"A very heartbreaking song"
full of postwar angst.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Yugoslav Identity and the Unique Case of Ivo Andrić
This paper was the midterm assignment for my course here. The prompt asked us to talk about the works of Yugoslav culture we've looked at in class in the context of a theme that we see as defining Yugoslav art, and then to compare Yugoslav artists to their American counterparts. Not the best prompt, and not the best essay, but interesting material nonetheless:
Ivo Andrić and the bridge on the Drina:
For download, with footnotes! (clearly superior):
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qzom5ntwunu/Yugoslav Identity and Ivo Andric.doc
Ivo Andrić, one of Yugoslavia’s most important writers, and probably its most well known internationally, was in many ways the prototypical artist - and citizen - of the former Yugoslavia. Andrić came from a Catholic family and so is often considered a Croat; he spent most of his life living in Belgrade, and so was deemed a Serbian; he wrote almost exclusively about Bosnia and its history, and so was thought of as Bosnian. He was born in the city of Travnik, the center of Ottoman power in Bosnia for some two centuries, in 1892: only fifteen years after control of the city had passed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Andrić was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 – the first and only writer from a Yugoslav republic to have received this honor – he is reported to have said, “I think that the award goes first of all to my country…The honor that has been given to me encompasses all of Yugoslav literature.” perhaps unsurprisingly for one who so completely exemplified the mix of ethnicities and divergent historical legacies that typified the spectrum of Yugoslav identity, Andrić was a firm believer in Yugoslavia and supporter of pan-Slavism.
Though there were many other proponents of pan-Slavism and supporters of a strong, centralized Yugoslav state, Andrić occupied a unique place in the nation’s artistic community as an author who was considered purely Yugoslav. In the same way that US states set their own curriculums for students, each of the Yugoslav republics developed their own programs of public education. The Croatian curriculum consisted largely of Croatian authors; the Serbian of Serbians; Slovenian of Slovenians, etc. When an author from a different Yugoslav republic appeared in the classroom, they were generally labeled as such. The chief exception to this rule was Andrić, who appeared in school readers across the nation, referred to only as one of “our best contemporary writers.” This contrast – between writers like Mažuranić and Cankar who were considered totally Croatian or Slovenian (respectively) and Andrić who was regarded as Yugoslavian - is a reflection of a larger tension between the concept of a unified Yugoslav identity and the reality of entrenched heterogeneity in the Yugoslav republics.
In 1954 the Novisad Agreement was signed by a conference of writers from across Yugoslavia, agreeing that they shared a common literary tradition and spoke a single language: Serbo-Croat. This was an important cultural analog to Tito’s post-war heralding of South Slavic brotherhood in the political sphere. However, a clear shift on the question of Yugoslav-ness began to take place in 1962 - the year after Andrić’s Nobel Prize – away from fraternalism, and toward more of a passive coexistence between the country’s republics. The Yugoslav nation-state envisioned by some gave way to a more robust decentralized federalism. The new constitution of 1963 asserted the right of the republics to secede from the union, a clause that had been absent from the country’s previous constitutions. This reduction in centralized state authority was a conscious strategy designed to reduce nationalist tensions between Yugoslavia’s six republics and two autonomous provinces. Until Tito’s death in 1980, the force of his personality and stature were enough to hold together the country, but a debate raged the whole time, always simmering under the surface, over Yugoslavia’s national identity. This debate, and the dichotomy between centralization and pan-Slavism on the one hand and federalism and distinct nationalisms on the other, can be seen as the central issue and defining thematic motif in much of the literature and cinema created in the Yugoslav republics during this period.
The place of pride gained by Andrić upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize illuminates another difference in the place of artists in society between the United States and the former Yugoslavia. In many nations in Eastern and Central Europe, authors are considered to have played key roles in the formation of a national identity. In Ljubljana’s central square stands a statue of the Slovenian nationalist poet, France Prešeren. Petar II Petrović Njegoš, a 19th century prince of Montenegro and Serbian-language national poet, appears on banknotes and statues throughout the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. Though the United States has its Walt Whitmans and Ernest Hemingways, who are seen as artists who typified the American spirit, they are not seen as shaping it in the same way as authors from the Balkans. This difference in public outlook towards the artist has an important legacy in Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav art. Writers and filmmakers in the Yugoslav republics tend to feel more social responsibility than artists in America, to engage in social dialogue, analyze societal problems and raise difficult issues about identity and national culture.
