the end of july

At night the deck lights are off, so you only identify other passengers by the pieces of their conversations - usually in French or Italian - that break through the sound of waves and wind, and by the tiny orange circles of their cigarettes that occasionally arc down and disappear into the water.

By 3 am the bar has closed and all the hallways and lounges are littered with fallen bodies, still and silent as if the ship had been gassed. People in our society rarely sleep together in large numbers, certainly not on furniture and floors, so the scene is eerie and tragic.

In the morning the sky is white and the sea silver. On deck dozens of passengers are wrapped into every corner with their sleeping bags like oversized, multicolored coccoons. Here and there are traces of people: a shoe, a cough, blowing hair.

29 july 2005

The border guards are boreder guards at 3 am so they unceremoniously unload us from the bus - the Spanish with big earings and the Germans with big cameras and the Croats, weary and unsurprised.

Now ten miles later we are on our third coffee break of a so far six hour trip, passsengers smoking and schmoozing as if this was what they'd signed up for, some all-night mobile bar, instead of just a ticket to Croatia.

grrrr

Here I am trying to look mean in the bus, trying to look big and mean though I am neither. When I want company I write in my journal - everyone wants to sit by the girl writing in her journal - but tonight I am big and mean, with two seats all to myself for the long trip to Split.

28 july 2005

Sarajevo is SO HOT.

I am noticing that I have written several times about graveyards and that isnt really fair. Because the thing about this region - the thing that is both beautiful and a little creepy - is that it doesnt feel like a graveyard at all. It feels like Europe, with galleries and nightclubs and cafe-lined streets. The locals kiss a lot in public and eat an inordinate number of ice cream cones and wear jeans rolled up high.

And all this happens against a backdrop of bullet-scarred buildings, every old surface so pock-marked I cant imagine so many bullets, and just a few more people than seems average missing a limb or speaking sign language.

The city of Sarajevo was under siege for nearly four years, completely surrounded by the Serbian forces. Their only link to the world was a tunnel 800 meters long and one meter wide. There was no running water and no electricity. And during that time the biggest seller on the black market was makeup.

I think no city in the world has the dignity of Sarajevo.

mostar

The thing about this cemetery in Mostar is that all the people buried here were born in different years. Usually in a small cemetery all the people were born around the same time, because one life span later the cemetery was made. But here people born in 1947 and 1966 and 1955 and 1974 are all buried next to each other, in clean white marble rows, because they all died in 1993.

What is a year like, when everyone dies at once? Where do you find compassion for the loss of your daugher or your brother when everyone you know is mourning their own losses?

In 1993 I was thinking about college and my new drivers licence and Jordan Potash. I didnt think much about the war going on, and when I did I imagined it far away and happening between irrational, even crazy, foreign people. It didnt occur to me that nice people with pretty houses and department store sweaters would kill each other. What would be the point of that?

so.

I wonder what the place is of a tourist in Bosnia in 2005. Clearly they welcome our currency - the women who meet the buses with signs that say rooms - sobe, and the men who sell kebabs and cheap jewelry in old town.

But then here we are plundering their misery, drawn here to ogle the physical scars that the Bosnians no longer see.

I spent this afternoon taking fetishistic pictures of beautiful broken buildings, while the people of Mostar quietly tolerated me.

laterer

Number 10 Kalhanska street was a two story house with an attic; like most of the houses on the street it had a stone wall around it with an iron gate painted white. Now the gate has only one door, and the house is just walls with no roof and windows with no glass. The bright Bosnia sun streams right down in past the free standing chimney, hitting the ground floor and nourishing the carpet of plants there: Ailanthus altissima, of course (the tree that grows in Brooklyn), and a few fig trees too young yet for figs, and vines that wrap around the empty window frames and cling to what's left of the balcony.

It's not a big house - just five windows across, big enough for a family making a life. They used to get mail here, addressed 10 Kalhanska; maybe they had parties or fights that the neighbors could hear.

I wonder where they are now, the people that used to come home to this house, if they are in Serbia or Sweden or still here in Bosnia, living down the street in a new bright yellow building or in one of the many marked and unmarked graveyards of this land. If they are alive I wonder if they come back here, if they ever even think about this place they used to live, or if it is just one more piece of a past that is best for being over.

later

I am drinking an orange ice drink with a red plastic straw from a white plastic cup on a street where no one lives anymore and above me a streetlight is on in the middle of the day.

