New Orleans and Deep South, 2023

Wednesday January 11

We wake up in Newton with the TV message of a massive computer failure that grounded most airplanes in the US. We can sit out our delay at home. In the end, it is only a 1.5 hour delay.  A friendly Lyft driver in New Orleans.

The International House hotel is a nice, rather old-fashioned place. The neighborhood is oldish, with many beautiful art deco and art nouveau buildings interspaced with smaller, random structures, most showing signs of some neglect. Two blocks away is a major thoroughfare, Canal Street, which seems like a border of the French Quarter and the beginning of its centerpiece, Bourbon Street. Philip does a quick reconnaissance and reports his pleasant surprise by the atmosphere: a nice mix of not-too-many tourists and locals making music in the streets; but also several homeless people lying around. I discover a nice courtyard annex café, very reminiscent of Budapest, where we later have dinner.

The food is mediocre but the drinks (sazerac and a cocktail of frozen peach with bourbon) are good, and the live music is great: a trumpetist annex singer, an older guy, and behind him an even older but identical looking guy, half hidden, playing the drums, and then a great young pianist. Halina asks them to play “gloomy Sunday” but they never heard of it. We go back to the hotel dead tired.

Thursday January 12.

For breakfast we try a place in Chartres street, not far from Canal street and the hotel. Halina’s eggs are greenish (from avocado butter) and look like vomit. Philip’s burrito is excellent.

The weather is uncommonly warm, in the 70s. We decide on a guided walking tour through the French Quarter that starts at 1pm, which gives us a few hours of leisurely walking, admiring the wrought iron balconies and further architecture of Chartres street, the music, life and recorded, everywhere, and the mix of black locals and (mostly white and overweight) tourists. We find the Cabildo building at Jackson square, the old government center that is now a fabulous museum. This is where the purchase of Louisiana was celebrated in 1812. 

The history of the purchase is interesting. The French Canadians came to this area from the Gulf, having heard from the native Americans up north about the great river that starts in what is now Minnesota and ends down south in the Gulf. Once they found it, they claimed the entire territory of the Mississippi watershed as theirs, calling it Louisiana after the French monarch Louis XIV. The territory is huge, essentially the American Midwest. But the New Orleans area turned out to be a big problem: swamps, heat, mosquitos, yellow fever and malaria, and no particular economic value. So, after maybe eight decades or so, the King of France gave the Louisiana territory to his nephew, a Spanish royal family member who was also the king of Mexico. The Spanish did not have a lot of luck with this territory. Two major fires burned down most of the city, and the economy was weak. So, after half a century, they gave it back to France. At this point Napoleon was the ruler of France and, needing a lot of money to finance his wars, sold it the same year to the United States under President Jefferson, for 13 million dollars.

We roam the three stories with displays of the battle of the 1815 battle of New Orleans and Mardi Gras costumes. One artifact is interesting: a water pipe for the local waterworks, made of a trunk of a tree with an inner hole bored into it. On the third floor there is an exhibit of Creole life by a local contemporary artist (artistically not so great but a nice display of creole figures and their dresses and lifestyles). We need a break and find it in the grand café Du Monde near the river, where the only thing served are beignets and coffee. Beignets are fried dough, extremely fresh, crispy on the outside and fluffy inside, and covered with a thick layer of powdered sugar.

Our guided tour is a disappointment. The very nice guide talks and talks, she has many interesting stories to tell about the history of New Orleans, the architecture of the houses, but she hardly moves; we would stay at one place for 15 or more minutes while she is telling some complicated story, which is tiring. But we also learn a lot about New Orleans’ history. The French made a mistake by selling Louisiana to the U.S. Shortly after the sale, a method was invented for granulating sugar from sugar cane, which made sugar a huge export commodity to Europe.  It was white gold. Then, the cotton gin was invented, which made processing of cotton into high quality yarns easy and created a boundless demand from the cotton mills in the north. New Orleans and the vicinity became very prosperous.

The tour has become long and tedious, so after 1.5 hours, when the group turned left around the corner we inconspicuously turn right and continue exploring the French quarter on our own. We recognize the houses with courtyards and small adjacent slave quarters the guide talked about, and of course the ubiquitous balconies.

We end up at the far end of Royal Street. It is not far from the tourist area around Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, but it is very quiet and lovely, with a completely different atmosphere. The architecture is very attractive, a variety of house types, and all these courtyards. We take some side streets, find a nice park to rest where dogs and kids play, have sandwiches in a little diner.  Back at Jackson Square, Halina has a foot massage, while Philip rests nearby. The place is run by men from Far East Asia, the front door is wide open, I close my eyes and listen to the man outside, an electrical contractor describing how the electric system in his building is totally overrun by roaches and eaten through.

We walk back to the hotel through a riverfront park. A man is playing on a keyboard. The best-looking restaurants are packed, need reservations. We settle in a large family restaurant where food is much better than the previous evening but still not top quality. Heading home, we run into a street performance of two tubas, trumpets, trombones, and drums, with the most uplifting music; loud, but completely appropriate. A band like the ones we have seen in movies at New Orleans funeral processions.

 Friday January 13.

Windy cold day, morning in upper 40s. We find a new breakfast place, Streetcar Café, conveniently near the streetcar stop. The breakfast and the ambiance are perfect. Our first destination is the museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. We step on the century-old streetcar with a large sign “only exact change” but of course we have no change and no idea where to buy tickets. The driver is irritated but sells us two senior day passes for the improbable total price of $2.62.  We cannot figure out how he came up with that odd number, and he is in no mood to explain.  The change comes in the form of electronic pass, supposedly to be used again. These trams have an uncanny resemblance to an ancient underground tram in Budapest: wooden benches and leather straps for the standing room passengers. They move very slowly but frequently.  I watch a scene repeating itself with new groups of tourists: no exact change which means that the driver has to take their money and give them change in the form electronic pass.  The tourists are happy, energized by the prospect of the day’s explorations and the driver gets increasingly impatient. A woman sitting across from me looks Jewish. And sure enough, a few minutes later we ran into her in the Jewish museum. This is my (Halina’s) Jewishness: recognizing other tribe members.

The museum is small, very new, and fabulous. Our visit starts with a ten-minute movie. The exhibits tell the story of Jewish immigration, lives, careers, business enterprises, persecutions, and integration into the social and business networks. It is open about the Jewish community joining the slave-based economy but does not go into any depth about it. We learn some new things: that the first Jewish settlers in New York in the 16th century were Sephardic Jews from Brazil when Portugal, following the Spain’s lead, forced the Jewish population to either convert or emigrate. Over time, they were greatly outnumbered by Ashkenazi Jews coming from Germany and, later, Eastern Europe.

We meet a local Jewish man who volunteers in the museum to answer visitors’ question. He and I get into a conversation about Jewish youth camps. We discover that their camps were very similar to the camps I attended in Poland: the effort to connect the assimilating youths with their heritage and to foster Jewish marriages. The curator of the museum is a musician specializing in Yiddish music. He regularly participates in the annual Jewish festivals in Krakow and Warsaw and knows people of my generation who did not emigrate in 1968. I point out to him that these festivals are fake, museal pieces and the entire current Jewish culture in Poland is a museal piece. He tells me that the people he knows in Poland are as adamant about Poland being their country as I am about the emigration as the right way to relate to Poland.  

We are looking for a café. We find one nearby, very trendy and completely full, with people waiting half an hour outside to get a seat. We move a couple of blocks further and find a lovely modern café that is almost empty. That other café must be known on social media. People do not bother to explore on their own, but rather go where the fashion tells them to go.

It is now sunny and crispy, a perfect day for exploring the city. The next streetcar takes us to the Garden District where we visit the House of Broel, an incredible historic mansion with the most amazing collection of dollhouses. The entire upper floor is filled with them. There are different themes, time of the year, countries, historical periods. We get a private tour of the mansion and its content from an eccentric lady who runs the place.  Halina loves these dollhouses and even Philip, who shows up just to please her, finds them enchanting. The House of Broel has an interesting modern history. Its owner Mrs. Broel, now in her eighties, started in her youth a business of custom-made gowns, mostly wedding dresses, for rich ladies. She bought this house in a very neglected state in order to be near her clientele in the Garden District and named her business as House of Broel. The name was modeled after French couture companies, such as the House of Dior or the House of Chanel. The entire third floor of the house is filled with gowns, some of them really beautiful and sophisticated in design. 

When, in the 70s, American department stores started selling mass produced wedding gowns off the rack, this smart businesswoman decided to go into a full-fledged wedding business, using her mansion to its fullest potential. This is its primary business now. The clever lady went even further: in order to vertically integrate her business she became an ordained minister so that she could personally perform the wedding ceremonies. And she herself changed husbands a few times to boot. Now she lives in a lovely cottage in the back of the mansion’s garden. And our guide is a wedding manager. I wish I could meet this incredible Mrs. Broel. She reminds me of Helena Rubinstein and Este Lauder, also self-made business women in the fashion world, with very modest beginnings (differing only from Mrs. Broel by being first-generation Jewish immigrants, though who knows, maybe Mrs. Broel is one as well). While we are touring her house, she is getting ready for being a queen of some ball tonight in connection with Mardi Gras.

