Endings and New Beginnings

It is the last day of our journey, and we have truly followed the footsteps of my father, from his birth in the town of Backi  Brestovac, to his high school experience in Sombor,  on to his university experiences in Subotica and Belgrade, his military experience at Zemun, and his time in Graz and Vienna. We have been guided throughout by his memories, his direction, and when we hesitated about our next step, we asked what would our father do, and we found our way each time. 

Salzburg was a wonderful place for my father. He received a scholarship to study at the Salzburg Mozarteum each summer for the three years he was Graz. He was able to take any course he wanted. We found the new Mozarteum today, which was obviously too modern to have been the place he had studied at in 1946. It is actually an eyesore next to the Mirabel palace and gardens, far to angular a modern building to fit into the rest of the quaint baroque town of Salzburg. We were redirected to the original Mozarrteum building, which was not too far away on Schwartzstrasse, where we wandered the halls and found the small recital room where he would certainly have listened to concerts. The Grosser Saal was closed in preparation for a concert tonight. We found the musicology lecture rooms and the library, which once held all the books but now was devoted only to Mozart. I imagine my father spent a lot of time in the library, and then walked over to the Mirabel gardens to read on a park bench. 

At the library, we asked the librarian about the Hotel Germania, which no longer exists. My father had told us that he always stayed at the Hotel Germania when he came for his summer studies. The librarian was able to find evidence of it once being on Faberstrasse, which turned out to be quite near our hotel. We retraced our steps to find the likely location of the hotel and found two possible candidates. One corner of the street was a church which had been badly bombed in the war and was almost entirely reconstructed, and not very attractive at all. The old photos of what it once looked at revealed a gorgeous 15 C altar that was entirely destroyed. Across from the church was a gymnasium with a plaque on the front announcing that Albert Einstein and given his lecture about relativity at the high school. The other corners had buildings that could have been hotels at one time. We asked a ‘buchhandler’ next door what the building covered with scaffolding had been(we asked the construction workers first, and they had no idea what the building once was!). It turned out that the building had once been the Bank of Austria, but before that, a very long while ago, it had been the Hotel Germania. A coffee shop was attached, and that was likely where my father went to eat and have a coffee and read the paper.

We had promised our father to visit cafes and eat pastries, one of his favourite pastimes, and we took him very seriously today. We wanted to try coffee shops that were likely present when he was there studying. For breakfast, where we had apfel strudel and topfen strudel, we sat at the Cafe Bazar with a view over the Salzach River and up to the Fortress on the hill. Later, for lunch, we tried the Cafe Tomaselli, which is one of the oldest cafes in Salzburg. There we finally tried the Esterhazy torte, layers of sponge cake, buttercream and hazelnuts, as well as poppy seed strudel. The poppy seed strudel was exactly as I remembered from my childhood. To top off our dessert obsession today, for dinner, we had Salzburger knockerl, a massive three mountain shaped dessert with raspberries on the bottom and whipped up eggwhites shaped in three peaks. One order took 25 minutes to make fresh, and was too much for the three of us. What a glorious day of eating just desserts!!!!

We have been lucky these past three weeks to have generally great weather, often very hot, and both hot and humid in Graz, but yesterday we had a frightening rainstorm and today it rained most of the day and was much colder. We spent much of the time trying to avoid getting wet. So although we walked through the town and saw the buildings and entered all the major churches (which is what my father would do), we did spend much of our time in shops and under cover. We found a ‘salt shop’, which presented salt in all sorts of ways; as a seasoning, as salt scrubs, as deodorant, as lamps, as wall coverings, as cooking plates; it is interesting to see how many ways salt can be used. The salt came form the mines in the Saltzkammergut. Next door was a ‘bio’ organic cream/beauty products establishment, and we asked about every product on the shelves, with creams for vein problems, muscle aches, bone aches, dry skin etc. We found the original Paul Furst chocolate store, where the Mozart kugeln are made by hand from scratch (all the others are copies and made by machines), so of course we had to try them and they were delicious. I am sure my father would not have spent time in a salt shop or a beauty shop, but most likely he would have tried the Mozart kugeln, which have marzipan in the centre surrounded by nougat and dipped in dark chocolate. 

