The Salt Harvesters of Sečovlje

Being a bit of a foodie, I consider using the mass produced "Sifto" table salt akin to mixing root beer with your vintage single malt scotch. My most recent favorite salt has been the Himalayan red salt.
Each of these gourmet salts have different mineral compounds that give them their distinctive flavours.

The Aegean Sea in Slovania is about a 7 hour drive from Werbass. We stop overnight in the Croatian city of Osijek Croatia, a pretty, medium-sized city that was booked up for hotel rooms due to business conferences. Judging by the roadway's shiny new Porsche Panameras, Lambos, 7 series BMW wagons and so on, I have to ask myself what financial crisis for Europe? We end up in a pension-style hotel which is a private residence converted and it turns out to be one of the best hotels yet.

The motorways are all in excellent condition and speed the passage to the sea considerably -- as long as you have the 15 Euros per country to pay for the privilege of driving on them.

Slovania, not to be confused with Slovakia, Upper Slobovia or Lower Slobovia (OK, I made the last two up) is an alpine country that is known as a miniature Europe all wrapped into a tiny place. It is not part of the Balkan peninsula, but above it and sort of a separator to the Alps. I liken it to a Slavic country that is run by Germans, although the only thing the Germans do here is patronize the tourist industry. Slovania has been an official EU member since 2004 and is on the Euro and with that goes the higher prices. It is still about 30% cheaper than neighbours Italy and Austria.

Piran from the Croatian coast. Salt flats to the lower right.

Piran, where we stay, is an ancient well preserved Venetian city that has seen habitation back before the Romans. The Venetians ruled here for 500 years from the 13th century and then the Italians and Austrians before the Slovenians took control. Slovenia has but a small harbour bay behind the peninsula where Piran is situated. Here too, is the modern container port of Koper, with Italy on one side and Croatia on the other. Piran's streets are tiny with only electric vehicles having passage and cars being restricted to a new parking garage outside and a bus shuttle in.  It is a UN preserved heritage site.
We take a lovely hillside apartment overlooking the town, the sea and salt flats for $70 per night.

Salt flats

To access the salt flats you must check out of Slovania but not check into Croatia. An abandoned dirt road leads into what is now a bird sanctuary and museum. Salt was harvested from the sea from 1300 to the 1960 when they came up with more efficient methods.

Basically there is a fresh water river, the Dragonja, flowing in the centre of the series of dikes. Wealthy merchants built houses and the dike system and allowed the families to keep a cut of the harvest for payment. The season lasted from April to August and involved a lot of art and skill to extract the valuable white salt. The pans, where the evaporation of the dammed sea water took place, had a special earthen floor and a biofilm that was encouraged to grow to keep separate the earth. The procedure was very weather dependent and the harvesters kept their large bedroom windows open to monitor the weather -- a major storm could wash away a nearly ready inventory. The salt flour was the sought light fine "cream" of the salt crop, but it played a role in the biofilm's growth so could only be partially harvested. It fetched double the price. Other Mediterranean salt harvesters used a two stage pond process without the biomat. The final pure white salt was stored in the bins on the main floors of all the houses. Barges would come into the river and load up for shipment, mostly back to Venice.

Dragonja River through abandoned salt housing

 The 500 inhabitants used communal ovens, raised their children here, and when the season ended would head back to their villages and work the local farms, vineyards, and olive groves.

When the university student guide hears we were from Canada he insists we take some of the salt. (we were his only tour that day). I now have a 3 kg bag of gourmet salt to carry home.

In house salt storage bin

Salt, at one time, was so valuable that it was considered the same as money -- wars were started and countries invaded over it. Moderns might laugh at this. In two hundred years what will our descendants say about our quest for the prized black hydrocarbon liquid we call oil?

Salt Worker

Old Cars of Eastern Europe

Yugos, Zastavas, Trabants, Ladas, Dacias & other oddities ...                   

In Eastern Europe, car drives you!

Culpability

Railway tracks north out of Werbass

October 1944.

