8 Days On The Road - and still counting - Part 2

 When we were in Beograd, one evening we went to dinner with the other senior couples there, the Andersens and the Blakes.  What fun that was!  It was a peaceful little restaurant and we were in a corner of the outside seating area.  There were shrubberies around us to keep out some of the city noises.  We didn't do anything special, play games, or any of that.  We simply chatted and got to know each other.  It is the first time we've had a chance to get to know these fine people.  I've thought about how it was that we enjoyed meeting these total strangers and found so much in common with them.  Of course, they made the same decision we did about serving a mission.  But that's not all of it.  I think it is more that we all miss our families back home, and we understand the sacrifices, as well as the joys of serving here.  Of course, we all took turns sharing how we met, where we've lived, a bit about our children and grandchildren - and great-grandchildren in our case.  I had thought that one of those brothers was the oldest one of the missionaries, but I am almost a year older than he is.  So, I am the most senior of all the senior missionaries in the mission, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of that title.  Cool.  And what, you may ask, are those rights, privileges, and responsibilities?  There are none, except for bragging rights.

So, back to our trip.    We audited the branch in Banja Luka, and stayed the night in a hotel not too far away.  That one was a very nice bed and breakfast.  The owner told us he had the land and decided to build a B&B, but didn't know how.  But then he stayed in one down along the Adriatic Coast, and he drew the layout of a room there.  The room was spacious, which is unusual here, but more than that, it was laid out so that it was very comfortable.  It is the only room we stayed in where there was a couch to sit on.  It had a nice balcony with a little cafe table and some chairs.  The shower was large enough to turn around in.  We will never get back that way, but if we ever do, it will be my first choice.

Friday, July 23.    We drove along the northern part of Bosnia towards Plitvice.  This area was taken by the Serbs before the Civil War started.  A lot of the people there are Serbian so they didn't resist, but Bosnia and Herzogovina was much more accepting of inter-tribal marriage than the Serbs are.  So many, many households where the couple consisting of a mix of Serb, Muslim, or Croat had married,  These were invaded and one or both parents (and sometimes children too) were marched away to disappear forever.  The remains of abandoned homes still linger.

This house has no windows or doors.  There is a large shell-hole in the side.

It was difficult trying to take photos of abandoned homes as we were driving along.  Suffice it to say that they are very common in that region.

There are also some interesting sights.  Muslem churches are also common, with their prayer towers.

Here, a business is operating on the bottom floor, while the top floor is abandoned.

This one is a poor photo, but there is a house at the end of the street where there is a large hole in the wall and the brickwork to restore it was omitted.  It looks like they just filled the hole with concrete or plaster.  About half the buildings in this photo are abandoned or only partially occupied.  It was a sobering drive.  We also heard a Muezzin giving the call to prayer from the tower at the end of this street.  He was very relaxed, speaking quite slowly with long pauses.

Finally, we neared Croatia and the overall feeling improved.  We began to see more prosperous places.

This is a very large home with colored plaster on the exterior, and a fine view from the upper floors.

Anybody would want to live here.

As we neared Croatia, we climbed into a range of mountains.   I took the photo of our navigation, showing switchbacks on the road ahead, and a warning of a slight left turn afterwards.  I thought that was funny.

Our goal for this day was to reach Plitvice National Park in Croatia, in time to enter on our designated time, 1:00 pm.  We bought the tickets online and you have to select a one hour time frame to enter.  You can't go in early, and you have to pay more if you arrive late.   It cost about $25 to see the park.  And what is worth so much to see?

We entered the park and had to descend into the ravine to walk along the boardwalk that winds back and forth around these lakes - some lakes are small like these, and some are quite large.  The common feature is the amazing color and clarity of the water!

We hiked 4.5 Km up the ravine to a large lake - yes, I hobbled along with my cane and managed it.  When we were in sight of the boat, there was a little stretch of dirt trail on a steep slope, and there I twisted my good knee.  So now they are equal.  There we boarded a boat to ride across the lake.  From there we took a bus about half way back, and then we had to hike another 1.5 km.  My knee still hurts from this hike.