And I don't want to make light of these people's wreckage, to sip Cokes and buy earings amidst the rubble, but I don't want to draw attention to it either because they step over it nonchallantly in shiny heels and pointing it out seems bad taste.

25 july 2005

This morning I missed my 8 am bus to Mostar. I was at the station, with a ticket, but the clerk told me the wrong gate and I was too sleepy to be skeptical. Then she made me buy another ticket, for the next bus, eight hours later.

I am reading a good book, Cafe Europa: life after communism, by the Croatian author Slavenka Drakulić. It has been very helpful to my sense of calm as I try to interact with people here. She writes, for example, about the slow pace with which post-communist countries are grasping the service economy. Under communism there was no reason for a salesperson to be friendly or helpful - the customer was the one in need of scarce goods. The system has changed, but service with a smile has not yet caught on. And I hate to say it, but I miss even the most fake how're-we-all-doin-today cashier smile. I don't like being eyed suspiciously as I choose my yogurt.

incidentally

I have some news for you, something that's come on hard and fast and taken me by surprise. But I want to be up front about it despite how some of you may react.

I have developed a passionate, and possibly fierce, pride in America.

It is not a blind pride, or a my-country-right-or-wrong pride, and it is certainly not a pride in our current administration. It does not involve assumptions that we are historically benign or currently wise. It harbors no illusions about the economic and social injustices that countless Americans and would-be Americans face daily.

However.

I am sitting in a bus winding its way through Croatia, a country that has had four distinct periods in the past 55 years. One was as a puppet state of a fascist reich, during which 17,000 Jews and at least as many others were murdered at Jasenovac. Two was a communist dictatorship, when dissenters dissappeared and everyone else waited on line for bread. Three was a war that violently ripped one country into five more "ethnically pure" countries, levelling cities, erasing towns, and displacing millions.

And now here is four, democracy revelling in capitalism, with McDonalds and Friends. And it makes me a little sad but I can't by any measure call it worse.

And this week alone I met a Serb girl who said that if she went to Albania they would kill her, and I saw a photo exhibit of 6-year-old Israeli boys dressed as soldiers and 6-year-old Palestinian boys throwing stones, and I talked to a Polish woman who had never met a black man but felt they were untrustworthy.

And so I am proud of America, for the way we are trying to make this work. I am thankful for the myriad ways we are trying, with varying degrees of grace and diligence, to live together peacefully and prosperously. That, the Balkans have taught me, is no small feat.

mario papac

There are a lot of graves at the Dubrovnic cemetery from 1991 and 1992. Almost all men, mostly boys barely twenty. The gravestones here bear small oval photographs of the deceased, so you don't imagine them old as they would be today. You see them young as they were when they died.

Mario Papac died thirteen years ago this week. He was twenty two. He has a big goofy smile that makes me think I could have fallen in love with him.

I look at all these graves and wonder if they died in some merciless attack by the Serbs, or if they died massacring Muslim civilians, or if they were in a building hit by NATO air strikes. And I wonder if it matters, and how you're supposed to know better when you're twenty two, and what you're supposed to make of it even if you do.

23 july 2005

Dubrovnic! The old walled city is white stone on every side, unbroken winding walls and staircases that disappear out of sight. There are no cars in the old town, so it feels like a giant fortress. A fortress full of tourists, unfortunately. Unlike Montenegro, which has only been discovered by Serbs and a few Italians, the Croatian coast is crawling with foreigners. Worst of all Dubrovnic is a popular cruiseship stop, so the narrow passages are clogged with guide-following mobs waving around cameras and the wrong currency.

Still. It is beautiful. The water is deep blue green, and it hits the land on rocky cliffs with dark trees and clusters of bleached houses. The light is that fabulous intense Mediterranean light that turns everything golden and casts sharp shadows. The streets smell like saltwater and sweat and calamari.

I am sitting at Caffe Bar Mali Princ - the Little Prince - named after my favorite storybook. I am eating a Greek salad made all wrong, no olives and ricotta cheese, listening to that song that goes, and I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain. But today I am choosing not to miss anything.