A message is wired from my grandfather(Opa), a cook for the German Army on the Russian front in Belarus, to my grandmother(Oma) in Werbass:  "The German war effort is collapsing and we are under full scale retreat. The red army will soon be arriving in our hometown. Follow the direction of the Red Cross and evacuate. Take the children to your uncle's house in Germany."

The Red Cross did organize an evacuation shortly after that message was received. Families with children got first priority on the trains. My mother's family had five children aged 6, 5, 3, 2 and an infant.

The train carriages were mostly cattle cars with a couple of passenger cars available. My family started out on the cattle car. Oma wrapped a dry smoked ham leg in a towel and packed a salami in a backpack along with a favorite set of silver ware, a couple litres of water and some clothing items.  

Her sister in law had two girls aged 7 and 3 and they got on a later train towards Munich, Germany. Eventually the train tracks became so damaged by bombing that the remaining Danube Swabians had to evacuate by foot for the 220 km. journey to Hungary and then onto Austria. 

The destination for my family was in future East Germany and the train route there was also through Hungary. After spending 3 days on the trains, the passengers were informed of the damaged tracks. They were told that the train could not continue, but that if they continued across the damaged section on foot, the train was still in service on the other side. Oma and the children attempted the walk across the bombed out terrain, only to be told that the trains were no longer running on the other side since the tracks were now too damaged further up the line to continue safely. They walked back to their last stop and took a train south, ending up back in Werbass after a total travel time of 10 days. The only route still passable was now into Austria and Germany. This voyage took several weeks, with stops and food supplied by the Red Cross along the way. The infant, who was later to become my uncle, suffered the worst malnutrition because my Oma could no longer breastfeed and there was no formula available. Some of the Red Cross volunteers attempted a makeshift powdered milk/coffee mixture to give him something in his belly.

Eventually the refugees arrived in a resettlement camp outside of Munich, and were placed in the Bavarian mountain village of Unterammergau, just beside the village of Oberammergau (famous for its Passion Play).

Once my Opa finally made it safely back from the front to Munich, the family was reunited there.

German Army or

Serbian Army?

The German government eventually paid a small restitution to my grandparents for the loss of their home in Werbass after they started a new life in Germany.  

The family lived in Unterammergau for 12 years before immigrating to Canada.

Cruising back from the Adriatic Sea at 170 KPH along the M3 motorway, or "Autoj Bahnic," as I call it, I ruminate about what happened to my family in Werbass.

Who is to blame for their hardship and loss of their home?

My Opa? He was an able-bodied young man and was expected to serve in WW2. He was first drafted into the Serbian army and then switched sides to the German army as many of the Danube Swabien men did. These men were not German nationals and could not belong to the regular German army so were enlisted with the notorious Waffen divisions. He drank the Nazi "Kool Aid," like millions of others, and chose the team he thought would win and ultimately benefit his family. It is all too easy now, in hindsight, to criticize his choices. 

The Partisans? One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. These people appeared to be your neighbour and friend by day, but fought for their homeland under cloak of night, and in secrecy. Serbia has had more than its fair share of invaders since Roman times, and these fighters were bravely defending their homeland.

The Red Army? Russia almost single handedly wore down the German war effort so that the allies could drive the final nail in the Nazi coffin. They lost 14 million women and children and 10 million soldiers. Astounding numbers. They were the liberators when they arrived in the east block nations and they wanted revenge on any and all German supporters. Danube Swabians who did not make it out were imprisoned in Siberian slave labour camps or executed immediately. The labour camp residents did not get out until the mid-1950's.

The Soviets treated any and all dissidents badly and wanted revenge for their dead, and for their destroyed cities. I cannot support their methods but I can see why they had no compassion for Germans.

The Allies? Hundreds of thousands of refugees were moving about Europe. Western Europe was preoccupied with repairing its war damage, feeding its own, and suffering from general war fatigue. UN refugee assistance was fractured by political infighting and the Cold War was starting to brew. The general populace of England was not aware of what was happening to the German-descent refugees of the Balkans, and the few politicians that raised the issue were ignored.