Completely saturated with the stuff and the stories, we get out to fresh air and something to eat. The rest of the afternoon, we explore St. Charles street in the Garden District, famous for its grand mansions. We take the tram to the end and walk back. At some point we find ourselves in front of a church-like residence with a huge, slate roof, almost like a Swiss Chalet. While we stand in front of it admiring the architecture, a gray haired woman of about my age emerges with a dog and we start a conversation. This was indeed once a church and the living room has 45 foot ceiling. The conversation goes further and we find out that she is German and her husband is a New Yorker, and they bought this house twenty years ago when it was already a private residence. She tells us about adapting to the Southern city and other details of their lives. She tells us that the house next door, which is a complete ruin, was sold for $2.5m to Beyoncé. An interesting story of it. The house was listed for 1 million and for a year there were no buyers. So the owners raised the price to 2.5 million in order to attract a different pool of buyers, and indeed it sold very quickly.  It is an amusing lesson of understanding your market.

We are too tired to walk again through the French Quarter so we have dinner in a place across the street and cash in our free welcome drink in the bar of our hotel. We drink something called French 75, very light, champagne-based cocktail.

Saturday, January 14

Another cold day under a brilliant blue sky. The streetcar (Canal Line) takes us to Enterprise car rental, where we are in and out in about 20 minutes. I notice that the price of gasoline is $2.91, indecently low in these days of climate change. In less than an hour we are at the Whitney plantation. The landscape along the way is unremarkable. We drive in turn by desolate tracts of land not used for anything, swamps and forest. Here or there, we pass trailer parks that look unloved. Although the homes are tightly arranged, there is no attempt to turn it into an organized community. There are no trees or shrubs, no central open space for community gatherings, no beauty.

The Whitney plantation was a functioning business until it closed in 1975. Because of that, it has been preserved quite unchanged since the 350 enslaved people labored here. It employed many descendants of the slaves who were freed in 1865. Thanks to a monumental effort of some academic, a lot is known about the names, origins and fate of these people. We listen to recorded interviews with some of them, conducted in the 1920s.

We take a self-guided tour with about a dozen stops. The plantation has many sculptures scattered around, all deeply emotional and reminding us of the horror of slavery. The slow walk through the plantation, the accompanying stories as well as my memory of the movie 12 Years a Slave combine to bring slavery alive. Women were giving their first births as teenagers, producing a large number of children, many fathered by the white masters. The recording for visitors is silent on the paternity of these children. How many had the masters for fathers? And in what proportion of cases were these mulatto children classified as slaves by their own fathers? Were they sold as soon as possible to avoid the uncomfortable situation? At age 14, the enslaved children were considered to be ready for full time work.

The tour says nothing about the Whitney family, other than they immigrated from Germany in the early 18th century. We visit their house, but it is unfurnished and open  for visitors only on  the ground floor. In comparison with the New Orleans mansions, this is a modest dwelling, rustic. Initially, I found it strange not to display anything about their lives: no pictures, no family history over decades of this plantation, and even the interior of the big house is not restored. But now I see that this was deliberate: the curators chose to direct their lens only on the lives of the enslaved people; they did not want to humanize the Whitneys.

On the drive back to New Orleans we encounter a familiar landscape of rolling hills, flat meadows and forest. We also pass several large industrial chemical works, two gigantic oil refineries and several smaller ones. In the refineries, the metal towers of many different heights look like music notation of some kind.

Philip found us a parking space in a nearby garage through Spot Hero for about half of what the hotel would have charged us. We have a terrific dinner in a tiny African restaurant on Royal street at the far side of the French Quarter. On the way, we pass a wedding parade, very similar to the classical New Orleans funeral parades. The bride and groom lead the parade. The passersby smile, clap their hands, some swing to the rhythm of music. The wedding party disappears in a restaurant. This is a long walk for us after a day of walking, through the full length of Royal Street. Our feet and hips cooperate beautifully.

Walking back, we find Bourbon Street transformed. It is always lively and loud, but tonight the streets are wall to wall filled with young people who are loud, coarse, and ready to get drunk. And big, very big, sometimes enormous. Deafening rock music blasts from club after club. It feels like Pamplona during the running of the bulls, minus the vomit on the streets. But it is only 8PM, the night is young. This ruckus is probably related to this Saturday being both part of a three-day weekend and the last one before the spring semester starts in most colleges.  Tour groups at almost every other corner. These tours are thematically about death, voodoo and vampires. For some reason that theme has become a tradable tourist commodity, in addition to eating, drinking and listening to jazz. We run away as fast as we can.

Sunday, January 15: Cajun tour and towards Mobile, Ala.

Mobile, Alabama, is our final destination today. Once out of New Orleans, we drive on a flat and largely empty highway toward a guided boat tour of Cajun marshes. (The word Cajun derives from an old French word I do not remember, which denoted the French Canadians who moved here from the north in, I think, 19th century. They were animal trappers and fur traders, having lived in the isolation of deep northern forest for maybe two centuries, and speaking archaic French, hard to understand even by the 19th century Canadians. Many settled here into a new form of isolation and wildness in the alligator-infested New Orleans marshes.)

The flat boat flat accommodates about 20 people. Captain Jamie is a stand-up comedian. He tells us to avoid falling overboard because the tripmates will certainly not try to rescue us but instead will pull out their cameras. And if a poisonous snake enters the boat, to pass it around as a curiosity but not to him, as he has seen enough of those. Captain’s stories and especially his perfect delivery keeps us laughing much of the time. But he is also a serious man with extensive knowledge of the eco system of these bayous. I ask him many questions. We spot many alligators, mostly small ones but also one large one, birds and tortoises.

This, like many other boat canals here, were created by petroleum companies as the refining industry grew. Before that, a jungle and very tall grasses and small irregular water bodies occupied this land. I can appreciate the wildness of Native Americans and Cajun families living here, where nobody else would venture, in these treacherous grasses, muds and waters. It is easy to understand the epidemics of mosquito-related yellow fever and malaria in these parts, which drove away the French and Spanish occupiers. We learn that many famous movies situated in marshes and wild forests were filmed here. I can easily imagine “African Queen” with Katherine Hepburn being among them.

Another interesting observation are the trees, mostly live oaks (very different from northern oaks) and southern pines (of which the floor of our Wellfleet House are made). The tree branches are covered with vine-like Spanish Moss, which hangs like grapes but have a fluffy and soft and silky texture. I wondered if these are parasites, but Captain Jamie says that this plant meets all its nutritional needs from the air. Spanish moss has many uses, most of which I forget: as house insulation, and mattress and cushion fillers. The canal culminates in a dead end but we can see beyond the trees and grasses the tops of barges and ships, indicating a large canal nearby.

After the tour we explored the nearby settlement consisting of mobile homes, some beautiful homes, mostly on stilts; the hurricane surges can be as high as 6 feet and these houses are probably all raised to protect them against the floods. We found a restaurant which was surprisingly sophisticated, where we had a light lunch. We started driving the 2.5 hours drive to Mobile, which turned out to be longer than we expected.

The drive to Mobile takes us back through New Orleans, across the Mighty Mississippi. The outskirts of the city, like all large cities, feature industrial and commercial bric-a-brac. But here, we also see many human settlements in mobile homes. We also see several vendors of mobile homes. This must be how a lot of people in these parts live. And of course, the inevitable Dollar Stores punctuate our drive. At some point we get off the monotonous highways and take a scenic route. First, it ran through marshes as far as eye can see, soft tall, dreamy grasses, crisscrossed by creeks, rivers, ponds, flat and flatter. 

Now we drive along the Gulf. Pristine white beaches, empty at this time of the year, are only yards away from the road, with no dunes in-between. We are at sea level. It is easy to imagine how this road floods, time and again, during storm surges and tornados. Hurricanes are the markers of time passage in people lives. People say: “I settled here shortly before Katrina”, or “we bought this house after Frederic”. Houses on the other side of the road, very close to us, have been raised on tall cement columns. The space underneath is used for car parking. We pass mansions under magnificent live oak trees.

It is getting dark, so beyond Biloxi we go back to the highway. Our Renaissance hotel in Mobile, next door to a convention center and two other high-rise hotels, is huge, cavernous, and nearly deserted. But somehow it is able to keep some measure of warm and coziness.  We have dinner in the hotel restaurant, almost empty.  Afterward, on our way to the room, we encounter a saxophone player in the lobby who plays the best music we have heard in days.

Monday, January 16, Mobile

It is MLK Day and we are in Mobile, Alabama!  At breakfast, we are the only people in the dining room. Not much is going on in this enormous space designed for conferences of thousands of people. It is warmer outside than in the past two days, and cloudy. The name Mobile derives from Mobile Native American tribes who lived here. Mobile was founded in 1702 by the French as the first capital of Louisiana.

We take a walk down Dauphine street, the city’s commercial and entertainment center. Very quiet, maybe because this is a holiday. This long street looks like it was once a thriving center of urban life and commerce: many large, solid buildings, similar to the old NY department stores, smaller residential building echoing some of the New Orleans architecture.

But many storefronts are boarded up.  We later learn that Mobile, with its large port, ship buildings and trade, was once a wealthy commercial center, but later suffered a major decline.

