https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/22/why-claudio-magriss-danube-is-a-timely-elegy-for-lost-europe
The Punk Balkan Brass Brand “More Blood for Vlad” is well known from Burning Man for their covers of Johnny Cash. My old friend from the American River College science fiction club Tim McGregor, the drummer for More Blood, is the original sub-tenant. He helped Mon Uncle Toby remodel the space he had bought for a song as BART was being built. He was my roomate as was Bandleader Vasili Zorba. We 4 shared a large Queen Anne twixt 25th and 24th street one block from BART on Capp with 8 bedrooms. Cafe La Boheme at 24th and Mission our watering hole. From BART, like a black hole, anything could emerge. Upon seeing a clean well lighted all night cafe (for locals with a speakeasy sub-basement and a Liberated Temporary Zone with live music and Absinthe) people did wriggle on in.
I wish Claudio had wandered in one night to hear More Blood, Vasili had been born on the Danube as the 8th son of a 4th daughter of a 13th mother whose father was a Chechen Shaman who was a direct descendant of Vlad The Impaler. I feel he would have been amused to hear the drummer and vocalist shout—-
Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you, Big River
And I'm gonna sit right here until I die
I met her accidentally in Vienna
And it tore me up every time I heard her drawl, Sarajevo drawl
Then I heard my dream went back downstream, cavorting in Belgrade
And I followed you, Big River, when you called
Balkans. Imagine: The Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through much of Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest into the Black Sea. Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and Bratislava, all capitols of their respective countries. The Danube passes through these four capital cities, more than any other river in the world. Five more capital cities lie in the Danube's basin: Bucharest, Sofia, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sarajevo. The fourth-largest city in its basin is Munich, the capital of Bavaria, standing on the Isar River.
I read this book twice some years ago. The first time when published from the Italian into English in 1989. I was in a bookstore haunting period and his new book translated from Italian caught my eye. I delved into it sipping coffee in La Boheme waiting for Mon Uncle Toby to show up so I could sign a lease for my room as I pondered the biography of the Danube river basin and the humans populating it. The second time was before I went to Europe just in time for the Second Gulf War to see Paris for 3 days, and then to the South of France in a small hill town named Nyon where I met a painter some 70 years in age named Claude Delbos who was in the Resistance as a teen and a relative of my wife. Judith had decided we were gifting him our Imac. She also hoped he could help us move to the South of France. We took this Imac from San Francisco to Nyon with her Roman Arch bridge intact, where Claude and I talked one night under a full moon and he told me of his life in the Resistance during the War. We went on to Prague, where at the foot of the rock bridge in Prague spanning the Charles River heading to the old Prague a fight between some Irish and Gypsies accused of pick pocketing broke out as Gulf War 2 erupted.
I loved Prague. Whenever I travel I want to move to the location. Even.
Austin, Texas hotter than hell, even New York. I always want to live in Carmel. Glad though I haven't moved from San Francisco. Covid brought my attention to how good we got it living on the razor edge bleeding. I shudder to think of being trapped in Europe or Hawaii.