Ivo Andrić’s most famous work, The Bridge on the Drina follows four hundred years in the history of an eastern Bosnian town of Višesgrad, from the point of view of the bridge that spans the river that bisects the town. Andrić’s novel presents a conspicuously multiethnic society, and deals to a large extent with the relationships between Bosnian Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks in the town. The Bridge on the Drina became a key work for its understanding of Yugoslav society (particularly abroad) and for its depiction of historical ethnic multiculturalism, and the material and psychological legacy of subjugation and imperialism. Likewise, Emir Kusturica’s 1985 film When Father Was Away on Business, which won the Palm d’or at the Cannes Film Festival, portrays a Bosnia in which Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats live side by side, their heritage never raised more than in passing. The writer Miroslav Krleža is widely viewed as Croatia’s finest, though he made a point to never write about nationalist themes, instead taking on subjects of wider Yugoslav or universal relevance.
On the other side, in Meša Selimović’s novel Death and the Dervish, a mono-cultural Bosnia is portrayed, where all of the characters are Bosniaks, and the settings are solidly within the Muslim world. In “The Culture of Lies,” written after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Dubravka Ugresic writes that she “grew up in a multinational, multicultural and mono-ideological community that had a future.” She discusses the emotional toll taken when her Yugoslav-ness evaporated in 1991. From a childhood where “the words ‘religion’, ‘people’, ‘nationality’” meant nothing to her, she was now forced to orient herself within these labels. Ugresic likens “Yugoslavs” in the modern world to gypsies: “the left-over ex-Yugoslavs have in the mean-time become homeless, exiles, refugees, countryless, excommunicated, new nomads – in a word, gypsies.”
The seminal Yugoslav filmmaker from the 1970’s, Dušan Makavejev, is known for his radical experiments with film structure and stylistic montage. His films deal with themes that are in line with other artists in this “golden” middle period of Yugoslav culture – namely their disillusionments with the Socialist system in Yugoslavia compared with the ideals of the Revolution - but the techniques he uses to explore them are totally distinct, and in many ways representative of Yugoslav society. In his 1971 film WR: Mysteries of the Organism, which deals with the confluence of sexual revolution and socialist revolution in the context of the German psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, Makavejev marries together multiple strands – self-made documentary segments about Reich and American counter-culture artists, a fictional story about a liberated Yugoslav woman who seduces a Russian ice skater with whom she argues revolutionary ideology, a 1931 Nazi propaganda film on mental patients, combined with Yugoslav patriotic hymns and footage of transvestite Jackie Curtis walking around New York dressed in an army uniform. These disparate strands can come together in different ways for each viewer, but taken in conjunction in each other they offer an utterly unique examination of Makavejev’s theme. The structure of this film – and others by Makavejev – can be seen as a sort of extended metaphor of Yugoslavia itself: diverse strands, though held together by a common form, coming together in a single entity, rather it be a nation or a film.
The responsibility of the artist in the Balkans is conceived of much differently from that of artists in the United States, and this leads in turn to different kinds of art. Coupled with the distinct histories of the two regions, this means that American artists are much less likely to write about American identity, or the conflict between regionalism and nationalism, because there is not the same concurrent political and cultural struggle as there was in Yugoslavia. Though Ivo Andrić may be the only purely Yugoslav writer in the country’s history – the literary equivalent to Tito – the literature and film that came out of the Yugoslav and former Yugoslav republics shared a common interest in defining their identity, either as a South Slav nation, or as a distinctive culture within the larger body.