Being in a laid-back beach town, even a touristy one, is a kind of relief. Serbia is a lot to handle. Serbia has too much testosterone for me. The people drive loud cars quickly and carelessly. Ticket agents and store clerks are abrupt and dismissive. Middle aged men - often with children in their arms - throw long, uncomfortably suggestive glances.

A number of Serbs told me how friendly Serbs are. And sometimes this was true. But often the warmth felt calculating, and even when it felt genuine it didn't feel reliable.

Being in Croatia and pretending it is any different is really just denial, but I am welcoming what feels so far like a small break from the Balkans.

22 july 2005

...sitting on a stony beach in Kotor. Things are looking up considerably.

I caught the train from Belgrade to Bar. In the hallway young beach-goers were playing music and running between cabins with beer. In my cabin were three 21-year-old girls from Belgrade going on a beach holiday and a 26-year-old Montenegran guy returning from school. First they were friendly, sharing food, asking questions. We pulled our seats down and had a slumber party.

Eventaully, though, my novelty wore off, and I kept contradicting their stories about how all Americans eat only fast food and are evangelical Christians. By morning when we arrived they said quick empty goodbyes.

In Bar I met Guro and Marianne from Norway, also looking for the bus to Budva. I clung to them with fervor. We got the bus and found an eight Euro room with a balcony overlooking the mountains.

Budva has a walled old town all white and yellow and winding and lots of tourist ammenities. It has a long awful boardwalk with tacky souvenir shops and cheesy bars. We found a quieter beach for the day and in the evening drank wine on our balcony over the orange-roofed houses.

Yesterday morning we caught a van to Kotor, another small coastal town with fewer tourists. I could stay here drawing for a week.

18 july 2005

Today has had a little more sadness than I would prefer, but I guess there are always days like that. I finally woke up in time for the hotel breakfast, which was bleak and communist and full of isolation: people sitting quietly being served omlettes on empty plates by severe waiters in white button-down shirts and dress pants. There were other people sitting alone but the mood was so pervasively depressing that I didn't approach them. It felt like making small talk in the lobby of hell.

Then my quick trip to the train station lasted two hours in the scorching heat, being sent from line to unmoving line, having hands waved in front of my face whenever someone didn't want to deal with my request.

So I went online for a while to dodge further trip anxiety, returned to the train station, and sat down to have a beer. I realize now that I haven't eaten anything since the omlette of despair, which might be contributing to my moodiness.

In any case I'm going to Bar, Croatia, on the scenic overnight train. Yes, that's right. Scenic. Overnight. And we will see.

17 july 2005

Typical morning... slept in, crashed a Serb wedding at the biggest Orthodox church in the world, visited the deserted mauseleum of the former dictator of the former Yugoslavia, and am now sipping ice coffee at the Plato Cafe.

Last night I went strolling along Skdarska, alledged heart of the Bohemian district of Belgrade, but in reality just a row of romantic restaurants with gypsy bands. When I asked for a table, the waiter said, Really? A table just for one? Which made me feel kind of lonely. Kind of really lonely. So I left. All the way to the take-out pancake stand I brooded about how hard it is to meet people here. Then I met the pancake guy, Bane. We hung out for five hours. This was really good, because it made me remember why I like traveling alone. When you're traveling with other people you rarely meet the pancake guy.

Bane is originally from Bosnia; his mom lives in Toronto, his brother is not really his brother, and further questions were met with the response It's a long story. A lot of people here have long stories.

hubris

Sometimes, if you have walked around for several hours in the pounding sun and have at last taken a seat in a comfy chair at an outdoor cafe, when your drink arrives you think: Yes! I have found the perfect spot and ordered the perfect drink, an ice coffee with whipped cream and sprinkles and a cookie and a tiny gold tassel.

And then, overcome with your own triumph, you knock back the large shot glass of clear liquid that accompanied your drink, and you realize, all in that instant, that Belgrade cafes are not like Budapest cafes, which always provide a small ration of water with coffee, but instead are like Belgian cafes, which always provide a small ration of liquid sugar.

speechless

Are there words for how I love the Hotel Royal?

Are there words for how, after a long walk to the bus station in Szegev, and a two hour bus ride across the border into Subotica, and a long walk still with pack into the city center for an ATM dispensing appropriate currency, and a long walk back to the bus station during which 7000 Dinars of said currency disappeared from my pocket, and a three hour bus ride to Belgrade, and a one hour wait for tram number two, I love the Hotel Royal?