We are heading to the noon rally at Cathedral Square celebrating MLK’s birthday. We walk past the square to see the city, then back to the square. What strike us are the many murals, some really interesting, next to often vacant lots.

Philip takes a position on a bench while I go across the street to a café, which aspirationally offers “full tea service”. The place is full for brunch, but all I want is a cup of tea to take out. ‘Well’, the nice woman says, ‘all we have are big pots of freshly brewed tea for two for $16. But I will try to get you a takeout cup’. She disappears and returns maybe 5 minutes later with a styrofoam cup of tea. Then she types $16 on the register. ‘Wait’, I say, ‘you gave me just one styrofoam cup of tea!’ ‘Ok’, she says with a smile, ‘so it is half price’, and she types $8. We are both looking at the tea in a moment of silence. ‘You know’, I say, ‘tea at the Ritz Hotel in New York does not cost $8’. Silence. Then I look her in the eyes and ask: ‘would you pay $8 for this cup of tea?’  She smiles and without a word types $4. Now we are in business: I pay, we both smile warmly, I leave.

In the meantime, Cathedral square slowly fills up with mostly black people. A band starts to play on the podium, and a large contingent of people arrive from some organized march through the city. Earlier we made a bet about how many white people would attend; and it was really disappointing how few showed up. The celebration started with fiery speeches and music; but the real spirit is not quite there; the crowd is not very big to begin with, and when a misty rain arrives, people start leaving. The speakers are minor local officials and celebrities, not that interesting. The Mayor does not show up. The most passionate is the young lead singer of the band who mentions the high crime rate and challenges the crowd with “what is going on here? Where are we  heading?” But that fires up only a few people.

On the other hand, the people are very nice, several greet us, some of them come to socialize, never mind MLK. Halina takes made a picture of a group of women on a happy outing (Philip quietly entered the frame, unnoticed).

We go to the history museum. Mobile started as a French trading post, then a military fort in the early years of the 19th century. It flourished in the time of big cotton plantations, mostly as a harbor for trading cotton and for imported goods. Later came shipbuilding. Around 1840 it was one of the biggest ports in the US. During the British invasion in 1812 the Spanish, who had deep roots in that area, joined the US and helped push out the British from the South. The fort was very useful. We learn that its best years were in the mid-1800s, based on the cotton and slave trade, and imports from around the world. The cotton from the plantations to its north was shipped from here all around the U.S and the world.

The civil war divided the city; but afterwards it flourished again. In 1901, new segregation laws came into force as part of the reconstruction and Jim Crow. After the Civil war, the city had several declines and revivals, the latter linked to the defense industry and ship building. But the overall trend was downward. The city began to decline after WWII, and although the U.S. civil rights wars in the 50s and 60s were not especially bloody here, the decline continued until it hit the bottom sometime in the 1970s. The city actually defaulted on its debts and was taken over by the state. It is currently on a slow upward trajectory toward recovery. In recent years, other industries moved in – space, chemicals, paper mills, harbor commerce, and four colleges (the biggest employer in the city) – and Mobile is slowly reviving. 

We spend most of the afternoon in the museum; and also visit the nearby replica of the early fort; with its military history exhibition. Dinner at a nice nearby place with Spanish food. This place could have been in Boston: bright, light, filled with fashionably dressed waiters and guests, well-prepared contemporary cuisine. No tourists. And no black people.

On the way back, we spot an inviting-looking pub-billiard place that is going to have live music later on. So we return around 9:30 to a warm gathering of pleasant looking locals, with a country music woman vocalist on the stage. Right in front of the bar a man accosts us with a sad story of being temporarily impoverished. In his telling, he is an artist, a keyboard player, and we notice that the bicycle he is holding is a very fancy model. I want to get rid of him so I tell him that if he indeed played music for us, that would justify giving him money. I thought that that would end the conversation, but to our dismay the man turns around, runs into the next-door bar, and returns with a keyboard!  He is actually planning to set it up here on the sidewalk and play! It is a chilly evening and the prospect of standing here in the street is not very appealing. I give him a few dollars and that is the end.

Everybody in our bar is white. Next door is another bar, all black. We order Bourbon and start a conversation with friendly and very cultured-looking bar tender about Mobile, then and now. He is a local, ‘born and raised’ and tells us about the city. Before long, a youngish woman joins us and the conversation gets quite intense. She introduced herself as Meredith Hayes, a clinical psychologist with a private practice, with a Ph.D. A very pretty woman, excitable, sincere, emotional, open. I cannot tell if she is who she says she is or if she is maybe nuts. She tells us about her husband musician and her two little daughters, about her Lithuanian forebears, about her stay in the Netherlands during graduate school, but the conversation gets deeper when she tells us that her doctoral dissertation was about how people coped with death during the Holocaust. In the end she gets ready to leave and insists on buying us another drink, which we energetically refuse. We make plans for lunch the next day (We never heard back from her).

On the way back to the hotel we see more signs of nightlife that we expected. I guess Mobile is indeed coming back to life.

January 17, Tuesday: Mobile and towards Hattiesburg, MS.

The highlight of today is the African Life Tour. It is designed as a two-hour group event but in this off-season, we are the only guests. Our guide Eric is an attractive black man in his 60s, with deep intelligent eyes. Eric is part of a local NGO which is active in reconstructing the black history of Mobile, identifying meaningful monuments, installing markers, conducting research, and organizing tours.

He takes us in his SUV on a trail of black life in Mobile. The tour takes 3.5 hours and at the end of it we are both exhausted from trying to absorb all we have heard. I cannot repeat all we heard but the essence of it is Eric’s comment that the black community in Mobile is living again through a period of another reconstruction. Later on I read in Wikipedia about reconstruction and conclude that what Eric means it this: After the period of relative renaissance and social and political gains since the 60s and 70s, the blacks in this city, and the state of Louisiana, have been getting increasingly marginalized, essentially repeating the trends of the original reconstruction that ended with Jim Crow era. The essential difference is, however, that the black community are much more self-confident and smart about using the instruments of law and market to fight this fight. And they are doing it again, as we speak, reconstructing again. Maybe this is the last reconstruction?

And then, Eric retells the story of Clotilde, the original reason for our trip to the Deep South. He tells us of the relationship between the wealthy landowner Maher and captain Foster, that the latter could bring 100 new slaves from Africa, a highly illegal act since 1808; how captain Foster in 1860 bought 120 slaves in west Africa on the assumption that only 100 would survive the passage (all survived); how he avoided being caught by US marshals (who knew of his trip and waited in the harbor) by transferring the 120 or enslaved people into paddle boats and landing them on the property of the Maher family, far from the Mobile harbor. He shows us Africatown, a small residential community in deep despair, its cemetery, its little bungalows, the large industrial plants that completely surround it. He talks about the population decline in the community, from 120,000 at its peak to 1600 today, and about the food desert that Africatown is, where one has to drive six miles to buy a bottle of milk. He talks about the efforts to renew that community, including the reconstruction of the recently found at the bottom of the river the Clotilda and constructing a museum on the site. 

As we drive toward other landmarks, he tells the past stories of prominent black residents of Mobile, who became doctors, pharmacists and other professionals, and about all-black schools and Catholic nuns who supported the fight against institutional racism. He shows us the public library for blacks, which is tiny in comparison with the library for the whites. He talks about the Jim Crow days. We learn a new expression: urban removal, a take on urban renewal whereby houses get torn down to make room for new neighborhood, but the neighborhood never materializes.

These stories are great, he is a master of storyteller. But in the end I still do not understand what today’s whites are so afraid of that they try to push the blacks here toward the margins. We walk away from the tour with our heads spinning, grateful for an outdoor table in a neighborhood cafe and greatly relieved that our acquaintance from last night has not followed through with lunch together.

We cancel the plan to visit the battleship Louisiana and drive out of town, through Mississippi toward Hattiesburg; about a two-hour drive.

Wednesday January 18. From Hattiesburg to Natchez, MS

We sleep late; it is warm today. We find an uninspiring breakfast place near our hotel; pack up; and leave Hattiesburg. The previous afternoon we saw a glimpse of the town; this morning we see parts of the University of South Mississippi campus only from the distance. We take a quiet highway first to the north and then to the west; rolling hills, beautiful green, next to ugly mobile homes, endless displays of mobile homes and used cars for sale, and then finally green hills with occasionally a house here and there, in its quiet isolation. It is unclear how people make a living here; there is no visible agriculture; only logging. Out of curiosity we stop in a place called Prentiss; but that place is basically a display of poverty: empty front stores, paint peeling, trash, petrol stations, lack of regular stores. We quickly drive to the next town Monticello, where it is not much better.

We decided the previous day that we would take a walk in one of the national forests marked on the map. Plenty of trees around but finding access to a forest is unclear. We find an unpaved side road that leads us along a few isolated, really isolated, houses in the woods, further and further away. There is a secondary side road closed to traffic, sandy and muddy but doable. We park the car and take a lovely walk on this warm and sunny day. This is a logging area, with large patches of clear cuttings. Lots of cut-off side branches and mounds of stacked up trunks. Now it is clear why entrance to this national forest is not marked: this is a logging forest, probably not intended for recreation.

We enjoy the outdoors, but we also have a nagging feeling that we cannot entirely trust this place. Maybe someone will vandalize our car? Maybe some armed men from these isolated cottages will show up?  We turn around sooner than we want.  