So who do I find culpable? Nobody and everybody.

Of the Danube Swabians that did make a new life in Canada, there is strong anecdotal evidence that this community has a larger percentage of high-net-worth individuals than the average population. There appears to be a stronger drive and determination that comes from hardship and fighting for survival, and I see the same in today's new Canadians that come from places such as Serbia, Romania, and Poland.

Webass Canal

The Historian

Dragica Vukotić.
Volunteer curator and director of the Werbass Cultural Centre or museum. If we had not found this women, our 7000 km. trip from Canada to find some of our family's past would have been in vain.

Mrs. Vukotić is a mother of three who is passionate about the history of her home town of Werbass and the Batchka region. She was educated in her field at the University of Novi Sad.

Ten years ago she started the Backa museum on a shoestring donation budget as an independent venture. Nobody gave it much hope for survival. A family of Danube Swabians who remained in Werbass post World War II donated approximately 2500 individual items including paintings and fine period furnishings. This gave the museum a serious base of artifacts although many are still in storage due to lack of space and funding. The eventual goal of the museum is to display the story of the region from prehistoric times through to modern times and it already has a prehistoric display.

The museum has now been recognized by the Voijvodina provincial government and has received official funding. Prior to this some funding came from the town of Werbass. She now has a staff of three and hopes to add an interpreter next that can give tours and translate the displays into multiple languages.

Mrs. Vukotić lives in a tidy house on a larger property on the west side of the town. Her husband is a professional who works in Belgrade and commutes back and forth 3 hours each way per day.Yes you read that correctly, six hours of commuting and he has been doing it for years. She has 3 children and her only son Millosh acted as our interpreter. Millosh is a bright young man who seems far more knowledgeable than your average 22 year old. Like my oldest daughter he has also dropped out of university in his third year, 3D computer graphic design.

Milos(Millosh)

When I walked into the museum office, I was not even sure if it was the right place since there are no English signs and the Serbian one is also small. A young woman and man with some English started to assist me and then went to get Mrs. Vukotić. Within about 10 minutes they had out a registry of Danube Swabien names and addresses, and old street maps from the prewar era since some of the street have changed names three different times since. A quick phone call was made to a local 84 year old Swabien who had returned to live here again. He verified some of the information for everyone.

We then followed Mrs. Vukotić's little red Fiat Panda over to her house to get Millosh. His English is nearly perfect and his remarkable translation skills were evident as he translated multiple conversations "on the fly". As he rode in our car, I admonished him to complete his university. His answer was "Hey, I admit it. I am lazy. Feel free to talk about anything in front of my Mom but please don't mention my university!"

We crossed the cobblestone bridge near the Vital factory and as it turned out the old property was just across the canal from the Club "A" restaurant.  The house address we were looking for was missing and there was a jump in the numbers so we inquired with the home owner nearest to the address. A middle aged couple came out of the house and explained to us how my family's original home had been torn down and their house was newly constructed on the site in the late 1980's. Basically, their back yard was the site of the former house on the corner lot. They were very friendly and we politely declined their offer to come in for coffee.

It used to be here.

Our next stop was the old Anglican Lutheran cemetery which just happened to be on the same street as the Vukotić home. We had to enter the site through a private back yard as the main gate is closed from use. This was truly incredible site as 2-3 hectares of land which was totally developed on all sides and had just gone back to nature with nobody tending it. The local government had recently paid for brush clearing with fire and chain saws and it was difficult walking through the large sawed off brush stumps, broken bottles and burned grass. Some of the tomb stones were still standing with many tumbled over and empty crypts were evidence that some of the deceased had already been interred to a new location. At the centre of this cemetery had once stood a monument celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Danube Swabiens arrival in the late 1700's. This monument is already in the possession of the museum to be displayed in future. Plans are in place to photograph the markers, catalog and then disinter all of the cemetery.