Other than the horrible weather today (which we were told was quite typical of Salzburg in July——June and August are better, September is the best month to visit), everything about Salzburg was quite wonderful. My father loved it when he studied here, and when I talked to him this evening, he expressed  wish that he had come with us. He has been participating in this journey from afar, in a virtual sort of way, which is not quite the same as having actually been with us.

We had to top of our day at a concert. The Marmorsaal at the Mirabel palace had a violin and piano recital. The performers had been students at the Mozarteum, and had experience performing, but I noticed that the violinist’s music was covered with red corrections and marks and her teacher was in the audience, so I thought perhaps that the musicians were not professionals. They played well, but unfortunately the venue had poor acoustics for the particular performance, and the audience clearly were inexperienced with classical music. I had fun anyway, and expect that my father went to all sorts of concerts while he was here, both professional and otherwise, and enjoyed the music, which is the point of going to a concert.

We have been traveling three weeks, and driven over 3500 kilometers, to Celtic and Roman times  through thousands of years of history to the present. I understand my father’s interest in history, because by living in the Vojvodina in the time that he did,  he was participating in history. I believed that my father grew up in a small town, but I learned that Backi Brestowac was much larger both physically and figuratively. It was connected to other towns in the Vojvodina in areas that are now Hungary and Romania. It was connected to Vienna and Budapest and Bratislava and people were moving all over the area once upon a time. The city was full of artisans and engaged in production and manufacturing of hemp and tiles and other products, so that it was not just an agricultural town. It had a population that supported sports teams and cultural activities and brought in music and art and theatre regularly. Children went to school far afield and returned with new and exciting ideas. I learned that Backi Brestovac was not such a small town, and that the families lived big lives, connected to the towns and cities near and far, and was a place for ideas and ideals. This version of the story makes so much sense, because the father that I knew lived a 'big' life that would never have suited a small town, but would be perfect for the type of place Backi Brestovac was at the time.

I learned so much more about my family than I knew....

Ending Our Journey

We were too late last night to eat dinner, so we finally started on our watermelon we bought in Backi Brestowac. My father had always talked about the wonderful watermelons he remembered from his childhood. We saw watermelons for sale all over the Vojvodina, reminding us of our father and his love for melons of all kinds. We bought the melon from a very friendly mother and her two children after a wild rainstorm just as we were leaving Backi Brestowac after looking at the cemetery our last day in Serbia. It was a very satisfying melon. 

We were surprised that we saw almost no vegetable gardens in Serbia, and when we ordered salads or vegetables in the restaurants, they never tasted very fresh. Perhaps they were imported from far away (much like our veggies and fruits in New York). The fields we saw were all soy, sunflowers and corn (or kukuruz as the DonauSwabians called it) Even when we bought apricots and peaches and plums on the side of the road outside of Belgrade, the fruit was a disappointment. It was surpassing that we saw so few livestock while we were driving through the countryside. We saw some sheep and goats, but no cattle. Since the menus were very meat oriented, where did the meat come from? Our best meals were fresh fish from the Danube; the catfish in Smederevo, the carp and Zander we had at Zemun. The fish goulsasch at Apatin should have been amazing, but the fish parts in the goulasch were too explicit, and altered the experience. I wish we had enjoyed the goulasch more than we did; my father and his father and his grandfather were all enthusiastic about their goulasch.

According to Francoise, our French friend from Belgrade, the poor quality of Serbian food is likely due to the struggling economy. The country is simply poor, and cannot afford to import the best quality ingredients. Perhaps the fish was good because it came directly from the river nearby.

