"The Hidden Europe" publication date and the 20th anniversary of the fall of Yugoslavia91DaysThe Hidden Europe
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his website will inspire you to wander& learn. I'm a Harvard MBA who left the tech world in 2006 to pursue a more fulfilling mission: visit every country in the world and share their unique lessons with whoever gives a crap. First-time visitors:start with the best articles!
Most of EU nations, like the US, are living beyond their means: their governments are spending more than they're collecting in taxes. After several years, something has to give. This week, what's giving is their credit rating.
If Europeans (and Americans) don't vote for and support politicians who cut government spending (especially on the big ticket items like military, medical care, and social security), then credit ratings will continue to plummet, interest rates will rise, and Western Europeans will suffer like Eastern Europeans suffered when they transitioned away from communism 20 years ago.
Some argue that we shouldn't just cut spending, we should also increase taxes. Some tax hikes would be good. For example, a carbon tax would be helpful at capturing externalities like pollution.
However, believing that increasing taxes on the rich would solve everything is foolish. First, in the US, the top 1% already pay over 36% of federal income taxes; in Europe, the wealthy are taxed even more.
"So what? Let's tax the rich bastards even more!" you say?
The problem is that it's easier than ever for the rich to take their money and run. Let's say you're a rich guy in Paris and France increases your tax rate to 95%. Are you going to stick around? Or will you move to a neighboring country that lets you keep more of your income?
On December 29, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the USSR, Michael Krasny interviewed me on his award-winning KQED radio show, Forum. KQED is currently the most-listened-to public radio station in America, reaching over 745,000 listeners each week.
The program's blurb: San Francisco native Francis Tapon has visited more than 80 countries and hiked over 12,500 miles. Along his journey he has learned many life lessons. He joins the program to share his insights about what Eastern Europeans can teach us in his newest book, The Hidden Europe.
“Francis Tapon provides us with a wide-ranging personal and historical travelogue. . . . The result is one of the world's most personal, idiosyncratic, and unorthodox cultural and historical travel guides. . . . It's really an impressive and ambitious book.” — Michael Krasny, Host on KQED's Forum
I was struck by a simple innovation, while I was washing my dishes in Belarus. The kitchen cabinet, which was placed over the sink, had dish racks embedded into the cabinet itself. Because the cabinet had an open bottom, you could place the freshly washed (and dripping) dish directly into the cabinet. Water would drip through the opening on the bottom and land into the sink (or countertop). Because there’s no need for a separate dish rack, Belarusians gain extra counter space while saving themselves the tedious task of moving dry dishes from the dish rack onto the counter. It’s a clever solution for those without a dishwasher.
Eastern Europeans aren’t known for being innovative, but in some ways the stereotype is unfair. Hungarians, for example, invented the ballpoint pen and holography. A Hungarian, John George Kemeny, co-invented the BASIC programming language with American Thomas Kurtz. Hungarians also invented artificial blood and the Rubik’s Cube. Four Estonians designed Skype. Nikola Tesla, a Serb, patented the rotating magnetic field, which led to the use of alternating current (AC). Russians were the first in space, made the biggest nuclear bomb, designed Tetris, and created the iPhone of assault rifles (the AK-47).
Imagine kissing your job and your friends goodbye to thru-hike a long trail over six months, then quitting the trail in just a couple of days. As loony as that sounds, it is what happens to hundreds of people every season as they are surprised by the reality of a thru-hike. About one in five prospective Appalachian Trail thru-hikers quit within the first week!
What's even more surprising is that most of those who quit don't do it because they suffer an injury. In fact, most who quit have no ailments and they adore backpacking. Their love for the outdoors is what motivated them to thru-hike a trail in the first place. They love backpacking and figure a thru-hike is a natural extension of that love.
Such reasoning is flawed, because backpacking and thru-hiking are different species.
People don't discover this pre-thru-hike because they simply rely on their limited backpacking experience, their gut instinct, or Uncle Harry who supposedly knows everything. This article is for people who are considering thru-hiking a long trail and want to make sure they know what they're getting into.
Hike Your Own Hike and The Hidden Europe are book 1 and 2 of the WanderLearn Series, respectively. Although they're part of the same series and have some common themes, they have significant differences. For example:
Hike Your Own Hike has about 84,000 words in 352 pages for $24.99.
The Hidden Europe has 330,600 words in 752 pages for $25.99.
