Ljubljana is not that city. The capital of Slovenia nonetheless is itself a treat, with its playful decorative grace notes and an architectural repertoire ranging from medieval through baroque and Vienna secessionist (i.e., art nouveau) to postmodern. A bridge with a dragon at each of its four corners spans the narrow River Ljubljanica. The dragon is the symbol of the city—another fire-breather adorns the inevitable hilltop castle overlooking the old town. Snide local lore holds that the four dragons will wag their tails if the bridge is crossed by a virgin—of course, this has yet to happen.
On both banks of the river are restaurant and café terraces absolutely jammed with locals. At street corners and on bridges stand buskers, mummers, and magicians, all surrounded by rapturous crowds. I pause to hear a young woman with a guitar and an amazing voice, both rugged and smooth, a Slovene Adele. The animation in the old town takes me aback—this is, after all, a weeknight, yet it seems that the whole population has turned out to eat and drink, as if every warm summer night called for a carnival. I wander from the river and find myself in a quarter that is distinctly countercultural. Head shops, the scent of reefer, and carefully curated seedy cafés mix in with municipal art houses and squats devoted to keeping Ljubljana’s bohemians happy. Foreign languages can now be heard, the young Reinhards of Europe having heard of the city’s welcoming vibe.
I stop before a shop called Laibach. Laibach? The owner explains that this was an earlier name for Ljubljana. I tell him that I know of a band called Laibach. “Oh yes, they’re still playing,” he says. This information brings me back to the early 1990s, when I was the music editor at a magazine in New York. Laibach, an avant-garde Slovenian band, descended on the clubs of the city, and nobody knew what to make of them. Their sound, their look, their whole shtick—all were unmistakably Fascist. Were they, in fact, Fascists? The band members explained to the bewildered press that Fascism was part of European folklore, part of its DNA, and they were just expressing that tradition. Doubtless there are other Slovenian provocateurs lurking in this hip neighborhood.
Daybreak draws me back northward, Alpward, for a last day near the mountains. The Karawanks, a limestone range that is a continuation of the Carnic Alps, looms on the border of Austria and Slovenia. I head toward one of its glacial lakes, Slovenia’s biggest tourist attraction. Like the lakes of the Salzkammergut, Lake Bled seems laid out by a draftsman concerned with perspective and perfection. It is almost too beautiful, its still waters changing color according to the time of day. A picturesque red-roofed medieval castle dominates from a hilltop on its western shore. In the middle of the lake, just off center, a wooded island rises up. Once the home of a temple of Živa, the Slavic goddess of love, it became Christianized in the distant past and the sanctuary became dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A Gothic chapel stands below a graceful baroque bell tower, which rises above the treetops and can be seen from any point on the lake. And, in the background, as always, my friends the Alps. It is time to bid them farewell.
The following day finds me in my final destination, the Italian port city of Trieste. I started by the banks of Lake Geneva, a good forty kilometers from the Alps, and I shall end on the shores of the Adriatic, similarly distant from the mountains. Although Trieste can hardly be said to be an Alpine city—a harsh limestone plateau called the Carso separates it from the Julian Alps—it might as well be, for its variegated population and history reflect those of the passes and valleys in which I have spent the summer. Besides, it is my birthday and Trieste has always been one of my four dream cities. The others—Paris, Istanbul, Aleppo—have all been seen in years past, leaving only this Adriatic gem on my list.
Trieste is, as I had hoped, exceedingly strange, an Italian city that looks Viennese, painted in a weird mustard color. For centuries, it was the port of the Habsburg Empire, one of the great cities of Mitteleuropa (the only one south of the Alps), its population a mixture of Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs. Christians mixed with Jews and Muslims. There is a Serbian Orthodox Church in its old town, as well as remnants of Antiquity that pop up unexpectedly around corners and down alleyways.
The place was a melting pot, or a mosaic, but it became less so after the Italians took possession of the city after World War I. Memories of that conflict loom large in Trieste this summer, as it is the centennial of the funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, gunned down in Sarajevo and brought here amid appropriate solemn pomp. Large banners throughout the city show old photographs of the occasion, placed in the exact spot where the photographer stood one hundred years ago. In one, a crowd of young men looks out at the passing cortège, except for one fellow who stares directly at the viewfinder, impudent and very much alive. For some reason, this image moves me. Perhaps it is the knowledge that in a few short weeks he would doubtless be handed a uniform and a rifle and be marched off to an almost certain death in the Alps.
