The Blue Vet Diary

 

I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, when at our local church, which was a converted farmhouse with a thatched roof in the North of Germany, the villagers had been invited to an unusual spectacle:

a member of the parish had travelled to Brazil and had come back with a Super 8 footage of this journey. The flickering film included images of Brasilia, the then still very new capital of this so distant and exotic country.

The images I saw, could have featured in an episode of Star Track, so outlandish appeared the architecture of the buildings of this city in the tropics to me. In the world I grew up in, most houses had a pitched roof and were made out of red bricks or were, if they had survived the war, even timber framed. And yes, since the nearby naval port of Kiel had been mostly flattened by British and American bombing raids, most of the post-war office and retail buildings had come directly out of the textbook of the Bauhaus, as the objective had been to build fast, efficient, and ideally at low cost.

However, the buildings in Brasilia were just on a different level. Here functional architecture had been combined with impossibly light, organic structures that were supporting the over hanging roofs. Waterfalls were coming from somewhere inside the buildings and were feeding into moats filled with colourful fish and a large square leading up to these buildings was decorated with equally beautiful, abstract sculptures.

What grew inside me on that day, was the desire to – at some point in the future – visit this place and to see these unbelievable buildings with my own eyes…..

What I didn’t know at the time, was that most of these buildings came from the drawing board of one and the same man, who is widely considered the most outstanding architect of the 20^th century: Oscar Niemeyer.

Niemeyer, despite his Germanic surname, was a Brazilian native, a lifelong communist and strongly influenced by the work of Le Corbusier.  Without doubt, Dessau and the Bauhaus movement must have played its role in Niemeyer’s development, but at some point he had started to go his own way, and he despised famous peers like Walter Gropius for their all too commercial approach to architecture and for their inability to take into consideration the geographical aspects of their projects.

For Niemeyer, Bauhaus was just too far removed from organic lines.

When Juscelino Kubitschek became president of Brazil in 1956, he started immediately to implement the by then already long-established idea, to move Brazil’s capital away from the coast and into the center of the country.

The ground breaking urban plan for this project, submitted by Lúcio Costa, had the shape of a plane, a bird in flight or a bow and arrow, that were hugging the western shore of a lake on the central highland. Part of Costa’s team was Oscar Niemeyer, who had received a lot of praise for – among others – his involvement in the designs of the building of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro and of the building of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. For Brasilia, Niemeyer was tasked with the designs of all the major government buildings.

My first encounter with Niemeyer’s work was not in Brazil’s capital, but just outside of Rio, when I visited the Museum of Modern Art in Niterói. While this is a later work of Niemeyer, it didn’t disappoint with its originality.

Resembling something like a flying saucer with a long, trailing, red and white scarf, perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking Guanabara Bay and beyond that, Rio de Janeiro and Sugarloaf mountain, this building is more than just a museum, it is a design statement.

The windows on the first floor offer a 360-degree view, while the exhibition space, mostly sheltered from the daylight, is kept in the center of the construction. Standing on a single, slim column in a pool of water, which reflects the sunlight on to the underside of the building, the whole structure appears to float in mid air.  

In addition, the museum features an upmarket restaurant in its basement, where the eyes of the guests are kept just above the ground level, so that every little detail and every small reptile or bird on the lawn outside the windows can be viewed, combined with the city on the other side of the bay.

A few days later I arrived in Brasilia, and as it was already night by then, the only Niemeyer structure located near my hotel was the TV tower, which, illuminated in lavender indigo, appeared to levitate in mid-air, as the lights on the supporting columns had intentionally been turned off. Sadly, I had to leave it by this first impression, as a nocturnal stroll along the mostly deserted streets towards the government buildings had come with a serious health warning… 

Getting up early the following day, a short taxi ride delivered me to the entrance of the Metropolitan Cathedral and by this to the starting point of this so long scheduled visit.

A circular structure of colourful glass and white reinforced concrete, this building looked nothing like a church, but more like a glass bowl for sweets one might have found on a nineteen sixties urban dinner table. Even the bell tower had been kept quite a distance away from the building and faintly resembled an oversized fork or a candle holder.

The inside of the cathedral was bright, with the glass of the roof kept in white and in different shades of blue and green. Suspended from the ceiling were a couple of angels.

The only feature that could have reminded an unprepared visitor of a traditional clerical building, was an abandoned wooden cross placed a bit out of sight against the wall. There was nothing here that produced the sometimes dreary, depressing, self flagellating, dark and guilt-ridden atmosphere of a traditional church. No crucifixion, no martyrdom of saints and no graphic portrayal of the final judgement.  

Well, I thought, that is what you get, when you ask a communist to design a church….

Next to the cathedral, slightly uphill, were the National Museum and the National Library.

The first one, again a domed structure, reminded me of an Igloo with a near impossibly suspended gangway circling a fair part of the museum. Without doubt this feature must have given the structural engineers a few sleepless nights.

The nearby library looked far more like a plain office building, if there wouldn’t have been the delicate rounded supporting arches at the first-floor level, that made all the difference and that aligned this building with some of the central government buildings further down the road.

Walking now along the “monumental axis”, the central highway towards the main state buildings, one had to pass a double row of plain and functional office buildings that housed most of the individual government departments.

At the end of these columns of administrative buildings, followed the more upmarket Palacio Itamaraty, which housed the Department of Foreign Affairs and on the contralateral side of the axis, the Department of Justice. Both of these buildings were surrounded by water and were accessorised with abstract sculptures. The Palacio da Justiça featured the above mentioned waterfalls. A white circular sculpture in-front of the Foreign Office, was by Bruno Giorgi, symbolising the five continents.