Math geniuses will note that when compared to HYOH, The Hidden Europe has twice the page length, but four times the word count, yet costs just $1 more!
As you can guess, HYOH has a big font and healthy margins, while The Hidden Europe has a normal-sized font and small margins. It's the old college trick that we all did - play with the fonts and margins to make the page count where you want it. Anamarija Mišmaš did the layout and did a fantastic job!
What does this mean to you?The Hidden Europe is a bargain! Four times more information, for practically the same price! It's a bad deal for me: I had to work four times as much for the same wage. It's like getting paid a fourth of what you got before. You win.
Moreover, there's no fluff or filler in my writing. It's tight, thanks to my awesome editors, Melissa Finley and Andreja Nastasja Terbos. As one reviewer wrote: "Francis is able to weave humor, history, and himself in such a way throughout the pages that you don’t realize just how much information you’re absorbing." Read more reviews of The Hidden Europe.
Places I saw and recommend in Northern Greece: Metéora. I’m sure it’s fun to climb Mt. Olympus, but I was too busy having fun in Thessaloniki.
Is Greece in Eastern or Western Europe?
Whenever you think of the founder of western civilization, you probably think of Greece:
The Greeks gave us Homer's epic poems, the Corinthian columns that are everywhere, and an early version of democracy.
Just the names of Greek places conjure up wondrous images: Athens, Thebes, Sparta, Crete, Rhodes, Mount Olympus, and the Aegean Sea.
Western companies use the names of Greek gods and heroes: Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Apollo, Perseus, Hercules, and of course, Nike.
Western literature and ideas were born out of text written in Greek such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, Oedipus, Medea, and the Bible's New Testament.
Western heroes include Greeks like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Euripides, Archimedes, and countless others.
Greeks built much of our foundation in mathematics, medicine, science, and philosophy.
The astronomer Carl Sagan observed that if the repressive Middle Ages had not come and Europe had stayed on the technological path that the Greeks had started us on, then we would have colonized the Solar System by now.
Given that everyone associates Greece with western culture and civilization, it's ironic that Greece is in Eastern Europe. [I'm assuming a binary east-west split, where the idea of "southern Europe" doesn't exist. For more about this read about how I define Eastern Europe.]
Americans don't like looking at maps, so it's easy to forget that Greece's northern borders touch the Eastern European countries of Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. In fact, Greece is so far east in Europe that you only have to drive two hours east from the Greek border and you'll have left the European continent and entered Asia! Istanbul, the gateway to Asia, is short drive away (see map below).
Hence, geographically, it's obvious that Greece is in Eastern Europe. Just don't tell the Greeks that, it will piss them off.
If you were looking for evidence that Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, was trying to claw his way to our plane of existence, it's in Metéora. It seems as if his stony fingers are piercing through the earth's flesh and reaching toward Zeus in defiance. In Greek, Metéora means suspended rocks. About 60 million years ago (five million years after the dinosaurs went bye-bye), Metéora's sandstone pinnacles formed. Weather carved them into their shape today. They may remind you of Monument Valley in Utah. What makes Metéora truly special is that hundreds of years ago Greeks built celestial monasteries on top of these rocks. When you see them, you'll ask yourself, "How the hell did they build that there?"
Places I saw and recommend in Macedonia: Skopje and Lake Ohrid.
Defining Macedonia
If you’re like most people on this planet, you know almost nothing about Macedonia. Incredibly, for over 20 years, Greece and Macedonia have been passionately and fanatically fighting each other over Macedonia’s name. It sounds absurd (and it is), but it’s true. Welcome to the Balkans.
Places I saw and recommend in Kosovo: Prizren and the mountains near the Albanian border.
How Serbia is similar to Oklahoma
In 1974, Serbia became like Oklahoma. Most Yugoslavs were not happy with the centralized economy and they thought decentralization would fix things. To avoid a revolt, Tito agreed to increase everyone's autonomy. Among the five republics, Serbia was the only one to have two autonomous provinces carved out of it: Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. Albanians were begging Tito for republic status, but Tito picked the compromise solution: autonomy. As a result, Serbia turned into Oklahoma.
Oklahoma, along with several other western US states, has large Native American reservations within it. Although the US has 50 states, there are about 310 autonomous Indian reservations within them.
In the map below highights the autonomous Indian reservations. Oklahoma is the state in the middle with blue colored reservations representing the Cherokee Nation. Mouse over the image to zoom in. Or view the high resolution version.
