Connections and Impressions book

We have assembled our blog entries, photos and additional information into .pdf book format titled Connections and Impressions.  It is available for download for our friends.
Please let us know if you wish a copy.



Donna and John

Proposed Aircraft Travel Rule

Travel rule (suggested):  Just as there used to be a smoking section on long airplane flights, there should be a Screaming Baby section on long flights.  We had five of them on our ten hour flight from Poland.  They never did quiet down.

Reflections – Reasons to be Hopeful for Eastern Europe

• Young couples, happily pushing baby carriages while talking on cell phones
• The rebuilding of a bright new Warsaw and beautiful Budapest after the total destruction of the war.
• Two generations who have had no first-hand memories of World War II.
• New countries entering into the European Union
• Support for the performing arts
• New life in many established churches
• Numerous young people planting flats of flowers in the city parks of Warsaw
• The emergence of true democracy in many countries
• Scores of young people who have learned English as their second language
• Wonderfully fresh, colorful and tasty vegetables and other produce on display in local marketplaces.
• Tourism
• International companies opening new businesses in Warsaw and Budapest.
• Children on field trips enjoying their cities.
• Inquisitive, tech-savvy and optimistic people, eager for opportunity.
• A generation of young people with no memories of communist tyranny

 Picture:  Young Bulgarian artisan displays her wares

Reflection - Things that saddened or shocked us:

• The thousands of bullet holes and hundreds of bombed out homes and businesses from the 1990s in war-torn Vukovar, Croatia.
• The absence of old men in Odessa, Ukraine a legacy of the millions of deaths the Red Army suffered during World War II.
• Faceless, Stalinist-era, high-rise housing blocks in Bulgaria.
• Hovels backing onto modern units in Odessa.
• Abandoned factories in nearly every Eastern European country.
• Empty windows in villages, devoid of population as the young people flee to towns and cities.
• Ancient babushkas in traditional dress, just trying to scrape by.
• The absence of the once thriving Jewish population of Eastern Europe, a continued reminder of the grim reality of the Nazi death machine.
• A woman in the Odessa marketplace attempting to sell a handful of toothbrushes.
• Fertile land, lying untilled, in rural Bulgaria.
• The grossly oversized monument to King Victory Emmanuel, overshadowing the heart of ancient Rome, a monument to Mussolini’s ego.
• Tiny shops in Bulgaria, nearly absent of any merchandise to sell.
• The Palace of the Parliament building and surrounding area in Bucharest Romania, an attempt by Romania’s communist dictator to Nicolae Ceausescu to honor himself while nearly bankrupting the country.
• Men plowing the fields with horses in Romania, right next to a modern highway.
• The Palace of Culture in Warsaw.  Erected by Stalin to be the second tallest building in Europe, this 231 meter tall structure was seen as a phallic symbol of the power of Soviet rule.  It still dominates a free Warsaw’s skyline.
• Stories of the days of glory of each country, often as many as 1000 years in the past.
• The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum.  Erected by the Roman emperor to commemorate his conquest of the land and people of Judea in the year 70 and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.  Its relief images symbolize total destruction to this day.

photos:  
bullet-ridden abandoned synagogue in Vidin, Bulgaria

abandoned Hungarian village home
 

Reflection: Impressions of Our Ten Days on the Lower Danube

May 29, 2011

John and Donna Mollan

• Historic towns and cities
• Ancient churches of all shapes and sizes
• Fertile plains, green hills
• Empty synagogues, sad reminders of the Holocaust
• Bullet holes, bomb damage, destroyed tanks
• Market squares with colorful and flavorful produce
• Women wearing babushkas
•  A myriad of strange currencies
•  Horses plowing the fields, donkey carts
•  Odd makes of automobiles and trucks
• Roman Ruins
• Wonderful music
• Gigantic monuments to past despots
• Ugly gray concrete high-rises, legacies of 45 years of communism
• People just trying to get by
• Stories of centuries of conflict; glory, occupation, revolution and hope for a better future.
• The legacy of population decline
• Empty factories
• Paying more for water than for beer.
• A babel of languages
• Lonely fortresses, reminders of times gone by
• Forests reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm
• Empty villages with blank windows staring outward
• …and still the river flows. 