These buildings were the entrance to the center of Costa’s urban plan, to the head of the arrow, to the cockpit of the plane – the Square of the Three Powers, the Praça dos Três Poderes, featuring most of the buildings that had impressed me so much, many years ago.

While dominated by the tall twin towers of the National Congress building on the west side of the square, which was facing on the other side of the square a giant flag pole (which was added later, under Niemeyer’s protest….) and a much smaller, more delicate building, that symbolised a dove and remembered a list of National heroes in a book of steel,

the real architectural stars were without doubt the Federal Court building on the southern side

and the stunning Palacio do Planalto, which housed the Presidential Offices, on the northern side.

This building in particular, with its huge marble ramp and the large overhanging roof, supported by gently curved and yet very pointed columns, was quite rightly considered one of Niemeyer’s master pieces.

      

The distance between all these buildings was covering the best part of two kilometres, and with the mid-day heat now transforming the square into a frying pan, there was some much needed shelter provided in a small café on the eastern side of the square.

This stylish place – of course also designed by Niemeyer – was a partially subterraneous structure, which kept once again the eyes of the guests, once seated, at a level with the surface of the square, a detail that was later repeated in Niterói.

While recovering with a cold drink, it became clear to me that all the other famous buildings had to be explored with the help of a taxi. The equally stunning Palacio da Alvorado, the presidential residence, which features similar columns as the Palacio do Planalto, the pyramid-shaped National Theatre building, the National Football Stadium with its exoskeleton of seemingly a thousand columns, the dome shaped giant food hall next to it or finally, at the tail end of the Axis, the  JK Memorial and the Memorial dos Povos Indigenas – all of them outstanding architectural statements and each of these buildings worthy of a chapter of their own.

At the end of the day, I was exhausted, but unexpectedly well hydrated because of the half litres of freshly squeezed strawberry juice, which cost the equivalent of 50 pence (I think I enjoyed three of them…) at the restaurant inside the JK Memorial.

Walking up the hill from the Congress building towards the Department of Justice, I noticed a man with a large cowboy hat, who had befriended a small white heron.

For some reason, this looked out of place….

Here was an interaction between an animal and a human being that hadn’t been planned, that wasn’t part of the design, that distracted from the grandeur of all the monumental, once groundbreaking structures and from the system of highways around us.

And with this, the giant floor of places like Brasilia became apparent.

Cities that have not grown, but that have been conceived in an urban planning office, based on plans that then had been dictated by an autocratic ruler or – as in this case – that had been agreed on by a committee of a few men (and often no women…) and that finally were build as a giant national project, usually fail to make the people happy, who have to live in them.

While Dubai might have an appealing warm climate and might be a great place for shopping, while Milton Keynes might offer great work opportunities and affordable housing and while Songdo might offer a Free Economic Sone, Satellite Campuses of renowned foreign universities and an excellent road infrastructure, no one is drawn to these places because of their beauty, of their appeal as a place just to live there. No one, unless forced by financial or by other constraints, would seriously choose to retire in these places.

There is a good reason why cities like Barcelona, like Istanbul or London are continuing to grow, despite the poor infrastructure, the strained health services and the social economic problems they might have. It is because they have a soul, they have a history, because they have a personality that has grown over hundreds if not thousands of years and that have stood the test of time.

Brasilia, with its astonishing, monumental buildings, which quite rightly deserves its World Heritage site status, is like a carefully arranged dish without taste, like a Burgundy wine with a deep red hue, yet without flavour, body and finish. It is like a beautiful person, but without wit, charm or character, completely devoid of personality.

There was a good reason why Niemeyer, while enjoying the time during the construction of all of these buildings in Brasilia, eventually decided to spend the final days of his long life in a flat on the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.

Strolling back from dinner at the restaurant at the base of the TV tower, I walked straight into a gathering of tuned cars.

All lowriders on steroids, that had a ground clearance of not more than 10 centimeters, their bodies polished to a lustrous shine and the interior of all of them packed with obscene numbers of loudspeakers and LEDs, which probably required a second alternator to provide them with the necessary power.

While the TV tower made a perfect backdrop for this rally, I considered it to be a very fitting end to my stay: Brasilia, I found, is probably more a city for cars than for people and it is unlikely that I will make again a detour for a visit.

 

It had been impossible to find some sleep…

It was 4 o’clock in the morning, the power cut had started 6 hours earlier and it was 32 degrees in a room with next to no ventilation.

It was then, when a group of howler monkeys were starting with their morning concert in the wildlife camp I was staying at in the end of September. What sounded as if someone had started to deploy an industrial cleaning device in the adjacent bathroom, originated from the top of the trees above my cabin. All hope for at mere hour of sleep before sunrise was finally dashed….

Following my visit to the World Small Animal Veterinary Association Congress in Rio, I had travelled to Cuiaba, a Brazilian city not far from the border to Bolivia and Paraguay, that is a gateway to both the Amazonas region to the north and the Pantanal to the south.

The Pantanal is a godforsaken giant swamp area, that is for most of the year waterlogged with impassable roads. It is mosquito and caiman infested and altogether an undesirable place for both human settlements or for any sort of farming.

With the exception of some gold prospecting over the last few years, which had left the affected areas with giant craters, mountains of discarded soil and with a few untarmacked roads, the environment and the wildlife here had been left mostly untouched, with the result that the Pantanal had established itself as a Mecca for wildlife watching like no other place in Latin America.

This is particularly true for the Jaguar and it was not difficult to see that a whole industry had evolve around it.

This elusive, third largest wild feline predator, which in the rest of South America is considered to be extremely rare, is thriving here and occurs in large numbers. This is of no great surprise, as for a big cat that loves to swim, that can of course climb any tree and that feeds not only of deer and capybaras, but also of caimans, fish and any waterfowl it can get hold of, in the Northern Pantanal the table is always abundantly stocked.