Are there words for how I love its giant protruding Latin-lettered sign visible from several blocks away? For how I love its English-speaking staff and its functioning internet reservation system? For how I love its 24 hour bar, its working elevator, its included breakfast?

For how I love my tiny white-walled red-carpeted room with its little shower and little TV and crookedly hanging Cezanne-like landscape painting, itemized on the room inventory as "1 art painting"?

There are not words.

15 july 2005

The Hungarian exit stamp is standard for the EU: blue and clear with the tiny circle of European Community stars next to a tiny icon for the relevant means of transportation. Twenty meters away on the ground and two centimeters away on the passport, the Serbian entry stamp is black and the writing is Cyrillic. While the language of Serbia is essentially the same as that of Croatia - both brought from what became Poland by the South Slavs around 600 AD - the conquests of Charlemagne in 800, and the Latin alphabet that came with them, never made it to Serbia. During the long brutal fall of Yugoslavia, embracing the Cyrillic alphabet was one way of asserting Serb nationalism. So now Serbian street signs, shop windows and news dailies are a mix of both, with various political, historical, and social connotations.

Today I sang myself a new song. (The ongoing monologue in my head when I am traveling alone often comes in song form, so I don't get tired of myself.) My new song went something like this: "Jenn, Jenn, Jenn, Jenn, holy shit! You are in Serbia. What are you doing in Serbia?"

13 july 2005

The buildings in Budapest are Moorish rather than pastel-colored like those in Prague, with reds, oranges and yellows that call to mind the Mediterranean rather than Easter candy.

The Danube in Budapest is wider and milkier than the Vlatava in Prague, and the bridges that span it have four lanes of traffic or six instead of two or none. The Danube is channelized for its whole journey through the city, hemmed in by stone and concrete stairways that set it apart from the ribbons of highway on both sides. The Vlatava has cafes on its banks.

I'm standing on a long white bridge over the Danube right now, watching and feeling a storm blowing in from the east. Behind me the sky is blue but ahead it is gray, and the gray is gradually swallowing the mountains in the distance and then it will swallow the castles on the hills of Buda and then it will swallow the apartments and the tourboats and the unfortunate Marriott of Pest, but I'm not going to stick around for that. Already the wind is blowing my pages and the drops are smearing my words.

11 july 2005

I had a plan for today but in the end I just flitted around magpie -like whenever I saw something fancy down the street.

First it was the Basilica of St. Stephen, named after the saint whose right hand is alledgedly contained in an ornate gilded glass box in the chapel. According to the plaque: His right hand found intact has been highly esteemed by the nation ever since.

I took a funicular up to Varhegy, Castle Hill, where a collection of castley things overlooks the city. Then I hopped a metro to Varosliget city park, where I found the sad news that an obscure museum I had much anticipated visiting - the agriculture museum, with exhibits on such lively topics as sheep breeding and Hungarian viticulture - is closed on Mondays. Just about then it started to pour, so I took shelter in the nearest attraction: Sazecheny Furdo, a Hungarian bath house.

Being slightly hard to find, the bath house had hundreds of Hungarians and only a few dozen tourists. Housed in a rectangular palace with a huge courtyrd in the middle, the baths comprised room after room of pools in different shapes, sizes, and temperatures: small steamy marble basins, jacuzzi-like tubs with ice cold water, whirlpools the size of tennis courts, and hot to unbearably hot saunas that smelled of eucalyptus or cedar. Each room had unmarked doors into other rooms, so the whole experience was a scavenger hunt for new forms of aquatic fun.

Just when I thought I had explored every passage - after two hours - I went down a flight of stairs in the back of a shower room and found myself in the courtyard, which had three enourmous pool-like fountains: one for lap swimming, one with cool water that swirled around and bubbled up, and one with steaming hot water that shot in massaging jets from a central sculpture.

Bathing was a very social affair: people of all ages were talking, playing, even holding chess matches in the water. Lots of couples, multi-generational families, groups of teens. Bathing together. In a palace.

From the outdoor steam pool I watched a thunderstorm roll in.

10 july 2005

Somehow I am in Budapest.