There was a nice breeze, which felt good, but ruffled the water a little.

The color of the water is caused by having so much dissolved limestone in it.  The limestone is also what caused the pools and lakes.  As it flows over the edge of each fall, it deposits limestone which forms travertine marble.  The marble builds up and traps a pool behind it.

It is simply astounding how clear the water is.  These are mostly a carp-like fish, but we also saw a lot of trout.

My favorite girl is waiting for me.  There were herds of people.  No surprise there, but what was a surprise was how many of them were speaking English.

This is a side trail that goes over to a stairway that goes into the cave whose entrance you see just behind Liz.  Once inside the cave, the stairway winds around and around and comes out on top of the gorge.  I'd love to go in there and see what is to be seen, but that many stairs in a row would cripple me.

These falls are probably about 20 feet tall.

So clear you can't tell how deep it is.

This is looking down from the boardwalk.  What looks like a tree trunk is a huge root.  It is impossible to tell how deep it is, but the fish are clear when they are anywhere near the surface - their murkiness in this photo means they are quite deep.

This little stream is about to go over the edge of a fall.  Clearly the fish gather here because the current gathers their food here.

Here is Liz watching those same fish.  They are not very big, but it is hard to say how big they are, because it can't be told how deep they are.  I would guess they are about 3-5 feet deep, but what do I know?

The color of the water is just hard to believe.

Here is the boat coming in to drop off a load of passengers.  The ticket to the park includes one boat ride, which we were happy to have.

The light color at the edge of the lake indicates shallower water than the dark color further out.  But even the white area ahead of us here is deep enough for the boat to go over, because we crossed it.

And that is why people come to Plitvica from all over the World.  When we finished the hike we checked into a hotel only a few miles outside the park, found a place to have dinner (which we only ate a bitof) and then collapsed into bed.

Saturday, July 24

We slept in, then started home to Maribor.  We drove north to Zagreb, where we stopped to buy a few items at the American store, such as canned soups, Dr. Pepper and A&W, brown sugar, and chocolate chips.  These things are not to be found in the Adriatic area.

We drove north towards Varazdin again, but we turned off the main road too soon and crossed the border at a tiny little border station.  We did not see another car while we were stopped there, so that was nice.  I think they checked our papers more closely than usual because this tiny station probably only sees local traffic normally.

We finally arrived home. we unpacked only the essentials and collapsed in our beds.

On the way home, we got word that the Zagreb Branch presidency would be ready for their audit Sunday evening.  I had forgotten that I had agreed to that date some time ago.  So Sunday, we went to Celje for Sacrament meeting, as usual, then returned home.  We made a hotel reservation in Zagreb so we wouldn't have to come home so late, packed a single little bag with a single change of clothes and drove back into Croatia.

Just as a test, I decided to see if our USA passports have any pull.  So when we approached the Croatia check station, I held out our passports so they could see "United States of America" on the front cover.  I also had our COVID vaccination cards inside the back covers.  To my delight, the guard took tham, looked at the passport covers, pulled a vaccination card up and examined it, then handed everything back to me without ever opening the passports.

The audit went very well.  We have a district auditor in Croatia, who normally does all the Croatia audits.  But he has been called as branch clerk in Zagreb, so he can't do that one.  His documents were flawless, of course, so it went very, very smoothly.

The hitch came when we got word that the Mission President wanted to join the missionaries for their P-Day (personal day) on Monday, and then hold a Zone conference on Tuesday.  We didn't care very much about him joining the missionaries for P-Day until we heard (on Monday morning) that he wanted to take them to Lake Bled, and they needed our car to get there.  So we had to stay another night in a hotel.  We reserved a room in a good hotel in Ljubljana, and I washed some clothes in the sink.  Then we got the word that President and Sister were running late and wouldn't be there in time for a trip to Bled that day.  Awesome, we could have gone home for a change of clothes, if it had been planned properly.  That was the thought I had, but along with not having enough clothes, I had also only brought one round of my medications, and one of those meds helps me remain my normal, happy self.  Without it, I got a bit snappy, angry, resentful, and unpleasant.  I fought it, and was able to function OK, but I was resenting being put in that situation.  

in the end, the missionaries all went for a hike up the Vintgar gorge near Lake Bled, which is said to be beautiful.  I had no more hike in me, so I slept in the car while they were gone.

