Doug's Hoosier Home Page

Doug's Cold War Victory Lap
1992-1994

 

American culture was very popular in Eastern Europe, even when English wasn't the forte. This gentleman's sports team coat says, "Detroit Rednecks"

Some of Old Bratislava survived the commies, although I'm told the construction of the UFO bridge took out the old Jewish Quarter.

I stayed in Bratislava long enough in 1993 to catch Opening Day of the Slovak Baseball Season!

Basketball might have been minor league compared to the NBA, but they still had some real talent and this particular game was well attended, noisy, and extremely exciting! Bob Knight would have been proud of the intensity.

Slovaks were serious about their ice hockey! When Bratislava Slovan started losing badly to a Prague team, all sorts of mayhem broke out in the stands. The announcer requested police to go to section K, then to section F, then asked whether there were any police in the arena at all. . .

Slovak Independence day was 1 January 1993. Although folks in Bratislava were frankly luke-warm on the idea of breaking up Czechoslovakia, no one was going to miss this party. In the main SNP square the crowds packed in and sang and danced to the Beatles "Hard Days Night" and waltzes by Strauss (Vienna is only a hop and a skip away). The fireworks thrown at our feet were impressive, and I could feel my jeans being blown around by the blasts.

Slovak Soccer was especially interesting due to the level of violence . . . between the fans. A separate section had been set aside for those visiting fans foolhardy enough to attend the game in Bratislava, and they were fenced in and kept apart from the Slovan fans with police and dogs. After the match, there was a huge melee with police cavalry charges, bricks and tear gas - the whole nine yards!

Due to the ongoing war in Bosnia, I tried to catch a lift to Greece via a friend who ran a shipping company in Rijeka, Croatia, but they had nothing going to Greece. It later occurred to me that this may have been due to the fact that the Greeks are natural allies of the Serbs, being Orthodox Christians and all . . . I later saw one of the Croatian ships in Bombay harbor - maybe I didn't ask to go far enough? This striking statue overlooked the port.

The Bulgarians were not huge fans of the Soviets, and when Communism keeled over, locals wasted no time defacing local Soviet monuments. This particular one ended up with orange UN helmets and Nike boots . . .

Greece did have some pretty swank Soviet hydrofoils.

In Thessaloniki I hiked the old Roman Byzantine walls, and came across this site: an ancient Roman basketball court!

My all time favorite street sign - how to make a left turn in Thessaloniki . . . I came across this sign on my first visit to the city in 1985, and then relocated it on this trip so I could take a photo.

One of the more interesting visits I did in Greece was to Mt. Athos - the peninsula run by the Orthodox church. While I did travel around quite a bit, I spent most of my time at Iviron Monastery. I helped do gardening, peeling, and other sundry chores, and attended church more in a week than I have the rest of my life combined. Not being Orthodox meant that I could not enter the altar area of the church during services, but I would get up at 5:30 am so I could sit in an entry hall and listen to the monks sing their way through the service. The singing and incense was truly intoxicating.

Father Iakovos was the monk who took care of visitors at Iviron. A 6'2" Frenchman, he had an amazing sense of history and always had time to show me around and talk to me about everything and anything.

One of the ancient paths of Mt. Athos. Although the peninsula is still mostly kept in a medieval state, at the time I was there enough vehicles plied the roads that some of the old walking paths and trails that had been built by the monks centuries earlier had fallen into disrepair. I did my best to follow them on my hikes, but often they were too over grown. This wonderful bridge is case and point.

Iviron looking towards the fort they had next to their dock. The fortifications had been built to beat back pirates that raid from century to century.