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Travel Stories from Around the Globe by Bay Area Travel Writers
Publisher: Bay Area Travel Writers (San Francisco, California) 2012
Sold by: Amazon
Language: English
Available in paperback at Amazon.com or on Kindle.
Book Description
Meet a baron from Brittany and the silkworm women of Dubrovnik. Take your chances on a rickety Chinese toboggan and get bucked off an ornery camel in the Sahara. Ride the Orient Express, a Japanese bullet train, and a Guatemalan bus. Enjoy a Zambezi River cruise at sunset — with an angry hippo. Share a Linzer Torte in Vienna with a Holocaust survivor. Here’s top-notch adventure travel by award-winning international travel writers, and you don’t even need to pack a suitcase or go through a security check to experience it.
Excerpt
A note about the excerpt: The following story, Silk from Ashes by Laurie McAndish King, won the prestigious Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Gold Award in 2013 for best cultural tourism story.
“Silk from Ashes”
“When war has happened to you, that is different from seeing it on the television in your living room,” Jan Hasnal says. “Thousands were displaced. Old ladies—they arrived in Dubrovnik carrying plastic bags with all their things. They were cousins of the people I bought fruit from at the market; they were the mothers of my friends. I saw fear and disaster in their eyes.”
There is no fear in Jan Hasnal’s eyes—instead, they reflect the determination and resourcefulness of her Croatian heritage. Hasnal is explaining what life has been like in Dubrovnik since the war. She tells me the story of 11,000 tiny eggs, her bra, and heroic transmutation.
Dubrovnik, “The Pearl of the Adriatic,” is a comfortable labyrinth of white stone buildings, red rooftops, and green shuttered windows. To the north and east are forests of oak and pine; to the south and west, sandy beaches and transparent turquoise waters. The soil is thin and rocky; nevertheless, residents have scraped out a living for centuries.
A smallish harbor in the medieval Old Town belies the city’s historic importance as a center of diplomacy, once rivaling Venice with its prowess in navigation, shipping, and trade. By some estimates, Dubrovnik boasted the highest GDP in the world during her Golden Age from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. But these successes, along with its position on the Silk Route, left Dubrovnik ripe for plunder, and the city was besieged by invaders.
Ruled successively by the Byzantine, Venetian, Hungarian, and Turkish empires, the wealthy merchant republic encircled itself with protective turrets and towers; in some places, the city’s fortified walls are as much as twenty feet thick. But that was not enough to stop Napoleon’s forces as they lobbed 3,000 cannonballs at Dubrovnik in 1806. Italians and Germans occupied the city during World War II. And in the freezing December of 1991, Serbian forces attacked and laid siege, ruthlessly cutting off all water and electricity, reducing centuries-old buildings to rubble, and blanketing the pale city with smoke and ash. Dubrovnik was devastated, but her citizens endured.
Jan Hasnal was there, helping with the relief efforts. “We started where we could,” she recounted, “to share underwear. Refugees streamed in from the countryside, and we put them in hotels. We shared whatever we had in our homes as women made queues, waiting for soup or powdered milk. They had nothing; they couldn’t even cook their own meals. The Red Cross sent clothes, but you had to sign an affidavit if you received even one shirt—it was humiliating. We needed to find some work for the refugees, so we cut up good clothes into strips and the women put them back together into recycled garments, to keep their fingers busy, to help their mental health.
“One old lady asked me, ‘My dear, can you bring me a silkworm? I am very ashamed to be wearing my neighbor’s clothing.’ I asked the authorities, but they were no help. They thought because of the bombing someone in Dubrovnik had gone crazy, asking for silkworms instead of food.”
Dubrovnik and silkworms go back a long way. Although the Chinese, who discovered silk, guarded it zealously, legend has it that two monks smuggled silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds out of the country in bamboo canes, letting the rest of the world in on the secret. For hundreds of years, silk was traded along with other precious commodities—gold and silver, pepper and spices—and by the fifteenth century Dubrovnik supplied it to much of Europe. Rural Croatian women used a traditional method of raising silkworms, in which they wrapped tiny silkworm eggs in cloth and placed them between their breasts, where it was warm and the eggs would hatch.