We reach Natchez around 3:30-4pm, early enough to explore the city. We are staying in a B&B guesthouse, an old mansion filled with beautifully preserved antique furniture and rugs.

Without unpacking or cleaning our muddy shoes we hit the road again, walk a few blocks towards the mighty Mississippi. Natchez sits on top of a very high bluff; imagine the view of Palisades over Hudson river, but twice as tall and wider. We walk down the steep ramp to the shore, where there is a casino and another beautiful view. In the past, during the heyday of Natchez, the city was clearly divided into a genteel upper part and the lower part of casinos, saloons, and houses of ill repute. Walking back up is a challenge. Up again, we stroll the charming streets of boutiques and small shops. It is hard to tell if these are for the locals or tourists, as there are very few people on the streets at this moment. And most restaurants are open only Thursday-Sunday.

We find an appealing and very simple place “Rolling River”: by the locals and for the locals. People in this restaurant are very friendly, all skin colors and appearances. Upon entering the restaurant, they greet everybody with “hello y’all”. Unthinkable in the Boston area. The food is also excellent.

Thursday January 19, back to New Orleans

We wake up in this beautifully decorated room with an ornate bed, very high ceilings, and heavily draped curtains. Breakfast is indoors but separated from the outdoors by a glass wall. After the heavy rains and thunder of the previous evening the sky is clear, sunny, and inviting. We walk the nearby streets and admire the mansions. Their whiteness sparkles in the morning sun. In the early and mid-19th century Natchez was a major center of commerce, at some point even boasting of being the second in the country, after New York, in the number of millionaires. Today, it is a sleepy town, population 13,000, with charm, beauty, and a great collection of southern mansions, more impressive in my view than New Orleans. All of it was built on the backs of enslaved people.

As soon as we exit the city, the landscape changes into the usual American ugliness: the geography of nowhere, with one-story commercial buildings, car dealerships, and the inevitable Dollar Stores. The plan is to return to New Orleans, through Baton Rouge, by afternoon.

The trip to Baton Rouge and back to New Orleans takes us through the beautiful rolling hills with some forests, on a nearly empty highway. We have coffee at Audubon Cafe and refuel the car in a little village called St. Francisville, where Halina inspects an enormous antique store while I buy fruit in a supermarket. From there, the landscape turns industrial, with refineries in the Baton Rouge area. Baton Rouge’s distinction is the high concentration of refineries and chemical factories, and it used to be called cancer alley. We pass an ExxonMobil refinery: enormous, like a small city. It is a strange feeling to see in the physical reality the thing of articles and debates: the big bad and ugly heart of the petroleum industry.

The final stretch to New Orleans is easy, uneventful, and familiar: marshes, Lake Pontchartrain on the left; the airport; the Superdome, and our original hotel, International House. Philip returns the car and comes back by the little streetcar. It is nice to be in a familiar hotel.

At the bar, while drinking our welcome drink French 75 we chat with other tourists who recommend places to eat and listen to live music. We do not follow these recommendations because, as usual, something does not fit: either too far, or, like the music place, requires getting a ticket for a show, or presents itself as a pretentious “fine dining”. We walk through the French Quarter where we find a restaurant to our taste: not overly pricey or pretentious; nice food and drinks; and just right for our last evening. We stroll down Bourbon Street, which is crowded and noisy, with music blasting through open doors of endless clubs and restaurants. A little boy, no more than seven, sits on a curb, drumming on two upside down large plastic buckles. This boy is really good! I notice an inconspicuous woman sitting on the pavement nearby, leaning against a building, watching him. This is clearly his mother. We stop in the same courtyard where we were the first evening: the same band although with a different pianist. We really enjoy their laid-back style of singing old songs. This is the only place we like on Bourbon Street.

We turn into a side street to avoid Bourbon Street and unexpectedly come by a little café called The 21st Amendment, with live music. It has the atmosphere of a club, with guests smiling at each other, chatting. We also chat with the Australian couple at the next table. The musicians are young guys, full of joy and fantasy: a leading saxophone, a trumpet, an acoustic guitarist and a bass player. The saxophonist and trumpeter are also singers, and the sax player is the soul of the band: funny, emotional, connecting with the public. They are superb in every way. For me, this is the best jazz performance I have ever attended. It changes my attitude toward jazz, which I have come to see as a display of virtuosity without melody. These guys combine both.

Friday January 20, Going home

We have a couple of hours this morning before going to the airport. After breakfast we take St. Charles street towards the Mighty Mississippi. It is the perfect finale of this remarkable trip.

Poland and the Baltics June 2019

Sunday-Monday-Tuesday, June 16-18.

The conference at the Katowice School of Economics. Halina’s keynote speech at the conference brought us here.

Tuesday, June 18, Katowice.

An excursion to the Katowice coal mining museum. Unfortunately the guide talks a lot but shows very little; and the museum is modern but does not show the grittiness that Philip remembers from the old coal mines in Belgium: dust, fog, mountains of waste, and rain. In contrast this museum is clean, modern, and light. The trip includes a real mine tower which we access by an elevator, but there is no access to the mining shafts, which would make this trip a real winner. It is a curious phenomenon: tourists come here to see the authentic remnants of the gritty mining era but the hosts want to show them the post-industrial “clean” developments of the region: the art, architecture, cultural amenities. I have seen this phenomenon before in a different configuration. When asked where to shop locals usually direct us to the modern shopping malls with familiar chain stores while we are looking for local shops with local merchandise.

Philip leaves early for the hotel and Halina spends more time in the exhibit of the history of Silesia. This was a German region for many centuries, a jewel in their economic crown, with rich deposits of coal, minerals, and metal ores, and with rich agricultural soil. Poland made a claim to this area relatively recently, after WWI.

 

Wednesday, June 19: Krakow

Today we have several hours for visiting Krakow until the evening train to Warsaw. The bus trip from Katowice to Krakow takes about 1 hour. While exiting the bus station we encounter a man with a loudspeaker asking people to sign some kind of a petition. He talks about the worldwide Jewish conspiracy to soil up the good name of Poland as a collaborator in the Nazi crimes. What a welcome!

We walk over to the old city square, as beautiful as we remember it, though very touristy. We eagerly wait for the hourly hejnal, cut short by a mortal arrow during the 13th century Tatar invasion. We spend considerable time in the Mariacki Kosciul (St. Mary’s Church), the highlight of which is the ceiling painted blue with stars and the 14th century triptych by Wit Stwosz about life of Jesus. This is an amazing piece of art. It is carved in wood and painted. The human figures are incredibly realistic even by modern standards. Their poses, flowing robes, facial expressions, even veins on their work-worn hands tell their own stories. Apparently the models used by Wit Stwosz were chosen from among working people in Krakow, not the upper classes, precisely to allow him to capture the details of the individuals depicted in his art. The story goes that during the recent past a medical specialist visited the Church and when he noticed the swollen legs and some other body details of one of the carved figures he diagnosed him as having some kind of circulatory disease. The triptych was removed from this church during the German occupation to prevent the Germans from stealing it. It was send down the Wisla River to Sandomierz. Unfortunately the hiding place was betrayed by someone and occupiers took it to Germany, where it was stored in some wet basement, getting damaged. In the meantime, the high commanders ordered not to do any damage to Krakow and its art so that after the war the victorious Reich could enjoy the city for themselves, just like they planned for Prague and Paris. Currently the triptych is undergoing restorations, so only parts of it are visible. A computer monitor in the church shows the details of the process of renovations, which we find fascinating and spend quite a bit of time on it.

In the afternoon we take an Uber to the Benedictine Monastery situated on a mountaintop outside the city, known as Silver Mountain. This particular branch of the Benedictine Order lives according to the strict old monastic rules of silence, self-immolation, and prayer. They do not allow women in, except for one or two times of year. I am prepared to wait outside for Philip but as it happens we discover that June 19th is one of these days, owing to the feast of Corpus Christi on that day! The problem though is with Philip’s shorts, which are not allowed in. Fortunately, a nice man who frequently visits the monastery offers Philip a blanket from his car to wrap his legs in, and we both enter. There is really nothing much to see apart from the main chapel because the most interesting part – the village where the monks live – is off limits to visitors. What is more interesting for us is the conversation with the monk who leads us and the explanations offered by the blanket man. The monk has a kind of beatific smile on his face and emanates tranquility. But the order is clearly dying out; there is only a handful of monks living in this huge place. They own a lot of land. The blanket man tells me that he is partly Jewish (I think one quarter) and tells a long and complicated story of his grandparents’ survival during the Holocaust, hiding in plain sight in Krakow.

On the way back to the city, bitten all over by mosquitoes, we stop at Wawel castle. The castle goes back to the 12th or 13th century, the beginnings of the venerable Piast dynasty. It dominates the landscape, perched as it is on top of a steep hill, it is huge a truly impressive. There is no time to go inside, so we admire it from the outside. We walk down back into the old town which by now is a tourist zoo.  A quick dinner in a relatively quiet place in a Park and we catch a train to Warsaw. We arrive at 10 PM and easily find our AirB&B, which was a pleasant old-fashioned apartment in the center near the street where I grew up.

