Monday night – Frau Erol

Today I woke to the news that my good freind Helga Erol had died.

 

Frau Erol was my Hausfrau.. my landlady.. when I lived in Vienna as an exchange student 1979-1980. I lived in a room above her family at 43 Graf Starhembergasse in Vienna’s 4th district. Frau Erol was a great freind and mentor.. she was fun and strict at the same time. She ran a tight ship. I remember her forbidding me to go out on the street in my old torn jeans.. the ones I burned while trying to dry them in the oven. When I did not take her advice and wore them out one day.. , she let herself into my room and threw them away ..

She and her family made me feel so at home. they fed me, counciled  me.. put up with me for thta entire year.. She taght me more german than my professors at school. she was . we’ve stayed  close ever since.. though  sometimes years passed between seeing  each other, we stayed in touch.   She wrote me in mixed German  and  English.. and I wrote back in English and German.. I tired to go through Vienna whenever I could . I once showed   up in Vienna  at a resutrant as a suprise to Frau Erol’s 70th birthday..  Her husband  Necat died in 2009.  I’m still in touch with two of her kids.. Osman and Murat.. and even with some of her grandkids

Last time  I saw her  was 3  years ago.. We had a great visit.. walked around the city for hour. She was still playing basketball !

 

I’ll miss her very much. I’m sending my love to the whole Erol family

nite all, nite sam

-me

sunday night – almst home

Sitting at the airport after 23 hours of travel.. waiting for our bags. . Our flight from paris was delayed more than 6 hours… instad of having 6 hours to sit around in Newark.. we had to run for our flights.. and made it by jsut a minute.  TSA was incredibly slow and soemthing in gabe’s bag set off the explosive detector.. Oy !

Crazy end to a really great trip.. a very good mix of adventure, relaxing and new places, people and things.  I’ve been out of the country for 4 weeks today (save  a 20 hour trip home to pick up diane) . I’m glad to be back in Vermont.

I don’t have any pictures of my own to share for the day of travel.. but I did get soem of Max’s fun pics from the trip.. I’ll share them now..

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ok.. got our bags.. lets go home

nite all, nite sam

-me

Saturday night – Tesla

Last full day of vacation, and it’s been a good one. THe whol trip has been wonderful..

Today is a play in four acts: Zadar by night, Zadar by Day. Tesla’s home town and Zagreb.

I beg everyones indulgence as I am goign to post far too many pictures.. I use this blog as a way of archiving and finding pictures.. so this putting them here is the best way I have of hanging on to them.

 

OK.. Starting with Zadar by Night. … 

I blogged early last night when we got into the airbnb just south of downtown Zadar.. we went out and checked out that beutiful city again.. this time by night .

 

The walk in to town was beutiful..

 

 

we then took the kids down to the boardwalk to hear the sea organ.. folks were walkign down to see the sunset.

 

we got to the organ.. but no sound this time !. Last week it was soudnign fine.

We later learned it had been taken apart for cleaning as it must be every 3 years or so.. 

 

the greeting the sun piece was flickering.. but was still hard to figure out in the daylight .. we came back later

 

we then cruzed around lookign for soemthign to eat.

 

we found a quiet place in the old city..   we ordered oneof our favotrite coration dishes.. ‘black risotto’.. colored with cuttlefish ink.. =

 

made for a messy table cloth too !

 

then we wandered aroudn soem more.. there’s a worldwide choir competition going.. and we happened across a spontaneous sing by a group of girls. beutiful and etherial

then back to the greeting the sun peice to see what it was really about

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a sign told us that alfred hitcock had once visited here.. and praised their sunset as the prettiest hed ever seen.

 

we had to get more ice cream !

 

on the way home we foudn a trash bin that had burned up while we were at dinner. How strange is that ?

 

 

act 2: Zadar by Day 

 

diane and i woke pretty early to get a run in..  took a few pictures of our great airbnb

the roof garden

 

the courtyard

 

the view of the sea

 

towards town

 

then off to breakfast  — what better than more freid squid ?!

 

then we got back in the car and drove to act Three:  Tesla’s birthplace !

 

i was so excited to go visit the birthplace of niola tesla, one of my true heros .. He was born in 1856 in the town of Smilja near the Croation city of Gospic

 

and there it was !  This is the town that Tesla was born in.. Hs dad was a Serbian Orthodox Priest.. and his mother was a skilled craftswoman.

 

pointers to places in Tesla’s life

 

his barn

a ton of school kids (though most of the time .. we had the place to ourselves)

 

there was a mock up of Texsla’s Colorado Springs lab..

 

inside were a few cool demos.. including an oldschool spark gap  tesla coil .. not very powrful.. but liot up soem florescent tubes well which the school kids really loved.

 

 

we then walked over to watch a truly bizzare movie abotu tesla’s lie.. 90% of it was abotu his psycological issues.

 

we then looked at a bunch of archived papers. THe exhibit was very well done !

 

 

 

 

ustairs there were even more demos

 

the egg of columbus !

 

another tesla coil.. It’s spark gaps clearly neededcelaning. I offeed to do it.. but they said they would try it.

 

 

a bladeless turbine

 

outside , we hit the play ground..

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we left smilian and drove to Zagreb for Act Four 

 

here’s the key to our wonderful airbnb here.

 

and here’s a paiiting of rosa the cow

 

this is a wonderful place.. just off the main square i zagreb

 

 

we walked around town this evening ..

 

museum of broken relationships ?

 

we decided to do one museum.. and we chose ‘the museum of illusion.

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we then walked back down town toe eat.t. ehre was this crazy moon.. looked like one of the street lights

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the moon was amazing !

 

there was a (band playing outside…

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now back at our place with about 5 hours to sleep before leaving for the plane..

time to go home !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Friday evening – land legs

 

Off the boat now and in Zadar. We had such a great time with Tomaz on his boat the Heron  the last couple of days.  He and Lili call it the Heron because in all their travels they see heron’s . . We’re all now getting our land legs back. It’s surprisig how wierd it feels to be on solid ground after just 4 days on the boat. wit’s been several hours and we’re all still swaying !

 

 

 

Here’s a quick look around our home for the last several days

 

it felt pretty big (47 feet).. butnot big in comparison to some of these huge cruise boats we kept seeing !

yikes

we had rough weather this morning.. but I had dramamine in my pocket..t hat seemed to be all we needed to stay O

 

i made a grapealntern for breakfast !

 

here’s Split.. where we were de-boating

 

 

 

It was kinda sad seing the landing hotel pulling into view

 

 

 

 

great, great trip !

 

 

 

 

 

 

had to say goodbye to TOmaz.. what a fantastic guy.. great sailor, guide, cook.. and so funny and nice. We hope to see him again and meet his wife Lili soemtime !

We got to meet our favorite car rental lady. now officially our oldest freind in Croatia.. Hi Jellena !

 

OK.. now off to explore Zadar again with the boys. More tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me