At first daylight, I crossed the yard when I was greeted by a young Capuchin monkey that was rummaging around in one of the palm trees for its breakfast.

The monkeys, together with the resident caracaras, colourful birds of prey that were patrolling the premisses like a flog of chickens,

had already tidied away any scraps of food or faintly edible waste that might have been dropped or forgotten outside the previous night.

High up on a tree branch, a pair of rare Hyacinth Macaws were busy grooming each other and screeching from time to time in response to the activities on the ground below.

Joāo, our guide, was mortified – it would have been his job to start the emergency generator when the power had cut out, but by being more adapted to the heat, he had not noticed it and had slept right through it.

Well, a lack of sleep was nothing that a strong cup of coffee couldn’t fix….

When a short while later we turned up at the small beach of Port Jofrey, a place of not more than three brick buildings, a small cluster of house boats and a short, bumpy landing strip for brave pilots and small planes, Markus, the captain of our aluminium bottomed speed boat, was already waiting for us.

The local river and its contributories were the real transport links in this part of the world and most of the wildlife, similar to deer peacefully grazing next to a busy motorway, had adapted to the activities on the water. Little to no hunting was happening here, only with the exception of the occasional deer or capybara taken by one of the local residents, so that most animals continued with whatever they were doing, completely unaffected by any observer or passing vessel.

By pure coincidence, it turned out that the timing of my congress had coincided with the end of the dry season in the Pantanal. This meant that most of the wildlife was more concentrated on the remaining pools of water and on the river sides, which made wildlife watching so much easier.

This window of opportunity would only last for a few weeks, until the rain and huge amounts of flood water from the Brazilian Central Plateau were due to arrive.

Natale, our friendly and always helpful driver had explained that during that time the roads, that were bone dry sand tracks at the moment, would be impassable and the wildlife camp would have to shut down for several months. Using the road on a daily basis, he had been caught out a few times by unseasonably early downpours a few times and had experienced the effects the hard way.

With the help of a a powerful outboard engine, our boat had made fast progress and we soon found ourselves in a more remote part of the reserve. With me on the boat were Eva Lau and Qi Shuai, a couple from South China, that were using all of their five days annual leave on this excursion. They had arrived far more prepared with professional looking Nikons, fitted with powerful tele-lenses. Their gear enabled them to capture even the finest details of the smallest birds and reptiles over a long distance.

Luckily, they were more than happy to share a few of their images, so that I could relax with my far more inferior smart phone camera set up, sticking to larger objects and to the scenery around us.

After passing a few groups of capybaras on the river bank, we didn’t have to wait long until we spotted the undisputed rulers of this half submerged world – a couple of jaguars, in fact a female with her nearly grown up cup, which were just emerging out of the water and then disappearing into the lush vegetation near our boat. Despite a cataract in one eye, the mother was still an excellent hunter and she was seen later that day catching one of the at this time of the year numerous caimans.

The next jaguar we saw was less camera shy, sunbathing on one of the small sand beaches that could be found alongside the river, which were normally populated by groups of capybaras. The automated shutter mechanisms of the cameras next to me went wild…..

Less than an hour later, when it was starting to get progressively hot, we spotted another jaguar resting underneath a tree and shortly after that another two swimming across the river ….

That was when the Tiramisu effect hit – there can be too much of a good thing….

Like having the famous Italian dessert for breakfast, lunch, afternoon coffee and for dinner, you eventually will get tired of it. It was, what happened to us.

 The cameras clicked less frequently, less dramatic or partially obscured shots were no longer taken and the initial excitement of a sighting was replaced by just respectful admiration.

When we ventured out for a second excursion in the afternoon, the jaguar, from having been the main attraction, had now been relegated to the ranks of an average member of the cast and we were elated by the first sightings of a group of giant otters, a toucan on a tree branch, a nesting giant owl or of the first tapirs.

Smaller birds, rare herons and feeding caimans, even Taruma trees in full bloom and individual smaller plants were now recognised and only then, real appreciation for this unique part of the Globe was allowed to emerge…

 

The early September sun is about to climb above the roof of a conference centre in the middle of Antwerp, that can claim to feature a “Room with a Zoo” as well as a meeting room guarded by the life-sized model of a Central African Okapi.

The first rays of direct sun light are starting to warm the pavement at Koningin Astridplein, the busy square in front of the venue, for another day of comings and goings, meetings and partings, arrivals and departures.

At the congress I am due to meet friends and colleagues, all likeminded veterinarians from all over Europe, who have descended on the city of diamonds to renew and to extend their knowledge and their skills to improve the treatment and care of their patients, where ever on the continent they require veterinary attention.

But yet there is time….

Time before the first lecture for a coffee and for some Belgian pastry for which there seems to be no better place than at the Mocambo Cafe, a small joint on the western fringe of the square, just a stone throw away from my apartment.

Antwerp, like Brussels, strikes me as a place of many contrasts, but I am a patient, at times surprised and at other times a somewhat puzzled observer.

While staying at probably the most central place in town, right above a row of jewellery shops packed with precious splinters of translucent carbon, that can cost the multiple of a man’s monthly or even annual salary, I have to step at night when the shutters are down and the outlets are closed, over the bodies of homeless rough sleepers, to get to my dwelling that is secured with a couple of solid steel doors.

Settling at a small table outside of the coffee shop, I am turning into a member of the audience, seated in the front row of another daily performance at the theatre of life on Koningin Astridplein.