 

Thursday, June 20, Warsaw

Everything in this apartment reminds me of the place where I grew up. The building is part of the Municipal Residential District (MDM), which was one of the first areas rebuilt in the almost leveled Warsaw after the war. The architectural blueprints and the materials are identical to my building on Nowowiejska Street. The high ceilings, the unpolished stone kitchen countertops, the hardwood parquet floors in a herringbone pattern, the granite stairs in the stairway: all are the same. This apartment used to belong to our host’s grandfather, so even the furniture is familiar: a Polish version of Danish contempo from the 60s and filmy white window curtains. I instantly relax.

The plan for today is to spend it with Ewa and Tadeusz. Philip has some digestive problems and stays home until afternoon, while Halina takes a bus to Ewa’s new apartment in Ursynow. Ewa is very talented in interior decoration and space design. The smallish new apartment is perfect in every way. I am full of admiration. No sooner do I arrive that Tadeusz disappears and four women with whom I went to elementary school (1957-1962) arrive for a small reunion. Two of them I instantly recognize and two require a second look and a comparison with old pictures. For the next two hours we talk, and talk, and talk.

I ask everyone to tell a short story of a vivid memory we have of those school days. Interestingly, Ania and I have the same story to tell! The episode had to do with a party in her house and her handsome much older brother. At some point I sat, or rather threw myself, on a couch in an exuberant moment of laughter, and inadvertently landed on a pile of records which the brother had borrowed from his then girlfriend. To our collective mortification every single one of these records broke. I never got over the trauma and guilt, and clearly neither did Ania. Ewa told of the time when she and I wrote with our blood on a piece of parchment “friends forever” and buried it in a container at the school yard. She tried to find it many years later, to no avail.

All of us pursued professional careers and did well in them: as book editors, national library curators, high level ministry officials, academics (me), …..Notably, these were all salaried jobs, not in business, which is partly explained by the communist system beginnings we had, and partly by the types of families that congregated in our school, which at the time was one of the very few schools in Warsaw without religious instruction (a short-lived experiment in a post-Stalin general political thaw). There were many Jewish children in my class, way out of proportion to the general population. The parents were in many instances sympathetic to the communist government or actively supportive of it, as mine were, though nobody wanted to talk about it, then and now. 

I try to reflect on more general topic but do not succeed much because the women prefer to talk about details of their lives, marriages, jobs, children, financial status. But I do ask at some point about the views of their parents on the communist regime. The answers are rather vague, almost apologetic, for the sympathies that clearly existed. For me, my parents’ communist values are simply part of my personal history as well as the history of that region. I also often disclose it to my American friends as an act of defiance and personal distinction. But for these women, the topic is clearly a somewhat unresolved inner conflict, politically sensitive.

But we all agree that our school was highly intellectual and progressive, and that made a difference in our lives. Ania, one of us, is a devoted activist opposing the current government and its curtailments of democratic processes, its collusion with the Catholic Church and its violations of the Constitution.

We also talk about the boys in our class. I discover that some boys who pursued me were at the same time kissing other girls. They must have instinctively understood that I was too immature for kissing, even if they were attracted to me. It took these almost six decades to clarify various relationships and behind the scenes goings on. I also learned that the Jewish boy I very much liked, Sasha, was not allowed to play after school with non-Jewish girls.

After the reunion Tadeusz reappears and the three of us have lunch, then take a bus to Old Town. Philip joins us. After walking far too much on this extremely hot day we settle for dinner at Ewa’s favorite little restaurant in New Town, erected in the 17th century outside the walls and the mote of Old Town. We see a Catholic procession walking right by our outdoor dinner table.

The day offered me an opportunity to see Warsaw and to admire its loveliness.  Since the 1990s it has become a very pretty modern city with history and culture. Women are dressed nicely and walk with their backs straight. And its public transit is fantastic. We can basically go from anywhere to anywhere quickly, comfortably, and, for us over 70, for free. This explains why bicycle sharing never took off in Warsaw. But we see many people using Lime Scooters, especially in the neighborhoods frequented by younger people. I stay away from trying one because if I hurt myself it would ruin our trip. But I will do so when we are back in the US. Philip however tried it several times and enjoyed it greatly. Krakovians turn their noses at

Warsaw as less cultural, more vulgar, more commercial. They are right to a degree but with these characteristics comes energy. And we can sense that energy in Warsaw.

 

Friday, June 21, Warsaw

Charlotte is our favorite café for breakfast. It is just around the corner on Plac Zbawiciela (Saviour Square, named after the imposing church which dominates it). After the first morning the waitress already knows us and remembers that we take our coffee black without sugar. Their bread is heavenly, I eat far too much of it, but cannot help myself. The area is now a hotbed of hipsters, full of young energetic people, busy, engaged. To me all the girls seem pretty and all the boys are handsome.

In the morning I meet Basia, a dear friend from high school, in front of the magnificent Lazienki Park for about an hour and half to catch up in Polish. It is such a satisfying conversation: each of us is truly interested in the other’s reports, and get deeply into them. Basia is one of these rare humans who are able to listen; she asks questions, she probes. She tries to understand and learn. Most people prefer to talk about themselves, especially women.

In the meantime, Philip tries out a Lime scooter, the same company that offers bike sharing services in Newton, our home town. For all the talk about global corporate takeover, some of it makes our lives much more convenient. All we need is to scan our US app for Lime to use the Warsaw scooters. The same is with Uber, and the same is with using public transit. Our American map app tells us what tram or bus to take and where to get on and off, which makes moving around any foreign city easy. Let’s face it: this technology is amazing.

Philip later joins Basia and me for lunch at the café at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the Park, after which the two of us walk the familiar streets of Halina’s neighborhood, including “our” building and the windows on the (Polish) second floor. We explore the newly developed waterfront at Vistula River, full of bars, cafes, and featuring some new university buildings and a small man-made beach. We also visit a modern art museum at the river front (not especially interesting). The area is full of people, singles and families. We sip Marguerites at a hipsterish bar.

 

As the evening approaches we take another bus to the Rozbrat stop and walk through the magnificent but very buggy Lazienki Park up the hill to the Chopin statue, where we sit in the stillness of a warm summer evening, immersed in the aroma of flowers.  

Saturday, June 22, trip to Tykocin.

Tykocin is a small town, more like a village, about 100 miles northeast of Warsaw on River Bug. At some point in history it was an important commercial stop for grain trade on the river but by the 20th century it became a small poor village. Its present claim to fame is an old synagogue which miraculously survived the war. In 1939 Tykocin was taken over by the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was invaded by the Nazis in June of 1941, around 2000 Jewish inhabitants for Tykocin, (half of its population) were executed in August of that year in the nearby forest. According to the Wikipedia about 150 people escaped but most were murdered by the local population. Some made it to the nearby Bialystok ghetto and eventually shared the fate the Jews there. As was the case all over the country, the Jewish properties were of course taken over by their neighbors. Since the war Tykocin has never recovered its commercial heart, and for that reason the houses from that era still stand. Halina wanted to see an authentic shtetl, so we went to Tykocin.  

We take this trip with Wojtek and Danusia in their car. It is a very hot day. Over the years it has become a tradition that while in Warsaw Halina goes on an outing with Wojtek and Danusia. In the past we have together visited Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny, Sandomierz, Wroclaw, Plock, Mazury and Malbork.

We arrive in Tykocin at the height of the day, scorching hot.  There are many people visiting the synagogue, all Polish. The building has been restored but most of it is original, dating back to the mid-17th century. It is treated as an art museum and the place for learning about Jewish religion. The audio guide informs visitors about the main religious rituals — the minion, the use of bimah, the location of the Tora scrolls, the fate of the silver chandeliers — but rather superficially. For example, there is no explanation of why there is a women’s section.

And all of it is abstract. Not a single word about the Jewish people of Tykocin who worshiped here, who lived here for centuries, who settled here from somewhere and at some time, who built houses and schools and this synagogue, who were neighbors and business associates of the Christians. The wall plaque tersely states in one sentence that the Second World War has ended the Jewish culture and life in Poland. That is all. Philip gets very angry at that and conveys his feelings to a woman who seems like a supervisor of this place. I say nothing because there is nothing to say.

 

After the synagogue we walk around the western part of the village — the Jewish section — looking for very old wooden structures. We identify several of those by the specially decorated window frames and asbestos roofs. Everything here is very modest but these shtetel cottages speak of past poverty. We pass an empty grass field with a sign “Jewish Cemetery” and I am glad that at least it has been left undisturbed, with no buildings upon it. And glad that they have not turned this village into a Hollywood set as has been done in the Kazimierz section of Krakow.

After stopping for lunch in a village nearby – rich traditional Polish food – we take a small detour to visit my brother’s and Wojtek college friend in her summer house on Bug River. It is a beautiful large garden with an expansive view of the river and fields beyond from its high river bank. She gives us a very detailed tour of the house, opening every drawer, storage cabinet and the shed. It seems that she invited us to show us her property. This feeling is reinforced during the conversation over excellent wine and pastry, when she does not ask any questions about us or her friend my brother but shows us the photographs of her trips around the world. Nonetheless this is a very pleasant visit and we like her visiting girlfriend. I have low expectations of people when it comes to being curious about other people. People mostly want to talk about themselves.

