Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Learning from a local who actually
lived through those horrible years
made my Mostar visit a particularly
rich experience. Thankful for the les-
sons I learned in Mostar, I considered
the value of fi rsthand accounts in my
travels over the years.
When I was a gawky 14-year-old,
my parents took me to Europe. In a
dusty village on the border of Austria
and Hungary, a family friend introduced
me to a sage old man with bread-
crumbs in his cartoonish white handle-
bar moustache. As the man spread lard
on rustic bread, he shared his eyewit-
ness account of the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. I was
thrilled by history as never before.
In Prague, my Czech friend Honza
took me on the walk he had taken
every night for a week in 1989 with
100,000 of his countrymen as they
demanded freedom from their Soviet
overlords. The walk culminated in
front of a grand building, where Honza
said, “Night after night we assembled
here, pulled out our key chains, and
all jingled them at the president's win-
dow, saying, 'It's time for you to go
now.' Then one night we gathered...
and he was gone. We had won our
freedom.” Hearing Honza tell that
story as we walked that same route
drilled into me the jubilation of a small
country winning its freedom.
My Norwegian uncle Thor gave
me a similarly powerful experience in
Oslo. Gazing at mosaic murals in the
Oslo City Hall that celebrate the hero-
ics of locals who stood strong against
German occupation, Thor told me sto-
ries of growing up in a Nazi-ruled Nor-
way. He woke up one morning to fi nd
his beloved royal family in exile and
A lard-eater with a big moustache made history fun for a 14-year-old future travel writer.
