Santo Domingo de Guzman, Oaxaca

There are so many churches in Oaxaca. And I don’t mean little village churches; I mean giant, gilt, built by the Conquistadors churches. I have honestly never seen so many big churches is one small area. It was like 7-11 or Starbucks. Which was awesome because usually work sends me to places that are very not at all Catholic so I enjoyed the churches. Because I didn’t have a lot of free time though I wasn’t able to tour them as much as I would have liked, but of those I did see, Santo Domingo de Guzman was by far my favorite. But I get ahead of myself. To really say why it was so awesome to land in Catholic country I need to talk first about my trip to Oaxaca.

I have airport fear and I am the person who gets to the airport three to four hours in advance of the flight. It could be the world’s smallest airport and have only one flight a day but I’ll still be there early. I’m trying to be better about that so I figured for a 2:50 flight out of Dulles I’d be ok to leave home at 11:30. That would give me a full hour to get to the airport (which with all the new metro line construction is a good precaution to take) and I would still have plenty of time to check in if the United counter was mad busy. As it turned out there was practically no one at the United counter so I walked right up and scanned my passport to start the check in process; and saw this message:

It is too close your flight departure time to complete this process

I of course am baffled. I have almost three hours until my flight. So I scanned my passport again thinking it was a glitch but got the same message. So I hauled out the itinerary and my heart stopped when I realized that 2:50 is when my flight would arrive in Houston. My flight departed at 12:28…in 18 minutes. I was utterly flabbergasted. I’ve had a few close calls with flights over the years but never have I been so blatantly stupid. I found someone at the United counter and explained that although I travel frequently and this was my third international trip in six weeks I had had a moment of utter stupidity and were there please any other flights that could get me to Oaxaca that day?

In what I am sure was a miracle, the guy I spoke to was not only sympathetic but also efficient and helpful. Qualities I would normally never attribute to United or its personnel. He switched me to a 3:20 flight to Houston out of National and didn’t even charge me. The only extra expense for me was the cab from Dulles to National. This meant I had a much shorter layover in Houston and was frantically running around what really is a giant airport because we had an in air delay and I had 20 minutes to make the connection…but made it I did.

I prayed the entire way clutching my travel rosary (yes I have one specifically for when I travel) and since God overlooked my massive idiocy I was especially thankful and delighted by all the Catholic churches.

As I said, I managed to peek into a few churches but really spent time, and attended Mass, in Santo Domingo. A former monastery (that part is now what I’ve been told is an excellent museum), church construction began in 1570 and took 200 years to complete. 

It has been used not only as a monastery but also military barracks in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and was completely restored in the mid twentieth century after it was returned to religious use. The restoration included the use of 60,000 sheets of 23.5 karat gold leaf.

And wow is it shiny. 

I have no idea why this looks crooked. I'm fairly certain I wasn't contorting my body for some sort of artistic pose. I blame the floor which is obviously slanted.

 Close up of the triptych behind the alter.

Once again my kingdom for both a wide angle lens and a telephoto! I wish I could have got better closeups of the paintings on the ceiling but between my limited 200 m zoom, the low light, and the inability to use a flash I was denied.

I did manage to get some details of the fantastic ceiling in the entryway (probably because it's much lower than the rest of the ceiling).

 I have no idea who all these folks are but it looked like each figure was individual.

Elsewhere I had less luck with the ceiling but it was so magnificent I'm sharing my blurry pictures too.

And, this being Mexico, there was a beautiful triptych featuring Saint Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

St. Juan Diego is off the left. I really loved the center though with Guadalupe, the dove, Jesus, and God all the way at the top.

The church also has a lot of small side chapels. Sadly they were all gated and locked but I did manage to get a couple pictures.

I assume Mary? I don't know but it's all kind of creepy.

I hope the next time I'm in Oaxaca I have time to see the monastery/museum and a few more of the churches. Santo Domingo was one of the most magnificent churches I have ever been in so I look forward to seeing what more the others have to offer.

Long Awaited Sarajevo

Ever what would happen if you smooshed together Austria and Turkey and dropped the outcome in the Alps? Well wonder no longer!





I have been to Serbia now seven times I think and for every trip I said that I wanted to go to Sarajevo for a weekend. Seems that seven is my lucky number because I finally made it! Granted this was the busiest and most stressful visit I’ve ever had to Serbia (including the time I was evacuated) so maybe the timing was not perfect but I was not turning down the chance. One of my colleagues here is from Sarajevo and, happy for a chance to go home for the weekend, went with me and toured me around the city.







If I ever go back to Sarajevo via Belgrade I am going to make sure first that I have an international driver’s license and rent a car; because dude. The trip there was not horrible…per say. The bus was comfortable and empty enough that it was ok, air conditioned, left on time, kept the volume of the techno folk fairly low, and only took 7 hours give or take. I was dreadfully ill the entire trip though. I started it with a migraine and the windy mountain roads did me no favors at all. It was like a horrible flashback to the horrible bus ride from Delhi to Dharamsala that was the most horrible trip I’ve ever taken.

