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| a crystal dish and one of six |
First of all, a rapid review of a fine Christmas. Our Christmas Eve church service started at 4:30PM, but we went to the Pastor’s flat an hour before to rehearse our choir numbers. Pastor Haug hosted a reception after the service, and then all of us came back here to Svoradova for Christmas Eve dinner, not at our flat but at Fredell’s, two flights down. We made two trips to the Vienna Airport early Christmas Day, one to deliver Arden Haug so he could go to the United States, and the second to fetch the son of one of the teachers, so he could visit his mother. She cooked a turkey for him (and the rest of us), so we ate well that day, too. In between trips and eating, Jim gave Paula crystal and Paula gave Jim clothes!
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| A new shirt and pants! |
On December 27 we tripped to Trieste. Trieste? Where is Trieste? Perhaps we should have been wary when the best travel book turned out to be Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris. Never you mind that The New York Times told us not to overlook Trieste.
Trieste is in Italy, just around the Adriatic corner from Venice, and is the capital of the autonomous Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Perhaps we should say Trieste is in Italy again. Ruins date
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| Trieste, from the Karst (see below) |
from Roman times, but from the sixteenth century to the end of World War I, Trieste served
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| Trieste's Roman amphitheater |
as the main seaport for Austria-Hungary. Then, as the Allies broke up Austria-Hungary after the Great War, Trieste came into Italy. When the Italians surrendered to the Allies in World War II, the German Army moved into Trieste and made it part of the Reich, headquarters for all German military matters in the Balkans. Two armies pushed the Germans out in 1945—the New Zealanders and Tito’s Yugoslav partisans from the east. The two armies served powers with different agendas. Tito thought Trieste would make a wonderful Yugoslav port, and the Soviet Union agreed. The Allies, on the other hand, had no intention of providing a window on the Adriatic for the Soviet sphere of influence. So Trieste became an international “free city” for a decade, only returning to Italian control in 1954.
Trieste attracted us primarily for three reasons real estate people tell us to buy property—location, location, location. The city is in a part of the world we want to see, close to Slovenia, Croatia, even southern Austria. Second, its location made it strategically important and its fate, like that of Bratislava/Poszony/ Pressburg, came to be decided by others. Third, Venice lies two hours by train. A host of secondary reasons drew us south as well. Traveling
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| Hot chocolate is better without a cold... |
from Central Europe to Italy in the winter is nearly always a good thing. Trieste is the coffee capital of Italy, and one of
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the prime coffee places in the world. Trieste is NOT a hot tourist destination, even in the summer, so that means quiet in the winter.
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| Part of the Karst--and hordes of tourists! |
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| The Caffe San Marco--better than Vienna? |
The city has had three names, like Bratislava/Poszony/Pressburg. Austrians called it Triest. Italians added a vocalized –e. To the Slavs, the city is Trst. Tree-est-eh is fiercely proud of
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| The Piazza del' Unita d'Italia |
being part of Italy--at least, the Italians are proud of it. Italian unification in 1871 fostered the irredentist (unredeemed) movement among them, and gave the empire’s secret police
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| Trieste's Cathedral |
Tree-est’s tourist draw, however, comes from her Austro-Hungarian, commercial past, especially after Maria Theresa came to the throne in the eighteenth century. Most of the heroic architecture comes from this period and into the nineteenth century. With the German-speaking Austrians
came the Protestants, too; to us, one of the most interesting churches in Trieste is the Basilica of St. Sylvester, built in the twelfth century but supplanted by a bigger church, taken over by the Lutherans at the time of the Edict of Tolerance in 1783.
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| St. Sylvester |
Move out of the city, however, and the region’s Slavic roots show. Friuli-Venezia Giulia is officially bilingual, Italian/Slovene, and signs outside the city carry two languages, including directions to Trst. Inside the city, we saw only Italian. You can read an account of the treatment of the Slavic (especially Slovene) minorities by Italian Fascists on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste), along with more history if you’re interested. We went with the intention of visiting Slovenia and perhaps Croatia, especially the Slovene capital, Ljubljana, because the two cities are so close and because several of our friends praised Ljubljana. However, public transportation does not encourage day visits to Slovenia from Trieste, and the ferry to Croatia runs only in the warmer months.
Trieste has a reputation for melancholy coming from the tendency of its citizens to look to the past for times of glory—or so we learned from our reading. Tourism focuses on the nineteenth century and trade for the empire. Italy between the wars made a show of valuing Trieste (“you should have been here during the Fascist times!,” one source quoted an older resident). But we saw a much more dynamic city, bustling about its business with polite regard for us tourists and a willingness to help, but neither an undue urge to please nor cynically arched eyebrows spoiled the experience.
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| The Karst, rising above the medieval castle |
Weather could have dampened our enthusiasm, but rain came only two days, Our readings also warned us about the bora, a tremendously strong wind that comes down from the Karst, a steep limestone rise to a plateau over 450 meters above the city. We only had fierce winds one day, and they lasted just a couple of hours.
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| Miramare |
Maria Theresa’s grandson, Franz Joseph, came to the Habsburg throne in 1848. His 
younger brother, Maximillian (Ferdinand Max), head of the Imperial Navy and then Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, began building a castle for his home in Trieste after he retired in 1859, and named it Miramar (Spanish) which became Miramare in Italian. Both mean the same—a beautiful view of the ocean. Although he had been approached by Mexican royalists to become Emperor of Mexico, he did not agree until 1863. He departed in 1864, even before workmen finished
younger brother, Maximillian (Ferdinand Max), head of the Imperial Navy and then Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, began building a castle for his home in Trieste after he retired in 1859, and named it Miramar (Spanish) which became Miramare in Italian. Both mean the same—a beautiful view of the ocean. Although he had been approached by Mexican royalists to become Emperor of Mexico, he did not agree until 1863. He departed in 1864, even before workmen finished  |
| Paula at Miramare |
Miramare, but Benito Juarez overthrew the short-lived empire in 1867 and executed Maximilian. The Emperor’s wife, Charlotte of Belgium, had returned to Europe and lived a few years at Miramare, but she became increasingly mentally imbalanced. Habsburgs visited occasionally between Charlotte’s departure and 1918, but for the mort part the castle stood empty until Amadeo, Fifth Duke of Aosta, moved in with his wife and two
daughters in 1931. He remained until he became Governor-General of Italian East Africa in 1937. He, too, died abroad, in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Kenya in 1942. The German Army established its high command in Miramare in 1943, as did the Allies during Trieste’s “free city” occupation from 1945 to 1954.
Our trip to Trieste (and thence to Venice) involved many kinds of art. Only in the last forty years or so have the Italians recognized that many Triestans contributed to literature, painting, and sculpture. Two palaces, the Revoltella and the Sartorio, show many works of art. We followed Umberto  |
| Two Jameses--one's a better writer |
Saba’s poem to three streets in Trieste. James Joyce loved Trieste; he completed most of Dubliners there, as well as most of Ulysses; he met and encouraged Italo Svevo, whose Confessions of Zeno is perhaps the greatest Italian novel of the twentieth century.
Since we couldn’t get to Slovenia or Croatia, we were forced to go to Venice twice. Oh, throw 
us into that briar patch! Each time we concentrated on modern art. On New Year’s Eve day we went to Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, and the second time (January 2) to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. We toasted the New Year in with some excellent prosecco--and then Davide, our B&B host, brought us more when we got back to our room, to make sure we had done the deed!
I guess, from the length of this, we had a good time. Wait until we show you the OTHER pictures!