I sit at a café and whip out my notebook. No one bats an eye. Trieste is a writer’s city par excellence, literary luminaries having flocked here for its unusual, unsettling atmosphere. One of the greatest was James Joyce, who taught English in Trieste in the first decades of the twentieth century, before moving to Zurich for his Fanny Urinia days. His past haunts are all signposted in the city, as they are in Dublin. In an incredible feat of memory over distance, Joyce wrote some of his greatest works—Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and much of Ulysses—in Trieste. Later, in Finnegan’s Wake, he paid a skewed homage to his adopted home by punning: “And trieste, trieste ate I my liver!” Which a canny French reader can read as “Triste, triste était mon livre!” (Sad, sad was my book!)—especially one familiar with Paul Verlaine, one of whose poems is entitled O triste, triste était mon âme (O sad, sad was my soul). When not revolutionizing English-language literature, Joyce also contributed to its Italian counterpart. The sharp-eyed Irishman recognized the genius of a neurotic businessman and washed-up Triestine writer, Italo Svevo, and later made sure that his classic Confessions of Zeno found a publisher.
The litany of slightly insane brilliance is not limited to Joyce and Svevo. Giacomo Casanova, one of the greatest rogues and spies of the eighteenth century, concludes his endlessly entertaining memoirs in Trieste. Nineteenth-century explorer and sexual adventurer Richard Burton translated the Kama Sutra, The Thousand and One Nights, and a collection of erotic classical poems by Catullus while in the city. Stendahl came this way, as did Rainer Maria Rilke, whose Duino Elegies, named for a castle just out of town, ranks as the poet’s most important work. Filippo Marinetti inaugurated the futurist movement here. More recently, writer Jan Morris was fascinated by the city—her Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere remains a touchstone to the city and its odd lack of identity. And it is no coincidence whatsoever that our greatest living travel writer, Claudio Magris, with his Danubio (Danube), is an Italian native of Trieste who has taught German literature at the university here.
If one walks farther into Trieste, one finds a pleasing hodgepodge, as befits its multiple nonidentities. Its cathedral is called San Giusto, as Justus was a Roman citizen of third-century Trieste martyred for his Christianity by being thrown into the Adriatic with weights attached to him. That sea can be seen from the hilltop sanctuary, which stands beside the city’s citadel. The church contains columns from a Roman tomb and elements of the Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and baroque. In the lower town, Trieste’s Jews continue the city’s devotion to the eclectic. Although their synagogue, one of Europe’s most important, was completed as recently as 1912, the great gray stone building draws its architectural inspiration from the building style in vogue in fourth-century Roman Syria. So perhaps Trieste is an Alpine city after all: Its mixture of cultures, languages, faiths, and cuisines is wholly reminiscent of the passes I have crossed this summer. It’s as if the human variety encountered—and created—in the center of Europe by the Alps has come to ground splendidly in seaside Trieste.
Nothing is straightforward here.
Depending on which square you visit, the cobbled expanse is either pristine or filthy. At the Caffè San Marco, an art nouveau literary café in this caffeine-crazed city (Triestinos consume twice the amount of coffee as average Italians), red-lipped ladies who lunch sit alongside grizzled drunks downing grappa. In the back is a bookstore where university students stand at a window-side counter, their laptops open.
I head to the shore. This quarter of Trieste is resolutely Austrian, having been constructed in the eighteenth century under the orders of Empress Maria Theresa, the only woman to have ruled the Habsburg Empire. Grand buildings lead to grand squares. At one place, the uniformity is pierced by a small, rectangular harbor, known somehow as the Canal Grande, a stretch of water from which launches once departed to fetch the wealthy from their yachts. The area is Italy’s finest seaside urbanism, bar none, but it is not a product of Italian genius.