We run out of time so we decide not to stop at Treblinka, which is only a few kilometers from here. Halina forgot her expensive sunglasses in the restaurant where we had lunch, so we need to return to the restaurant, an extra two hours driving. Based on my research, Treblinka was second only after Auschwitz in the number of people exterminated there, but its claim to fame was a successful prisoner uprising in 1943, after which the camp was liquidated. Only a monument marks the camp.

We arrive in Warsaw late, really tired.

 

Sunday, June 23, Warsaw.

This day was set aside for the Jewish History Museum, Polin. Philip does not connect with the first half of the museum, with a lot of texts and citations about Jewish life in Poland during the earlier centuries, starting around the end of the first millennium. There are no artifacts of any kind, only pictures and quotes from sacred and secular texts. For Halina, who is familiar with Polish history, this all makes much more sense. She could easily stay here much longer, getting into the weeds of the stories. Philip likes the coverage of the 19th and especially the 20th century, finds it more interesting and at times impressive. This is probably because he understands the historical context.

The highlight of the exhibit is the video of a televised speech given by the first secretary of the communist party Wladyslaw Gomolka in March of 1968. In it, he denounced the “Polish citizens of Jewish extraction” as the “5th column” and “Zionists” whose patriotic loyalties lied with Israel, not Poland, and who should therefore follow their preferences and leave Poland. He also said that such people cannot hold responsible government positions, which was a thinly veiled call to fire Jews occupying high positions in the government, industry and academia. I still remember that speech. Mama turned off the TV and said: this is the end of us in this country. And she was right: in short order, Tata was thrown out of his job in industry, Heniek was harassed and jailed for several days, one dawn our apartment was searched by men in trench coats, and we received a notice to vacate the apartment for some other place, away from the city center. By August 13th I was already on the train to Vienna, never to return (the official banishment lasted for 22 years). Today, 51 years later, I can still feel the fear we felt on that March day. Even Philip, who has heard this story more than once, is a bit shaken by Gomulka’s speech, trying to imagine how he would have felt in my place.

A museum guide stops next to us with a group of Japanese tourists, explaining in English what happened to the Jewish people in 1968. I remark to her that I am one of these people, which wakes up the listless tourists. She asks me an interesting question: how long did it take for me to want to visit Poland again. When I answer 23 years she says “I am not surprised, “ and nods as though saying: I would also hesitate before returning, after what you went through. 

After the museum we slowly walk through a park (so many parks in Warsaw!) toward Old Town, which is a tourist zoo at this time of year. We meet there Wojtek and Danusia and find an elegant restaurant in the neighborhood of the Grand Opera House for a light dinner.

 

Monday, June 24: from Warsaw to Tallinn.

We say good-bye to our AirB&B and café Charlotte and take an Uber to the airport. The weather forecast is another heat wave in Warsaw, with 35 degrees expected by mid-week, so we are happy to escape to cool Tallinn in the north. At the Tallinn airport we discover another car sharing service, headquartered in this part of Europe, called Bolt (nothing to do with electric car Chevy Bolt in the US). Philip downloads its app. Our hotel Imperial is very comfortable and well-located.

After checking in we explore Old Town: climb the steep hill along Pikk Jalg, visit the Orthodox cathedral on the top, walk around the House of Parliament and Prime minister’s palace, and roam the narrow streets. The houses here are mostly Medieval and Renaissance, with some Baroque. We both have seen such charming old towns in other countries and cities, but Tallinn is among the most beautiful. What makes it special is that most streets have gentle curves in them, even small alleys. The result is that we can see the buildings present themselves both from the sides and from the front facades. And the curve at the end creates a sense of mystery. In addition, the ancient walls and fortifications are blended with residential houses, older and more recent, so the textures, colors and heights are always varied.

The Old Town is overrun by tourist groups. The Chinese speaking groups especially stand out. These tourist groups are unloaded in the morning from enormous cruise ships parked in the harbor and depart in early evening. It gets quiet and cozy here in the evening. And the evenings are very long. The sun sets at around 11 and rises around 4 AM but it never gets really dark here. These are the white nights near the Arctic Circle.

After a dinner at the supper touristy central Town Hall square we continue exploring the city. It is after nine and the sun is still flooding us with bright light. We visit a medieval basement which has been turned into an art studio of an entrepreneurial and somewhat shady Ukrainian character, and walk back toward the hotel along the old medieval city walls reinforced with several round towers, truly impressive and very well preserved.

Tuesday, June 25, Tallinn

The history of Estonia and their language is that of foreign dominance and suppression. Estonians are ethnically related to Finns, and so is their language. Tallinn was founded in the 13th century by Danes involved in the Hanseatic trade along the Baltic and North Seas, though there was a settlement on that site much earlier. A century later Danish king sold that land to German-speaking Teutonic Knights of the Cross, the leftovers from the crusades and headquartered in Malborg (Marienburg) in Poland. By then Teutonic Knights were masters of the area where Prussian tribes lived for centuries, and which by then were practically exterminated. They were also steadily invading traditionally northern Polish lands. The expansionist Teutonic Knights (Krzyzacy) were for several centuries the nemesis of Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. Very quickly all the Estonians, whose economy was based on agriculture and fishing, were relegated to serfdom while all the manor houses and city dwellings belonged to the Germans. German was the language of trade, cultural and governing elites, and scholarship. And after only partially successful attempts by Teutonic order and others to bring Catholic Christianity to this region, by the 16th century Estonia became Lutheran.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries Estonia belonged to Sweden, and from the 18th century on to the Russian empire. After the WWI Estonia established its independence but that did not last. In 1940 it was invaded by the Soviet Union, in 1941 by Germany, and in 1945 became a Soviet republic. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union Estonia is independent. It is amazing how quickly Estonian language has been adopted by its population, considering that since the 13th century it has been preserved mostly by the peasants.  At the same time we hear a lot of Russian on the streets and in restaurants. The Bolt drivers, and restaurant and hotel personnel seem to be predominantly Russian.

After a modest breakfast at the hotel we take a Bolt to the open air museum in a forest outside the city, partially to escape the tourist hordes, and partially because we want to see the countryside. It consists of many original farmhouses and farms from the past going back several centuries. In many of the sites women dressed in historical clothes are eager to offer explanations. They do not play roles but rather serve as tourist guides. They tell us about the history of Estonia and its domination by Germans, Russians, Poles, Danes, and Swedes, and about the emergence of Esotnian national identity during the European national movements and romantic era in the 19th century.

We spend several hours here, walking through the woods on this sunny and cool day. In a fisherman houses we watch a long documentary about Old believers within the Russian Orthodox Church, sort of the Hasidim among the Orthodox Jews, who rejected various reforms within the church during the reign of Peter the Great. Escaping persecution they settled on a lake shore in Estonia. Like the Hasidim, their dress, songs, food, culture, family relations, and so on are rooted in the early 18th century. 

After the park a Bolt takes us to Telliskivi Creative City a once decrepit industrial zone now brought back to life by hipster cafes and restaurants. We have a lazy and very tasty lunch under an umbrella and walk through the fashionable “DePoo” market back to the Old Town. After a short visit to the Great Guild Hall which houses the Estonia History Museum we finally get some rest in the hotel. The museum collection is small and rather thin but it is just right for our limited ability to absorb the thousand year history of this place.

After dinner at another fine outdoor restaurant we walk toward the sea. Outside Old Town the land looks neglected except for some recently built modern residential housing. The water front is full of possibilities but for now it is a field of weeds and stones from some earlier structures, and without sidewalks. From what we have seen through the car windows, the modern section of Tallinn does not seem to have any coherent design or style. Buildings of all types, rather ugly, streets crossing in various directions. Not too much indication of a thriving economy. But that may soon change. We are told that Estonia has an exceptionally large number of high tech start-ups and that Skype was invented here.

I was always curious how long the days are at midsummer at the Polar Circle. Now I know. It never gets completely dark. At the dead of night I look out the window. The sky is dark but not completely. It has shade of dark blue that usually appears on the west side about half an hour after sunset. It is a mysterious half-darkness when everything seems different than during daytime.

 

Wednesday June 26. From Tallinn to Riga

The Eurobus that takes us to Riga is very comfortable (4.5 hours ride). The landscape is green, flat and unremarkable; woody in Estonia and agricultural in Latvia. The entire drive between the two capitals takes place on a single-lane road and without traffic congestion.  Entering Riga we immediately notice a difference: it is a larger city, better organized and more coherent. Looking at its skyline we identify the same building as Moscow University and Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science: the modern pyramid built by Stalin. I wonder how many more copies exist in the former Soviet territories.   PALACE OF CULTURE

We are of course heading for Old Town. Here is a question: if we love old towns so much, and we do, then what is it about modernity that prevents us from building cities using that model: narrow curving streets, ornate houses on a human scale, each different from all the others? This is especially true today as city planners and others advocate for walkable, bikeable car-free cities. Is it because city development is left mostly to the market which finds tall sharp-cornered unimaginative buildings more profitable?

Hotel Neiburgs where we are staying is a beautiful renovated Art Nouveau building and our apartment on the top floor is great. We drove ourselves too hard in Tallinn, falling into bed at night bedraggled, and this time we resolve to take it easy. So after a quick reconnaissance around the neighborhood we settle in an outdoor café for a long slow session of appetizers and a meal.