Ivo Andrić and the bridge on the Drina:
For download, with footnotes! (clearly superior):
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qzom5ntwunu/Yugoslav Identity and Ivo Andric.doc
Ivo Andrić, one of Yugoslavia’s most important writers, and probably its most well known internationally, was in many ways the prototypical artist - and citizen - of the former Yugoslavia. Andrić came from a Catholic family and so is often considered a Croat; he spent most of his life living in Belgrade, and so was deemed a Serbian; he wrote almost exclusively about Bosnia and its history, and so was thought of as Bosnian. He was born in the city of Travnik, the center of Ottoman power in Bosnia for some two centuries, in 1892: only fifteen years after control of the city had passed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Andrić was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 – the first and only writer from a Yugoslav republic to have received this honor – he is reported to have said, “I think that the award goes first of all to my country…The honor that has been given to me encompasses all of Yugoslav literature.” perhaps unsurprisingly for one who so completely exemplified the mix of ethnicities and divergent historical legacies that typified the spectrum of Yugoslav identity, Andrić was a firm believer in Yugoslavia and supporter of pan-Slavism.
Though there were many other proponents of pan-Slavism and supporters of a strong, centralized Yugoslav state, Andrić occupied a unique place in the nation’s artistic community as an author who was considered purely Yugoslav. In the same way that US states set their own curriculums for students, each of the Yugoslav republics developed their own programs of public education. The Croatian curriculum consisted largely of Croatian authors; the Serbian of Serbians; Slovenian of Slovenians, etc. When an author from a different Yugoslav republic appeared in the classroom, they were generally labeled as such. The chief exception to this rule was Andrić, who appeared in school readers across the nation, referred to only as one of “our best contemporary writers.” This contrast – between writers like Mažuranić and Cankar who were considered totally Croatian or Slovenian (respectively) and Andrić who was regarded as Yugoslavian - is a reflection of a larger tension between the concept of a unified Yugoslav identity and the reality of entrenched heterogeneity in the Yugoslav republics.
In 1954 the Novisad Agreement was signed by a conference of writers from across Yugoslavia, agreeing that they shared a common literary tradition and spoke a single language: Serbo-Croat. This was an important cultural analog to Tito’s post-war heralding of South Slavic brotherhood in the political sphere. However, a clear shift on the question of Yugoslav-ness began to take place in 1962 - the year after Andrić’s Nobel Prize – away from fraternalism, and toward more of a passive coexistence between the country’s republics. The Yugoslav nation-state envisioned by some gave way to a more robust decentralized federalism. The new constitution of 1963 asserted the right of the republics to secede from the union, a clause that had been absent from the country’s previous constitutions. This reduction in centralized state authority was a conscious strategy designed to reduce nationalist tensions between Yugoslavia’s six republics and two autonomous provinces. Until Tito’s death in 1980, the force of his personality and stature were enough to hold together the country, but a debate raged the whole time, always simmering under the surface, over Yugoslavia’s national identity. This debate, and the dichotomy between centralization and pan-Slavism on the one hand and federalism and distinct nationalisms on the other, can be seen as the central issue and defining thematic motif in much of the literature and cinema created in the Yugoslav republics during this period.
The place of pride gained by Andrić upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize illuminates another difference in the place of artists in society between the United States and the former Yugoslavia. In many nations in Eastern and Central Europe, authors are considered to have played key roles in the formation of a national identity. In Ljubljana’s central square stands a statue of the Slovenian nationalist poet, France Prešeren. Petar II Petrović Njegoš, a 19th century prince of Montenegro and Serbian-language national poet, appears on banknotes and statues throughout the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. Though the United States has its Walt Whitmans and Ernest Hemingways, who are seen as artists who typified the American spirit, they are not seen as shaping it in the same way as authors from the Balkans. This difference in public outlook towards the artist has an important legacy in Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav art. Writers and filmmakers in the Yugoslav republics tend to feel more social responsibility than artists in America, to engage in social dialogue, analyze societal problems and raise difficult issues about identity and national culture.
Ivo Andrić’s most famous work, The Bridge on the Drina follows four hundred years in the history of an eastern Bosnian town of Višesgrad, from the point of view of the bridge that spans the river that bisects the town. Andrić’s novel presents a conspicuously multiethnic society, and deals to a large extent with the relationships between Bosnian Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks in the town. The Bridge on the Drina became a key work for its understanding of Yugoslav society (particularly abroad) and for its depiction of historical ethnic multiculturalism, and the material and psychological legacy of subjugation and imperialism. Likewise, Emir Kusturica’s 1985 film When Father Was Away on Business, which won the Palm d’or at the Cannes Film Festival, portrays a Bosnia in which Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats live side by side, their heritage never raised more than in passing. The writer Miroslav Krleža is widely viewed as Croatia’s finest, though he made a point to never write about nationalist themes, instead taking on subjects of wider Yugoslav or universal relevance.
