TravelStream™ news feed for member gainer1 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/gainer1 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:56:59 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gainer1/2/359949420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gainer1/2/359949420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gainer1/2/359949420/tpod.html Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:56:59 -0500 UWP European Tour

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Skopje, Macedonia

Horribly used during the Civil War
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Belgrade, Serbia

After the spendour we had just experienced in Italy and Western Europe, I was not really prepared for the bleakness that was northern Yugoslavia (now, Serbia). Belgrade was the epitome of the communist/socialist-type of building and city design: utilitarian, lifeless and ugly. My impression was also influenced by the fact that I saw very few people in the streets here, and that when I did, their movements were so stiff and formal. That most of them were in military uniform probably had much to do with this first impression. One early afternoon, I was walking around a deserted city square that has a small park in the middle of it. I was looking at the statuary which depicted 'working people' and soldiers, struggling valiantly towards some goal that eluded me, and busts of important leaders (mostly Tito), when a set of doors opened and a couple of hundred uniformed men poured out onto the street from what must have been a theatre. There are only a few times in all of my travel experience that I have felt very uncomfortable about the situation I was currently in, and this was one of them. Perhaps it was all the stereotypes about the Communists and Eastern Bloc that I had grown up with and heard through the media, in combination with actually being there on the ground, alone, and with no one with whom to speak to about it.

Our shows here were typical of our whole Yugoslav experience, save for a few exceptions. We never could quite figure out if the audiences were enjoying the shows. They tended to be quite unresponsive and reserved in displaying any sign of enjoyment or emotion. Eventually, I was able to find some people that explained that that behaviour was quite common for audiences here, and that the response we were getting was actually quite an enthusiastic one! Go figure. Another peculiarity that these audiences had was how they clapped along with a song when they did participate. Typically, a western audience will clap along to a standard tune in 4:4 time on the second and fourth beat. Here, they clap on 1 and 3, which really can screw up your counting while you're playing! By this time, we knew our shows completely by rote and feel, but we found that we really needed to apply a different level of concentration to block out this particular form of audience participation!
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Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

After a long train trip, we finally arrive at the Yugoslav border. A short stay in Trieste and Gordizia, Italy and we are expedited across the border to the province of Slovenia. The Yugoslav government went to great lengths to assist us and their Ministry of Culture, which I'm told was a principal sponsor. I never did learn much about how this tour came to be, but it was a ground-breaking effort for everyone involved. Some background:
Tito and his communist party had seized control of the semi-autonomous states that were left over after the collapse of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire after the First World War, and that of the German occupation during the Second World War, to organize a newly created Socialist state: Yugoslavia. They are Slovenia and Croatia in the north, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Herzegovena in the middle of the country and Montenegro, Albania(the province of, not the country) and Macedonia bordering on northern Greece in the south. Since the days of the Ottoman Empire and then the Hapsburg dynasty of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, this region has been a hotbed of radicalism and cultural clashes as Muslim Asia met Christian Europe. Prior to this, and since, it has been an invasion route for armies throughout its history and as a consequence has been conquered, reconquered, ignored and conquered again. After Philip II of Macedonia consolidated his control of the area and overran what was left of Classical Greece over two thousand years ago, his nephew, Alexander the Great, marched his armies throughout the Middle East and all the way to Northern India and Afganistan prior to his early demise in Iraq. This new Empire was then divided and ruled by his generals; the most notable perhaps: Ptolemy in Egypt, an antecedent of Cleopatra.
The result of all this is that it has provided this region with a fascinating mixing of cultures, languages, customs, colour and architecture. Sarajevo, was my first taste of ethnic Eastern culture - the minarets and the Moullahs calling people to prayer, blended with the Western and the Eastern Orthydoxies of the Christian faiths. The open air markets reflected all this with the ethnic dress, foods, smells, tastes, sights, sounds and languages. The cultures of three continents all coming together in this one crossroads of humanity! What an incredible experience it was!
It was only months later, while I was at Simon Fraser University and back in Canada, that I was watching the bombs and artillery shells falling on this fabulous international city on CNN - and learning new phrases like: 'ethnic cleansing', - that I was reminded of an elderly woman I met in our hotel in Belgrade. She liked to sit by the bay window at the end of the second floor hallway and knit while her granddaughter worked the front desk. Her English was surprisingly good (I did not meet many English speakers on this tour and my Serbo-Croat was nonexistent, so communication was always a challenge.). We had some excellent talks in the short time I was there. What I remember most clearly was her lament for the loss of Tito and his ability to control the excesses of the different ethnic factions in the country, and her great fear for the future of her family and her country. She was regrettably prophetic.
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Venice, Veneto, Italy

