Twice as Upset as in Town

Warsaw: February 2nd

11:41pm

I’ve just finished Wild and started on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother on the train ride from Poznan to Warsaw. I had slept in this hotel two nights ago. Everything seemed familiar in a place that was still unfamiliar. I unpack and repack my bag, glancing at the patchwork of color on the bed (yet it still seemed to be all grey and brown). Tomorrow marks the beginning of two weeks trekking across southern Europe, the secret place that was no secret to anyone. It is a place I never thought I needed. I always imagined my time in Europe being spent in the cliche places (snapchats in bookstores in London that I’d conned myself into thinking were “underground,” sipping coffee in the Latin Quarter, visiting a beach in Malmo if I felt especially saucy). Yet here I was making the concerted effort to avoid what I had expected and venture into the unknown (and substantially cheaper) hard, jagged underbelly of the European continent.

Istanbul
February 3- 6

“Air Serbia.” The name sounded austere. It brought to mind something unfriendly sounded. However, for the moment, it was a stepping stone to Istanbul (reference the song and I’ll slap you silly). We arrived in the late afternoon, somewhat overwhelmed with a) the fact that it was after 5 and still daylight was present, b) the fact that the outside temperature was in the 50s, and c) that we’d actually gone and done it. We were in Istanbul. Is-tan-bul.

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Spending three days wandering this city offered a whirlwind of everything one could possibly find interesting. The areas by the river smelled like cooking fish, each little shop offered its own scent (from heater fluid to moth balls to keep carpets hole-free), sounds of conversations from street cafes, the calls of shop keepers eager to make a sale, and the general hubbub of any city occupied the ears. Beyond anything else, it was just one hell of a sight. The domes of colossal mosques, titanic in stature but somehow smooth and common as a rising moon, poked about the hill. One of them had to be the Haiga Sophia, one had to be the Blue Mosque. Other than that, we were willing to gamble a bit. 

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We eventually saw both: the yellow-gold insides of the Haiga Sophia, the mosaics of Christianity existing side-by-side with the iconic names of former sultans dominating the ceiling. Despite the history of the building, it felt devoid of religion, more like a large hall than a former church/ mosque. The Blue Mosque offered something slightly different; a colossal and imposing building from the outside, the inside seemed impossibly small when compared to the gargantuan structure we’d just fawned over like obvious tourists. There was a rush, an imminent flood of those who used the building for prayer as opposed to photo ops. We left the building to discover that it had started raining. 

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“Come here. We have what you’re looking for.”

I somehow doubted it. Market places are notorious for never quite having exactly what you’re looking for (despite having everything else). The irony did not escape me. “The Grand Bazaar,” the infamous indoor complex where one could legitimately buy most things (leather, jewelry, fabric, metal work). I doubted it because I was unsure of what I was looking for and just relied on knowing it when I saw it. It was like shopping for groceries when you haven’t eaten yet: walking clumsily through a maze of stalls marked by carpets or colored glass orbs (with signs forbidding pictures) and not having the foggiest idea of what the hell it is that you want and whether or not it is something that can be bought.

Sofia, Bulgaria
February 7-9

It’s not going to win any awards for being a beauty queen.

But I love you anyway, Sofia.

Sarajevo:

February 9-12

Smoke Break Near Sarajevo

I had been told to look for scars, remnants of loss that poured from the granite and pine

like melting ice. Yet snow had covered the mountains and left everything that would hold it soft and round. A group of women smoke cigarettes and speak about children and music and what they would like for lunch, their ashes and frozen breath blending with the dust of an afternoon shower. Inside, a man sharpens a knife to a rhythm too perfect to be calculated. The blanche of snow is broken by two cows, copper colored chest deep in whiteness, moving like leviathans 

through a path chopped away specifically for them. With the exception of them, the entire world is stationary:their movement, their wine-stain muscles polluting the stillness of fallen snow with clouds of angry vapor pouring from their nostrils.Their faces are covered with black cloths to prevent them from seeing where they are going, pulled tightly by a small boy who knows his job is to deceive what trusts him(I’m told it would be humane until the last second, with no more suffering than necessary). Would seeing truly stop them? Who could blame them if it wouldn’t?

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Sarajevo took me for a ride. It bills itself as the city that began and ended a century (an especially terrible century). I had heard the name in history class in two contexts: Franz Ferdinand and the Bosnian War (which I had seen on the news). The words I process fly around the air like vultures over a carcass:

Don’t Let them Kill Us

*Muslim woman uses her veil to cover her Jewish neighbor’s yellow star* 1941

“They exchanged security, economics, and stability for democracy. Now they just want to trade back”

Welcome to Hell

I have gangrene. Do you know what gangrene is? (we’re both helpless to stop him from exposing his leg to us).

But the thing of it is, it wasn’t hell. This city had twice influenced the world in a way that altered everything (could the first war have been prevented?). It existed as any place does after conflict and trauma. Virtually every building, I have read, shows signs of damage from a war 20 years ago. A few miles away, Olympic venues sink passively into snow, silently waiting for their return from obscurity. A soccer field sprouts gravestones.

Yet the city offers such life, such beauty. There are bars and cafes, an old movie theatre now filled with cigarette smoke and amber beer bottles. If it is the city that began and ended a century, it is a commentary indeed that this place represents the ability of human beings to survive terrible decades and still look forward to another hundred years.

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Sarajevo Jewish Cemetery

I have been told in broken English

of the men who sat here, viewing

the people carrying loaves of bread

and jugs of water through a scope. 

The slabs that hid them, where they

rested and cooled the hot steel of 

a discharged gun, are etched deep

with the names of those who left

before times grew too desperate,

owing nothing to the living nor the

dead. Equally deep is the spatter of 

bullet holes, volleyed back in an effort

to cross the street without running. 

Snowflakes begin to fall, carpeting the

stillness of a February afternoon

with secrets, ashes, and broken 

promises and it is hard to believe

that this place so ordinary, this

place of rest could disguise what

was most feared, could give refuge to

the early days of Armageddon, could

muffle out the cries of the final hours

of a terrible century. 

“Where will you hide,”

I think to myself, letting my bare hands turn

red as they rest in the snow, “when one day

they come for you?”



Zagreb, Croatia
February 12-13.

Someone has painted two finch heads over the faces of two people on a concrete wall.

Somewhere else, a crane with a gun for a head pukes breakfast into the wet beaks of little winged pistols.

Trippy street art and sweethearts who help you to your hostel.

You should see it sometime.

Budapest, Hungary

February 13-16

There are lions on the bridge, a castle on the hill. I’m told people still come here because they think the water will heal them. Yet not far away, sixty lead shoes without owners rest on the river bank.

 I try absinthe for the first time and secretly wish I’d ordered water. 

Home again.
February 16.