The hissing sound of the espresso machine, the clinging of cups and saucers and the clattering of the cutlery is blended with the cacophony of conversations and the shouting in multiple languages, underlined with the sirens of an ambulance, the ringing of bicycle bells and the hooting of cars. A child is crying because it was woken up too early, a couple is arguing because they are about to miss their train, and a police whistle fails to stop a car that is driving in the wrong direction.

The smell of coffee and warm pastry is interlaced with that of an expensive perfume of a passing business women, with the faint stench of urine from the nearby doorway that had to substitute as a lavatory for a drunken dweller the previous night, with the oriental spices of the Arabic restaurant next door,  with the odour of some bags of rubbish that should have been cleared away already a couple of days ago, as well as with the smoke of a just lit cigarette on the table next to me.

The square in front of me is a rich palette of delivery drivers on colourful electrical bikes, of vailed women, next to bare bellied young girls and heavily tattooed men with professionally trimmed beards. Ray Bans on heads with dyed hair, air pads and high end headsets, bicycle helmets, gold jewellery and stainless-steel piercings are accessorised by brightly coloured scarfs, expensive handbags and urban bagpacks.

A tourist appears to be lost next to the bronze statue of a naked child sitting on the base of one of the two elaborately decorated lamp posts in the middle of the square, a couple is hugging and kissing not far from a long row of rental scooters, an old lady is walking her equally aged and clearly overfed toy dog and a delivery driver and a shop keeper are engaged into a heated argument, all under the watchful eyes of a young boy riding on a camel that is precariously balancing on a pedestal high above the roof tops.

   

 And yet, Koningin Astridplein is just the fore court, just the prelude to the main act, to the central character in this play:

A cathedral, fit for a king (and commissioned by one), but dedicated to Mercury, to Hermes, to Saint Christopher or even to Ganesh, the gods and patron saints of travel, of timetables, of restlessness and of transience. In its nave populated by creatures fed with coal, diesel or high voltage, that were once just arriving and departing here, but that are now running right through it.

There is an entrance hall that appears to have integrated the fronts of palatial houses as its walls. Crowned by a sky-scraping, domed roof that would be the envy of any clerical building, it is currently been used as a concert hall. The not ordinary, but ‘royal’ railway café, might still serve coffee but has the appearance of a 19^th century ballroom.

Dorian marble columns and in the main hall of the railway station, a huge freely suspended roof of glass and steel and delicate ornaments along the walls, elevate the transient traveller here to fleeting royalty and transform the food vendors, the waiters in the cafes and the ticket sellers to their willing courtiers.

Ruling this never ceasing cortege with an iron fist, are golden rimmed clocks, high up on the ceilings of all of these rooms. Without mercy the seconds on the clocks are ticking away and when the hour is struck, even the longest cup of coffee has to find its end…

 

The last bar had just closed and with the streets now deserted, I took a stroll through a world that had disappeared over a hundred years ago, in a place that was so charming and peaceful, that it provided the canvas for one of history’s most chilling narratives…..

I was in Sighisoara, one of a ring of seven fortified medieval towns in the lush hills of Transylvania, in the heart of Romania. Sighisoara and neighbouring towns like Sibiu and Braşov are unusual, because they were part of a network of German speaking settlements of Transylvanian Saxons, deep in the East of Europe, that were frequently attacked and often raided and from time to time ruled by Tartars or Ottoman invaders. As a consequence of centuries of geographic isolation, these communities developed their very own customs and traditions, which might have appeared to a visitor from the other side of the Continent as more quintessential German than Germany itself.

In addition to this, due to a combination of local autonomy and a lack of funding during the communist time, the local buildings and infrastructure enjoyed a period of fairytale sleep, where most of the historic Saxon dwellings were neglected, but remained untouched and were thankfully not replaced by the functional but characterless architecture of that time.

As a result of this, I found myself standing on a dimly lit cobblestone street in a German town, somewhere in the middle of the 19^th century….

On the street corners were German street names in Gothic script, the town was surrounded by medieval gate towers  that were assigned to individual guilds and an impressive clock tower with an elaborate pattern of roof tiles and fitted with multiple spires was next to a town square where every house was carrying a reference to a Saxon name.

This cocktail of German and Balkan trades and traditions, combined with the questionable heritage of being the birthplace of one of medieval’s most vile war lords – Vlad “The Impaler”, better known as Count Dracula – must have felt so utterly alien to an Irish novelist and to his readers living thousands of miles away on the other end of the continent at the outgoing 19^th century, that it became the opening scene of a narrative that, together with Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Victor Hugo’s  “Hunchback of Notre-Dame” enjoys a seemingly never ceasing popularity – even today.

Bram Stoker never visited Sighisoara, but the medieval streets, devoid of people in the middle of the night, the deserted covered staircase leading up to a gloomy church on a hill and to a graveyard filled with ancient Saxon tombstones, overgrown with moss and neglected for decades, with an evasive cat as the only living being in sight, would indeed have been an unsettling destination for a lonely visitor from London, not familiar with the language or with the local customs.

Stoker’s novel struck so many points of unease and preconception about this part of the world: languages no one understood or really couldn’t be bothered to learn, the mentalities of the Balkan that were so different from that of a privately educated Anglo-Irish university graduate of that time,  communities of people who lived isolated in a mountainous location, surrounded by forests that were the home of bears and wolfs, animals extinct on the British Isles for centuries and in addition to this the hidden threat of something unknown und unspeakable, that had the ability to strike a chord with the paranoia of the British soul like an epidemic of rabies.

For me, the flighty cat on the church yard remained my only encounter with a creature with prolonged canines that night, and returning to my car the next day, it became clear that these descendants of the infamous Count were even able to enjoy their well deserved rest in broad day light without vanishing into a cloud of smoke….