We are happy to be in Austria and enjoying the wonderful desserts. We are always trying the poppyseed cakes and strudels. We tried them in Hungary and in Serbia, but they are best in Austria, and we are taking advantage by entering every bakery and looking for thick juicy chunks of poppy seed. We tried a cake with poppy seeds, rhubarb and meringue, but only the poppy seed part was good. We will definitely keep trying, although we are in Salzburg today, and there are very particular Salzburg desserts which require tasting. 

Lunch is usually a picnic for us. We take all the cheese and meat offered at breakfast and each make a sandwich to eat on the road. We stopped in Bruck an der Mur today and sat on a bench in the town square, admired all the gothic and renaissance buildings (the town traded with Venice and amassed great wealth) and reflected on our journey. We have been on the road for 20 days, but on the one hand it feels as if we just started, and on the other hand there is a sensation of being on this journey forever. We are all amazed that we have traveled so far and seen so much and learned more than we knew when we started, and each of us wishes to return and see and learn more. It is our last day tomorrow. We travel to Munich to catch trains and planes and return to our ordinary lives. Yet nothing will ever be ordinary after this experience; we are different people than when we started, aware of many more layers about the past and our present. 

Before we end our journey, however, we have a last day in Salzburg. My father received an scholarship for the Mozarteum in Salzburg each year he was studying in Graz, and was able to take any course he wanted and attend all the concerts there each summer. It was heaven for him. He stayed at the Hotel Germania, which we have been unable to find. We arrived late this evening in Salzburg, because our first goal this morning was to find Krottendorferstrasse near Graz, which we did, and it was not too far from the cable car, so we knew that this time, we were probably at the right place. He lived there with his parents and grandmother, because he found a job for his father at the British military installation. We drove the length of the very long street looking for likely places for the Brits, and found some likely possibilities including a castle at the very end. We did not have a number of a house, but it may be that Loni will know, because she would send mail to the address and remembers the name. We will have to ask her.

After leaving Graz, we looked for a monastery that was within a short distance and which had public transportation access, and decided on Stift Rein, an absolutely stunning baroque church and attached buildings, which was the oldest Cistercian abbey anywhere. It was exactly the sort of place my father would visit. 

He had also advised us to visit the Salzkammergut, which has been economically significant for thousands of years due to its salt mines. There was so much to see and do in the area, but we were limited both by time and a frightening rainstorm that made it impossible to see or move forward. Traffic was almost completely stopped for over an hour. We limited our viewing to the Dachstein mountains towering over us, and stopped at a couple of the lakes. Grundlsee and Wolfgangsee were arbitrary  stopping points; there were many more places we could focus on. We will leave that for our next visit. Austria is so very picturesque and clean and well kept, and very much on the agenda for our next trip. We ate at a gasthof with a great view of a lake, and enjoyed carp and spinach knoeldel and our poppy seed strudel. 

It is hard to believe we are almost at the end of our journey. We are settled in our hotel in Salzburg, marveling at what we have seen and done in such a short time. When we are driving we are reviewing all sorts of family stories, examining all the layers, anticipating all the meanings, wondering what more we can learn. We have one more day to imagine the life of our father when he came to Salzburg each summer to immerse himself in music. We walked along the quiet streets of the old city, which is a pedestrian zone now, and was probably not much different in my father’s time. The Salzburg castle towers over the town, the Salzach River runs through the middle, massive churches are used for concerts in the evenings, and the cafes and restaurants are full of excited patrons enjoying themselves. My father would listen to music above all else, so we will look for a concert to attend tomorrow in his honour. We feel so very lucky to be here walking in his footsteps.