I have switched cafés and closed the notebook for the last time. The Piazza Unità d’Italia stretches out before me. It is the largest square in Italy and the largest seafront square in Europe. It is so big, is there room for ghosts here? Yes. The sun is setting over the Adriatic, and a large group of visitors from a cruise ship follow their umbrella-wielding tour guide. It is an assault rifle of American tourists, reminding me that it is time to go home. I stretch languidly and order a last caffè corretto, knowing that my journey is over. In Trieste, this city of ghosts, a few dozen kilometers from the Alps, I think of the presences that have animated me and surprised me. Sisi, of course, but also Hannibal, Napoleon, Toni Kurz, Heidi, Sherlock Holmes, Edward Whymper, James Bond, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Joyce, and Frankenstein’s monster.
I had not expected such a richness of the imaginary and the real. The Alps, before I spent this time in their fastnesses, was to me a rumpled blanket—a very rumpled blanket—over the heart of Europe. I did not know that they tell a story of humanity far beyond their bounds.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOME AUTHORS like to perpetuate the idea that writing is a heroic solitary endeavor. It ain’t—there are people who help you out throughout the process.
In my case, this network of support spans an ocean. In Europe, I’d like to thank Heidi Ellison for her repeated hospitality in Paris. Likewise, Marie-Christine and Scott Blair warmly welcomed me into their Paris home for extended periods. And Elisabeth and Sandy Whitelaw were always there for me in the French capital with advice, food, and wine. Sadly, my very dear friend Sandy passed away in early 2015. A lover of, and an expert on, the Alps—he was on the British ski team at the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo—Sandy will not be able, alas, to point out the errors in my book. He mastered many languages, so his help would have been invaluable in negotiating the linguistic minefield of a book on the Alps. I still hear his voice over my shoulder, but all of the mistakes in this narrative must be laid at my doorstep.
Also in Paris, my thanks to Pierre Masson, proprietor of the Librairie des Alpes, for his excellent advice. If you’re in town, visit this gem of a bookstore—it’s at 6, Rue de Seine in the sixth arrondissement, just behind the building housing the Académie française.
In Switzerland, my thanks of course to Ernst Herb, tour guide and travel companion extraordinaire. His friend, NoéMie Schwaller, became my friend and agreed to accompany me on that weird day in Heidiland. The following summer, she introduced me to her father, who shared some of his encyclopedic knowledge of the strange balancing act that is Switzerland. Thank you, Herr Schwaller. I am also deeply grateful to Paul Rechsteiner, who let Ernst and me stay in his St. Gallen flat while he was away in Bern. His job? He’s a Swiss senator—which goes to show that not all politicians are cut from the same cloth. Elsewhere, Italian novelist and journalist Carlo Pizzati answered my queries with lengthy, funny, and immensely informative e-mails. Grazie, Carlo.
Closer to home, in Rhode Island, I want to thank my family—Eve, Rachel, and Jill—for their ever-bemused support of my obsessions. Also, a heartfelt thank you to Dana Holmgren, for her gentle and steady encouragement. A fellow writer in Providence, Phelps Clark, struck just the right balance between cheerleading and hectoring to keep me from my proclivity to procrastinate. He also made a valuable editorial suggestion that spared me a month or so of dithering. Phelps’s friend, Tony Trocchi, a rock climber, did me a great favor by dipping into his extensive library and extracting a dozen of the best books and memoirs about mountaineering. And Spanish professor and avid mountaineer Francisco Fernandez de Alba was kind enough to read a draft of the manuscript before it was sent to my publishers.
In New York, thanks as ever to my old Paris pals Maia Wechsler and Edward Hernstadt for opening their Dumbo home to me whenever business took me to the city. And thanks, Ed, for keeping me company in the Dolomites and the Engadine. In Manhattan, longtime friend and fellow writer Eli Gottlieb provided the correct dose of despairing levity whenever the going got rough.
Thanks as ever to my unflappable literary agents in New York, Liz Darhansoff and Chuck Verrill. Last, a great measure of gratitude to my editor, Matt Weiland, for nurturing and feeding the Alpine bee in my bonnet. His editorial suggestions, alarming at first sight, turned a stumbling draft into a standing manuscript. Thank you, Matt.
Readers are encouraged to give me their feedback—even if they’re just Dutch campers who want to express their outrage. Contact info can be found on my website: stephenosheaonline.com.