 

I realised that it had been a mistake to pass the last petrol station on the fertile plain near Sibiu, before starting the long ascend along the Transfăgărşan Road, which is crossing the Transylvanian mountain range from the North to the South. The forecasted 150 km of reach, the fuel gauge had indicated, had melted down to just 45 km, with the nearest petrol station on the other side of the pass still over 60 km away….

I had driven the whole day from a mountain camp in the North of the country near the border to Ukraine. The gathering  had been organised by Alex Bogdan Vitalaru and an enthusiastic group of Romanian veterinarians. For a whole weekend I had thoroughly enjoyed their company and particularly Alex’ guitar playing while sitting around a campfire. I was still humming to myself the melody of the song of Andrii Popa, Romania’s own version of Robin Hood, when suddenly a dark shadow appeared from the side of the road, trying to cross right in front of my car – a bear !

Not huge, but still probably 150 kg of fur and muscles, I certainly didn’t want to hit….

Thankfully, I had closed all the windows, and I considered myself lucky for not sitting on a motorbike or – even worse – on a bicycle.

The mountains of Transylvania have some of the highest density of brown bears and wolfs in the whole of Europe. Direct encounters with these large predators are becoming now more common and reports of even fatal attacks feature more frequently in the news.

After deciding that I, surrounded by a reassuringly thick layer of steel and glass, would be  “too much work” for a decent dinner, the bear crossed the road and disappeared back into the forest.

Only 40km of fuel left…..  

The road continued to climb and eventually I passed the tree-line. The vegetation was reduced to frost and wind resistant low growing shrubs and sharpe edged battle hardened grass, which only the toughest of ruminants were able to digest.

The temperature had dropped significantly and as the last daylight was fading, light rain was starting to fall.

Eventually I reached a poorly lit tunnel, just below the central ridge of the mountain, that was connecting the Northern to the Southern side of the massif.

Emerging from the other end of the tunnel, I finally parked the car and from here it was now just a short hike in total darkness to reach the small refuge.

Passing then the closer inspection of a guard dog, that was not much smaller than the bear I had just seen, I entered the battered cabin and found out that I was in luck after all: there was not only a spare bed for me in one of the dormitories,

there was even a cold beer and a hot soup waiting for me, before turning in for the night.

When I woke up the next morning, the clouds were hanging low over the mountains and it was still raining. While the hospitality at the hut had been great the previous night, it seemed to have run out of steam in the presence of early daylight. The fair this morning was some dry bread, an egg without salt and some plain cheese that had the texture of rubber, all washed down with some lukewarm instant coffee without milk. When I asked to get my thermos flask filled with some hot water and the manageress just took it to the kitchen sink turning on the warm water tap, I realised that it was time to leave….

Passing the now chained guard dog, which in day light looked much smaller than previous night, I ventured into the misty tundra landscape and found myself alone on a small path, while below me the road, filled with cars and motorbikes, meandered its way up the southern slope, with only individual rays of sunlight breaking through the thick cloud cover.

Being less than a mile away from the tunnel and the road, I was in complete peace and there was not a single sound around me. Next to the path I noticed beautiful blue aconites, that were frequented by industrious bees and more clumsily operating bumble bees.

I was just starting to enjoy the sensation of freedom and tranquillity, only the high mountains or the open Sea can give, when I noticed a movement next to a rock in front of me.

Rearing its head, completely covered in a thick coat of brown fur, moving the next moment at considerable speed straight towards me and coming to a halt just a few meters away, displaying a fine set of long and yellow front teeth…….was a…marmot…. that had clearly not been prepared for a visitor at this early hour…..

An earsplitting, high-pitched screech was to follow, before the large rodent disappeared into its nearby burrow.

Once I had rounded the side of the mountain, the path descended slightly into a small green valley, with a small stream running right through the middle of it. On the other side of the valley I first heard, then saw a large flog of sheep. The bleating of the livestock was occasionally augmented by the barking of a dog and I instantly knew that I had to give this seemingly peaceful setting a very wide berth.

The valley was eventually crossed without getting mauled, and then another mountainside had to be rounded before the final ascend was right ahead of me.

Now the path zick-zacked its way relentlessly up towards the ridge and to the only slightly higher summits of the Transylvanian mountain massif.

Finally I was standing next to a small lake – the sad remainder of another long disappeared glacier – and just a few meters away from it, was the destination of this solitary hike – the probably ugliest mountain shelters you will ever come across….

Something that resembled a crude hybrid of an oversized turquoise plastic dustpan and an illegally parked combine harvester with a large handle on it’s roof, had taken center stage on a small plateau.

One could only assume that numerous distinguished design prizes must have been won with this extraterrestrial looking object. 

Yet, the structure had an unlocked door and offered a place to rest after an eventful hike in Transylvania.     

 

Robert Popa was indignant when I entered his consulting room in Timisoara, in the most western corner of Romania, and the image I saw was just all too familiar to me:

Robert had just examined a one-year-old terrier with a non-weight bearing lameness that had for all of two weeks not responded to rest and oral pain killers.

Only reluctantly his owners had decided to seek a second opinion.

While already a limited clinical examination had been anything but encouraging, a set of radiographs had confirmed the diagnosis Robert had feared when his patient had limped through the door ….

Presenting a classic example of why it is important to take whenever possible two or more X-Rays of an area of concern, the first- cranio-caudal – film had implied a seemingly normal alignment of the bones, while the second film had unmistakably confirmed the presence of a distal diaphysial femur fracture.

Over the preceding two weeks, callus formation and muscle contracture had managed to immobilise the break somewhat, but one could just imagine, in how much pain this dog must have been.