Cruising down the Danube

  

Reflection: Our most interesting cross-cultural experiences

          

Central and Eastern Europe

May-June 2011

1. Watching a samurai movie on Hungarian TV dubbed perfectly in German
2. Sitting on a park bench in Budapest eating a Hungarian salami and cheese sandwich while a pair of Hungarian men walk by with a McDonalds bag in their hand
3. Riding the Metro in Rome at rush hour.  It is the closest you will ever get to someone while still being clothed.
4. Trying to get haircuts in a Croatian town where neither of us understands the others’ language.
5. Listing to “Hit the Road, Jack” on the radio - in Russian!
6. Trying to purchase sandwiches (?) from a ancient Ukrainian babushka and actually attempting conversation.  We did get our sandwiches.
7. Purchasing beads from a young Bulgarian shop owner.  Her radiant and enthusiastic manner made it such a pleasure.
8. Spotting a Mexican restaurant in Odessa, Ukraine.  (Yes the sign was in Russian!)
9. We have discovered that wherever we are in the United States, people stop us and ask us for directions.  When we were walking in Odessa, Ukraine, the same thing happened, but it was a man who spoke only Russian. We were unable to help him.

 And the very best experiences…

10.           Trying to read signs in the Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine as we walk down the street!

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig…

June 5-Sunday

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig…

Five weeks, two cruises, thirteen countries, three continents, 16,000+ miles, ten languages, and memories to numerous to count. This was definitely one of the most astonishing months that we have ever experienced, filled with loads of laughter, love, smiles, tears and our shear love of learning about people and places that we have only read about but never encountered in our lives.

Last night we returned to our country and cleared customs in Chicago after a 10 ½ hour flight from Warsaw aboard Lot Polish Airlines. We had hoped to sleep on this flight but the five crying babies seated in the two rows right behind us made that impossible. The next flight to Seattle was much quieter and we were both able to catch some needed of winks during this 4 ½ hour segment. Since it was late and we had missed the last ferry to our island, we had reservations for the last night in a hotel. This morning our good friends picked us up and drove us to the ferry dock and another friend met us on the island side to drive us home. The house looked so large after the small ship and hotel rooms that have served as our home for the last 36 nights.

Reflecting on this last months’ travels, we have come to realize just how lucky we are here in our beloved USA. We have seen countries that have been devastated numerous times in the past 20 or more years and many of these have not had the money to rebuild what this inhumanity toward them has destroyed. Very few of the countries we visited were able to rebuild part if not all due mostly to the tenacity of the people to go on with life but it has been difficult for most to do so yet or maybe ever.

We have learned so much about people in cultures that we previously knew so little of including Donna’s own ancestors. We feel so honored to be the first descendents to return to the ancestral homeland and walk on the same grounds that her grandparents walked but sadly we realize that the relatives that they left behind perished due to man’s inhumanity to man during the past 70 years.

We have been fortunate to be able to travel to many parts of the world in our job as professional cruise ship lecturers but this particular trip will live in our memories as a very special and touching five weeks of our lives.

We will have a few of our most memorable moments in a future posting so keep checking and thanks for following us on this adventure.

Our last night in Warsaw

June 4-Saturday

In transit for a long day toward home

Our last full day in Warsaw and Europe was a great ending to a wonderful five weeks away but home is looking really good now. We feel like the horses that see the barn in the distance and are ready for the final gallop back! Even though we have about 15 hours of flying and numerous hours in airports waiting, we are looking forward to a great day back to WA. and will return to the island by Sunday.

Yesterday, we were on our own in the lovely city of Warsaw and decided to venture back to the old city using the map in Polish as our guide. At least they use the Roman alphabet in this country even though the words are so full of consonants that it is difficult to read or pronounce. We walked under the streets using the underground shopping/metro center and bought Metro subway tickets and rode to the stop that we were able to decipher on the map as Old Town. We were correct on our few words of Polish and got off on the right stop. From there we walked for 20 minutes to the city gate. We were anxious to find the last of the gift items that we had wanted to bring home but to our dismay, lots of tourist goods but nothing like we wanted was available. We had passed up much nicer items in other countries but were afraid of overloading our bags for the flights so had decided to wait until the end to buy some of the gifts. Not a great idea as we realized that we should have bought them in other countries. Rule for the day: if you find something that you like, buy it then and don’t wait as you may never see it again or may not be able to find the shop that was selling it.

After spending many hours walking in the old city, we took our trusted old hand-held GPS and followed it back to the transit area where we got off and this time decided to board the street cars back to the hotel. No problems on transportation but we encountered another one of the many funny situations here. A girl was standing and holding on next to us while the bumpy street car moved along. With her arm around the metal pole, she was talking on one cell phone while texting on a second one! The younger generation in Eastern Europe likes their mobile phones even more than those in the US. as everyone has at least one in their hands at the same time.