Perhaps this history of silken intrigue inspired Jan Hasnal. In 1993, she founded an organization called Desa, with the goal of helping both local women and the influx of refugees cope with the social and psychological horrors war. Desa sponsored embroidery workshops in the refugee camps, providing a sense of purpose and the beginnings of economic independence for the women there.
Hasnal wanted to find silkworms so the women could reclaim their livelihoods, but was thwarted by a ban on transporting insects. She persevered for years, finally locating silkworm eggs in Lyon, France, and convincing women there to donate eleven grams of them—about two teaspoons full. A silkworm egg is the size of a pinpoint, and eleven grams are enough to produce 11,640 silkworms. Jan carried the tiny eggs the same way Croatian women had traditionally carried them—in her bra. “I couldn’t get them across the border any other way, she explained. Maybe it is the destiny of the silkworm to travel incognito.”
And, in a wooded valley near Dubrovnik, women once again produced silk thread the traditional way, beginning by carefully incubating the eggs of a blind, flightless moth, Bombyx mori. They fed fresh mulberry leaves to the young silkworms many times a day for more than a month. When the silkworms were fully grown—about three inches long—the creatures stopped eating and began to spin their fluffy white cocoons, which were ready to be harvested after four or five days. The cocoons were stirred in hot water and their delicate threads, sometimes as much as a kilometer in length, were reeled onto a holder, dried, and processed with soap and—ironically—the ashes that had covered Dubrovnik.
Soon the women of Desa were using silk thread and their embroidery skills to recreate the area’s traditional folkloric costumes, replacing heirlooms that had been destroyed during the war. Intricate red and gold embroidery, tassels and cross-stitches, floral and geometric patterns, brightly colored scarves and sashes and blouses and jackets—all began to reappear in Dubrovnik.
These women had endured bombs and occupation, siege and starvation … and they had found a way to transmute ashes and silkworms into dignity and independence. All with the help of 11,640 insect eggs hidden in the cleavage of a brave woman’s breasts. “There were many obstacles,” Jan Hasnal said. “But I am so glad I did it.”
Excerpt from Travel Stories from Around the Globe by Bay by the Bay Area Travel Writers
Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Reviews
“This wonderful story of human endurance and perseverance in Croatia is masterfully told. In only a few pages, Laurie McAndish King acquaints us with her heroine, with a culture, a national history and the age-old technique of harvesting silk from silkworms. The author’s touch is light and endearing, and her story stays with you throughout your day.”
—SATW judges, commenting on Silk from Ashes
“The pieces in this anthology offer surprise, serendipity, connection, and personal transformation—all crucial ingredients for good travel writing. The collection proves, once again, that the [San Francisco] Bay Area is home to so many talented storytellers.”
—Julia Cosgrove, VP and Editor-in-Chief of AFAR magazine
“Travel is about seeing the world with new eyes, so from time to time it’s worth taking a break from Theroux, Bryson, Morris, Iyer and Co. to discover fresh voices, and fresh perspectives. With stories ranging from the poignant to the hilarious, this collection of pieces by the Bay Area Travel Writers will give you a fresh set of eyes with which to see the world.”
—John Flinn, Former Travel Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle
“Each entry in Travel Stories from Around the Globe zooms in on an unpredictable experience—a journey within a journey—that reveals more about a place than you’d ever learn from a guidebook. To read them is to be transported into other travelers’ minds and shoes on journeys defined by open-mindedness and courage, curiosity and doubt. It will make you yearn to pack your bags and collect some travel stories of your own.”
—Janet Fullwood, Winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year award
“This world-girdling collection whisks us from New York, Canada, and Mexico to Italy, India, and Tibet. In its pages we ride the Orient Express and sail a luxury expedition ship, walk Alaska’s Chilkoot Trail, explore Maya caves in Guatemala, soak in Japanese hot mud baths. We meet a master ice cream maker, learn the art of hula, and absorb unforgettable stories of courage and compassion. We re-appreciate the magnificent mosaic of the world. Happy reading—and happy travels!”
—Don George, Legendary travel writer, editor, speaker, teacher, book reviewer, broadcaster and all-around bon vivant.
About the Author
Bay Area Travel Writers, Inc., based in San Francisco, CA, is a not-for-profit, professional association of writers and photographers with outstanding achievements in travel journalism. These professionals share their unique stories in newspapers, magazines, books, internet publications, and travel industry publications.