Learning To Love The Balkans

For the past few weeks, my youngest and I have been memorizing the countries, capitals, and flags of Europe. She took on this project to meet a requirement for her upcoming graduation; I signed on to give her some competition and to give my brain's memory center a solid workout. 

Here's how we attacked the challenge: we broke the continent up into five regions, and starting with the Western countries, memorized the key facts. Every day, we tested ourselves using daily quizzes of our own design. Once we felt confident about that information, we added the Northern region, then the Eastern, Central and finally the Southern regions of Europe.

Some of this information was already wired into my brain. Yes, I was aware that the capital of France was Paris. I can recognize the Union Jack at fifty paces, and I even knew just where to look on my map to find the teeny tiny country of Luxembourg, hiding at the tip of Belgium. 

But some of the other bits...well, I had no idea there was actually a country called Lichtenstein, and what's up with all those cross flags in Scandinavia? They all look so much alike. And by the way, maps were a lot simpler back in the days of the Soviet Union when Eastern Europe was one big communist blob; there are a lot of new countries I don't recall from my high school days.

The biggest challenge for me has been the Balkan Peninsula. Honestly, I'm fairly familiar with life in Western Europe, but I know almost nothing about the countries or the people who live in this little corner of the continent. I can cram facts about these lands into my head all day long, but unless I feel some sort of emotional connection, I know that knowledge will be fleeting. In order for all these new facts to mean anything to me, I need to know what life looks like in those places today. I want to see how those people live, eat, work, travel around, entertain themselves. 

So I decided to strip the last pennies out of the family bank account, hop a plane to Venice, rent a bicycle, and do a cycling tour of the entire region.

Ha. I wish.

Resorting to my second-best option, I dug around a bit on our old friend, Wikipedia, and came up with some photos of everyday life in the Balkans to share with you:

The Barn, part of the cultural centre at Metelkova Street in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I want to touch those mosaic walls NOW.

ZET bus on route 106 in Zagreb, Croatia. Love that blue milk-carton-on-its-side-with-wheels of a bus.

Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during a summer night in 2011. Oh, there is something 1960s-tacky about this scene that strikes me as very, very sweet.

Podgorica City Stadium, in Montenegro, is FIFA-approved and full of football fanatics. I can hear the vuvuzelas from here.

Colorful buildings in Tirana, Albania, remind me of one in my own part of the world

A street cafe in Plaka, one of the most ancient neighborhoods of Athens, Greece. Perfection. Pass me the olives and the feta cheese.

Apartment blocks in Novi (New) Belgrade, the fastest growing part of the Serbian city. The ones in the back are a little dreary but the front row, with the little peaked dormers, are kinda homey.

Pristina City Park, in the wannabe-breakaway country of Kosovo. I like curving stone pathways. I'm sold on Kosovo.

Christmas lights in Skopje, Macedonia. Looks quite a bit like Seattle's own University Village at holiday time.

Mall of Sofia in Bulgaria. Looks a lot like a typical US mall. All it's missing is a Verizon guy jumping out of a kiosk to ask me if I've thought about getting a new phone.

Oh, I feel so much better now. I can imagine this world, not in a hazy grey cloud of Soviet-controlled Cold War gloom or during the war-torn destruction of the 1990s Bosnian war, but as an interesting, colorful landscape full of history and culture and perfectly normal people who are more or less like me.

But I still want to take the cycling trip.