probably out of reach for many Sarajevans)) -- a haze hangs over the city even thicker and grayer than what I saw in the smaller towns along the way. We smelled it everywhere we walked, and we felt it in our lungs. The stuff inside wasn't much better. For an American, walking into a Sarajevo restaurant is like taking a time machine back to when (a) a full meal for two cost $7 and (b) you could smoke inside. We took full advantage of the former, stuffing ourselves with delicious meat and cheese pies, sausages and bread charred from their time in charcoal-burning stoves, while the locals availed themselves of the latter. We walked out gingerly sniffing our clothes to assess the damage, but incredibly full and very satisfied.

Such cultural differences become trite when you step in to the exhibition on the seige of Sarajevo at the history museum. The museum itself was damaged during the Bosnian War, and perhaps as a further reminder they have not repaired it or chosen not to heat it. Or perhaps they don't have the money: walking around the center of town, you still see buildings partially or completely reduced to rubble, and even the town hall is still being restored. The exhibition is direct and powerful. There are photos of Sarajevans crouching behind UN vehicles, in preparation for a dash across a street that would expose them to snipers. There are makeshift stoves that people fashioned to burn the firewood that they gathered from parks to cook and heat their apartments. There is a young girl's diary with entries about a school day cut short because the teacher deemed it too unsafe and how time moves slowly when there's nothing to do. I smiled to myself when I saw that the local tobacco factory didn't stop production (the local brewery, meanwhile, was an important source of water during the seige), and I marveled at the fact that the newspaper never did either. In Sarajevo today, there are green shoots of capitalism amid the gray and rubble -- tall office towers and hotels and several large shopping centers, one of which contains a Vapiano where we ate the night we arrived (as in Budapest, once we saw it, we couldn't resist). The museum was a vivid reminder of a terrible part of a terrible war that was not that long ago at all.

-- MBB

Sunset over Split.

The Dalmatian coast, as seen from the window of our bus from Sarajevo to Split.

Picturesque bend in the road to Sarajevo.

The main market (Baščaršija) in Sarajevo.

I. Zagreb

The first in a three-part recap of our eight-day, three-country visit to the former Yugoslavia.

In a word, gray. From the time we touched down Monday morning till our prop plane to Split took off the next afternoon, that's what the weather was. Foggy too. And, for a time Tuesday morning, snowy, which put a damper on our visit to the main market. The market is a short walk from our hotel. So, it seems, is just about everything in Zagreb: the main cathedral with the two enormous spires; the pretty shopping street where we stopped for delicious miniature donut-like desserts covered in warm Nutella and sugar, and, later, cherry and honey schnapps; and the lovely park, surrounded by grand old buildings, that spreads north from the train station. For that reason, and for the nice room, large bed and ample breakfast buffet (featuring lasagna and other dishes we Americans normally don't associate with that time of day), I recommend the Hotel Dubrovnik for your next stay in Zagreb.

The city is altogether agreeable. In its center there are far more pedestrians and trams than cars, giving it a relaxed feel. Walking on the aforementioned pretty, donuts-and-schnapps street, we felt like we were in a village, not a city, what with the lack of cars and sounds, save for people walking and talking. At least until we arrived at the big new shopping mall -- all glass and dark metal, and full of high-end shops. Cars are allowed on this stretch of street, and the parking spaces were full of BMWs and Land Rovers. But one glance back across the street at the crumbling old houses leaning against one another, and we were returned to the little Balkan village.

The most striking thing about Zagreb was all the familiar music we heard. American music is common everywhere we've been in Europe. But here it was as if someone was spinning songs just for us. At dinner we sat down to the Boss's "Streets of Philadelphia." While selecting dessert in the bakery, we heard a French song we like. At breakfast, as we sipped our coffee and smelled the lasagna, it was a favorite from the Bridget Jones soundtrack. And on the bus to the airport, it was "Murder on the Dancefloor," a treasured memory from Ashley's days as a single gal in DC. (We would see the video for this song twice on the trip.) I don't know if Zagreb does this for all visitors, but we certainly appreciated it.

P.S. For your next stay in Zagreb, I also recommend checking out the Museum of Broken Relationships. We didn't visit it, because I only discovered it in the Croatian Airlines in-flight magazine on our way to Split (no pun intended), but it looks really cool.

-- MBB

The main square.

The pretty, donut-and-schnapps street.

The cathedral.

The main market.

The Color Red

The theme of red for our weekend jaunt to Krakow started out with my Rudolph-like nose compliments of one of those (since I am now thirty), blemishes. Whereas I would like to blame it on rudely diving into lavish amounts of Polish pastries, its origin instead came from the excessive amount of green-tea scented hand-cream that I had to glob in and around my nostrils in a failed attempt of decreasing the stench of one of our fellow passengers aboard our flight. Although I did not think it possible to emanate such odor, I can now say without reservation that deodorant is not a luxury, it should be an international mandate.

But, the good news is that my Rudolph Christmas costume allowed me to fit right in with the excessive holiday greenery still decorating the town (perhaps due to the city-wide Nativity contest that is ongoing until the end of February), the tastefully-adorned Christmas tree in one of the many picturesque town squares, but yet very conveniently was also in the correct color to help blend in with the Valentine's day hearts dangling in windows, artfully arranged in candy boxes, all while being illuminated by candles abound in numerous restaurants. A festive city indeed -- and one where I have never felt so proud to have a pimple.

But the red is also connected to a more gruesome item, and one that deserves no celebration or jubilation. As our Saturday started with an early rise to board the bus to Auschwitz, the day became one of melancholy and sadness. The nip in the air and the high winds aided in the dreariness that accompanies such atrocities. Regardless of how much Holocaust knowledge you may have, nothing prepares you for standing in front of the execution wall or roaming the basement corridors, lined with the pictures of grim faces who were murdered in those very cells. Red can also be the color of evil (and blood) and was certainly symbolic of our time on the sacred ground.

And as our hotel room did not afford us a weekend of MTV, instead we tuned into CNN to stay abreast of the situation in Egypt. The images are appalling --- rocks being collected as artillery, people looking exhausted, bruised and battered, all while fighting for the simple concept of equality (along with deodorant --- also an international mandate, I believe). The wound is clearly still open and will be spewing red for weeks (and potentially years) to come. If we reflect on history, blood-red is present in most major national/cultural/religious overhauls and changes. But as someone who has never had to suffer in any of those capacities, red in that form is hard to accept.

If I had to chose how I most prefer my red, I would have to opt for it in the shape of a heart (covered in chocolate and filled with peanut butter). Shallow, I know.

Some other rouge items of note this weekend:

-Matt's beet soup in the Milk Bar where we had Friday's dinner (a cafeteria style joint subsidized by the government). The best and most massive meal 10 euros has ever bought us!

-The cherry liquor we were served after dinner Saturday night. This was to help erase some of the memory of the massive meal we had just consumed (and how the band moved right next to use to harass us with a polka rendition of "I Love Paris in the Springtime").

-The color I want to use to decorate the possible new flat we are looking at upon return today! Think fantastic shoebox ---- with lots of red!

The main gates of Auschwitz

Execution Wall