June 24 - Zadar Old Town

I woke up refreshed and wandered the shoreline, rimmed with older hotels. A sea wall and pebble beaches and stone piers. Families and children and old people in bikinis, playing and sunning. I lay down on a pier. My back against the old flat stone felt reassured. I lay and wrote in my journal, after days of rain turning my white body over in the sun. In the afternoon I took the bus back to old town and this time it was quieter. Oh, the sea organ, moaning and wheezing and singing like whales, from the wind and wave action at the end of the peninsula. People loved it, stopping and cocking their heads like little dogs. Old men peered under the steps to see the openings for the wind, air and sound. Little children played in the waves. I walked the old Roman ruins on the other edge of town and then along the edge of the wall barricading and protecting the city.
Then I walked back to the hostel along the coast, almost an hour, at a good clip.

June 23 - The train to Zadar

The next day I took the 6:50 am train to Zadar, a seven hour ride. My seat faced a table and the two seats across from me. So we were four for the ride; an older Croatian man who spoke English, a younger man working on his computer, and an older stylish Croatian blond woman who spoke no English. We spoke on and off for the ride. When I got off at Knin to change trains, I had three people yelling at the steward to help me find the next train.

In Zadar I took a bus to the old town and was overwhelmed by the throngs of tourists, mostly Italian families. I escaped to the youth hostel and luckily they had a single room for me. I ate dinner – yoghurt and banana and potato chips - on a quiet pebble beach looking out at the lights around the coast of the Adriatic. I imagined Odysseus sailing, looking for the few lights along the shoreline that might reveal a port or two to guide his ship. Imagined the walled old city, originally Zara, with its fortifications around the church within.

June 22 - In Zagreb, Croatia

I awoke to rain falling over the red tile rooftops, and some intestinal trauma. Was it the glass of white wine at the Regent (that cost as much as my lunch) or the goulash? So I walked gently into the morning around the squares, sipped some tea, then some coffee. I visited the old Stone Gate. A massive fire centuries ago burned much of the city’s Cathedral to the Virgin Mary, except for one stone gate of the church. The wood carving of the Virgin Mary and her child was left untouched by flames. The gate is now its own cathedral and I walked through the gate into a small open air sacred space. In the darkness of suddenly leaving the sunlight for this L-shaped stone arch stood a woman selling candles, a few pews. Many people prayed in front of many burning candles by the wooden statue on the wall; sudden darkness and quiet of prayer. I passed through into the empty cobblestone square of St Mark’s Church. In the center of the square stood a large painted egg of Croatian art, about five feet tall. And strangely, the couple on the bus I met going to Dubrovnak days later had a picture of me standing by the egg, only I was hidden by the egg so you couldn’t see me. They swore I was in the picture.

I walked for hours through the city. From the churches, I walked to the funicular tram in the center of town. Then down a narrow alley with a small open air theatre and bars within the trees and graffiti on the walls. Everywhere, tags. In one park a sphinx had purple eye shadow and lipstick painted on its face. I wandered uphill into a park and deep trees. Many dogs being walked. Dogs are given a respectful citizenship in this country. Hours of walking through park trails, old roots, fountains and iron sculptures in the park plazas.

Finally made it back to ride the tram, all 50 feet, up to old town again. It was a Monday, the day all museums are closed, and a holiday at that. It was the day Croatia began fighting against the Fascists in WW1. None of the shops were open. In the evening I walked the old streets filled with cafes and people lounging, socializing, drinking. That night from my window the city sounded like a wedding party, as if everyone knew each other and was talking together. The noise was congruous. There was no city noise of buses, cars, sirens. Only the loud happy talk of many people in the same conversation all across the city.

Days 2 & 3: on to Zagreb, Croatia

Day 2
I finally admitted yesterday to myself that I have a poor sense of direction. Give me a map and I'll find my way. But let me wander, and I really need a border collie to show me the way back. A few tips for overnight trains - the steward holds onto your ticket while you travel. And the moment you close the door of your tiny efficient sleeper car and the train begins its gentle unannounced rolling out of the station, you rediscover the ecstatic excitement of the unknown, or of newness. Even 15 hours felt quick. And then the sun set beautifully - and somehow I had a view to the west.