On the other side, in Meša Selimović’s novel Death and the Dervish, a mono-cultural Bosnia is portrayed, where all of the characters are Bosniaks, and the settings are solidly within the Muslim world. In “The Culture of Lies,” written after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Dubravka Ugresic writes that she “grew up in a multinational, multicultural and mono-ideological community that had a future.” She discusses the emotional toll taken when her Yugoslav-ness evaporated in 1991. From a childhood where “the words ‘religion’, ‘people’, ‘nationality’” meant nothing to her, she was now forced to orient herself within these labels. Ugresic likens “Yugoslavs” in the modern world to gypsies: “the left-over ex-Yugoslavs have in the mean-time become homeless, exiles, refugees, countryless, excommunicated, new nomads – in a word, gypsies.”
The seminal Yugoslav filmmaker from the 1970’s, Dušan Makavejev, is known for his radical experiments with film structure and stylistic montage. His films deal with themes that are in line with other artists in this “golden” middle period of Yugoslav culture – namely their disillusionments with the Socialist system in Yugoslavia compared with the ideals of the Revolution - but the techniques he uses to explore them are totally distinct, and in many ways representative of Yugoslav society. In his 1971 film WR: Mysteries of the Organism, which deals with the confluence of sexual revolution and socialist revolution in the context of the German psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, Makavejev marries together multiple strands – self-made documentary segments about Reich and American counter-culture artists, a fictional story about a liberated Yugoslav woman who seduces a Russian ice skater with whom she argues revolutionary ideology, a 1931 Nazi propaganda film on mental patients, combined with Yugoslav patriotic hymns and footage of transvestite Jackie Curtis walking around New York dressed in an army uniform. These disparate strands can come together in different ways for each viewer, but taken in conjunction in each other they offer an utterly unique examination of Makavejev’s theme. The structure of this film – and others by Makavejev – can be seen as a sort of extended metaphor of Yugoslavia itself: diverse strands, though held together by a common form, coming together in a single entity, rather it be a nation or a film.
The responsibility of the artist in the Balkans is conceived of much differently from that of artists in the United States, and this leads in turn to different kinds of art. Coupled with the distinct histories of the two regions, this means that American artists are much less likely to write about American identity, or the conflict between regionalism and nationalism, because there is not the same concurrent political and cultural struggle as there was in Yugoslavia. Though Ivo Andrić may be the only purely Yugoslav writer in the country’s history – the literary equivalent to Tito – the literature and film that came out of the Yugoslav and former Yugoslav republics shared a common interest in defining their identity, either as a South Slav nation, or as a distinctive culture within the larger body.
Apologia
July 13, 21:50, Zagreb
Between classes on the weekdays and trips every weekend I'm not finding as much time as I would have liked to update this blog. I've got a lot to say, and haphazards of stray notes, but it's a chore to find internet and set it all down. I'm going to try to catch up a bit this week.
It's hard though. When you have the option of heading to a new country or the internet cafe, the choice is usually clear. In a way, it's appropriate: I'm away from the Mediterranean for these three weeks in Zagreb. Zagreb is in many ways your typical central European capital, with an atmosphere much more similar to Vienna than to Croatia's own coastal cities.
I went back to the sea yesterday, on a little roadtrip with my new Croatian friend Matija, his girlfriend, and two of their friends. We went to the town of Crikvenica on the northern coast for the day, and lay on the beach, playing Uno (!) and swimming in the Adriatic (the location is very nice for swimming, with a narrow channel between the coast and the island of Krk).
Between classes on the weekdays and trips every weekend I'm not finding as much time as I would have liked to update this blog. I've got a lot to say, and haphazards of stray notes, but it's a chore to find internet and set it all down. I'm going to try to catch up a bit this week.
