On the Last Legs of Austria-Hungary: Ljubljana

For my Easter break, I ended up going to two cities that once compromised the southern edges of Austria-Hungary: Ljubljana and Trieste.

I was highly impressed by Ljubljana. Slovenia's landscape is a lot like Austria's, with sloping hills rolling into mountains, green fields, and the like. The climate is much like Italy, and the architecture is of the same Habsburgerish Vienna/Budapest/Prague feel in some spots, with other influences mixed in.

 The city (I'll be honest, there really is only one city in Slovenia) is incredibly clean - definitely cleaner than Vienna - due to a concentrated effort by the government to encourage and improve access to recycling and proper sanitation.

The river of Ljubljana cuts through the city. The area where we stayed was in the student district, which gave me a distinct nostalgia for my Lawrence days...though this area's definitely cooler than College Ave. We also took a tip from the guidebook and went to the old Austrian military barracks, which have been since turned into bars and artist communes for people who cannot otherwise afford rent. Very alternative - and pretty damn cool.

Ljubljana Castle is one of the more famous sites the city has to offer:

Either as adopted patronage from St. George or some earlier myth or legend of the Slovenian people, there are TONS of dragons all around the city. The castle has dragon emblems all over the place, and they sell dragon key chains, dragon gummy candies and dragon key chains in the gift shop. One of the most famous dragons is the dragon bridge, which is done in the Jugendstil (art nouveau) style. Ljubljana is also famous of being the smallest city with the largest amount of Jugenstil architecture (move over, Vienna!) in the former Austria-Hungary.

dragon step

dragon bridge

We went to the Serbian Orthodox church as well - problem was, it was Holy Monday, so everyone was in there praying. Actually, there weren't a lot of church-goers, possibly because, as the deacon (or whatever he's called, this guy who let us take pictures when the service was over) said, Slovenia was communist as part of Yugoslavia, and there are not a lot of people living there anymore who are religious for that reason. In fact, he said (after discovering we were Americans) that the largest population of Serbians - and Serbian Orthodox Christians - live in Chicago. Imagine that!

And here are some random pictures:

Worlds Apart and Worlds We Live In

Last week, I went to a talk at the university given by Swanee Hunt, the former American ambassador to Austria during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). She recently wrote a book (possible her memoirs...I picked up a copy but haven't looked at it yet) and, certainly, part of the reason for the talk was to promote it, but I'm sure her other reasons for coming back were to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances from her time in Vienna as ambassador.

No matter her reasons (though I had anticipated a completely different type of talk), I found what she had to say interesting and rather enlightening. First, she called Angelina Jolie a saint for directing and producing In the Land of Blood and Honey. Then she went on to explain the personal disconnect she was feeling during her time as ambassador, after she began keeping a journal which her husband had recommended she do during her post. She had wanted to be posted to India as ambassardor (I guess as a foreign service officer, one must take what one can get) and, at the beginning, she wanted to do her best in the post she was given, i.e. do a good job so President Clinton would reassign her to where she really wanted to go after a few years posted in Austria.

At the time, there was no American ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was considered too dangerous. After the break up of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian lands had been claimed by Serbia; thus, it wasn't even officially a country. Despite ethnic cleansing and snipers stalking the streets of Sarajevo, the EU said "Hands off!" to the United States. NATO and the UN knew bad things were happening to the Bosniaks, but didn't know how to do anything about it.

Thus enters Swanee Hunt.She mentioned, during a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, she had a crisis of conscience: here she was at this state dinner eating off of gold-rimmed bone china, boozing it up and rubbing elbows with big wigs from around the world patting themselves on the back for how far the world had come in 50 years, when, 800 km away, the same damn thing was happening in Bosnia.

She knew, because a stack of memos a mile high were waiting for her on her desk, all about the Bosnia situation.

That's when Swanee Hunt decided to tell the president. Bill Clinton didn't want to do anything, until a car bomb exploded, three American diplomats were killed, and, upon attending the funeral, met their children who were all about the same age as Chelsea. The rest, as they say, is history.

It's interesting to think of this, since many of the refugees from the conflict ended up living in Austria. I have several Bosnian students who, though they weren't alive at the time, do have parents who lived through the conflict. It's amazing to me to think of living through a civil war - or any war at all. For though we (the United States) are still at war, it is so far removed from my self, my daily life and my being that, aside from an academic, philosophical, or political discussion, I sometimes forget there's any conflict at all.

To be honest, that scares the hell out of me.