Mrs. Vukotić had to meet for a local cable access video interview so we all headed back to the museum and re met after her appointment. She gave us a detailed account of how the area was resettled by the Swabians and other groups after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Serb society is rich in culture with its long checkered history and multi ethnic roots. The museum in Werbass is an important initiative in preserving the story of this area of Serbia. My mother and aunt made donations to the museum before leaving and I plan to contact the Voijvodina government in support of the museum as a foreign tourist.

The Dead End

 Almost every wall or building in Serbia has Graffiti. It is so ubiquitous, eventually you don't even notice it. Evidently one of the most popular slogans translates as  "Ha!  You wasted your time painting this wall!"

 Werbass (population 25,000) is a nondescript gritty town circled by factory sites and agri-supply businesses and the steady traffic of transport trucks and tractors that feed them. The town is known as the food factory of Serbia with a meat canning plant, sugar refinery, and cooking oil margarine production facility. The sugar refinery uses the locally grown sugar beets and has been here since 1913. I have seen this building in old family photos.

The main street is canopied by the old trees that line its route with cafes and stores set back further from the street than other towns in this area. The side streets are mostly well kept single family dwellings with the odd apartment building or town house complex thrown in. A disused, polluted canal runs across the north side of the town. We cruised the main street looking for a town square or town hall and neither of these were evident.

The only accommodation in town is the central Backa Hotel, a tired 45 year old six story building that is way past its obvious glory days with multiple dining rooms and a ball room. It is now mainly used as housing for temporary workers at the food plants. We unwisely decide to take a room at the Backa so that we can be in town and get started in the morning tracing the family history. I have to rate this hotel in my top five list of worst rooms (This list includes the one in Ahmadabad, India where my sister and I had to block the holes in the wall to keep the rats out). We are assigned a dorm style room with seven beds and two bathrooms. The light fixtures are all bulbs on a wire, curtains frayed, bed sheets ripped and mattress with stuffing spilling out covered up by torn bed sheet.

Glory days in the rear view mirror

On the recommendation of the desk clerk, we head out to dine in one of Werbass' top restaurants. This restaurant is an eclectic mix of kitsch and old world charm near the edge of town. Its outdoor court yard dining area houses hand made iron sculptures and the roofs around the terrace are an odd undulating row of clay tile roofs supported by columns made of re purposed varnished tree trunks with branches still attached. The floor is a mosaic of old ceramic tile, pottery and granite all carefully cemented in no particular pattern. On the walls are spot lit decoupage plaques of naked women and on each table is a vase with a bouquet of (magic?) mushrooms. The sound system provides the ambiance with a mix tape of Lionel Ritchie, Guns and Roses, Whitney Houston and Kraftwerk.
Excellent food and service though, with a wood fired oven in the kitchen. $14 each including a litre of wine, espressos, slivovica (plum brandy), dessert and tip.

Funky restaurant "Club A"

Back to Hotel Hell where no amount of wine or slivovica will make it seem better and we all have a terrible night's sleep. We cannot find anybody who speaks enough English to steer us to the museum. Finally I find out from a news stand women that the museum is housed in a non marked building right beside the hotel and that it will be open tomorrow. Behind the museum are two side by side abandoned churches in different states of disrepair. We recognize one of the churches from old family photos as the one from my grandparents 1934 wedding.

We set out to explore the surrounding countryside and secure other accommodations ending up in Sombor about 35 Kms northwest. Sombor is a town of about 50,000 inhabitants that has a charming town hall, central square and cathedral from the 18th century. North from here near the Hungarian border is the town of Subotica, a major town with amazingly preserved architecture from the Austro-Hungarian medieval kingdom period. Both of these towns are a feast for the eyes. I discovered that SMS text messaging is the method that is used to pay for street parking here. Cyrillic signs are difficult to decipher and the tow truck known as "the spider" scooped our Ford Mondeo and took it to a suburban depot. A cabby helped out and took us there for 3$ and we approached the standoffish attendants who were expecting some pissed off Romanians to come for their Romanian plated car. I paid the 63$ ransom(1+1/2 weeks wages for the average Serb) and when they saw our amusement at the situation they relaxed and apologized. A total delay of 20 minutes from missing car to back on the road and now I know about SMS pay and park.

