Danube Portfolio, Part Two: Sketchy

I was on vacation in a troubled land. My pencil enjoyed itself, at least. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

AS NOTED IN MY POST LAST WEEK, I recently returned from a carefree cruise through a care-worn region: The former Yugoslavia, shattered into a half-dozen pieces in the 1990s, at the cost of 140,000 lives. Thirty years later I floated through it on the Danube, enjoying fine cuisine and paying witness the still-grinding momentum of war.

As a journal keeper of long standing (every night since 12 October 1978, or 16,814 days in a row—oof), I had lots to say to myself about the the trip. My sketchbooks caught some of the action, as well.

Join me on the most difficult vacation I’ve ever loved.

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Thursday, 3 October 2024

Belgrade used to be the capital of Yugoslavia, but since the war, it’s now the capital of Serbia. As every Colorado basketball fan knows, the greatest Nugget of all time—Nikola Jokić—is from Sombor, just up the river from here. He was born in 1993, during the war, and has the sober mien and sardonic sense of humor that befits a war baby.

So, surely, I could buy an awesome Jokić jersey in the capital city?

As it turns out, there are zero Nikola Jokić Olympic basketball jerseys available for purchase in downtown Belgrade. I know because I went on a wild-goose chase to look for them. There were a few off-brand Nuggets jerseys for sale by street vendors, and I probably should have bought one just for the amusement factor. I asked one guy if he had Nikola’s Serbian Olympic jersey and he shook his head sadly, gesturing toward multiple Celtics jerseys. That’s it? By way of apology, he told me that he is a huge fan of South Park.

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Saturday, 5 October 2024

All was quiet and bright at the start of the day. So peaceful here on the Danube. Today. But at 8AM (before we’d had breakfast!) we ran out into the rain to see Vidin, Bulgaria. We boarded our luxury coach and threaded our way through a town that has been on hard times since the Soviet Union fell apart, in 1991. The retreating Soviets closed a tire factory that had employed 10,000 workers, according to our tour guide, and the town still hasn’t recovered. We saw abandoned buildings everywhere, plus a giant car graveyard straddling the road out of town. Eventually we pulled up in front of an elegant bungalow and twenty-five tourists trooped into a home crowded with nicknacks. In the kitchen, Ramona and her “auntie” walked us through the process of assembling eggs, feta, nuclear-green soda, and sheets of phyllo dough into banitsa, a treat that is central to Bulgarian hospitality. We were shown that warmth, as well, when we got to eat a lot of it. I helped clean up, which made Ramona happy. Then back in the bus, in a downpour, to return through the wasteland to our fabulous ship. I’m still damp.

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The Amabella was pressed into service for our cruise, because the original ship was stranded downriver after violent September storms. Our new ship had a beautiful bell, which I never heard ring. But I did stare at it for a long time one afternoon.

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Sunday, 6 October 2924

A day in Bucharest, with a drive through the Bulgarian and Romanian countrysides, new stamps for my passport, and a view of the architectural insults of the Ceaușescu regime. He was the country’s dictator starting in 1968, but was finally overthrown during the Romanian Revolution. He and his wife were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989, after twenty-one years of despotic rule. Let the voter beware: Dictators serve for life, and however violently they want to.

Two years later, Michael Jackson visited Bucharest with his “Dangerous” tour. The crowd roared when he stepped out on stage. Then he exclaimed, “Hello, Budapest!”

Of course, he was five hundred miles away from Budapest, which I well knew, having floated the entire way between the homonyms.

Well, it is a pretty confusing part of the world.

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Monday, 7 October 2024

Hard to believe I’m sitting in the garden of the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul. Having awakened at 2AM to fly here, we conked out after our lunch at the Pudding Shop—the hippie hangout made famous in the 1970s, when an American kid bought hash there and wound up in prison for five years. He eventually found his way into a movie called Midnight Express—which I’ve never seen because that scenario is scarily plausible in my life. One side-eye from passport control and I’d confess everything—including stuff I didn’t do.

Istanbul was alive with pedestrians and trams and worshippers and hawkers and food carts and stray cats—a crossroads experience with a cacophony of languages and modes of dress. The women bore the brunt of this fashion clash, appearing in everything from obscuring abayas to full-reveal tube tops and miniskirts. I hardly knew where to look.

Just now the call to prayer rang across the city, from the high minaret of Hagia Sophia mosque.

The tower is just a quarter mile from where I’m sitting, as the Anatolian blackbird flies. That’s the national bird of Turkey, b.t.w.—not our humble turkey. Turkeys don’t live in Turkey, oddly enough.

Here’s what the muezzin was singing:

God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! God is Great!
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Hurry to the prayer.
Hurry to salvation.
God is Great!
There is no god except the One God.

Not bad to be reminded to offer up a prayer five times a day, at top volume.

I learned that the building now housing the Four Seasons used to be a prison. Here’s my prayer of gratitude: I am grateful to be offered breakfast here, rather than starvation and today’s thrashing.

Thank you for sparing me, fates!

“After a time, my hand had become as skilled as my eyes. So if I was drawing a very fine tree, it felt as if my hand was moving without me directing it. As I watched the pencil race across the page, I would look on it in amazement, as if the drawing were the proof of another presence, as if someone else had taken up residence in my body. As I marveled at his work aspiring to become his equal, another part of my brain was busy inspecting the curves of the branches, the placement of mountains, the composition as a whole, reflecting that I had created this scene on a blank piece of paper. My mind was at the tip of my pen, acting before I could think; at the same time it could survey what I had already done. This second line of perception, this ability to analyze my progress, was the pleasure this small artist felt when he looked at the discovery of his courage and freedom. To step outside myself , to know the second person who had taken up residence inside me, was to retrace the dividing line that appeared as my pencil slipped across the paper, like a boy sledding in the snow.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City

Thanks for joining me here.