It's hard though. When you have the option of heading to a new country or the internet cafe, the choice is usually clear. In a way, it's appropriate: I'm away from the Mediterranean for these three weeks in Zagreb. Zagreb is in many ways your typical central European capital, with an atmosphere much more similar to Vienna than to Croatia's own coastal cities.
I went back to the sea yesterday, on a little roadtrip with my new Croatian friend Matija, his girlfriend, and two of their friends. We went to the town of Crikvenica on the northern coast for the day, and lay on the beach, playing Uno (!) and swimming in the Adriatic (the location is very nice for swimming, with a narrow channel between the coast and the island of Krk).
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Sunday at the Tracks
I'm published!
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=101956&MID=123&PID=2
NOW Extra
A Sunday at the tracks
Horse Racing at Beirut’s Hippodrome provides authentic thrills
Spencer Dylan Burke, Special to NOW Lebanon , July 3, 2009
In a city bereft of public parks and mature trees, and thronged by new construction wiping away the uncanny urban vacancy of the war, it comes as a surprise to drive up Avenue Omar Beyhum and see a long wall partitioning the bustle of the city from an expanse of verdant tree tops within. Over the concrete block walls spill branches laden heavy with orange and purple flowers. On the other side is the Hippodrome, where every Sunday Beirutis gather to wager and watch.
Horse racing has been popular in the Levant since at least the days of the Romans. Indeed, a short drive south to Tyre brings you to the sight of the largest surviving Roman hippodrome in the world, once capable of seating 20,000 spectators.
Beirut’s Hippodrome, though not as colossal, carries on the same tradition. The stadium first opened in 1885, but was moved to Mathaf in 1918 from its original location in Beir Hassan. The racetrack is set on the southern edge of the city, book-ended by the National Museum and the French Embassy. Adjacent to the south is the city’s largest expanse of parkland: the 300,000 square meters of pine forest in Horsh Beirut.
The Hippodrome is in itself, however, a respite from the city. The atmosphere changes instantly upon entering the gate from the busy multi-laned expressway outside. Walking down the tree-lined dirt path to the track, the sound of traffic disappears and the smell of manure and earth replaces that of exhaust.
The Hippodrome du Parc de Beyrouth, as it is known officially, is administered by SPARCA - the Society for the Protection and Improvement of the Arabian Horse in Lebanon – but owned by the city’s municipal authorities. There has been talk of the municipality revoking SPARCA’s grant – discussed here by NOW Lebanon in 2007 – and turning the space into a public park.
This would be a shame. The Hippodrome provides a rare glimpse into the days of old Beirut, and offers the outsider a revealing look at the culture of urban Arab masculinity. The Hippodrome was, supposedly, the place to be for Beirut’s elite during the French Mandate, and up through the beginning of the war. Now the Beirut Hippodrome is one of the few sites in the Middle East where one can bet legally on horse racing.
The place seems to be the exclusive preserve of middle aged and older local men. I was the only foreigner in sight, and in 20 minutes of looking, I spotted only a single woman. Small clusters of men sit on plastic chairs, gathered around tables or on the concrete steps of the grandstands, chain-smoking cigarettes or taking slow drags from narghiles, confabbing exuberantly among themselves under the thatched awning. Given their gesticulations and bearing, it wouldn’t surprise me if every one were a taxi driver.
When the horn announces that a race is about to begin, everyone ambles down and packs along the rail overlooking the track. The energy of the crowd builds palpably, and as the jockeys push the horses around the course into the second lap, an electricity fills the air. The men lean far over the railing, shouting wildly at the horses, to each other and to themselves, just shouting. The spirit of the experience seems to beg any kind of outpouring of noise and emotion. I suppose it’s better to vent one’s aggression here than behind the wheel.
As soon as the first horse hurtles past the finish line, the clamor dissipates, and in an instant, everyone scatters: the winners to claim their takings and the losers back to nursing their pipes.
I went to the Hippodrome intending to try my hand at betting on the races, but abandoned the notion at first glance. As a non-Arabic speaker, the whole process was abstruse, and obviously not designed for the use by an outsider. Still, the mere thrill of being a spectator, of the sleek and muscled Arabian horses – described on the SPARCA website as “masterpiece[s] of Mother Nature” – and of the other spectators, is reason enough to recommend a visit to anyone.