We stayed on the Lido, which is the resort area on the Adriatic coast just across the harbour from Venice itself.. Our accomodation was a run-down youth hostel that was near enough to the beach to compensate for its serious lack of amenities, notably hot water and any kind of security. A short pedestrian ferry took us across to the City of Venice (Venezia) and we spent a great day exploring the city. St. Mark's square was very busy as usual and there was no end of art galleries and shops. I stumbled across a great art show that featured Picasso, Goya, Dali and other notables that was truely impressive. Strangely enough, I was to see almost the identical show, featuring the same artists and the same works twenty-three years later in downtown Seoul! What are the odds of that happening?
The rest of the day was spent playing tourist and wandering from street to street, which is my usual way of discovering a new city. Since Venice uses canals instead of streets, this meant riding the water taxis that went all around the island and out to the surrounding islands as well..
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Rome, Lazio, Italy

Ten glorious days in this incredible city! The age and history here is palpable!
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, with its abundance of natural beauty, was a blessing, yet nothing I experienced there could prepare me for Rome. Mindful that the oldest man-made structures in Vancouver and Victoria are at most a hundred years of age, the ruins of Imperial Rome are twenty times older! Nothing made this more clear than my first sight of the Colosseum. I was sitting beside our guitar player, Bernardo Bulnes from Monterrey, Mexico, as the bus approached the old city centre. Bernardo had been to Roma only two years before with his father on a business trip; he gave me a description of what we were about to see and updates as to how close we were getting. By the time the bus rounded the last corner, I was coming out of my skin with excitement! I was not disappointed: The Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Michelangelo's Pieta, Da Vinci's Moses and the vast array of ruins and antiquities. An historian's paradise!
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Winterthur, Zürich, Switzerland

After doing an outdoor show at the city university in Zurich, we jumped back onto the bus and headed deep into the Alps to the alpine town of Wintertur. I stayed in the home of a retired gentleman and his daughter, who was the graphic designer that did our promotional material. This is a picture-postcard type of place that you would see on a travel brochure. Houses are scattered on alpine meadows on the slopes of the hills which overlook the town, and the backdrop for all of this is the incredible beauty of the Alps themselves. My hosts showed us the kind of hospitality that the Swiss are famous for and a few other things as well. He was an officer in their National Guard and we were given a tour of their civil defenses. Interestingly, each member is required to keep his weapons (automatic) at his home and bring them to their mustering point in the case of an emergency. The thinking is that because the size of the country's populated area is so small, the defenders would not have time to muster and have their weaponry issued before they were overrun. For a country that has not sent a soldier in harm's way for several hundreds of years, I found their thinking really quite practical. The main bomb shelter in the downtown was in an underground parking garage equipped with blast doors, water and air filtration systems. Several months worth of food, medical suppplies, clothing and munitions are all in place. They were certainly well organized for when the 'Big One' hits! What I did not understand was why they felt that anyone would bother to drop an expensive bomb on this out-of-the-way, non-strategic country village and, well, cow pasture.
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Vatican City, Lazio, Italy