What had frustrated Robert most was not only the time it had taken to get the condition diagnosed,  but the reluctance of the owners, who had arrived in a shiny new Bavarian SUV, to consent to the long overdue surgical management of this injury for the very reasonable fee of 400 Euros or the equivalent of a couple of tank fillings of their car….

“Ok, we will think about it…” was their – not very encouraging – reply, before leaving the clinic with their still half sedated canine companion……

While the cost of veterinary care is slowly catching up with other continental European countries, there are still many pet owners in Romania, that consider spending money on a dog or a cat as a superfluous expense.

Just an hour earlier I had arrived at the small airport of Timisoara, a city that had been completely off my radar, but a place I should have heard of, not at least because it was the first town in Europe that had a horse drawn tram (an excusable knowledge gap), the first place in continental Europe with electric street lights (less excusable…) and  the home of at least two Nobel laureates (inexcusable….) plus the birth place of Johnny Weismuller, the Olympic swimmer and world famous Tarzan actor (completely inexcusable….).

Here Oana and Robert Popa had designed and built their own functional and well-maintained veterinary clinic. Their team provided not only first opinion care, but the couple had also established a reputation as a referral center for more demanding cardiology, dermatology and orthopaedic cases.

While a standard consultation here had a comparably priced fee of 30 Euros, a cardiology referral appointment for 120 Euros appeared rather inexpensive to me.

Pet insurance cover and health plans remain virtually unheard of in Romania, and while telemedicine services are available, here in Timisoara, they did not seem to be used routinely by veterinary clients.

When a small dog with an acute onset of gastroenteritis entered as the next patient, I witnessed a familiar picture which  I had observed before in many other Eastern European countries: both the patient and the client were admitted to a dedicated room, where the owner had the opportunity or was expected to stay with their dog during the administration of i/v fluids. The introduction of the smart phone in combination with the availability of an excellent wifi connection had replaced in this situation the need to bring along a good book…..

The small and functional consulting rooms, equipped with foldable examination tables and the seamless, rounded connection of the flooring with the walls, were an indicator of how much thought had gone into the design of every little detail at this clinic.

While the vast majority of Romania’s veterinary practices – like Oana and Robert’s place in Timisoara – remain in private hands, the first national and international corporate groups have already started to take an interest into this fast-advancing, new veterinary market.  

The professional progress made in Romania can also be judged by the steadily increasing delegate numbers at the annual congress of AMVAC, the Romanian Small Animal Veterinary Association, which is held in the autumn in the city of Sinaia, in the center of the country. By now the congress has firmly established itself on the list of events of note on the international veterinary speakers’ circuit.

Looking at the clinic’s drug shelves, the in-house laboratory, the posters about the judicious use of antibiotics or at the screens of the fully computerised practice management system, that allowed a direct transfer of all digital imaging into the patient files, I could not see much difference to most UK veterinary clinics these days.

Somewhat unsettling I found a poster in one of the consulting rooms, displaying not less than nine different native species of snakes. However, following my comment on this, Robert assured me, that the poster had more to do with the interest of one of his colleagues in exotic animals and wildlife species, rather than with a heavy case load of snake bites, which in fact – at least in the region around Timisoara – he had not encountered in years.  

Once again it struck me, that Oana and Robert’s clinic in Timisoara were another testimony of the impact of the international exchange of knowledge and transfer of both clinical and management skills. Clearly a result of the important work of international veterinary organisations, exchange programmes and surely also of the uninhibited flow of information in a digital world.

While this stream of knowledge over the last decades has been running from the West to the East, it becomes progressively apparent, that the tide – not only in Timisoara – is rapidly turning.

 

“She’s got a smile that seems to me

Reminds me of childhood memories

Where everything was as fresh

As the bright blue sky

Now and then when I see her face

She takes me away to that special place

And if I stared too long,

I’d probably break down and cry….”

                                        (Sweet Child O’Mine, Guns N Roses)

 

It was 11 o’clock at night when Denis phoned and he was unapologetic:

“Listen man…. Laurent is coming and at the same weekend Guns N’ Roses are playing in Belgrade! So, no way that you can refuse that !…..”

He had a point …..

Denis Novak, one of the partners of the family owned Veterinary Clinic Novak – an institution not only in Serbia’s capital, but a place that over the years had been visited by all the Great and the Good in Companion Animal Veterinary Medicine, a disruptor and rethinker of veterinary continuing education on the Balkan and in many other Eastern European countries, a connoisseur of good rock music, addicted to dark fruit juices (preferably freshly squeezed blueberry juice) and authentic Italian pizzas (strictly limited to Margheritas), had – once again – an offer for me, that was impossible to resist.

Laurent Locquet, a fast rising star of veterinary cardiology, who, when not applying his trade at some of the UK’s finest veterinary referral clinics, can usually be found scanning the hearts of tigers, lions, chimpanzees and other more unusual creatures or designing smart phone applications to improve the cardiac care of both humans and animals, had – following some serious arm twisting by Denis – agreed to pass on some of his knowledge and skills of cardiac ultrasonography at Denis’ training facility near Belgrade. A free concert ticket had apparently been the ultimate argument….

Four weeks later, and I found myself together with Laurent and Denis right in the center of the crowd in-front of the stage at the Gun’s N Roses concert venue not far way from the Sava river…..

I have to admit, that I am not a great fan of large crowds, but once we had identified the place with the best acoustics, there wasn’t too much of a squeeze and fans who had travelled from around the world, were reassuringly polite and relaxed with each other.

Gun’s N Roses, like so many other groups that had come to fame and fortune at the end of the last century, were giving their career a final push this summer with another concert tour, possibly to show that they still “could do it !” and certainly to cash in ‘big time’ once again.