Races are held every Sunday, starting at 12:30 p.m. (in July and August, 1:30 p.m.). According to the Hippodrome’s official website, 700 horses are attached to the track and train there every morning from dawn until 8:30 a.m. For the rest of the day, the premises are open to the public.
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=101956&MID=123&PID=2
NOW Extra
A Sunday at the tracks
Horse Racing at Beirut’s Hippodrome provides authentic thrills
Spencer Dylan Burke, Special to NOW Lebanon , July 3, 2009
In a city bereft of public parks and mature trees, and thronged by new construction wiping away the uncanny urban vacancy of the war, it comes as a surprise to drive up Avenue Omar Beyhum and see a long wall partitioning the bustle of the city from an expanse of verdant tree tops within. Over the concrete block walls spill branches laden heavy with orange and purple flowers. On the other side is the Hippodrome, where every Sunday Beirutis gather to wager and watch.
Horse racing has been popular in the Levant since at least the days of the Romans. Indeed, a short drive south to Tyre brings you to the sight of the largest surviving Roman hippodrome in the world, once capable of seating 20,000 spectators.
Beirut’s Hippodrome, though not as colossal, carries on the same tradition. The stadium first opened in 1885, but was moved to Mathaf in 1918 from its original location in Beir Hassan. The racetrack is set on the southern edge of the city, book-ended by the National Museum and the French Embassy. Adjacent to the south is the city’s largest expanse of parkland: the 300,000 square meters of pine forest in Horsh Beirut.
The Hippodrome is in itself, however, a respite from the city. The atmosphere changes instantly upon entering the gate from the busy multi-laned expressway outside. Walking down the tree-lined dirt path to the track, the sound of traffic disappears and the smell of manure and earth replaces that of exhaust.
The Hippodrome du Parc de Beyrouth, as it is known officially, is administered by SPARCA - the Society for the Protection and Improvement of the Arabian Horse in Lebanon – but owned by the city’s municipal authorities. There has been talk of the municipality revoking SPARCA’s grant – discussed here by NOW Lebanon in 2007 – and turning the space into a public park.
This would be a shame. The Hippodrome provides a rare glimpse into the days of old Beirut, and offers the outsider a revealing look at the culture of urban Arab masculinity. The Hippodrome was, supposedly, the place to be for Beirut’s elite during the French Mandate, and up through the beginning of the war. Now the Beirut Hippodrome is one of the few sites in the Middle East where one can bet legally on horse racing.
The place seems to be the exclusive preserve of middle aged and older local men. I was the only foreigner in sight, and in 20 minutes of looking, I spotted only a single woman. Small clusters of men sit on plastic chairs, gathered around tables or on the concrete steps of the grandstands, chain-smoking cigarettes or taking slow drags from narghiles, confabbing exuberantly among themselves under the thatched awning. Given their gesticulations and bearing, it wouldn’t surprise me if every one were a taxi driver.
When the horn announces that a race is about to begin, everyone ambles down and packs along the rail overlooking the track. The energy of the crowd builds palpably, and as the jockeys push the horses around the course into the second lap, an electricity fills the air. The men lean far over the railing, shouting wildly at the horses, to each other and to themselves, just shouting. The spirit of the experience seems to beg any kind of outpouring of noise and emotion. I suppose it’s better to vent one’s aggression here than behind the wheel.
As soon as the first horse hurtles past the finish line, the clamor dissipates, and in an instant, everyone scatters: the winners to claim their takings and the losers back to nursing their pipes.
I went to the Hippodrome intending to try my hand at betting on the races, but abandoned the notion at first glance. As a non-Arabic speaker, the whole process was abstruse, and obviously not designed for the use by an outsider. Still, the mere thrill of being a spectator, of the sleek and muscled Arabian horses – described on the SPARCA website as “masterpiece[s] of Mother Nature” – and of the other spectators, is reason enough to recommend a visit to anyone.
Races are held every Sunday, starting at 12:30 p.m. (in July and August, 1:30 p.m.). According to the Hippodrome’s official website, 700 horses are attached to the track and train there every morning from dawn until 8:30 a.m. For the rest of the day, the premises are open to the public.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)