Now we are back home, and I have decided that we are not going on another audit trip next week, but perhaps on the week after.

8 Days On The Road - and still counting - Part 1

 Things are opening up here, and we have an audit to do.  So last Monday - July 19 we left beautiful Maribor and headed east.  To avoid holiday traffic, we went a bit north towards Varazdin and crossed at a little border station for local traffic.   No worries.  Just before we got to Varazdin, we stopped to readjust Google maps, and Liz was enthralled by this field.

It turns out that sunflowers are a major crop in places besides and Nebraska and Ohio.

And if I turned a little to the left, this is the view.

The building is just another one of the numerous, never-ending, top of every hill, castles/churches in this country.  Ho hum.  The structure under the hilltop seems to be there to stabilize the stone face.  There are dozens of tension bolts in it, too.

So, we drove south to Zagreb, then east to Osijek, our first Croatian home, where we took the Elders assigned there to lunch.  They wanted pizza, which is quite good in these parts.

Then we continued east to the huge city of Beograd, Serbia.  It has a building that stood out a bit as we entered town.  I have no idea what it is for, but it does stand out..

Serbia is noticeably poorer than Croatia, but the city did have things to offer.  We had reserved a hotel room near the center of town - it was rated 9 out of 10.  The rooms was missing most of the lightbulbs in the lamps.  There were water stains on the ceiling and it was raining.  And the balcony we had paid extra for, turned out to be a glassed room inside the room with a raised floor, and a sunscreen outside the windows that made so we couldn't see out.  So we called the manager and told her we weren't going to stay.  She didn't even argue.

  The audit department of the church says to stay in hotels equivalent to Holiday Inn.  We found that hotels are surprisingly expensive in Beograd, but we found a Holiday Inn with one room left and booked it.  It was a little higher than the other hotels near by, but that isn't a problem, right?  We drove through the rain and heavy traffic ( perrenial problem there) to the hotel and checked in.  The staff gave us huge smiles and jumped at our every whim.  That was surprising.  The room had a very comfortable larger-than-Kingsize bed, a huge bathroom with a jetted tub big enough for an orgy (but no shower.)  It had a balcony that stretched out over the hotel entrance.  Beyond that there was the top of the hotel's tower, with a door to a private sunroom inside.  The room came with bathrobes, slippers, and chocolate bonbons on the pillows.  So we decided to stay 3 nights.  The price was $150 American per night, not the Serbian price we expected.  Trust me, $150 is a huge sum for anything in the still mostly Communist country of Serbia.  We thought about finding something less expensive, but we were bushed, so we stayed.  Ahhhh, yes.

The currency in Serbia is the Dinar.  It is worth about 1 cent.  We spent a LOT of Dinars, but not much money there.  There are dinar coins in 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1, just like with dollars and Euros.  The locals are happy to get those coins, but the official audit policy for Serbia is to round to the closest dinar and forget the cents.  After all, a Dinar cent is worth 1/100th of  a 100th of a dollar.

Next morning we did the Beograd Branch audit, and then the Beograd District audit.  That afternoon we had time to see the sights with the other senior couples.  There is an amazingly large fortress at the curve of the river where the Drava joins the Danube.  It is largely  intact, which is amazing.  If you look closely at the river to the right of the photo you will see a bridge support in the middle of the river.  The locals say the Americans blew up the bridge.  No, no, it was NATO!

This is the fortress from across the Danube River.

And here is the central keep, up close.  It is a museum and park now, and there were lots of people strolling through it.  I wore my camera on a strap so everybody would know I was a tourist.

Here we are by the flowers.  I carry a cane for use on stairs and rough ground.  After walking this far, I was leaning on it almost all the time - and that makes my knees sorer than they were.

The wall in the background is interesting.  It has been re-built using masonry from several previous versions.  The red bricks are Roman.  Those Romans were very clever!  I thought I had a closeup photo of that wall, but it appears to have vaporized.