While some of these performances were of questionable merit and at some occasions provided extremely poor value for money, the same could not have been said for what Axl Rose and his band had install for us over the following three hours of non-stop performance…

40 years of repertoire were rolled out to an enthusiastic crowd, below a cloudless night sky. People of all ages were dancing to ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, ‘Paradise City’, ‘Patience’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ or to a few solo guitar performances by Slash or Duff McKagan.

This was rock music at its finest and some decades old T-shirts worn by die hard enthusiasts vouched for a lifelong love affair.

Axl Rose was drenched in sweat after the first hour. Slash’s guitars were exchanged faster than you could down a can of lager.

During the guitar intro of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, the combined amplification of well beyond 100 000 watts appeared to make the loudspeakers glow red hot, putting a real strain on Belgrade’s electricity grid. As a result, the reverberation of the rhythm of the drums through the rib cages, the shredding on the guitars and the melodies of the lyrics massaged the thirsty ear drums of every lucky ticket holder in a thoroughly physical interaction with the music – something that only live performances are able to achieve.

What a night….

The next morning it was time for the performance of a veterinary ‘rock star’ supported by a happy band of Scottish Terriers.

Just outside of the capital, in a room equipped with padded examination tables and a number of ultrasound machines, Laurent took a group of veterinarians, that had arrived from all over Europe, on a ‘Tour de Force’ through the intricacies of cardiac ultrasonography.

While the dogs visibly enjoyed the stroking and the constant attention, every little details of their hearts were measured, the function of their valves was assessed, the ratio of the diameters and the volumes of different chambers were compared and the velocity and the direction of their blood circulation was displayed in vibrant colours on the adjacent monitors.

Once again the ears were tuned, this time to the rhythm of pulse waves that were entering and exiting canine hearts.

While Laurent didn’t need to break the same amount of sweat as Axl Rose the previous night, his performance left an equally lasting impression on his audience and in addition, one that is likely to benefit dogs with failing hearts for many years to come….

 

‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever

And we both know hearts can change

And it’s hard to hold a candle

In the cold November rain’

                        (November Rain, Guns N Roses)

 

Oleksandr Nazaryshyn was preparing his consulting room for a busy afternoon surgery. Outside his small practice on the ground floor of a multi storey building in Irpin, just a few miles west of Kyiv, pet owners already started to queue to have their animals seen.

Together with his colleague Alina Klechanovska, a native of the nearby town of Bucha, all veterinary care they provided in this small practice was free of charge and entirely funded through donations to the Four Paws animal welfare charity and to UVMF, the Ukrainian Veterinary Medical Foundation.

Their small clinic provided predominantly preventative care including vaccinations, anti-parasitic treatments, minor surgeries and neutering procedures. For the latter, Oleksandr still used and cherished the scalpel and the needle holder of his grandfather, who also used to be a veterinary surgeon.

The service Oleksandr and Alina provided, was much appreciated by the local residents, who were mostly refugees in their own country, with very limited means of income.

Standing outside the practice, which was conveniently located right next to an excellent coffee shop, it was hard to imagine, that this neighbourhood had seen some of the worst fighting at the beginning of the war. More than 70% of the buildings had been damaged or levelled to the ground and yet, due to a well working re-building programme and helped by international funding, I found myself surrounded by well attended modern apartment blocks with a number of playgrounds and a good variety of shops. While some of the buildings still showed some signs of damage caused by shrapnel and bullets, lagged this neighbourhood completely the familiar tristesse and ennui of traditional soviet style suburbias.

It makes sense, that physical and mental healing is progressing much better in a healthy environment and this was, what was provided here, both for humans as well as for their pets.

On our way back to Kyiv, I asked Nadia, a colleague from Zaporizhzhia who was driving, to stop at a sight, that had caught my eye just next to the road when we were entering the town.

A huge pile of mangled bodies of destroyed and often burned out cars and vans, all left to the elements and by now covered with a solid layer of rust, had been left in the middle of a parking place. This was Irpin’s ‘car cemetery’.

More than any man-made sculpture, each of these cars told its own story of fear, terror and tragedy. These cars were left behind by local families that had tried to escape the advancing Russian troops at the beginning of the invasion. Most of these cars were carrying women, children, elderly people and family pets and a few hastily grasped belongings.  

 

Some of the cars were left behind when no further progress could be made, as the only bridge connecting Irpin with Kyiv had to be destroyed by the defending Ukrainian army, forcing the civilians north of the bridge to flee on foot. These were the lucky ones….

There were numerous cars, that showed signs of bullet holes and nearby explosions and one could just imagine what horrors must have happened in these vehicles when they were overtaken by the advancing Russian forces….

Some artists had tried and failed to improve this place of carnage by painting sun flowers, the probably most iconic of all Ukrainian plants, on the outside of some of the destroyed vehicles, but while the buildings in towns like Bucha and Irpin could be restored, will this never be the case for the people and the animals who lost their lives or who had to witness what human beings can do to each other, not only in the dark days at the beginning of the invasion, but also in the still ongoing conflict…..  

 

We were just approaching the Maidan, the very heart of Kyiv, which by now was a Sea of blue and yellow flags that were commemorating fallen Ukrainian soldiers, when my phone exploded with the sounds of my first real air raid alarm.

Both drones as well as rockets were approaching the capital, and we had to take cover.

“I know just the right spot for us” said Andrij, my trusted companion. “Just follow me….”

While heading north-west in no great hurry towards the glass dome of the Globus shopping mall, Andrij explained that an air raid alarm in Kyiv usually leaves you 10-15 minutes time to retreat to a safe place. There was more time to react in Lviv and understandably far less in Kharkiv or in Kherson, which were much closer to the front line.