Arsenal, Palaces, Parks, and Music

I felt a profound sense of sadness today, after having an absolutely wonderful day in the delightful town of Graz. We were able to get tickets to a concert tonight as part of the summer festival season. It is almost the last concert of the season. The opera and all the concert venues in town are closed until September or October, but festivals are happening everywhere, and the tickets are affordable. We were entirely inappropriately attired for the event. The Austrians were dressed their best, but we had been seeing sights all day in the 32 degree humid weather. We got seats in almost the last row, and tried to blend into the scenery without being noticed. The programme was all Beethoven piano sonatas by Markus Schirmer and was called ‘Der Sturm’. It was marvelous. But I started reflecting on the stories I have been hearing from my father, from his parents and his cousins and his aunts and uncles, and the incredible tragic experience they carry with them. 

I remember my grandfather Jakob, a proud but modest man at the same time. He was the son of an Anton, a landowner in Backi Brestovac;jakob was the mayor of the town and had political aspirations. My father had expected to return to Backi  Brestovac and follow in his father’s footsteps. As a 20 year old, he was only interested in completing his studies. Instead, he was drafted into the army and sent off to the Eastern front. My grandfather was drafted later in the war, and ended up in a Russian POW camp. When dysentery spread through the camp, the Russians left in fear of being infected. Jakob was able to find his way to Hungary to stay with family friends who nursed him back to health. He had been on his way back to Backi Brestovac, but was advised at the border that going to his home was dangerous. How he found his way to his family is a miracle. My father left his American POW camp to find his family in Upper Austria. When he arrived,, he found his mother very ill and in the hospital with an infection. The doctors did not know how to use the Penicillin that my father was able to procure to save her. The penicillin was diluted and so she lost her finger, her lower leg and part of her skull. When my father went to Graz to study, he was able to arrange for his father to work as a maintenance man at the British military establishment, so he was able to move with my grandmother and my great grandmother Eva. 

My grandfather, who had lived in a grand home, a leader in his community, never hesitated to work as a janitor, a maintenance man, both in Graz and later in Dietlingen Germany. My grandmother, once the matriarch of the community, adjusted to her prosthesis and supported her husband and her children. My father’s brother Tony, spent ten years in a POW camp in Hungary, and likely survived because he was very good at fixing things and always had a job at the camp. He finally moved to Germany to join his family after losing years of his life.

My father focused on his studies in Graz, and spent every free moment listening to music. He heard concerts in the Burgarten, at the music halls all over town. He has always loved his music. He could no longer play the violin after being injured in the war, but studied musicology and went to Salzburg each summer to study.  Hearing the concert today had me thinking of the role of music in his life, perhaps the activity he loved most of all.

This journey has been so much about loss. I have known the general story and most of the details all my life, but traveling to the places that were so important to my father, has brought depth to his story. I hope I understand better what his former life was, what he lost, how he survived. 

Graz was healing for my father, for us. He insisted today that we go to the Arsenal museum, a massive collection of medieval armaments. There were arsenals in every town in the middle ages, so that when attacked, the townspeople could be armed and ready to defend the town and the castle. The armoury in Graz has been perfectly preserved, and is the largest collection there is.  We walked through the medieval part of the city, and admired the houses and courtyards of the palaces. We trekked back to the university to find the music hall in Mozartgasse where my father listened to music most regularly. We drove out to Schloss Eggenberg, which is just outside the city, and took a tour through the state apartments. Maria Theresia had stayed for a week at the schloss, and her bed is the only one that was not destroyed in the Second World War. The rooms are well preserved, because the castle was left undisturbed for 150 years, after the last Eggenberg had ho children and the family died out. The best part of the schloss were the peacocks, who were screeching and displaying their feathers for us.

We went on a wild goose chase looking for the street where my father lived with his parents. He had given us the name Krottendorfergasse, so we went to the town of Krottendorf, which was far south of Graz on narrow country roads near a monastery, St Ulrich in Wassen. It was clearly not the right place, since my father had a 20 minute ride to the university from his house. Later, we learned that there was a Krottendorfergasse closer to the city and we will check it out tomorrow. Meanwhile, we had a lovely view of Styrian countryside. 