Seeing Sarajevo made the trip worth motion sickness. It was like Austria and Turkey got smooshed together then dropped in the Swiss Alps; completely charming and familiar with a hint of the exotic. According the great wisdom of Wikipedia, there are 186 mosques in Sarajevo which I am more than willing to believe. There is also a Serbian Orthodox cathedral, a Catholic cathedral, a Franciscan monastery, and two synagogues. To the casual observer (i.e. me) everyone seemed quite laid back and happy, or at least resigned, to living with the various religions. The monastery and attached church of Saint Anthony of Padua are home the inter-faith Pontanima choir. The choir, which means bridge for souls (or of or soul bridge or whatever, my Latin is only so-so), was established after the war in 1996 by Franciscan priest Ivo Markovic. Lacking enough Catholics to create a choir, Father Markovic reached out to the community. Now the world famous choir consists of people of all faiths, has a repertoire that includes religious pieces from Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Orthodox, and Jewish traditions and helps bridge gaps and heal wounds from the war.











Sarajevo, like many cities, has an old city which is where all the charm is, and a new city that is generally not so attractive and full of tall buildings. We, with no argument from me, stuck entirely to the old city. And like most of the Balkans, Bosnia has seen its fair share of wars and rules from the Ottoman Empire to the Austrian Empire to Yugoslavia and now independence as Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of things I found so interesting about Sarajevo was that the heart of the old city, the baščaršija, or market, was built during the Ottoman Empire and the Austrians built around it, preserving the original buildings and streets. So while you wander around the very Austrian looking pedestrian area







all of the sudden BANG!













Turkey. Cool, no?

Food in Bosnia is brilliant. Typically Balkan it is meat heavy and Turkish influenced, Bosnia is the home of the best cevapci and burek ever. In fact, the only thing all my Balkan friends and colleagues (those from Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia)agree about is that the Bosnians make the best burek. Breakfast was an intriguing affair. I went with my colleague to a restaurant up in the hills called Biba. Breakfast was Bosnian coffee (i.e. Turkish coffee) and this:



I cannot remember what the bread is called but it's like a not sweet donut. There was also several kinds of cheese and a cured meat. Two of the cheeses I couldn't identify, one tasted a bit like a cheddar and the locally made cheese tasted like I would think licking a cheese coated sheep would taste. But kind of good all the same.

Speaking of food, we also visited one of the open-air markets in the city. The space was full of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as flowers. I am normally shy about taking pictures in these kinds of situations (which is why Moglie took all the pictures in big market in Beijing). However I tried a technique in this market that I'd never thought of before. My camera was hanging around my neck but I held the camera with one hand, as if keeping it more secure, angles it a bit, and started clicking while hoping for the best. The pictures didn't actually turn out too bad.







And while it now looks like a nice venue at which farmers sell their flowers and produce, in 1994 it was the sight of a bomb that killed 68 people and wounded 200. called the 'single worst atrocity' of the conflict in the 90's, the market, like the people, survives.



I also got a good look at the bridge near which Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 thereby beginning the first World War. Like many places in which such major events have occurred, the bridge, which is one of many, is very unassuming and is in fact, quite charming.







After a lovely weekend I sadly had to leave Sarajevo. And I was even more sad to leave the city during the actual trip. While I was a little motion sick on the way, the trip back was so very much worse. Rather than take the bus back we got seats in a tour van. It was jam-packed, the driver smoked, I couldn't see anything in front of me except the back of some guy's head, and it took longer than the bus! I tried to fight the nausea as we careened madly down the twisty turney mountain road. Convinced that I was about to die I did the only sensible thing a person could do...I started my Rosary. Now (small aside) when I was in college I decided I was going to learn how to pray the Rosary in every language I knew. German and Spanish were easy enough as there are readily available booklets for those. Chinese had to wait until I could buy said booklet in Taipei and have a friend painstakingly write out the bo po mo fo for all the characters (which I'm very sorry to say I have since misplaced), and Latin came after I started regularly attending Latin Mass. So all this together means that I pray a weird Rosary. The Apostle's Creed (which opens it) I only know in German. I actually couldn't recite that in English to save my life. The Our Father (Lord's Prayer) and Hail Mary I can do in Latin, the Glory Be is a little shaky and comes out half and half, and the Fatima Prayer and the Hail Holy Queen in English. And you know what? It totally worked.

At one point during this oh so miserable journey through, what I am quite sure, were beautiful mountains and countryside, my colleague told me to look to the right. We had apparently been driving along the Drina river for sometime and at that moment were passing the city of Visegrad and the bridge immortalized by Nobel prize winning author, Ivo Andric, made famous in his work Bridge over the Drina. I had jut finished reading the book about a month before I came to Serbia this time and thought it was very cool that I got to see the bridge. Even if it was while shooting past it at an inhuman speed while racing around yet another turn. Ave Maria, gratia plena/Dominus tecum...

While two days was not nearly enough time for me to have enjoyed Sarajevo, I was very grateful for the opportunity to finally make my first trip (motion sickness not withstanding). Fortunately tough, I drank of the waters from the fountain in Sebilj square and if legend holds true, I am destined to return.