We wanted to spend our final night in Europe doing something different and special so we dressed up and walked back to the center of town for a nice quick dinner in an outside café. We couldn’t find one with a menu posted in English and did not want to trust our very limited Polish to a chance encounter with something we didn’t want to eat so we chose to stop in a Turkish kebob place and ordered by the picture and each got a delicious gyro prepared by the owner who spoke some English and told us he was a native of Yemen. Another cultural experience: Turkish food prepared by a Yemenite speaking both Polish and English in the center of Warsaw!

After dinner, we walked further to the Warsaw Philharmonic Theater where we had bought concert tickets earlier in the day. We were surprised at how lovely this concert hall is,  knowing full well that it was destroyed during the bombing of Warsaw and rebuilt to its old elegance after WWII just like the rest of this gorgeous city. Our seats were wonderful with a huge amount of leg room and the concert was excellent. Of course Donna had to make the joke that wherever you sit in this concert hall you are always sitting “behind a Pole.” This is the largest symphonic orchestra that we have ever visited and enjoyed this very much. Europeans find it important to bring culture to the masses so the tickets were only about $10 each and we were only 24 rows back from the orchestra on stage. We enjoyed our final evening immensely as we marveled at all we had experienced and strolled hand-in-hand back to our hotel.

Warsaw, Day 2-3

June 2-3, 2011

Warsaw

Visiting Warsaw is a challenge to the emotions.  Words can not truly comprehend what the city and its inhabitants have experienced.  Throughout the ages, Warsaw has had its low moments, but none like the half century beginning in 1939.

Poland’s neighbor to the east was the Soviet Union, ruled by xenophobic Josef Stalin.  On Poland’s western boundary was the ultimate psychopath, Adolf Hitler   With no natural defensive borders, the Poles never had a chance.

It is easy to confuse advances in technology with advances in humankind.  Nazi Germany proved that disconnect.  Their use of technology to industrialize mass murder and destruction made such other historic figures such as Genghis Khan and Vlad the Impaler appear as rank amateurs.   The Nazis were efficient, systematic and brutal.  When they were finally forced out of Warsaw in 1944 by the advancing Red Army, they deliberately and systematically reduced the entire city to rubble.  The occupying Communists were no more generous

We witnessed the destruction and rebirth during our trip to Warsaw.  The Jewish community of over 350,000 was shipped off to the gas chambers, even as they resisted with crude weapons until the last man and woman was standing.

In the 45 years following the war, under the hand of communist dictatorship, Warsaw was rebuilt.  The Old Town that we see today has barely a brick from the original.  Similarly, the other parts of the city have been rebuilt.  Since its independence in 1989, Warsaw has been prospering, with only a few remnants of old-style communist mentality visible.  Poland is on the rise.

We were amazed by what we saw… the wonderful parks the City of Chopin has maintained, the resilience of the Polish people.  Again, we shed many tears at the many tragedies; the monument to the futile Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and Polish uprising of 1944 as well as the execution of the 22,000 Polish army officers in 1940.  Through all this, Poland triumphs in the long run.

On a lighter note, we are still perplexed by the Polish language.  It reminds of a Scrabble player who has way too many continents and can’t figure out how to use them.  It is only surpassed in its complexity by Hungarian.

We are anxious to get back to Anderson Island.  Our flight to Chicago on LOT airlines (flight #1) will take us seven time zones to the west, both over the Pole and over the Poles.  A short American flight to Sea-Tac should get us back late Saturday night.

We will give a complete wrap-up in our next few blog entries.

J & D

12 countries, 11 languages - 5 weeks

Photos

Monument to Ghetto Uprising

Donna & Polish Menu

Chopin statue

Old Town Warsaw

A new country, a new language!

June 1, 2011   Wednesday

Warsaw, Poland

(our last country of the trip)

Today was a day of travel.  We left our hotel in Odessa at noon and spent some time at the Odessa airport.  The airport is a throwback to the Soviet era.  It reminded us of a small city US airport in 1950.  Not only were there not jetways, but we had to go through TWO security screenings to leave, one for customs and one for something else.  They are also big on rubber stamps.  Apparently, just because there is a new country and government, the bureaucratic tradition remains.

We had a wonderful flight on a LOT Polish airways airplane, a model we didn’t recognize, but the seats were two by two.  The trip took just under two hours and we landed at ultramodern Warsaw Airport.  Baggage check was a breeze and our taxi soon reached central Warsaw where our hotel was located.

Poland is now experiencing a heat wave and we discovered that our room has no air conditioning, making it sticky and quite uncomfortable.

The streets here are wide and beautiful and there appears to be nothing “third world” about the city.  A quick stop at a nearby sidewalk café for drinks and a nice walk around the area got us ready for our city tour on Thursday.