We rushed back to Graz to get to the concert with no time to eat or change our clothes, but the concert was well worth it, and we reminded ourselves that our father would have made sure to be a the concert too. We are guided each step of the way by the question; ‘What would our father do?’, which helps us focus on our journey. Otherwise we would be pulled in too many directions; there is so much to see, so much we have missed and must return to visit next time.

Time and Place to Recover

In late 1945, my father petitioned the American military, who were in control of Upper Austria at the time, to study in Graz, and when he received permission, he moved to Marschallggasse in Graz, and attended the university to study political economy and music. Shortly thereafter, he was able to move his parents from the farm in Unterolzing to a new home in the outskirts of Graz on Krottendorfgasse. They stayed with him until he finished his PhD. He then moved to Vienna and they were sponsored by the German government and moved to a place near the Black Forest in Dietlingen. His incredibly brave grandmother Eva died in Graz. She had driven the cart (with my grandmother, great aunt and uncle and their child) from Backi Brestovac to Unterolzing, taking almost a year to reach her destination, avoiding Russian troops from the east and encountering obstacles with every turn toward the west. Graz, for my father, was a peaceful refuge from years of war and tragedy. He loved his time in Graz, changed his course of study, studied and listened to music, decided to work with the Danube Swabian group with the aim to return to the Vojvodina, and moved to Vienna after finishing his doctorate in 1948.

For us, after the frenetic pace of the last two weeks, and our own challenges and fears and anxieties, we are feeling much calmer and more relaxed, and Graz offers us chance to recover, recharge, wind down, before we end our journey. Graz, with its parks and palaces and churches and statues of the Virgin Mary at every corner, is the perfect place to quiet down, return to our normal selves. Or perhaps, after all we have seen and learned in these past days, we will never quite be the same as we were before.

Again, we followed the footsteps of our father. We started at the Mausoleum, which was built by Emperor Ferdinand II. We learned that Graz had been the residence of the Hapsburgs since 1379, and became an imperial city when Friedrich the II became the Holy Roman Emperor. Until 1619, when the capital was moved to Vienna, it played a significant role in defending the realm against the Turks, as well as the French. In addition, Graz played a role in the Counter Reformation in the 1500’s, after three quarters of its residents became protestant, and the Jesuits were called in to re establish Catholic beliefs. The city is full of churches and statues of religious figures.  

The mausoleum introduced us to the Austrian baroque, which was less exuberant than the churches in Vienna. it was curious that the marble was painted on; rather than using marble, which may not have been available, wood was painted to look like marble, which was not altogether convincing at times. Otherwise the baroque was not overdone, and often quite lovely. My father was most interested in music, and attended church to hear the organ or the choir or the musical mass, so he became familiar with all the churches in the city.

We climbed up to the Schlossberg, the fortress at the top of the hill in the centre of town. My father told us that he walked often to the park above Graz, to read, to look over the town, to relax. It was hot and humid and a very long hike up to the top to see the clock tower. The fortress was impregnable, and withstood the onslaught of Turks and the French, who attacked in massive numbers  unsuccessfully. The skies opened up while up at the top, and we found ourselves in an open air theatre constructed out of the ruined cellars of the old castle, where we found protection from the rain. Perhaps my father came to watch performances at this venue. He describes Graz as a place where he listened to music as much as he possibly could. He went to the opera, and we visited the opera house. He listened to music in the gardens, in the theatre; we tried to find all the places he had described as destinations to  listen to music. We grew up with him listening to classical music nonstop, and this was his great interest in Graz as well. When studying at the university, he was able to attend classes at the music school, which we visited as well. It was a great disappointment to him to give up his violin studies. He had taken lessons all through high school in Sombor, and expected the violin to be part of his life forever.