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Page numbers followed by n refer to material in footnotes.
Abélard, Pierre, 16
Achen Pass, 188
Adelaide, the Girl from the Alps, 156
Aeneid (Virgil), 76–77
aerial tramways
on the Aiguille, 37–38, 41, 42–43
disasters, 42
history, 41–42
Aiguille du Midi (Needle of the South)
aerial tramways, 37–38, 41, 42–43
altitude, 37
Espace Vertical, 43
Le Pas dans le Vide (Step into the Void), 44–45
Plan de l’Aiguille, 38, 41
Aime, France, 60
Alba di Canazei, Italy, 252
Albertville, France, 55–57, 74, 87, 91n, 94
Aletsch Glacier, 124, 125–27, 173
Alighieri, Dante, 72
Allues Valley, 59
Alpe d’Huez, 65
alpenglow, 255
alpenrose bush, 82
alphorns, 153–54
Alpine buttercup, 82
Alpine Club, 40, 43, 119
Alpine plants, 81–83
Alt, Salome, 212
Altaussee, Austria, 223, 226–27, 270
Altdorf, Switzerland, 132
altitude sickness, 46, 203
Alto Adige, Italy (South Tyrol or Südtirol), 243–44, 262, 264–65, 275
American Psycho (Ellis), 42
Andermatt, Switzerland, 132–33
Andrews, Julie, 204, 212, 229
anguane, 254
Anselm of Aosta (Anselm of Canterbury), 99
Aosta, Italy, 98–100
Aosta Valley
cretinism (congenital iodine deficiency syndrome), 98, 120
dahu legend, 29–30, 96
effects of development, 97–98
Fort Bard, 96–97, 108
mountains surrounding, 95–96, 97
Aperschnalzen, or competitive whipcracking, 199
Appalachian Mountains, 139
Appenzell Alps, 146, 149, 152–53, 225
Appian of Alexandria, 74
Arnoldstein, Austria, 280
Ascent of Mont Blanc (Smith), 39
Astrolabe, 16
Attersee, 228, 229
Augustus (emperor), 86, 98, 109
avalanche galleries, 61, 105–6, 116, 237, 277
Avengers: Age of Ultron (movie), 97
Avoriaz, 26, 103
Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War One (O’Shea), 288
Bad Aussee, Austria, 223
Bad Ischl, Austria, 215–22, 230
Bad Wiessee, Germany, 188–90, 192, 208, 221
Balmat, Jacques, 35–36, 37, 238
Basin and Range (McPhee), 139
Battle of Solferino, 79
Bavarian Alps, 193–94
Bayrischzell, Germany, 194
Beaujolais, France, 3
Bell, Vanessa, 40n
Belleville Valley, 59
Bellinzona, Switzerland, 136–39
Berchtesgaden, Germany, 193, 199–201
Bergfilm (mountain film), 168, 187, 188, 192, 204
Bernau, Germany, 197
Bernese Alps, 128, 264
Bernese Oberland, 157, 165, 167
biblical literalism, 9
Biel, Switzerland, 128
Blatter, Sepp, 116
Blessed Virgin sightings, 27
Bobbio Abbey, 147
Bollywood Restaurant, 173–74
Bolzano, Italy (Bozen), 243, 244–47
Bonatti, Walter, 170
Bond, James, 28, 46, 130, 256, 263–64
Bormann, Martin, 201, 202, 207
Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, 61, 74
Bourrit, Marc-Théodore, 35–36
Bovec, Slovenia, 281
Bozen, Italy (Bolzano), 243, 244–47
Brahms, Johannes, 215
Braun, Eva, 203, 204
Brenner Pass, 70, 259–60
Bressanone, Italy (Brixen), 260
Brig, Switzerland, 123
Brindisi, Italy, 84
Brixen, Italy (Bressanone), 260
Bruckner, Anton, 215
bullet train, 85
Burgundy, France, 3, 18, 106
Burj Khalifa, 45
Burke, Edmund, 17–18
Burnet, Thomas, 8–9
Burton, Richard, 292
Buzzati, Dino, 96–97, 256
Byron, Lord, 19–20, 190
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