Vienna-Zagreb

We had another full day, though a large part of today was spent on the road. I highly admire the driving and parking skills of our bus driver. If only I know how to park my Suzuki Splash the way he parked our behemoth bus + trailer in front of our  Vienna hotel.

The Heeresgeschichtliches Museum is impressive. While preparing for the CSA I read Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War, and liked the parts about the 'Sarajevo assassination' in particular. Today I saw with my own eyes some of the objects that were there on that fateful day in June, 100 years ago. 

The bus ride to Zagreb went smoothly. I really liked the city tour: the city center is pretty and compact. The dinner was very nice, and Slavko Goldstein's story is extraordinary. After I went up to my hotelroom I reread a review of Mr Goldstein's review that I had read earlier on the website of The Guardian, by Richard J. Evans (whose In Defense of History (1999) and trilogy on the Third Reich I highly recommend). I would like to finish this posting with a quote from that review: " Ethnic hatreds incited by bitter memories of 1941 remain, but the efforts of men such as Slavko Goldstein  to exorcise them through open and honest  reconstruction of the events  of the war are slowly bearing fruit. Skepticism  and distance are the necessary weapons in this struggle".

PS: As for the pictures that accompany this posting: two of them appear on their side, even though on my laptop I seem them as they should be. I don't know how to correct this. The plaque on the former site of the central synagogue says: "On this spot stood the central synagogue of the holy community of Zagreb that was erected in 1867 and destroyed by the fascists in the days of the Shoah in the year 1941".

PPS: While I am writing this posting I receive updates from my wife through Whatsapp. More rockets have been fired at northern Israel from Lebanon. She insists that there is no reason to come back home: it is a Palestinian faction that tries to engage Israel on a second front, Hezbollah is not interested in that, and the Lebanese army tries to prevent such attacks, so they will probably remain limited. This time the rockets landed in open territory in the north, and the alarm was heard in Nahariya and  the surrounding area only, not in Haifa. Earlier tonight rockets were fired by Hamas from Gaza in the direction of Tel Aviv. My wife then wrote that Holland is leading 2-0 in the game against Brasil. Is this unreal or what? She cynically added that if she felt it was absolutely safe to take off from Ben Gurion Airport she would come and join me with the kids in Sarajevo.