Sombor town hall

On Tuesday morning we set out to try our luck in Werbass one more time. 

We were soon to hit the jackpot.

Pigs

Our two day stay in Zriajinin overlooked the town square at another excellent boutique style hotel very similar to the one we stayed at in Bucharest.

The entire hotel looks like it was decorated by the an Ikea designer. An international woman's volleyball tournament is taking place in nearby NoviSad, Serbia's second largest city. Staying in the hotel are the Polish, Romanian and Israeli teams. This tourney seems to be a big deal as it is being televised internationally. Security is tight with the Israeli's staying here as they get escorted loading in and out of their bus by police and security. These 16 -30 year old women are all very tall and needless to say, fit. From our hotel window I look down on the pretty town square to see the juxtaposition of the athletes boarding their bus beside my Mom and aunt waddling around the the town square after the 15,000 Dinars that just blew out of one of their hands at the ATM. Within ten minutes all the $180 CAD equivalent in cash was recovered.

Zranjinin is about 20 minutes from both Novi Sad to the south and Werbass to the northwest. It has a fairly wide of variety of active industries with textile plants and numerous food plants to process the harvest from all of the fertile land surrounding it. The terrain around here is the same fertile alluvial plains that make up most of the Vojvodina. It is harvest time and the roads around here are crawling with combines harvesters, corn laden trucks and tractors.

The highway to Novi Sad is pretty decent driving for a two laner. The Serbs are the probably most civilized drivers I have ever seen in any of the eight European countries I have visited. It is really just like driving in Ontario but then it is highly subjective if Ontario driving is indeed civilized. Police enforcement of speed limits is strictly enforced here with numerous radar traps and rules are generally obeyed.

Novi Sad is undergoing some major road work with new highway interchanges and ramps that workmen appear to be toiling on 24/7. So far at every highway construction project that we have encountered in both Romania and Serbia there is EU or German government signage and flags indicating their funding of the work. Only Bulgaria and Romania have been accepted into the EU as probationary members but still maintain their own currencies. The former Yugoslavian republics have not been granted entry primarily due to the unresolved border conflicts. Speaking to some of the locals about this, western European nations use the EU membership as carrot on a stick approach to get these countries to comply with EU standards on ecology, human rights, trade and other concerns.

As one German tourist told me: "We need to loan these countries money so that they may build the roads and buy our cars to drive on them". It all sounds similar to classic Ponzi scheme going on where the Chinese buy US treasuries so that Americans have money to borrow and buy more Chinese trinkets.

German total national exports are approximately equal to that of China's 1.2 trillion dollars, their population is aging and not consuming like they used to and they are on the hook for 250 billion in bonds loaned to the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) One extreme solution would be for Germany to exit the Euro and allow the other nations to devalue the currency which cannot happen with the Germans still on the Euro. This seems unlikely now though as a devalued currency will make it more difficult to pay back the debt. It is starting to look like the plan is to paper over the debt with more money printing just like the US does: Extend and Pretend

I am just a dumb millwright so I don't understand the intricacies of LIBOR, sovereign bond purchases, debt rollover  and international finance. I say just pull the band aid off fast and let Greece default along with the rest of the PIIGS but people way smarter than me supposedly have got this all under control. The African politicians have even waded in giving the Euros and Americans advice Quit your belly aching and the newly powerful BRIC nations are now talking about loaning money to the European Central bank which leads me back to the east block nations.

The Euro zone needs these new consumers to buy their products. These burgeoning consumers are the next frontier in the easy credit and finance cycle so that the Germans can keep their mighty industrial juggernaut chugging along. American industries are also getting a toehold here to replace their own tapped out consumers.

