I took this photo as we left our first port city of Oltenita while sitting on the deck of the Avalon Passion.

We cruised through the Balkans on this journey. But—what are the Balkans?

The Balkans are a peninsula in southeastern Europe, known as the Balkan Peninsula, but they are also a word used to describe a number of diverse countries and cultures that are found in that region.

There are various definitions for it. Here is one that I found as a result of an AI search I made. I did not know I was making an AI search but that is what the message I received indicated. So, I will believe it.  That definition is based on bodies of water. Here it is: “It is bordered by the Adriatic Sea to the northwest, the Ionian and Aegean Seas to the southwest and south, and the Black Sea and Turkish straits to the east.”

If your geography, like mine is not really up to snuff, then you can say this about the Balkans (again according to that AI search):

“Geographically, it’s defined by rugged mountain ranges and is surrounded by the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas, though the exact borders can vary. Historically, the region has a complex and turbulent past, shaped by centuries of Ottoman rule, and today includes countries like Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia, though the inclusion of some countries is debated.  I thought Hungary was included, but that might be a bit beyond the boundaries.  I want to include it because we will be going to Hungary, so I will include it. That means that all the countries we will be visiting are part of the Balkans.”

Here is what I really know. First and foremost, the people are incredibly interesting. There is nothing boring about the Balkans. Remember the word above that you might have missed— “turbulent.” Politics here is never boring. Some people refer to the Balkan as the place where wars are born. Most famously, the match that lit World War 1 occurred when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand occurred in part of the Balkans, namely, Sarajevo in 1914.  Sarajevo was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was formed after World War I, in 1918, although the region of Bosnia and Herzegovina was later a part of the country before becoming independent in 1992.

Secondly, the Balkans have been the plaything of greater powers.  Our Romanian guide Vio, grumbled that Romania, one of those countries had been enslaved by Greeks, Turks, Austro-Hungarians, Germans and most recently, Russians. He openly wondered who would be next in line, as he saw signs of a crumbling country. It seemed obvious to him that Romania would be enslaved again.

And great powers rarely care much about lesser powers. Except of course when they want to exploit them. It was actually a ridiculous event that should never have happened. No one really cared about that assassination. Yet the various countries of Europe set about a brutal long-lasting war after many years of preparation for war by all of the countries involved. The countries were all European countries seeking to enhance or start up their empires. There was no reason for the war and it served no military purpose. Amazingly however, in a number of European countries the young men in particular, and even older men goading on the younger men, were all wildly overjoyed at the fact that war had been declared. Many felt it was a chance for young men to obtain glory. In other words, the war was categorically stupid, and happened in part just because the flash that started the war did so in the Balkans. I first heard of this phenomenon from reading the autobiography of Bertrand Russell. He was a young man when World War I was declared in 1914 and saw the young men of England in Trafalgar Square ecstatic at the prospect of war.

And that could happen again. The Balkans are a perennial hot spot. Maybe this is where the next world war will ignite. Just before we got here a Russian drone, mistakenly they said, flew over Romania.

This ship name with the name Mariupol painted on it reminded me of how close we were to the latest war in Europe, the largest since World War II, the War in Ukraine.  There occurred  absolute slaughter by the Russians in Mariupol.