The Czeck Republic landscape traveling to Austria was a private Monet painting in my panoramic window with couples riding bicycles down dirt lanes between farm fields and small brown deer leaping and white cranes with black tipped wings lifting over wetlands. Slovenia was a raging mud colored river and rock cliffs and deep wild dark coniferous forests of Peter and the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. Even later on as the sun rose and I needed the sleep I couldn't stop watching the movie out my window.

Day 3
I arrived in Zagreb at 8:30 am exactly on time. Accidentally wandered into the flower market and the farmer's market. Past the Cathedral to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary surrounded by Gothic towers from an even earlier time, maybe 1260? Luckily the inn keeper took pity on my tired face and gave me the triple at a single rate. I wandered the Botanical Gardens just now before settling into a green velvet sofa at the elegant and generously free wi fi hot spot Regent Hotel to check my email.

This city is a surprise - light and large palaces, museums, parks and squares, and people out everywhere enjoying cafe, the sun, chatting, chairs on the streets, lots of italian men and croatian men talking animatedly in groups. There is a funicular tram, famously the shortest in the world, that rises above, well, not much. But I'll check the view and report. In the garden, I discovered a very rare and endangered cousin to the Redwood tree thought to have been extinct for 5000 years until one was discovered in 1941 just before WW2 broke out, in China. It took 5 more years before others could study this find and realize that this Chinese Redwood still existed. Unfortunately, it was cut down until today the tree is truly near extinction and exists mostly in botanical gardens around the world. It grows quickly and unlike the California Redwood, and although it is coniferous, it drops its needles each year after they turn a golden red color in the fall.

Prague - day 1

Yesterday was day one of my trip through Eastern Europe this summer. I awoke in the dorm after 11 hours sleep to beautiful rain. Birds chirping. Not as much English spoken here as I'd thought but a smile is all you need. I somehow found my way via the tram to a Starbuck's - I know, pathetic. But I hadn't had coffee yet.

There I discovered the incredible convenience of my new iphone gps system. I walked 215 steps up to the top of the St. Nicholas bell tower for a view of the city. Bells are forged in the ground, with casts, at the spot they will be installed. It is bad luck to transport a bell by animal or to let anyone dirty (women) touch them. If they must be transported, hundreds of boys would pull them, and were paid in a drop of mead. Bell makers were wandering artisans. It was believed that the sunday before Easter, the bells flew to Rome for a blessing - and after WW1 and 2, the bells that had been melted down into cannonballs also flew away from the battlegrounds.

I wandered across the Charles' Bridge, lined with dark religious statues leering over the artists selling earrings, paintings, photos, and fridge magnets. It began to gently rain again. In Old Town, I walked with my head craning upwards to see the architecture -

Seven hours later I found my way by tram back to the dorm where I thought I'd sleep again. But unexpected jet lag? hit me and I lay awake until finally I read some Kafka. It put me right to sleep.

The opposite of train

by Karen Terrey

Paddle across yourself. Canadian geese black feet push push
pushing left, right. High in grey trees, osprey gather

rope bark molted coyote fur. The train shot up tracks straight
from Truckee to the pier at Tahoe Tavern and past, sparks igniting lumber,

each plank a milled forest. Heavy wheels spinning iron hundred feet out
over the lake. Stopped at a dead still idle, engines spewing.

San Francisco socialites, sequined flapper dresses, those perfect hems at the hip,
slim suits, disembarked. Yellow moonrise above the Carson Range.

The opposite of train is lake. Brimming. Soft feathers hard in fast wind.
She reveals only what obscures – sky, storm, light.

Wind ripples her misleading surface. Long bent wings. She
dances the salmon orgy each spring running from Camp Richardson,

fat and urgent. Stone rubs feet raw, soil-to-be. Drop
beneath the tension. Open your eyes. A lakebed of satiated volcanoes.

Silence. Tucked bodies diving. No more train. Uprooted pier
became window frames, hundred-year-old redwood, so old and hard

it doesn’t need to be sealed. Lake so old and hard, loss
hangs in her deepest waters, a gallery on fishing line.

Published in Rattlesnake Review #18 Summer 2008

These Days

by Charles Olson


whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle

And the dirt

Just to make clear
where they come from