A Journey Through The Communist World:

The Balkans And Hungary 1980

Scot Walker

Majestic view of the Hungarian Parliament Building along the Danube River in Budapest. Photo by Samuel Hájnik at Pexels.

May 1 Thursday. FLYING TO THE BALKANS. I shall spend the next 2 weeks in Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. I visited each embassy last year to purchase my visas (more stamps in my passport) and have done some reading on Yugoslavia and learned there are six Republics: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. I chose this tour because I would be able to visit all six areas. “Yugoslavia's problems began when the Roman Empire was formally divided into East and West in 286 under Emperor Diocletian, who ruled from 284 to 305 to stabilize the vast empire by creating Tetrarchy—a system of four rulers—and split the empire into two halves:

Maximian ruled the Western Empire with its capital in Rome and Diocletian ruled the Eastern Empire with its capital in Nicomedia but in 324 Constantine the Great chose Byzantium as his seat of power and renamed it Nova Roma—Constantinople and it remained the capital until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453.

The division was intended to improve military defense and administrative efficiency, so while the empire remained a single political entity in name, the two halves governed separately. The split became permanent after the death of Theodosius I in 395, when his sons divided the empire between then.

I also was excited about visiting Hungary and Romania—one of the women at Northern where I had taught school was from Cluj and she had mentioned it a lot

May 2 Friday. ARRIVAL IN BELGRADE, SERBIA. My guide, Brandy, met me at the airport where I met the rest of my fellow travelers” Bill and Bernadette; Peggy, a 70-something single woman and Doris, her 40-something travel companion; Ben and Sarah, John—a gay guy; Donna and Henry Oselka from Minneapolis (Editor’s note: I corresponded with Donna for many years); and Carlos and Juanita, a newlywed Argentine couple. Juanita spoke no English, so Carlos sat beside her for the entire trip simultaneously interpreting as her guide. Brandy led us on our city morning tour along with a horrible local guide who barely spoke English and when I asked her a question, she had to start her patter all over again. I didn’t ask her any more questions after that.

After lunch, we visited the Kalemegadan Fortress which sits on the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers and was originally built by the Celts. It surprised me how much the ancient tribes traveled—because I have an Irish grandmother.

The Turks ruled from here when they controlled the area, but later the Austrian-Hungarians refortified it in the 18^th Century and used it to protect their realm.

The Danube is the home of three world capitols: Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade (editorial note, I have visited all three—and, in subsequent trips, traveled the length of the Danube from its origins at Europe’s continental divide to Vienna). The word Danube means river in Celtic and is Europe's second longest river after the Volga. That evening, I stayed at the Hotel Inter-Continental.

May 3, Saturday. BELGRADE. We visited the Petrovaradin Fortress, dating from Roman times, which is the mightiest on the Danube! I also visited St. Michael the Archangel's Cathedral, the burial place of the Serbian kings and the first church built after the expulsion of the Turks. Yugoslavia has been a warlike nation for thousands of years. More than 1.7 million Yugoslavs were killed In WWII and at one point 11 armies roamed the country, stalking one another.

After breakfast, while still getting to know each other, we all gathered by the bus and talked while Brandy loaded our luggage on the bus before we had a chance to make sure he had ours. Unfortunately, Brandy was new at his position and, I believe, had never led a tour group before. We didn’t realize the value of a well-seasoned guide until we arrived in Budapest. Brandy had marked Ben and Sarah’s bags as going to Bucharest and the bellboys had placed them beside the wrong bus. Ben and Sarah made do in their same outfits for nearly a week. They smelled “riper” and “riper” as the trip progressed and graciously sat toward the rear of the tour bus until they finally reunited with their clothes in Bucharest. They were the nature of several good-natured jokes, of course, and the whole experience made our group “closer” in more ways than one. We were fortunate on our trip—there were only 12 of us traveling but the bus easily accommodated 30, so we frequently spread out—which was good because we ended up traveling over 2,000 miles in the bus in the ensuing two weeks. From that moment on, the rest of us learned to be by our bus in the mornings to make sure our bags were with us! [editorial note: this is a lesson I have never forgotten—I always identify my bag before I get on a bus or plane—good guides sometimes even double check as their “charges” get on board.]

May 4 Sunday. YUGOSLAVIA TO SUBOTICA TO BUDAPEST. President Tito died shortly after we left Belgrade. Brandy asked for a moment of silence, and we all complied but just as we got deathly quiet, Peggy started talking. She was partially deaf and didn’t seem to know what was happening and blurted out something or another. In a sense it was very ironic because she very seldom said anything during the entire two weeks. The sad thing is that Brandy told us there would be a month of mourning in Yugoslavia and we would have no entertainment or dancing when we returned to Yugoslavia for the last week of our tour.

After traveling northward to the border town of Subotica, we ended up waiting several hours to cross into Hungary. [editorial note: The only other time this has happened to me was when I was on the border of Guatemala and Honduras later that same year during my Christmas vacation to the Yucatan, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala—there we had to wait until we could find a guard to bribe ($1.00 or so) and, since it was siesta, we ended up waiting 2 hours before we could cross over into Honduras.]