It was a long train ride from Brno, the southern Czech town where I stopped mostly to see the abbey where Gregor Mendel did his genetics experiments with peas. During communist rule the legacy of Mendel was swept under the rug because he was religious - which didn't go over well with the communists - and his genetic theories did not explicitly support the communist ideals, as those of Soviet scientists did. Now, however, there is a fabulous little museum dedicated to his work and the future of genetics.

In the train I sat across from a sweet Slovakian girl named Bogci. We chatted and I accepted a cigarette she offered, not because I like smoking in the middle of the day but because it felt so illicit to smoke in a train car. I tried to ask about Slovakian politics but it didn't go well.

At eight we pulled into Budapest and all the ATMs were broken and the bus ticket machine wouldn't take bills and I couldn't find the bus and when I found the bus and got off I couldn't find the hostel. But then I got a clean bed in a clean room and took the best shower ever.

I walked around Budapest, through the closed-up shopping streets and by the river, and I crossed the bridge and it was beautiful, castles and palaces and cathedrals all lit up on the banks of the Danube. I found an outdoor cafe and asked the one other person sitting alone if he would join me for a beer. His name was Colim, he's an electrical engineer of course, and he spoke in Dubliner speech so long and quick that it was like Trainspotting on fastforward.

Budapest.

9 july 2005

St. Thomas and the other four saints that loom large in the facade of St. Thomas's Cathedral are draped in fishnet, I guess to keep off the pigeons. It hangs all right where their stone robes billow, but it binds around their outstretched fingers and tangles in their spiky golden halos.

You can still see the expressions on their upturned faces through the wide black mesh, but the piety looks a bit more doubtful.

museum appendix

On panel 6b of the Conscripted to Work exhibit on the forced labor of Czech citizens by the Third Reich is an architectural axon drawing labled "Work and Disciplinary Camp, Plana and Luznici". It's not the kind of blueprint necessary for construction; rather it is a more artistic rendering in black ink and three shades of watercolor, the kind of illustrative image one makes to sell the future beauty of a proposed plan.

Someone made this plan, one person, probably an architect or a landscape architect like me, and I wonder if, when the pen was set down after inking in the compass rose, he or she felt that satisfaction of a job well done. It's a nice plan. The lines are square and the trees cast appropriately eliptical shadows and the legend is neatly lettered. The small rectangles of grass are stippled. Tiny watchtowers and floodlights evenly punctuate the perimeter fence. The red watercolor pigment of the roofs pools in the corners, popping the buildings right off the page.

What if this was the work you loved to do?
In Germany, in 1943?

8 july 2005

Today was gray and rainy, a perfect museum day, so I went to the Prague History Museum. I love museums that are forlorn, aloof, outdated, obscure, or otherwise uninviting to the general public. The Prague History Museum did not disappoint.

With its case after case of glassed-in relics accompanied by lengthy explanations in Czech, attendance was predictably low. Between the cashier, the coat clerk, the entrance guard, and the dispersed security, the staff to guest ratio was roughly 6:1. Fortunately a few arbitrary exhibits had been adopted in recent years with the public in mind: black and white photos of Prague in the 1950s, a chronicle of the 6-day Czech resistance uprising at the end of WWII, and a meticulous 3D model of the city, barely visible in the room kept dark for its preservation.

I tried to go to the Muchovo Museum as well, but the cashier was so mean to me that I left. I try to keep in mind that if I had lived through Stalinism I might not be brimming with pleasantries either.

Instead I found Anagram Books, the kind of book shop I would spend all afternoon in back home, with an excellent collection of regional authors and works. I sat out the rainy afternoon in a coffeeshop, reading, writing, and nursing a single, tasty, overpriced latte.

Now I am doing the same, in a different cafe, with a beer and my uplifting new book The Fall of Yugoslavia.

Central Prague at nite is filled with tourists: couples leanining into each other, young partying mobs from the UK, big families from Spain and Japan. I don't really want to meet any of them so I've just been observing. They take alot of predictable photos, crowd noisy ugly bars, and wander in and out of souvenir shops selling scarves and glass and t-shirts that say Czech Me Out. I realize that this is not really Prague, that real Prague is outside this appropriated core, but the core also happens to be the old part, the part with the cobbled streets and windy alleys and startlingly ornate buildings. So for now, for three days, Im just being a tourist.