A free day allowed me and some other cast members the time to visit the Vatican. Another one of those places that everyone should see at least once in their lifetime. The size of St. Peter's is astonishing as is everything about this place. The architecture of the dome itself produced visual effects like I have never seen before nor since. Walking through the throng that seemingly perpetually occupies the Piazza in front of the Basilica, we entered right where the Pieta has sat for hundreds of years. The interior is extraordinary with all the naves, alcoves, altars and just the vast size of the place! To the left of the main altar you can access stairs that lead to the roof that circles the dome itself and to balconies that look down inside the building. It is from here that you get a true feeling for the immense size of the place. From the floor looking up, the dome does not look to be all that high nor far away. From the balconies looking down however, it is a completely different feel. The people on the main floor look to be the size of ants! The statuary and the construction tricks the eye in a most remarkable way. The same can be said for the statuary that lines the rooftop as you look down on the square itself from the roof.
The Sistine Chapel is also something that must be seen! It was awe-inspiring then, before the restoration, now I can only imagine! I understand that it was previously thought that Michelangelo and Raphael had only used drab colours on this phenomenal artwork. That is, until they cleaned off the soot and ash left by centuries of torchlight , candles and wood fires, and the true colours emerged. It must be truly amazing now!
No Flash!! The security guards stand around all day intoning that, much to the chagrin of photographers hoping to somehow capture this place on film. It's very embarrassing (right, Mary?).

The only major disappointment we experienced during the Italian Tour was the cancellation of our audience with Pope John Paul II. Although we were introduced to the Italian President after a short show at the Presidential Palace, we had been really looking forward to meeting the Pope. John Paul II was well known for his support for youth initiatives and especially international ones. While our advance team for Rome was working on our schedule for the Italian tour, they were contacted by his office to arrange a show and audience at the Vatican itself. Shortly after our arrival in Europe however, he was shot. A hospital visit was talked about but his doctors wouldn't allow it. One of our cast members, Dan Popp from Yakima, Washington, did return to Rome with a subsequent cast a year later and they were granted an audience at the Pope's own request. Dan was even wearing the Polish traditional costume the dancers used during the International Medley part of the show. Their photo quickly found its way onto promotional material and the next album cover!
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Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Regrettably this was just a short stop on our way to the Italian/Yugoslav border. The trip was both very sombre and one of anticipation, both excited and apprehensive. Talk about your mixed emotions! In preparation for our coming Yugoslav tour and after a year together, the cast was split into two. The group that was going on to Yugoslavia consisted of the principal vocalists,dancers, band members and techies, all of whom played multiple roles in the show. For the rest, their tour and extraordinary year was finished. Our departure from Rome Station was very emotional as those of us going on were given a tremendous send-off by those who would soon be going home. An impromptu final performance on the train platform shattered anyone's hope of keeping their composure as the train finally pulled away.
We changed trains in Firenza (Florence) and had some time to play tourist, but a few short hours is just not enough time to take in the grandeur of this city's cultural assets. Our timing couldn't have been worse as many of the more famous and reknowned artworks, including the statue of David, were not available for public viewing due to restoration work.
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Lake Garda, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

A popular vacation spot in the north of Italy, not too far from Florence. We were allowed a free day here as we weren't yet due in Rome. A very large and pleasant lake that has been a popular resort area since the time of Imperial Rome. Mussolini was known for his extravagant parties at his villa here.
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Vaduz, Liechtenstein

Nestled deep in the Alps is yet another of these wonderful little countries which are of course, holdovers from the feudal systems of the medeval period. Liechtenstein, being a principality, is ruled by a Prince and Princess and their council. There are seven towns in the country with the principal 'city' being Vaduz. The Prince and Princess live in the castle on the mountainside above Vaduz, which is in the middle of the country. Being here is like living in a fairy tale, or perhaps, a museum: medieval architecture, cobblestone streets, castles with surrounding farms and villages and cows.
Skiing here is great!
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