Beograd was bombed by NATO forces trying to stop the Yugoslavian Civil War.  People here say it was the Americans, and it probably was.  Quite a few members of the church left the church after NATO bombed them, and there is some resentment, although it didn't affect us in any way.  There is a ruined building in town that is just a shell due to the bombing, and it is maintained as a monument to their suffering.

  We had dinner with the other seniors and got back to the hotel late, exhausted.

On Wednesday the 21st, we drove north to Novi Sad where we audited the Novi Sad branch.  Elder Johnson is branch president of this branch as well as the one in Sremska Mitrovica, and we had hoped to do them both that day.  But he didn't get my emails (sent to junk mail), so we weren't able to do that, and decided to do one of them the next day.

   Back in Beograd, we met the young missionaries and took them to dinner.  They chose a pizza place. next to an amazing church.  What is amazing about it is that Russia is paying to build it.  Putin came to see it a couple of times.  Clearly it is a propaganda opportunity to show them how much better Russia is than us dratted Americans, but who knew Russia would encourage the Serbs with a fabulous new church?  It is Eastern Orthodox, which is closely allied with the Russian Orthodox church.

The front door.

Since the church isn't open, yet, there is a booth where people can light prayer candles for those who need it.  The guy kneeling there had a bucket full of candles.  He must know lots of needy people.

I saw this pretty girl at the side of the church.

And here are some photos of the inside.  There is no doubt that it is very impressive.

And here are the young missionaries at their pizza feast.

Thursday, July 22  This was a travel day, with a stop in Sremska.  The road signs are interesting in Serbia.  The official alphabet is Cyrillic, but signs often have latin, English, Turkish, or Croatian translations.  English was very common.  The freeway signs seem to be at the whim of the community named.

Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia is a small town and fun to visit.  The centar was only two blocks long, and here is the entrance.

The elders there also wanted pizza when we offered to take them to lunch.  After the audit and lunch we pressed on.  We crossed back into Croatia, and then headed south into Bosnia to go to Banja Luka.  The border crossing was no problem, as usual, but it is on a narrow bridge, so it moved painfully slow.

  One thing we could see from the bridge was a series of three gold domes on a church on the other side.

These two photos are of the same church, but one on the sunny side, and the other in the shade.  The stripes are interesting.

    We arrived in Sremska at about 6:00 pm.  That one was difficult.  The internet was going in and out, and part way through the audit, repairmen arrived to check it out.  They were disconnecting cables to test the impact, and they pulled the plug on us several times.  Add to that, we had some young elders who had already left and didn't know what they were doing.  In addition, they hadn't organized the paperwork very well, and when the new elders arrived they cleaned the place, apparently throwing away some of the documents we are supposed to keep for 10 years.  All this meant we finished the audit at about 9:30 - after the elders bed time.  No pizza for them, I am sorry to say.  We were exhausted once again.  We found our hotel and collapsed.

Don't miss the next exciting episode!

Over the Alps, Down to the Sea

 We have had a very busy time, and it keeps getting worse.  As I write this, we are half-packed to leave on a trip to Serbia and Bosnia & Hezogovina, tomorrow morning.  The audits are a lot of pre-work, an hour or two of examining the records, and then a lot more post-work.   Boring stuff.

We had a visit from our grand-daughter, Winter, last week.

This photo is from our first day together, after arriving at our little gasthaus near the airport.  She was exhausted.

The next day, we took her to Lake Bled - the place all the Slovene Tour books start with.

The castle on top of the hill - the old church a level down - the color of the water - the fish swimming by.  Pure magic.

The City of Bled installed this heart so people could take photos with the third Bled icon in the background - the little church on an island at the other end of the lake

We just had to have our picture taken, too.

Then we took a boat out to the island.  I've published stuff about those boats before.

Liz and Winter sitting in our boat as we started our journey to the island.  Another boat is in the background.

The island is much more scenic at this distance.

The girls went up to the church, but my knee was hurting from the stairs at the Gasthous, so I didn't go.  I just took photos.

It was nice.  The lake is entirely surrounded by mountains.  You can see people paddle out to the island.  Some also swim over from the camping area nearby.  It's fun to watch them go up the gravel path barefoot.