Thursday June 27, Riga

The history of Latvia bears some similarities to that of Estonia. Riga was founded in 1201 by Germans and soon became a very important trading center of the Hanseatic League. Between the 14th century, when it was finally Christianized, Latvia was conquered by, in turn: Livonian Brothers of the Cross, Teutonic Knights of the Cross, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and finally during the reign of Peter the Great by Russia. Its modern history is also similar to Estonia: 19th century national identity movements, 1918 liberation, conquest by the Soviet empire in 1941, liberation in 1944.

We take a walking tour of the city: 2.5 hours, great guide Tom speaking perfect English and full of humor and warmth. Good group, very engaged. His business model: he offers a free tour, welcomes people who join half way through, and then explicitly and charmingly ask for tips at the end. People are giving him tips of 5-10 euros and we estimate that he collected about 150. Pretty good for a city where a monthly income is around 900 euros.

The architecture of Old Riga is different from Tallinn. It is a mixture of buildings from many periods, ranging from Medieval gothic to Baroque and occasional 19th century, with many more 17 and 18th century buildings than in Tallinn. Some buildings have been built by incorporating the ancient city walls as their back walls, sometimes serving to connect two or more adjacent buildings. This, and the variety of styles, creates and lively collage. As before, Old Town belongs to tourists. And as before, we hear a lot of Russian spoken on the streets though more people in the service industry speak English than in Tallinn. Russians represent about half of Riga’s population. During the sight-seeing trip we pass by several theaters, big and tiny, as well as concert halls.

In the afternoon we go to a multimedia show entitled “From Monet to Kandinsky”. This show has been traveling internationally for some time. We really do not know what to expect. We enter a large rectangular room along with about 30 other people and recline on puffy chairs, floor, regular chairs, wall seats, some people lie down on the floor. The show begins with Monet’s ballet dancer moving to the sound of Chopin. On five walls of the room we watch paintings of famous 19th and 20th century artists, taken apart and put back together in an amazing collage, moving, running, sometimes static, sometimes extending from one to another, each painter accompanied by a different music track. It is imaginative and fabulous. The paintings we know so well reveal themselves in a new light, and so do the painters. Halina is struck by the sad faces of Modigliani, the passion and tenderness of Klimt, including her favorite unfinished Adam and Eve, the joy and playfulness of Mondrian. When the show ends after an hour we stay and watch it through the second time. Philip studies the techniques. Some painters are conspicuously absent, such as Matisse, Klee, and Miro.

Riga is famous for its Art Nouveau buildings. With about one third of its buildings in that style, Riga has the highest concentration of Nouveau buildings in the world. To see them we leave Old Town and head toward the famous Alberto Street and its environs. This gives us an opportunity to see other parts of the city. As we thought yesterday, this is a purposefully designed city. We walk through a park and along streets about 5-6 story high, clearly planned with a big picture in mind, and well cared for (at last in this part of town). We discover a fantastic collection of Art Nouveau buildings, many of them designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, father of famous movie director Sergei Eisenstein.

Art Nouveau buildings are characterized by very rich, in some cases fantastically excessive, decorations. They were all built during a period of rapid economic growth between 1904 and 1914. In that sense, they remind me of Budapest. The creation of the faculty of architecture in Riga in 1869 was instrumental in providing a local cadre of architects. The style is most commonly represented in multi-story apartment buildings. The decorations draw on images of animals and plants, folk art, Greek mythology, classicism, or pure fantasy.

On Albert Street we run into two women from our morning tour and we exchange tips about what else to see and do in Riga. Several tourists are taking photos of the buildings. This is a great and unexpected discovery.

 

Friday June 28. From Riga to Vilnius.

Before jumping on the final bus ride to Vilnius we walk the maize of Riga streets to figure out the geography of the Old Town. Seeing a place with a guide, without a map and the necessary searches for directions from sight to sight, makes the place kind of unreal. We visit the Guilds building known as “Blackheads”, occupied by German fraternity of unmarried seafaring traders going back to the 1300s. The building is beautiful from the outside and very interesting inside: it has been completely rebuilt after WW II following old blueprints. It is richly ornamented outside. Inside we study a very interesting central heating system in the basement and the opulent rooms upstairs.

Another four-hour drive and we settle in a very comfortable Hotel Vilnia. Its location is perfect: on the edge of Old Town and at the foot of the steep castle-fort hill, and across the street from a large park. A stroll through the park is a perfect thing to do after a long bus ride. The park resembles Lazienki in Warsaw. Its walking paths and benches are formal, yet there is a certain amount of wildness in the trees and shrubs. Across the river is a steep hill with a monument of three crosses on top. Further on top is an old castle.

Tonight over dinner we listen to a three men band (cello, violin and accordion) playing and singing folk tunes. Later in the evening we sip wine in another café and invent a story while watching a well-dressed and made up young Lithuanian woman with a much older American man. Seems like an escort service.

Vilnius (a Lithuanian name; Vilna in Yiddish; Vilno in Polish) is altogether different from Tallinn and Riga. It is a grand city. Old Town is not as radically different from the rest of the city because its buildings are much younger: mostly 18th  and 19th  century. The grand-ducal palace is much older, going back to the 13th century when the first dynasty was established (from which Jagiello’s dynasty that ruled Poland between the 14th and 17th centuries derived) but the structures surrounding it are mostly Baroque. The park across the street from our turn-of-the-century hotel is similar to Warsaw’s Lazienki: wild and formal at the same time, lovely. The wide avenues circle the city, the main walking streets are expansive. There are plenty of small alleys with 2-3 story buildings, always curving gently, often hilly. And the courtyards are everywhere, just like in Budapest.

Essentially, in Vilnius all our waiters speak very good English; they look and act like modern cosmopolitan students. The boys are very handsome and girls are pretty. We hear very little Russian on the streets and in the popular cafes at least half of the patrons are Lithuanians, not foreign tourists. A big contrast with Tallinn, where Old Town is deluged with tourists and many local people do not speak English.

Tonight we take in the geography of Old Town. Our wanderings take us to the old Jewish section and inside the perimeter of the former Ghetto from the German occupation days. We encounter a small synagogue, renovated and practically rebuilt after the war. This is a functioning synagogue for the remnants of the Jewish community in Vilno. It is closed. As we wander through the somewhat shabby neighborhood we encounter occasional store fronts with old signs in Hebrew letter. I always like courtyards so we enter several. In one we come across a very tall, maybe12 feet high, ghetto wall. It just stands there, separating this one from the other abutting courtyards; silent, unrecognized, unmarked, sad.

 

Saturday June 29, Vilnius.

We take a light breakfast in a chick café across the street. The background music of the early Beatles plays in the background. I tell the young clean-cut boy-man at the counter that I used to listen to this music in high school and that it was so long ago that he could be my grandson. To this he replies, looking serious and earnest, that this is classical music, so of course!

The plan for today was to visit the Grand dukes’ palace and then the castle on top of the hill. I have great interest in the grand dukes of Lithuania because Poland and Lithuania were joined – first through marriage, then as a formal commonwealth — between 14th and the end of 18th century. Learning Polish history in school I am familiar with various grand dukes, several of whom were also kings of Poland.  

The first round through the museum takes us to the structure of the castle and into the history of dynasties of Lithuanian grand dukes and Polish kings. The Lithuanians, like Latvians and Estonians, were the last European people to be christened (about mid-14th century, but in reality not until the 15th century did Christianity take deep roots). The modest grand duchy entered into a union with Poland in 1380 through a marriage of the only daughter of Polish king Kazimierz the Great to Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello. So ended the first Polish royal dynasty, the Piasts and started the second one the Jagiellonians. Over the next two centuries Lithuania came to dominate the Polish kingdom, though the pope never gave its monarch the title of a king, presumably not trusting their commitment to catholic Christianity. The Lithuanian part expanded enormously throughout the next two centuries until it reached Black Sea and it became the largest country in Europe. At its greatest expansion Polish territory was only half the size of the Lithuanian territory.

The Commonwealth reached its peak after both countries signed the formal Union of Lublin in the middle of the 16th century. Although Poland had kings, it was in practice a republic because the kings were elected by a legislative assembly –Sejm — comprising all free people.  It was a multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious country, tolerant of diversity, and rich. Jews thrived here and Vilno came to be called Jerusalem of the East. It hosted great schools of Jewish learning, philosophy, and culture. But this giant had clay legs.  As a republic it lacked a constitution or a properly designed executive branch. As a monarchy, its kings were very weak,  depending on great aristocratic families to support the military. In the Sejm a single oppositional vote (so called liberum veto) could invalidate the entire proposed legislation and months or years of deliberations and compromises. The economy depended on exports of grain and local sales of distilled alcohol, all on the backs of serfs and their alcoholism. Commerce and manufacturing was slow to emerge so the burgher middle class was small and disrespected. The nobility had more loyalty to their own interests than to the country as a whole, and the royal elections were manipulated by foreign countries through greedy and corrupts nobility.

