PROLOGUE: RAGING IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE -- Sep 3

By Dan Winters (posted by his more tech savvy daughter)

"Three things you don't want to hear when you walk by the cockpit:

     1. "Oh, shit!"
     2. "I have no idea."
     3. "Watch this."
                    --anonymous
 
Why not? Come on, who doesn't love Turkey and Croatia? All those swarthy guys dressed like Shriners. The fezzes. The freakin' pantaloons!  All that hummus, the feta . Those cool carpets. The  Kalisnikovs. The Balkans. The thousand years of violent wars with anyone and everyone. I know what you are thinking, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc., weren't they Yugoslavia and wasn't it ruled by that rockin' party animal Marshal Tito. Other then the brutal repression, the Gestapo-like secret police,  the miserable civil rights record and the occasional execution, Tito was kind of a cool cold war dude. He sucked up to the Chinese just to piss off the Soviets. Or maybe the other way around. Anyway, he is clearly in the top five of Marshals in all of history:  1. Marshall Dillon (Gunsmoke), 2. The Marshall Tucker Band,  3. U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens (Justified),  4. Marshal Tito,  and 5. The Marshall Plan. Good first name. Tito not so much. The only Tito mentionables are - Tito Fuentes and Tito's Vodka. That's it.

We start our trip by flying to Istanbul, then transfer to a flight to Zagreb, Croatia. So on the first leg, we are trying to learn about Croatia by reading from the ubiquitous Rick Steves. It is pretty vanilla until we get to the part named "Helpful Croatian TIPS." Number three was "Watch out for land mines."  That gets your attention. Carol says, "Why isn't that number one?” "Notable Croatians in History" was interesting, except the only names we recognized were Marco Polo and John Malkovich. There was also someone named Nicholas Tesla (no, not the car guy) who we read had a face-slapping blood feud with the great Thomas Edison. Nothing worse than pissed off electricians. Apparently, Tom invented DC and Tesla AC. They would later patch things up and start the iconic heavy metal group of the same name—you can look it up.

We are flying on Turkish Air. Unfortunately, they don't have the individual hookahs or charcoal grills for kabobs we expected. Instead, they have old school elegance. (OK, we have never been to a school new or old that had old or new elegance, we went to the U of I, but old school, we think, is what Turkish Air is doing.) There are a swarm of flight attendants in 1940's dark blue women's suit type uniform and there are actual chefs wearing ties and crunched down chef hats. It was a lot of fun. We note with satisfaction that the galley staff, despite their flair, still had to deal with the prepackaged entrees on those tiny TV tray plates with tin foil on top that you see on all airlines. It is soothing. It reminds us of our Moms. 

Istanbul Airport must be gigantic. We land after 13 hours, then taxi for 20 minutes. Just when we are thinking, "He is lost", the plane parks surrounded by miles of empty tarmac. We sit forever.  Just as we are thinking "High jacking", the buses arrive. We drive forever. Just as we are thinking, "Does this bus have a bathroom?" we arrive at the terminal—only to walk for 45 minutes to our next gate. We pass tens of airlines we have never heard of, hundreds of over-loaded families bearing unfathomably large quantities of luggage, dozens of high fashion stores, a fair number of burkas and two Victoria Secrets shops. It is a big airport and a big world.