Sightseeing in the Mindfields
Current Events 60: A Dubious Heroism
May 19, 2022
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Radi was pleased to disclose the reason for the Bulgarian Jews' escape from the Nazis' extermination camps. Though his country had been aligned with the Axis powers, King Boris of Bulgaria had resisted Hitler's demand to surrender 50,000 of the king''s Jewish subjects. King Boris traveled to Germany in order to express his defiance in person. A few...
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Current Events 59: The Abandoned Synagogue
May 12, 2022
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As we walked from Baba Vida back towards the town center, I heard a riot of barking and growling. Suddenly, a pack of dogs bolted down the street in pursuit of a car. Vidin had not taken the sort of stringent measures to reduce its stray canine population that Belgrade had done. Radi cautioned us not to approach the dogs where they stood, panting,...
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Current Events 58: Baba Vida
May 05, 2022
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Bulgaria had been a formidable kingdom during the early Middle Ages. A remnant of Bulgaria's former might was the fortress of Baba Vida, Vidin's principal landmark. According to legend, Vida was one of three daughters of a Bulgarian king. After their father's death, each of his daughters inherited a third of the kingdom. Both of Vida's sisters wed...
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Current Events 57: The Faces of the Dead
April 27, 2022
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The Bulgarians have a custom that I had never encountered anywhere else, and it was in Vidin that I was introduced to it. The local people printed the pictures and names of their deceased relatives on sheets of paper, the size of computer printer paper, and posted them around town. People pinned these Memento mori to metal, cork-lined frameworks pl...
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Current Events 56: A Mosque in Vidin
April 21, 2022
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The mosque was not much larger than a private house. A black-bearded man of perhaps forty ushered our group into a room that had two tiled niches set into one wall. The windows had ceramic frames embellished with arabesques. Otherwise, there was little ornamentation and almost no furniture, as there had to be space for the worshippers to unfurl the...
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Current Events 55: Vidin, Bulgaria, Part 2
April 13, 2022
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Vidin had a modern central plaza with marble and bronze monuments to soldiers who had died in a plethora of wars. Even without the civil conflagrations of the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria had been involved in half a dozen wars in the Twentieth Century alone. On a terrace above the river was a Soviet-style sculptural tribute to The Heroes of the Resi...
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Current Events 54: Vidin, Bulgaria, Part 1
April 07, 2022
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On the morning after our passage through the Iron Gates, the ship docked in Bulgaria. The river port of Vidin was in the extreme northwestern part of the country, a narrow hook between Serbia and Romania. On a map of The Balkans, the borders of the countries look as if they were drawn by a toddler who had binged on sugar prior to picking up a crayo...
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Current Events 53: Through the Locks
March 31, 2022
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Our ship entered the first lock at noon. Iron Gates I was the site of the first hydroelectric dam to supply power to both Serbia and Romania. Constructing it had taken twelve years. The lock had four chambers. It was one of the largest in the world. The ship began to drop as soon as the lock's gates swept shut behind it. The mechanical sequence tha...
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Current Events 52: Decebalus the King
March 23, 2022
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On the Romanian shore was another monument, the titanic head of the Dacian ruler, Decebalus. Decebalus fought a series of wars against the Romans, winning some before he was defeated definitively by Trajan's army. At forty meters high, the hero's statue was the tallest rock carving in Europe. The part of the outcropping above the chieftain's massiv...
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Current Events 51: Trajan's Tablet
March 17, 2022
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The Danube River carried our ship through the deepest gorge in Europe. Aside from a few craft sailing upriver, there were few traces of civilization. Both Serbia and Romania had created national parks on their sides of the gorge. I was content to commune with Nature as the river wound south. I should not, however, call the landscape unspoiled. It h...
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