The decline started in the mid-16th century with the Chmielnicky uprising of peasants in Ukraine. This was quickly followed the Swedish invasion. Russia began to devour pieces of Lithuania and Poland. Finally in 1772 the partitions of Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth began, without a single shot being fired. The Commonwealth was sold out. By 1795 the third partition eliminated Poland and Lithuania from the map of Europe. All the unrests and uprisings took a huge toll on the Jews, who were murdered by the thousands. In 1919 Poland and Lithuania both re-emerged, but the city of Vilnius was in 1920 incorporated by Poland. After WW2 and the Soviets it finally regained independence in 1991, but it has shrunk beyond recognition.

Apparently, the national pride created massive funds for this fascinating and quite modern museum. After several hours on our feet we managed to quickly do round two in the castle, focusing on the interior rooms, and skipping two other rounds. We emerge from the palace museum well into the afternoon, more than ready for a break.

I am fascinated by the difference between the Polish history I learned in school and the Lithuanian perspective here. In the Polish rendition Lithuania was basically Polish, while in the Lithuanian rendition, without Lithuania Poland would have never succeeded in defeating the Teutonic Knights and other invaders during the first two centuries of the existence of the union.  For Halina this entire exhibit is fascinating; Philip is also fascinated by Halina’s fascination.

This exhibit impresses upon us the impermanence of everything in history, be it ideas, power balance, or borders. First Lithuania dominated the Union for two centuries, then Poland dominated the Union for two centuries, then the entire enterprise disappeared for more than a century while the Russian, Habsburg and Prussian empires grew. After the First World War the three empires collapsed and the little Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland started to figure out how to become modern democracies, with little success, as dictators took over one after another. And so it goes. A few years ago the West thought that they were permanent democracies but now we see that this cannot be taken for granted. The East is not democratic and the pressure is moving westward. 

Being in Vilnius allows us to compare the four cities: Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Warsaw.  If we were to move through them in that order we would find the following: the knowledge of English among the people we encounter in restaurants, shops and taxis increases; the presence of Russian language on the streets decreases; the cities get larger and their Old Town buildings get more recent; the presence of foreign tourists declines. And the history of foreign dominations seems to get less complicated: Estonians were relegated to peasantry and serfdom while the manor houses were all German, and the areas changed the hands between Sweden, Prussia and Russia; Latvia was a contested territory, dominated by Teutonic order of the cross between the 13th and 15th centuries, then by Prussia, and much later by Russia. Poland and Lithuania were mostly independent and rather dominant (though with forever adjusted boarders) until the partitions at the end of the 18th century. All four countries became independent in 1918 but were not very good in building democratic systems, leaning toward dictatorships and became either absorbed or controlled by the Soviet Union after WWII.

It is amazing how quickly these countries reverted to their original languages since 1991. Consider that Estonian and Latvian were mostly spoken by peasants, while the literary and power elites used German and other languages (Swedish, Russian). In Lithuania the process of Polonization was so strong that by the 16th century the great dukes of Lithuania did not speak Lithuanian. And the process of Russification was no less strong. And now, less than 30 years later, everybody in the three countries (except probably some ethnically Russian families) speak their own national languages.

We find a nice small Lithuanian restaurant nearby and had our lunch/ dinner, blinis Lithuanian style. We linger and make plans how to spend the rest of the day. We find on the map an old Jewish cemetery; and call a Bolt to bring us there in a few minutes of reckless driving.

To our dismay the cemetery does not exist anymore. During the soviet era all the gravestones were removed and used as building materials: stairs, buildings, walls. A modest monument at the entrance is made of gravestones and informs visitors that since 1830 seventy thousand people were buried here. But apart from us there are no visitors here. We climb the steep hill and cross to a grassy wooded area with hardly any traces of stones left. Shocking. Coming down we discover a large modern building in brutalist style of the 70s built on the cemetery field. In a macabre joke of sorts the building is a Christian funeral home. Behind it there is a very large of gravestones, some with Hebrew letters still visible pile.

I comment to the Bolt driver on the way back how disrespectful it is to build on top of Jewish graves (they must have also dug up human remains in the process). The driver blames it all on the Soviets. The usual story: the Nazis responsible for the killings and the soviets responsible for erasing the remaining traces of Jews. Everybody else claims innocence. Not a sign of national self-reflection. It is so profoundly sad. 

Later, searching the web, we learn that the destruction of the cemetery was part of a deliberate Soviet policy to erase traces of the Jewish culture in Vilno. Another large cemetery was also destroyed at that time, around 1960. As part of that process, the partially war-damaged Great Synagogue of Vilno, with a capacity for 5000 people, was also torn down in 1957 and a kindergarten was built on that site.

Back in the city center stumble into a Russian-Orthodox service and stay for a long time. In the haze of the incense, candlelight, and beautiful pre-Gregorian choral music our nerves calm down.

Saturday, June 30. Vilno.

We start the day by walking over to what we think is the Jewish historical museum; it turns out to be a cultural center with a very interesting art exhibition by Samual Bak, a child survivor of Vilno’s ghetto whose paintings depict the horrors of the holocaust (he lives in Weston, Massachusetts). After another steep walk we reach what we thought was the Jewish historical museum. It is closed and it looks neglected and deserted. So much for a state-run Jewish museum in Lithuania. It appears that the so-called branches of the state museum are run separately with philanthropic funds while the official state museum is dying. This time it cannot be blamed on the Soviets.

By now it is pretty hot; the heat wave that swept Europe and that we escaped so far had now reached us. We take a Bolt to Panar Woods, a site of mass executions, about 10 miles outside of the city. This is a very pleasant forest with railroad tracks running through it. On this particular Sunday the sun is playing with the lovely green of the trees and a pleasant breeze makes it a perfect weather for an outing. There are almost no visitors in these woods. The parking place is empty except for one bus which soon disappears, and one car belonging to a nice young Polish couple with whom we have a brief conversation.

Here are the facts. About 100,000 people were murdered here by mass shootings of people standing on the edge of large pits, which were to be their mass graves. The majority of the killings took place in 1941, soon after the German invasions of the Soviet Union. 70% of those killed were Jews from Vilno and other parts of Lithuania. Of the approximately 80,000 of Jews living in Vilno at the time of the German invasion in June of 1941 (half of the city’s population) about 50,000 were murdered during the first 4-5 months. These murders were performed by shooting. There used to be more than a dozen pits, about 5-6 meters deep, each capable of holding many thousands of bodies. I did not count how many are currently marked but it is about 8 or so.

So this is how the Nazis, using the well-organized help from many volunteers among the local population, learned their first lessons in genocide. And this is where they discovered that a more efficient industrialized method of murdering and body disposal was needed. Sometime in 1943, when Hitler’s victory became an obvious mirage, the Germans decided to dig up all the bodies, burn them, and pulverize any leftover bones, all to erase the evidence of their crimes. This work continued until the spring of 1944. One of the pits we visited was a ‘home’ for 80 prisoners, including 4 women who prepared meals. The several meters tall walls of the pit are reinforced with bricks. There was no way to escape.

The job of the prisoners was to uncover the mass graves, pull out the decomposing bodies using special  poles with hooks at the end, and deploying some kind of a simple machine with wheels and belts to help (today displayed in the pit), stack them up like wood and burn. They were called “brenners” or burners. These people knew that when the job gets finished they will be killed. So they decided to try to escape. For months they were digging an underground 30 meters-long tunnel, starting at the back wall of their shack, using literally soup spoons for tools. On April 15th, 1944, between twenty and thirty individuals made it to the opening of the tunnel, but when a twig broke under someone’s foot the Germans realized what was happening. They started shooting randomly into the darkness, killing some escapees. Thirteen people survived and were hiding for the next three months, until July 13th when Red Army liberated that area. They were able to tell the story. I would like to think that the local population helped them during those months.

 

In 1948 the surviving members of the Vilno Jewish community erected a monument to commemorate the martyrdom of the Jewish people in Panar. The government soon removed the monument and replaced it three years later with an obelisk to the memory of “victims of fascism.” Many years later, in 1992, when Lithuania had already declared independence from soviet occupation, another monument was placed in these woods, commemorating “Lithuanian victims.” What can we say: the Soviets as well as the Lithuanians could not bring themselves to acknowledge what happened to the Jewish community in Vilno and who took part in that tragedy.

On the other hand, I cannot understand for the life of me why the Jews of Vilno were so passive. For a year and half they listened to the reports about the fate of Polish Jews, the starving ghettos, the executions, the camps. Treblinka and Sobibor camps were not far from the Lithuania. And they did nothing. They could have at least tried to run east, away from the proximity of the German-occupied Poland. Mama and Tata did, to Ukraine and eventually Uzbekistan. Such an unbelievable denial of reality. I do not get it.

We need to change the atmosphere after the Panar trip. A Bolt car takes us to the modern art museum. The museum is rather disappointing, with only a few interesting pieces. After some rest in the hotel we take a final walk in “our” park, with strolling mothers and kids, young couples, and friends, enjoying the cooling evening, the beautiful low sunlight, the fountain that explodes every now and then to the sounds of music. It is a truly lovely summer evening: warm, breezy, gentle. The horror of the past leaves us bit by bit. We stop at the little vegan RoseHip café, order two glasses of wine and a bowl of borscht for Halina and walk one last time through the park, around the castle and tower.

Monday, July 1. Back in Voorschoten.