Right next to the dome we descended into the underground and found ourselves in-front of a door with an illuminated sign with Cyrillic letters I could not read.

We entered and after a few more steps we found ourselves in a dark room, with countless hands protruding out of a black wall.

This unusual barrier was guarded by a young girl who demanded a password from us to proceed…

Overcoming initial confusion and puzzlement by this unexpected demand and helped by a little nudge from the gate keeper, Andrij eventually recalled the quintessential passage of Taras Shevchenko’s poem “The Caucasus”, which was both a verbal attack against 19^th century Russian Imperialism as well as an elegy for his fallen friend Yakiv de Balmen, and he said:

“Boritesya – poborete!”  – Fight on and you will prevail!

yet without the following passage, which stated that “God is on your side”.

And sure enough…. the seemingly impenetrable black wall opened, and we were allowed to enter one of the most famous restaurants in Ukraine….

Ostannya Barykada, the “Last Barricade”, had for many years not only been a shelter for writers, poets, philosophers and for the politically persecuted, it was now providing us with a safe roof above our heads, while at the same time presenting us with the finest offerings of the Ukrainian cuisine!

Once we had settled as more or less the only guests, we were first treated to an unusual choice of exclusively Ukrainian cocktails.

The “Svitovan” – the “Traveller” – seemed a fitting choice for me and the careful blend of grapefruit vodka, lemon, sugar, egg white and orange juice certainly helped to steady any frayed nerves….

Waiting then for our food, it gave us some time to take a closer look at the interior of our “shelter”…..

Illuminated display cabinets that were hanging off the walls, contained various memorabilia of both Ukrainian as well as of foreign historic events and political struggles.

A scarf and tie worn at the ‘Orange Revolution’ protests twenty years ago, could be found next to a brick of the Berlin wall. A framed letter, sent from Minnesota in 1990, supported the “Revolution on Granite” which was followed by Ukrainian independence a year later.

A pair of gloves and a thermos flask gave an idea of the freezing conditions  during the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity during the winter of 2013/14.

Throughout these struggles, the “Last Barricade” had been a place of shelter and sustenance for many protesters.

In an adjacent room, a “Mother Motherland” sculpture and a modern anti-drone gun reminded guests very vividly of the harsh reality of the ongoing conflict.

Large poppies on the wall near the entrance commemorated all the victims of revolutions and wars.

Eventually our food arrived and while enjoying the delights of a green and a red Borscht, the air raid App announced the end of any imminent threat.

While we were allowed to live another day and had probably one of the most enjoyable and educational experiences you might have in a bunker, we had to remind ourselves that many good people before and after this night hadn’t been or wouldn’t be so lucky….

 

Exiting Vystavkovyi Tsentre metro station, we first had to pass a considerable amount of tank barriers, which had been placed conveniently on the pavement next to Akademika Hushkova Ave, to be always at hand to set up an impromptu road block on this major trunk road leading into the centre of Kyiv and to the Dnieper river. It looked like an odd assembly of concrete blocks and pieces of rusting metal, that had been welded together in a hurry and were now discarded like the unwanted toys of a giant toddler.

The occasional portraits of some of the defenders on the boulders however confirmed that it had been ordinary people and not disgruntled giants who had used these items to defend their city.  

Walking through the gates of Ukraine’s Expo Center, Andrij and I found ourselves standing next to a full sized Tupolev TU-134A-3, which someone had decided to park here. While there were a number of impressive exhibition pavilions, including the spectacular “Grain and Oilseed” Pavilion, which featured a huge female statue on a central column, the aim of my first excursion in Kyiv was far more hidden in one of the minor and less eye-catching buildings at the other side of the central square.

Here the Patron Pet Center was – with the support of an army of local volunteers – looking after not less than 200 dogs and over 120 cats, some of them badly injured and traumatised and most of them rescued from the Kharkiv area.

What struck me, while standing in the brightly lid reception area of the building, was that I could hardly hear any barking or any other noise indicating that so many animals were kept here under one roof.  

The reason for this was explained to us by Iryna Podvoyska, who was both the head vet, the general manager and the main brain and engine behind this unusual shelter.

Helped by an industrial ventilation unit, all animals were kept in sound proofed and climate controlled small rooms, that had a large glass front door and could be cleaned easily. All of these units were placed in huge timber framed cubes, which filled out a large hall inside the building.

Some of these units had been adopted by individual artists, by local celebrities, by partner cities or by foreign animal welfare organisations.

There was a centralised food kitchen, a dedicated treatment room and an operating theatre to meet all the needs of the animals that were kept here.

While being located in the middle of a public park in Kyiv, the urban community was encouraged to visit the center and to take suitable dogs for a walk. The thus established human-animal bond proofed to be helpful for both the dogs as well as for the families that had been traumatised by the ongoing conflict. Unsurprisingly, a fair amount of the dogs were later adopted.

Cats had a separate home on the first floor with a dedicated room with individual care units, as well as some larger rooms, where groups of cats were housed together, depending on their individual immunological status.

The whole set up was already impressive, but Iryna had even bigger plans…..

A large feline play zone was in the process of being build and a café, right next to it and overlooking the park was due to follow soon.

Iryna carried the undeniable signs of chronic sleep deprivation, which I recognised so well from my own work in emergency clinics, but there was at the same time an iron will and determination, that I felt was on a different level than I had ever seen before.

While running this huge rescue centre, Iryna was already planning to return to Kharkiv and to the towns near the front to rescue even more animals. Relentless commitment fuelled by coffee and adrenaline….  

(If you like to learn more about Iryna’s work or like to support the Patron Pet Center, you should visit their website at https://patron.center or follow them on the usual social media channels)