Since the university had been the focus of his life in Graz, we wanted to find exactly where he attended classes, and at first believed it had been at the oldest university in Graz, which had been started by the Jesuits in the 1500s. We had a special tour of the old university, which has not been a university for over a hundred years. It is now used to host events. It was a library and archive for many years, but was not a good venue to store papers and books, and eventually the contents of the library and archives were moved to a climatically controlled location, and the old Jesuit university was restored and managed by a private company. It turned out that my father had in fact attended the newer old university a little outside of the Altstadt, so that was our next destination. 50, 000 students attend university in Graz, and the Franz Wilhelm it is one of the oldest universities in the country. 

The university was empty of students and faculty, but we were able to walk the halls and imagine my father studying political economy. When he finished his Phd, he returned to study philosophy for a short time before moving to Vienna, so we visited the philosophy department as well. The building is beautiful, with a renaissance courtyard, lovely halls and wooden doors and wrought iron finishes. The main ‘aula’ is stunning, and that is where my father received his diploma. We were unable to see much of the music school, and had to imagine his experience there.

To find the Marschallgasse, where he first lived when he moved to Graz, we had to cross the river Mur, and pass the awful modern ‘Kinsthalle’ which from afar looks like a blue breast with lots of nipples, quite the eyesore in an otherwise consistent style of architecture. Graz was not bombed extensively, so the medieval part remains intact, as do the baroque churches and renaissance palaces, and the result is coherent and not overly renovated, and easy on the eye.

My father insisted that we visit the arsenal museum, the most extensive collection of armaments from medieval times. That seems entirely out of character for my father, who has never expressed interest in military activities. We have the visit on our agenda for tomorrow. Today was about immersing ourselves in the relaxed tempo of this beautiful city. We lingered in parks, sat on benches, stopped for a coffee near the Freiheitsplatz, ate dinner over hours at the Glockenspielplatz eating Styrian specialties and drinking dry white wine. It was Karen’s birthday, and as a surprise, a cherry strudel came with a firecracker sizzling and the whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday for her. 

We are very different people than we were three weeks ago when we started this journey. We have learned so much about the history of my father’s people, and of the many ethnic groups that made their way into and out of the Vojvodina over the centuries. We have struggled through the despair and the tragedy of so many, and tried to understand and empathize with the travails of those who have come before us. We have faced our fears and come to a more complete knowledge of our past. We are relieved to be here in Graz, where my father was able to move forward from his past, and where we have relaxed and started to absorb all that we have seen and learned in our travels.          

Heading West

I am feeling sad for Serbia today. With 50 % unemployment, and so many wars to survive recently, the economy is depressed and there is no money to take care of the people, let alone the buildings or the history of the place. This is in remarkable contrast to Hungary, which is already part of the EU and has not had to deal with any recent conflict. The towns are well kept, and the city of Pecs was stunning. We saw that last night, as we wandered throughout he lit up streets. Today, we again walked through the central pedestrian zone, and were again amazed at the difference with Sombor and Subotica and Belgrade. These were once important cities, with trade and manufacture and culture and presence. I imagine that is what they were like in the days of the Hapsburgs. Now, the Serbian towns are falling apart, and there is no money to renovate or restore. These places were important to my father, and impressive once, and could be today. 

Pecs was perhaps excessively renovated. Every building was well kept and impressive alone, but all together, it was almost too pristine. There was even a mosque, which felt right, because so little of the Turkish reign is evident in the places we have visited. When we told that to a Serb, we were corrected, and told that there are many Turkish words in the language, as well as Turkish food and products. The mosque in Pecs was being renovated, so we were unable to enter. The main cathedral had been almost excessively renovated. The original structure was a simple Romanesque style, but it had been restored and altered so many times, there is a mishmash of styles which altogether do not quite work. Nearby evidence of the original medieval walls and fortress were rebuilt, and the walkway along the walls was of beautiful travertine marble. Nearby, the remains of third and fourth century Christian graves are accessible to the public, and are covered with chapel like structures, and full of frescoes inside. 

