(This set of posts comprise an addendum for Time and Place 2015-16, accounting for previous travels and events.) 

What very interesting and historically vital countries I am putting into an ‘odds and ends’ category. I apologize  but in the case of the first two the visit was too brief and, in the case of Ljubljana, Slovenia, too undistinguished for comment. I went for an arts gathering which was everything it should have been, full of enthusiastic youngish and fringish artists with work not so interesting or clever or important for me, and besides I was in a very bad mood. I did walk around the city and attend events in a couple of venues and it seemed a nice small traditional eastern European city. I took a train one day to Zagreb, Croatia simply to say I’d been there, but I had just finished Robert Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, which made me angry with the Croatians for what they did to the Serbs during WW2. Of course the Serbs behaved at least as badly in the 90s but that’s another story. In any case I remained in a bad mood even on that very pleasant rail journey. The moral of this introduction to a small photo album is Do Not Be Cranky When You Travel, it spoils the view and the taste and the memory.

CROATIA AND SLOVENIA, 2009 OR 2010

HUNGARY IN 1989

This was a fine trip, marching along with the first political campaign parades of the newly independent Hungary. It was exciting. Much speechifying and waving of banners and good will. I had several hundred dollars in cash stuck, carefully I thought, in my purse to exchange for local currency later. I proceeded to lose it during my enthusiastic trekking after various candidates, none about which I had a clue as to platform or intent. I did live quite sparingly for the rest of that trip as I didn’t have a credit card at the time! I remember the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach for the remainder of that day. However I also saw a brilliant performance by a young Hungarian dancer whom I would present at the New Performance Gallery in San Francisco when I moved there later that year. It was all good…