John was very jittery and made me nervous; he was also a chronic smoker and hovered around the rear of the bus, blowing his smoke out the window—although the bus was supposed to be smoke free—no one complained. I usually sat on the right-hand side of the bus, about two or three seats from the front door. Carlos and his wife sat on the front left and the little old lady and her friend sat behind them. We all had our places and seemed very comfortable—it was a great group! Finally, we reached Budapest late in the afternoon and stayed at the brand new Hilton next to the Fisherman’s Bastion and St. Stephen's Basilica at one of the most awesome city sites I have ever visited. We could see the entire city below us—since we literally slept in the ruins of an ancient castle. Late that night we ate at the restaurant there—it was a fantastic place—they even put bibs on us and had a Gypsy violinist play. We heard violinists almost every night for the next week or so and each one seemed to get better than the one before! It was a wonderful evening, even though and I asked Bernadette, who was a music teacher, to identify several songs but she was very tired and snapped at me. John tried to hit on me in the evening—but I was so dumb I didn’t know what was happening—he knocked on my door and acted very strangely [editorial note: I didn’t come out until the following year. I had just left my teaching job a few months before and was still trying to come to grips with myself] Most of the people in the group became great friends [editorial note: I wrote to Donna at Christmas until 2005, exchanging cards and letters, when I assumed she died. Bernadette and I wrote to each other for about a dozen years after this trip—not bad in the pre-email era.] I avoided John, however: he was like a walking smoke cloud and it was difficult for me as a man who had never smoked to be anywhere near him.

The view from my hotel was fantastic I just wish I could share some photos with you but go online and check out the marvelous cities of Buda and Pest.

May 5 Monday. BUDAPEST. I awoke with a glorious view from my window in the Fisherman’s Memorial Hilton Hotel and that view shall forever be etched in my mind and then walked around the ruins of our castle in the sky and of all the places I’ve ever stayed, this one place has to be way at the top of the list as it’s difficult for me to think of any other place on earth like it. We ate breakfast and then spent the day touring Budapest!

May 6 Tuesday. BUDAPEST. Again, I stood at the Fisherman’s Bastion and looked across the Danube toward Parliament which is on the other side of the river in Pest—what a sight! I, of course, was in Buda. The only other time I had as exciting a view was when I was standing on the bridge across the Black Sea at Istanbul—because that bridge is the longest in the world. Why? You ask! Well, it starts in Europe where I was and ends in Asia.

As a lifetime philatelist, who specializes in US, Hungarian and German stamps, I can assure you that the Parliament building is perfectly presented on their stamps. Both are exceedingly beautiful—as is the Danube, that river of song—that river I’ve sailed on and walked along. It flows through 10 countries, and I’ve seen it in the first 8: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatian, Serbia, Bulgaria; and Romania—perhaps one day I shall view it from the final two: Moldova and the Ukraine.

We then visited Matthias Church, which was built from the 13 to the 19th centuries and then visited the Peles Castle, and saw the crown jewels at the Hungarian National Museum before journeying to the Millennium Monument. I rode the metro in Budapest and I try to ride metro in each city I’ve visited (London, Paris, St. Petersburg-Leningrad, Moscow, Tashkent, Beijing, Hong Kong, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, San Francisco, Boston, NYC, Washington, Chicago, Sydney (sky train), Vienna, Vancouver, Rome, and I’m sure a few others that I cannot remember right now.

Then we rode to the top of Gellert Hill for the view and listened to a folklore presentation that night.

May 7 Wednesday. TRANSYLVANIA TO CLUJ, ROMANIA. We left Hungary for Romania, passing the site of Plevna’s Defeat where the Romanians beat the Ottoman army and saved Europe from their onslaught. Then we drove through the Transylvania Alps, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful in my life! It seemed as though each time we crossed a mountain range the view literally became more and more beautiful—until it literally took my breath away—and then we rolled up and down from one side to the next and the next and the next. Along the way, we saw the shepherds and their animals as they came down from the mountains until we ended up at Count Dracula’s Castle!

There, we saw a wedding procession before visiting Castle Bran, the palace in which Count Dracula was born. I wore my Count Dracula teeth but received strange reactions. The people in Romania revered Dracula. The truth is that Count Dracula impaled the Germans who lied and cheated the people. Since Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was a German, we have an entirely different picture of the man—Dracula was no vampire—but a hero comparable probably to our own George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. As am author I know how much power I exude so I try my best to ensure I am as fair especially when I have a political statement to make re: gun control (as in Porcupines Forever, which opened in gun Country North Carolina and was, perhaps because it is a knock your socks off comedy, became an instant hit. My first off-Broadway play on 42^nd street in New York was about female teenage suicide—which is one of the 3 leading causes of deaths for young women 13-25.

After a long bus ride and walk through the castle and exploration of the castle and dinner we lodged at the Napoca Hotel in Cluj.