Places I saw and recommend in Albania: Drin River, Albanian Alps, Butrint, and the southern beaches.
What Albania and Finland have in common
There is a world of difference between Finland and Albania, but they both call their country something that doesn’t sound like what the rest of the world calls them. As we saw in the chapter on Finland, Finns call their country Suomi (while nearly all other countries call it something that sounds like “Finland”).
Albania has the same deal: the Italian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish languages call the Albanian country Albania. Other languages have a similar phonetic sound: Albanie (French); албания “Albaniya” (Russian, Bulgarian); Albània (Catalan); “Aherbainieya” (Chinese); Albanija (Balkanian, Lithuanian, Slovenian); Albánie (Czech); Albanien (Danish, Swedish, German); Albanië (Dutch); Albānija (Latvian); Albánsko (Slovak); αλβανία (Greek); Albanya (Filipino); and 알바니아 “Albania” (Korean).
So what do Albanians call their country? Shqipëria.
Yeah, I didn’t expect that either. They call their language Shqip.
Why did all that happen? Nobody knows. First, the origin of the Albanian term is an enigma. There are few clues: in the second century BC, Polybius mentioned the Arbon tribe. About 400 years later, Ptolemy marked the city of Albanopolis near modern-day Durrës in Albania. There are other ideas, but nothing conclusive.
Second, scholars can’t agree on where Shqipëria comes from either. One theory is that it comes from the verb shqipoj, implying one who understands.
The other theory is that Shqipëria comes from shqipojnë (eagle). Albanians have been using the double-headed eagle symbol for at least 600 years. The Albanian flag, one of the coolest ones in the world, has a red background and a black two-headed eagle on it.
Places I saw and recommend in Montenegro: Kotor, Budva, Perast, Lovćen's Mausoleum, and Durmitor National Park.
The highest compliment you can give a place is to say, "I want to buy a house here." It's more meaningful than saying "I want to live here," because buying a house is a deeper commitment than renting. These were my thoughts as I walked through the romantic streets of Kotor, Montenegro.
Montenegro is smaller than Connecticut, but it has Alpine scenery, deep canyons, coastal fjords, old Venetian-style towns, and a sparsely vegetated, limestone mountain range that plummets into the azure Adriatic Sea. Montenegro has it all. But it was Kotor, a town which lies in the largest fjord in southern Europe, that stole my heart.
Places I saw and recommend in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo, Mostar, and the southern mountains around Herzegovina.
The opening of the Bosnia and Herzegovina chapter in The Hidden Europe
Bosnia and Herzegovina is Europe's most complicated country. That's ironic, because it's filled with Europe's simplest people.
Just how complicated is it? Try to understand this: Bosnia and Herzegovina is a bit smaller than West Virginia, but has three religions, three ethnic groups, yet one language (some claim that there are three languages). However, the country is not divided in three regions, but in two. Yet the exact definition of those two regions depends on what you're talking about. The two-way split can either be between the Bosnia region and the Herzegovina region or between the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Oh, but then there's the tiny autonomous Brčko District, which you might call a third region. The three ethnic groups elect a President for a four-year term; each President controls the country for an eight-month period before handing power over to one of the other two Presidents. They rotate among themselves six times. On the other hand, none of that matters because there's this third guy, a foreigner called the High Representative, who has king-like powers.
Nothing is simple in the Balkans. — David Owen, author of two failed peace attempts during the Bosnian War
I've written Hike Your Own Hike: 7 Life Lessons from Backpacking Across America. I've walked across America four times and visited over 80 countries. I'm the first guy to yo-yo the Continental Divide Trail. I also thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail southbound. I just returned to the USA after traveling in Eastern Europe for three years and finishing my second book, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.
Most of EU nations, like the US, are living beyond their means: their governments are spending more than they're collecting in taxes. After several years, something has to give. This week, what's giving is their credit rating.
Whenever you think of the founder of western civilization, you probably think of Greece:
In 1974, Serbia became like Oklahoma. Most Yugoslavs were not happy with the centralized economy and they thought decentralization would fix things. To avoid a revolt, Tito agreed to increase everyone's autonomy. Among the five republics, Serbia was the only one to have two autonomous provinces carved out of it: Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. Albanians were begging Tito for republic status, but Tito picked the compromise solution: autonomy. As a result, Serbia turned into Oklahoma.