From there, we drove north and west towards where Slovenia meets Austria and Italy.  It is SUCH beautiful country.  

I really like the little church steeples in the villages in the mountains.  It looks serene.

We drove by TRIGLV, the tallest peak in the mission.  Its top was covered by clouds, and its bottom was blocked by trees.  I tried many places and never got a decent shot of it.  Nonetheless, it is awesome!

Google maps gave us the fastest route to our destination town, but we suddenly came to a border crossing into Italy!  So we pulled over and consulted the map.  The road that doesn't go through Italy took about an hour longer, and it was scary, but the views were stunning.

The road had dozens of switchbacks where as we approached a curve we could see the road immediately above us going further up.  Back and forth

Interestingly, the road was tar, but on the switchbacks, they had cobblestones where the road doubled back.  I guess it makes it easier to repair the winter damage.

We finally came to the peak at 1638 meters of elevation.  I think that's about the same elevation as Fillmore, but it is that high above the surrounding country.

   Liz took a break by hiking a short way up a little trail.  My knee was very sore that day from going up and down stairs in a rented house the night before, so she was driving and I wasn't about to go hiking.  But while I waited, I took a photo of a flower of Queen Anne's lace.

One flower: two yellow jackets, a small wasp, two flies, and assorted little bugs.

Turns out it is actually poison hemlock, not Queen Anne's lace.  The lace flower has guard tendrils under the flower, one red or purple flowerlet in the center, and a fuzzy stem.  This has none of those.  Maybe that's why the bugs were moving so slow.

Going down the other side - more switchbacks - we passed several old, old tunnels, and concrete blockhouses from WWI.  This is the very area where Earnest Hemingway drove his ambulance up and down the mountain.  He was sided with Italy.  His novel "A Farewell to Arms" is based on his experience there.

The reason we came was to scope out the place where we are going to hold a conference for senior missionaries.  We have twelve couples here and we all need a break from time to time.  The old tradition was that the newest couple was to organize the conference.  So when we arrived we were IT.  Then COVID hit and we thought we were off the hook.  But it fell on us anyway.  We wouldn't have picked this location - so far away from everything - but we had to do it here because it turned out that senior missionaries just before us put down a 1200 Euro deposit on rooms at the hotel in Bovec and it is non-refundable.  

It is a nice, modern hotel with a large conference room that is perfect.

From there we drove south along the Slovene-Italian border, and it is a lush area full of honeybees.

We saw several bee trucks.  This one holds 60 hives.  There were also many traditional Slovene bee houses, and some little places with just a few hives.  The fields were full of bees!

Final stop was a cave.  We bought tickets to this particular one because it has a train that goes inside and my sore knee appreciated that!  English speakers to the right, German to the left.  Slovene and Italian beyond that inside the mouth of the cave.

Waiting to go inside.

Flash photography was prohibited, so I was using only the cave lights.

This cave was huge and I only took a few shots of it from the train.  When we stopped, I realized people were glaring at me and I remembered that while the camera was not flashing, the auto-focus uses a little white light, which seemed very bright inside a dark cave.  Besides it was dripping inside there.  So I put my camera away.

A surprise was in store for me.  The train brought us 2 kilometers inside the cave.  Then they had us all got off the train and after it pulled away they announced that the next part of our tour was going to be 1.5 kilometers on foot!  Drat!  No photography.  Sore knee.  

  However, I can still walk and I had my cane (which I normally only use for stairs and steep slopes), so I pressed on.  I fell behind, but every time the guide stopped to talk, I moved up to the front.  That way I kept up with the group - more or less.  It truly was an amazing cave with huge chambers.  Stalagtites, Stalagmites, tubes, columns fans, curtains, and all the goodies.  I actually enjoyed it a lot, even though my knee was killing me by the end.  We also saw some cave dragons, eyeless newts about a foot long, that are pure white and move very, very slowly as they search for shrimps and worms.

Next morning we put Winter on her flight to go back to Holland.  

Today we had church, which I conducted.

Tomorrow we leave for Serbia and Bosnia and more adventure!