There was much more to be seen in Pecs. Tara always tells us, when we choose not to see a site, that we have ‘travel insurance’, and have a reason to return. I feel that in every place we have been, we have so much more to see, and will have to return. Now that we are out of Serbia, I am eager to revisit, and head more southward, see more Roman ruins, find more Turkish remains, perhaps even visit Backi Brestovac again and enter one of the houses. We have had a very positive experience in Serbia; considering how fearful we were in Timisoara, when we considering canceling our trip altogether, and took hours to convince ourselves to follow our itinerary, none of our worries came to fruition. The police did not ticket us for speeding (we never sped!), we were not robbed, our car did not disappear, we did not crash; nothing untoward happened to us. We were warned in Romania that driving in Serbia was inadvisable, the internet was full of scary stories; but we learned that such stories are told of the Hungarians when in Serbia, of the Serbians when in Romania. Our freed Francoise, who has lived n Serbia since 2001 warned us of driving in Hungary!

Our experience with the Serbs has been very positive. Sometimes upon approach we encounter a scowl, but the minute we smile, or engage, or make an effort to communicate with gestures and facial grimaces, the response is always friendly and helpful. I think the Serbs expect a negative interaction and are always so relieved when they encounter some friendliness or kindness, and always respond in kind. 

We drove forever today. Our destination was Graz, where my father went to university after the war. He brought his parents to Graz from Unterolzing in Austria, and studied economics and music. He tells me he loved his time in Graz, and it changed the course of his life in many ways. We took seven hours to get to Graz however. We drove to Lake Baloton, the riviera for landlocked Hungarians. It was full of sunbathers, sailors, windsurfers, fisherman, all enjoying the heat and the sunshine and working on their summer tans. The countryside through Hungary was hilly, such a contrast to the pancake flat plains of the Batschka. There were storks in every town, and in one particular place, we looked for the black storks, but did not see any. We crossed the border into Burgenland, Austria, and noted immediately how much advertisement and strip malls there were compared to Serbia (almost none) and Hungary. It appears that Austrians shop a lot. Life appears busier and more consumer oriented in Austria. I felt as if we were entering civilization again’ Serbia was so much calmer and quieter and relaxed. I almost miss the place

Hidden Graveyards

My birthday celebration today included a visit back to Backi Brestowac to look at the town cemetery. We had not found it during our last visit, and felt that we could not leave without searching for it. We mentioned not finding it to Anton Beck who had assured us that it was still there and visible. 

We spent the morning in Subotica,. We climbed  to the top of the Rathaus tower for a view over the city, and wandered through the streets admiring the secessionist art nouveau architecture. The style is charming and whimsical, and sometimes too much so, that it becomes ridiculous. Occasionally,  it all comes together beautifully; the synagogue is one such example. There were once 4000 Jewish people in the city, before the Second World War, but they all left, so the building is no longer in use and is not well kept at all. But it is an absolutely gorgeous building. The Ferenc Raichle house is another wonderful example; crazy a bit like Gaudi in Barcelona, but very entertaining. The pedestrian zone in Subotica is full of cafes and bicyclists and people walking, talking, eating, drinking and shopping; the city feels very much alive, yet most of the once stately and stylish buildings are falling apart. Subotica was once the capital of the region, and rich with factories and exports, but has lost its importance since the war, and had been left to deteriorate.

My father was at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade at Subotica. We went on a hunt for the building of the law school, and asked five people and received five different answers. The tourist office sent us to an elementary school, which was a lovely building, but was not the same one we had seen online, so we returned for clarification, and learned that the old law school was not a high school and was being renovated. We found the building, but it was not in the process of renovating at all; it was falling apart, and required scaffolding to protect the passersby from being hit on the head by bits of the stonework.

It is not difficult to imagine Subotica as the town my father chose to study at; dynamic, energetic, connected, entertaining. Today it is faded and worn, and is only recognizable as having once had importance. 