dear universe

once in a methodist church auditorium i saw a folk singer from northern minnesota; before one song she told a story about her heart and how she woke up one morning and realized she was ready and put a call out to the universe to find the right guy. and i thought, well that’s something, but you still live in northern minnesota, you write songs in your basement and tour with a dyke. and i believe in the universe but i also believe there are places in that universe like the still spots in rivers and if you put yourself in one it’s harder to move. for example, hypothetically, if you live in new york city, it’s harder for the universe to bring you a boy with a tent and a full-blown appreciation of the absurd.

once on a particularly good episode of this american life the narrator said: really, how many human stories are there? and i knew there was this one, the one where the girl realizes that when it turns out to be the boy next door all along it’s a mistake, unless the girl forgets why she moved out in the first place.

so here i am universe, the one with the green backpack, the one dancing a little bit in the bus station, the one with no complaints whatsoever if things continue exactly as they are. but if there happens to be someone out there who happens to be curious about what it means to be in bosnia, someone who reads and sings and laughs a lot, someone who has realized that bravery can be bluffed, then for the record i’ll be in dubrovnic, and i have extra cookies, and i’m flexible about what’s next.

7 july 2005

Prague is so beautiful that when I finally got to the main square after navigating the train station and finding a hostel and locking up my bag, when I finally looked up, I nearly cried.

And now the next day Im sitting on a bench looking across the river at a lit-up castle while group after group of touists poses in front of me for photos.

I am alone in the Czech Republic.

Talley got on a train for Paris this evening and I went to see Laterna Magika, a black light / ballet / video performance piece. With clowns. Talley and I had a great time traveling together but the timing was just right -- she was ready to go home and I was ready to not go into any more shoe stores. Also she doesnt like to get lost, and I dont like to eat in restaurants.

Now I feel that possibility of being in the middle of somewhere with a few weeks and only the most negotiable semblance of a plan. I also feel shy, which better go away soon.

(About 30 seconds after I wrote that I was eavesdropping on a conversation between an Aussie and his mum, and it was funny so I laughed, and when she left he called me on it and we chatted and hes a civil engineer of course, because at least half the people that randomly enter my life are engineers because apparently they somehow sense that I will really want to hear about the British highway system, etc, and then he left. This will all be just fine.)

6 july 2005

Im sitting across from Talley in a six-seat coach of a train heading east; the German couple sharing our car is reading and Talley is adjusting her cd player and I am sipping a tall brown bottle of Heffeweisen and staring absently at Isabel Allende.

Talley and I met up as planned and found the apartment of Dorte, a German woman I met online. Dorte and her boyfriend Frank took us to dinner at a cozy warm cafe nearby with a whole menu of pfiferlingen, the chantarelles now in season.

Dorte had a busy weekend planned so she left us keys to her place and a big city map. Traveling gives me hope in people.

Sunday morning our plans to visit the Chocolate Museum were abandoned when we walked into the middle of Colognes gay pride parade. For the next few hours we ate street food and danced to ABBA and Queen.

Monday morning we decided to head to Landscapepark Duisburg Noord, an immense smelting-plant-turned-public-recreation-area that gets landscape architect dorks like ourselves all flustered with excitement. Our breakfast with Dorte, however, stretched into an extended Q-n-A session about German politics and culture, so what was left of the afternoon we spent book shopping and sitting in a coffee shop where I outlined the next four weeks of my trip.

Out: Slovenia, which it turns out is really just like Austria despite the American tendency to lump it in with Eastern Europe since its name vaguely resembles Slovakia.

In: Bosnia and Heryegovina, Serbia, maybe Montenegro.

So. Today we finally got to Duisburg and the park, a wonder of towering climbable metalworks and concrete bunker gardens. Hooray.

We then realized that this park, in fact, was so cool that it was maybe the only thing we really wanted to see in Germany. So tonight at 10:39 we got on a train to Prague.

2 july 2005

According to the LED display at the front of my train car, I am heading towards Koln - Cologne - at 167 kilometers an hour. I didnt think Id make it onto this train at all when i arrived at the station 20 minutes before departure to find the ticketing lounge packed with people, but the Dutch railways take-a-number szstem awards special priority numbers to unprepared last-minute travelers like myself. I was in and out in 5 minutes, got a sandwhich, got onboard.

I didnt sleep much last nite so Im tired and a little empty-feeling.

With any luck I will meet up with Talley in a few hours on the steps of Colognes twin-spired Gothic cathedral.