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a travel blog not a finance blog.

Today we are making another trip to Werbass to try to locate the house. Our base is now in Sombor, about 50 kms. to the northwest of Werbass. I'm still having hotel WiFi issues but will try to update with more pics and an interactive map later.

Long Live Serbia 2

We set off from the interesting but difficult to get around Bucharest or Buchapest as I like to call it since driving there is so annoying.

Michael Jackson had stood on the parliament balcony there in front of his adoring fans and shouted Hello Budapest. I'm so glad to be here!

The country's one good motorway, the national road E70 is a relatively short stretch of road that heads up towards Transylvania and you can cruise at 160 kph. That is after escaping the city which takes two hours, keeping in mind that this is not even during peak hours.

3 Abandoned soviet era crop dusters. One is a now a very cool makeshift house for an elderly man.

Our travel route was to take us through the province of Wallachia. Here is where prince Vlad Tepes the inspiration for the Dracula novel ruled, not Transylvania. After an hour on the fast divided highway we get back onto a two laner that winds its way through foot hills and plains. Road side vendors sell produce from the farms surrounding the road and traffic is light but caution must be exercised for gypsy horse drawn wagons.

 As we pass through some medium sized towns it becomes evident of the scale of industrialization that took place under the communists. Each town has a massive steel mill, aluminum smelter or some other large scale anchor plant. Many now look either totally abandoned or working at partial capacity. We also pass the nuclear facility that Canada designed and collaborated on. The road then passes through an oil field with derricks as far as you can see on both sides.

Our overnight stop was in the town of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. A lovely city on the left bank of the Danube.The hotel is a frozen-in-time 1960's, seven story overlooking a church and the Danube.  We rented a suite with two bathrooms for $75 including a full breakfast. This is considered a 3 out of 4 star hotel in the Romanian system. Typical meals in this country cost around eight dollars and the excellent beer or wine are a dollar. The desk clerks apologized that their hotel was outdated and I don't think they believed me when I explained where I come from 1960's decor is actually sought after.

Mid Century Modern east block style

View from our suite

We wanted to follow the Danube as much as possible and selected a small secondary route that hugs the bank along the mountains through what is known as the Iron Gates since the mountains tower straight up each side. This added at least 3 hours of driving but was well worth it.

The border crossing at Bela Crkva, Serbia involved checking out of Romania with the border guards including presenting passports and all of the paperwork for the car and then doing it all over again for the Serb guards in the next building. Vojvodina province where we entered is as flat as the prairies. It was once known as the bread basket of the Balkans and is now covered in endless cornfields with the odd apple orchard and vineyard thrown in. We stopped at the sole cafe in a sleepy farming village about an hour outside of Belgrade. After placing our order we were asked if we are Americans(the bad guys who dropped 2 bombs on their town during the 90's) and when we told them we were Canucks we were suddenly treated as heroes(they have relatives in Kitchener) no charge on the house but we must promise to come back again. I discretely slipped the cash under an ash tray and gave the coin collector amongst them a full set of Cnd. change plus some Ottawa embroidered badges.

Serbian Victory symbol

Most people under 40 speak English and what a couple of different Serbs have already told me "The whole world hates us". I am a guest in their country and also am not sure of their net neutrality so will not get into a discussion about the Kosovo situation on here. What I can tell you is the people who I have interacted with have gone out of their way to show kindness and generosity. A fellow uploaded my GPS with local maps saving me $100 and then saw that my iPhone had no case and insisted on giving me one. He was adamant about not taking money. Pirated software is still the main source for consumers in this part of the world. I feel bad for my girlfriend, sister and brother in law who are in the software development business because if we all used pirated software how would they ever be able to afford their thoroughbred horses or yachts?

In case of Cyrillic script..RUN!

The past two days we have stayed in Zrenjanin, midway between Novi Sad and Werbas. Today we head to Werbas and try to find the family homestead.

I will attempt to upload a route map onto the blog next update.