When we returned to drive off in our car, we discovered that the street leaving away from the parking spot had been dug out and we could not leave the way we arrived. I talked to the construction workers with hands and gestures, no one speaking one word of any language I spoke. I was directed to drive int he opposite direction over the sidewalk. I was worried about the police, but they laughed at me. We drove down the length of the outdoor market, which was closing up for the day, until we reached a barrier, where usually parking is paid. Once again we tried to explain our situation without being understood at all. The man at the booth finally decided we were looking for our hotel, and lifted the barrier and gave us extensive instructions to return to the hotel. i did not have the energy to explain our circumstance any more and let him believe he was being awfully helpful with directions. We did not have to pay our way out, which was the goal. All our interactions with the local people have been entirely positive. They are often gruff at first, but a smile is all that is needed to soften their gaze, and then they are very helpful and accommodating. We have only had good experiences with the Serbs.

We all decided that we needed one more visit to Backi Brestowac before we left the area, so we drove down to Sombor, through Stapar and on to the country town. We could not find the cemetery, although we had a map that clearly delineated the area. We walked around the fields in the hot sun for a while, and finally asked a lady who was working in her vegetable garden. I am not sure how we communicate; she spoke no English or German, but we were able to express ourselves, and she sent her rather unwilling young son to guide us. We encountered a sheepherder on the way, as well as an elderly woman who was picking fruit from the trees. All three helped us find the very large and overgrown cemetery. Most of the headstones were buried or covered with thick brush. We found one standing, with the name Krewinka on it. We were rather horrified with the state of the graveyard. My father was excited last night to describe the Richter headstone. I imagine it was taken to be reused somewhere else. Perhaps if the area was excavated, many of the original headstones would be found, but for now they have disappeared. I felt sad to spend my birthday wandering over the graves of my forefathers, their existence entirely erased by time and circumstance.

We walked to the Jewish cemetery, which had been sizable at one time, and were even more horrified to see that the original cemetery had entirely disappeared, and new headstones had replaced the older ones. There had never been many Jewish people in Brestowac; in 1944, there had been only two families. My father’s first violin had been bought from a Jewish man in Brestowac; my grandfather helped finance his trip to America when he did not have enough money for the fare, and the violin was part of the deal.

We drove through the town again, visiting the Richer houses, my grandmother’s house, the church. We all wanted to find a way to get inside the closed gates, but were too uncertain about asking for access, and then the skies opened up again and we sought shelter and decided not to push our luck. We stopped on our way out of Brestowac to buy a watermelon. My father had always talked about the delicious watermelons of his home town, but we have hesitated buying one because we do not have a knife, but that is not a particularly good reason not to get one, so now we have a watermelon without a way to open it.

We followed the wagons fleeing the Russians and the partisans out of town. My father walked to Sombor after finding his family had left Brestowac in October of 1944, and followed their trail, hoping to catch up with them. He found transport in Sombor, and was planning to return to his regiment, until he found his father along the Danube, and stopped to share the only thing he took from the house when he left. His grandfather Anton had been so proud of the wine that he produced, and my father took two bottles from the sand where the bottles were buried to keep them cool. We followed the trail of the wagons as well, all the way to Baja across the Hungarian border, where the refugees had hoped to cross the Danube. They found the bridge blown up, so had to go further north to Dunafoltwar, where they were able to cross over. We crossed the Danube at Baja, and drove further to Mohacs, where the Austrians and Turks had signed a peace treaty after years of hostilities, and on to Pecs, or Funfkirchern, which is a lovely city, with well preserved buildings and an extensive pedestrian zone in the centre. 

We celebrated my birthday with Weinerschnitzel and spinach, relieved to finally have tasty food again. My cake was a panna cotta with two candles. I am feeling strange after a day of sadness and loss.

Cockroaches

I am staying up too late watching for cockroaches. Three have visited me so far. Yuck. And it is my birthday today.