May 8 Thursday.. CLUJ TO BRASOV TO PLOESTI AND BUCHAREST, ROMANIA. I had really wanted to see the Ploteski oil fields since I learned how important they were to the Germans during the Second World War—they were like the Strait of Hormuz today, however I was so sleepy from the rocking action of the bus that by the time we arrived, I was barely able to lift my head up from the seat of the bus and look out the window. There were thousands of oil rigs, but I couldn’t look more than a few moments, before I fell back to sleep. We spent the night in Bucharest. And the good news is that Sarah and Ben finally got their luggage—they dressed for dinner, much to the relive of the rest of us!

May 9 Friday. BUCHAREST,K ROMANIA. Here we saw the Mausoleum and Memorial to the Heroes of the Revolution and the Arch of Triumph. Others are:

The Arc de Triomphe, completed in 1836, is the most famous example, honoring those who died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The Cinquantenaire Arc in Brussels marking the 50th anniversary of Belgian independence.

Mexico City, Mexico – The Monumento a la Revolución, in Mexico City, which is the tallest triumphal arch in the world at 67 m (220 ft).

The Narva Triumphal Arch in St. Petersburg, Russia, I saw it there when the city was still Leningrad.

Wellington Arch in London

Marble Arch in London

The Washington Square Arch in New York City.

The India Gate in Delhi India, which is a war memorial commemorating soldiers who died in World War One.

The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea modeled on the Paris arch and is slightly taller at 60 m (197 ft).

The Triumphal Arch of Orange, in Orange, France is one of the oldest surviving Roman-style triumphal arches, built during the reign of Augustus.

Later, we visited a Romania village, which was a recreation of all the house styles in Romania. There we saw a Castranovan house, a Dragon Resti House, a windmill, and houses from the west, north and south. The village was unlike anything in Europe (although I later saw one similar to it in USSR and in other countries,). Later that day we visited the art gallery.

May 10 Saturday. SOPHIA, BULGARIA. We saw the Church of Alexander Nevsky, the largest church in the Balkans—from the outside it looks a little like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The interior is highly decorated with many fine murals including: the Wedding at Cana, the beheading of John the Baptist and the resurrection of Lazarus. The altar is impressively decorated with large lions. The interior of the dome shows a picture of God in heaven surrounded by his angels.
We also visited Freedom Park, which has a large monument shaped in an obelisk like ours back home in Washington. Then we went to the beautiful National Academic Theater, which is in Georgian in style with massive columns. There’s a lovely spraying water fountain in front of the building. I went shopping and bought a Bulgarian bear by pointing at it [editorial note: he is one of my prize possessions and sits on the shelve overlooking me as I type this.) I took a cab home—and the driver had a picture of Misha, the Olympic bear that I had in my wallet. I showed him my picture and we both smiled. I gave him a Washington DC postcard and I bet he has it to this date.

As I sat in a park watching the young women, I was very impressed with the Bulgarian people—they seemed very sophisticated and mature unlike the giggling teens I’ve seen at home.

May 11 Sunday. SOPHIA TO MACEDONIA, MONTENEGRO AND DUBROVNIK. We returned to Yugoslavia. But first, we went to Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great and then to the capital at Skopje, where we saw the Church of St. Panteleimon (Nerezi) built in the 12th century. We saw the Franciscan Monastery built in 1321, Roman Baths, a mustard field and dozens of colorful people. Then we went on to Montenegro, where we visited the Monastery of Nikita (14^th Century) and again marveled at the icons and mosaics. We also saw the Church of the Holy Savior, the Kurchumli and the Sarcophagus for Mustafa-Pacha (15th Century) and dozens of great mosaics in the Monastery of Grachanitza. We drove on to Dubrovnik, stopping off at St. Stephen for photos, before spending the night in Babin Kuk, outside Dubrovnik.

May 12 Monday. DUBROVNIK. We met our city guide, but I quickly broke away from her and walked the entire length of the wall. [editorial note: starting on the 2^nd or 3^rd day of our tour, one by ne, we all “broke away” from our local city guides—we found them too confining. Then, at the end of the day, we’d get together at dinner and discuss our adventures. The next day, if we remained in the same town, we’d take advantage of those travel descriptions and go out again reliving our friend’s journeys the previous day. I’ve been traveling for over 40 years and never been with a group quite as adventurous as this one. We all did our own thing, and no one complained about anything.] On my walk, I watched the boys run through the ancient city gates, hiding from their moms, as they climbed the dangerous rocks outside the city. When I reached a place mid-way through my walk, I felt as though I had been killed there in defense of my city, many centuries before—I saw the ships attaching my city and heard the guns blasting away. I’ve never before or since had such an experience. Have you?. When I returned to the hotel, I learned that everybody on the tour had broken away. The guide started to cry, claiming that this was her first tour and she’d be fired. Ben and Sara—the last of our group with her, who’d planned to get away, were stuck with her all day. That night we shared our stories.

May 13 Tuesday. LEAVING DUBROVNIK FOR HOMEWhat an absolute wickedly crazy day. I flew from Dubrovnik to Lubjana to Geneva to Paris to Gandor in Nova Scotia to New York City to Philadelphia to Baltimore and took the shuttle home to Capitol Hill, DC.

I’ve been to 100 countries and met thousands of people, made scores of new friends and fallen in love with so much of our beautiful world. I hope reading this story makes you fall in love with part of it, as well.

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