Fall Break in the Balkans: entry #2: Bosnia

Balkan Review

One of the realities of travel is that you spend a lot of time walking on other people’s bones. Everyplace you wander, landscapes are rich with history and its attendant layers of joy and tragedy. In some places this sense is closer to the surface than others, and the Balkans is one of these places.

Since we were already in Northeast Croatia at Plitvicka, a quick look at a map shows you how close Bosnia is. "Bosnia" as a word is laden with associations for those cognizant during the 1990's, most of them bad. Yet this war was over 20 years ago and, we thought, perhaps the place was worth a look. Tourism, which was never a big industry for Bosnia, is still in a nascent stage of development. This means that while certain infrastructure is not available, the travel experiences are probably more interesting than other places.

There is no discussion of Bosnia without stepping into the larger topic of the war that broke up the former Yugoslav Federation. In order to provide some sort of context for this part of the trip, we shall now step in it...

Backgrounder!

After WWI the various Balkan provinces of Serbia, Solvenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Hercegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia were fused together to create an early version of “Yugoslavia.” Some boundary shuffling occurred at the conclusion of WWII, but the map remained largely the same. Drawn into the Soviet orbit during the Cold War, Yugoslavia was held together by the charismatic Josep Broz Tito, who gained his popularity by leading the partisan movement against the Nazis during the War.

Tito was able to keep all the various factions happy (somehow) for over thirty years after WWII. This was no easy task as the Federation, a collection of provinces of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, had little homogeneity. Religious and ethnic fault lines criss-crossed the geographies in a confusing mosiac. Empires can keep a lid on this situation through sheer force, but that never lasts for long.

The individual Yugoslavian states were also afflicted by the tinge of history in that each nursed a strong connection with their former geographic borders obtained during past times of their widest territorial expansion. These memories stretched back to campaigns from the Middle Ages. There were also religious undertones since the area was Southern Europe’s prime battleground between the Muslim Ottoman Turks from the east and elements of the Byzantine Orthodox Catholic Church on the Northwest.

The various groups had largely lived together peacefully since the end of WWI, with nationalities and religions intertwining robustly in commerce, art and statecraft. But this lost its prime support leg when Tito died in 1980.

For the next decade the place was drifting aimlessly until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR. With former Soviet republics declaring their independence everywhere, the Balkan states joined in.

1991.

Due to the makeup of Yugoslavia and Tito’s influence, the power base rested in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Serbs held most of the dominant positions in Yugoslavia's military forces and saw the Soviet break up as an opportunity to use this opportunity to expand the borders of Greater Serbia. But some states beat them to the punch as they (Slovenia, Croatia) suddenly held referendums to leave Yugoslavia.

The ethnic and religious fault lines as of 1991.

Slovenia was the first to withdraw. The Yugoslav Army followed with a ten day mini-war in a half-hearted attempt to keep them in the Federation. But there were few Serbs who lived in Slovenia and culturally the province was more similar to Northern Italy and Austria, the states that enveloped it on two sides. The Serbs let them go.

Croatia was a different matter, since it had areas of Serb concentrations (see the Purple splotches in the above map) whose allegiance was to Belgrade. These groups had no interest in being part of a new Croatian State and The Serbs in Belgrade did not want to lose its influence over all that territory either. The first skirmish happened at Plitvica Lakes when Serbs fired on a bus convoy of Croat policemen. Then the Serbs invaded Eastern Croatia at Vukovar and the war started.

Bosnia then declared its independence from Belgrade. The picture there was even more confusing than in Croatia, since the population was mixed with Catholic and Muslim areas and striated with both Serb and Croat enclaves. The Croats and Serbs living there envisioned taking their chunks of Bosnia to add to their own states. 

Making matters more confusing was the sudden formation of a new breakaway Serb republic called Krajina Serpska on land that was mostly on Croatian soil. These were Serbs who happened to live in these areas of Croatia, which straddled the Bosnian-Croat border from Northeast of Plitvica Lakes National Park down to Zadar on Croatia’s coast. (The left Red area chunk in the below map).

The end result of all of this was simultaneous invasions, encirclements and ethnic cleansing actions by the former Yugoslav army elements, who were mostly Serbs. The Croats and Bosniaks had little weapons and were either slaughtered outright or pushed quickly off their homes into refugee situations. Some Croats were able to overrun Yugoslav Army depots at the beginning of the conflict and secure weapons this way, but they were constantly at a material disadvantage against the Yugoslav army.

For the next three years the wars here between the breakaway provinces ebbed and flowed based on local advantage and momentum. The Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were always outgunned by the Serbs since the Serbs controlled most of the former Yugoslav military assets. Many Bosniak towns were surrounded and held under multi-year sieges, one of the higher-profile aspects of the conflict to reach international ears.

At length news began to leak out about ethnic cleansing, atrocities and concentration camps. The UN became involved. The city sieges and ethnic-cleansing operations continued. Atrocities mounted on both sides. 

In August 1995, a mortar shell landed in the middle of a street market in downtown Sarejevo, killing 43 people and wounding 75. The Bosnian capital had been under siege since 1992 from Serbian artillery surrounding the town in the hills overlooking it. The outrage caused by this one event pushed NATO to finally go after the Serbs and over the course of two weeks flew over 3,500 sorties against Serb positions and supply lines. 

This broke the Serb’s back and with the simultaneous fall of the Krajina Serpska in the West, the balance of power shifted back to the Bosnian Government Army (mostly Muslim). The Croats also regained the momentum in the West and retook all of the former Krajina Serpska areas in addition to territory it lost in Eastern Slavonia to the Serbs around Vukovar in the early days of the war.

The final chapter to it all was the Serbian loss in 1999 of the largely-Muslim Kosovo province in the South. The Serbs had hoped to drive all the Muslims out and claim the area for Greater Serbia but NATO intervened again when it became obvious the Serbs were again conducting ethnic cleansing operations on unarmed civilians and violating aspects of the 1995 Dayton Peace accords.

Today the warring groups are largely segregated into their own provinces since the original inhabitants of the ethnically-cleansed landscapes did not return. Bosnia-Herzogovina is the only exception as it is split into a Muslim-administered section and a Serbian Orthodox section. 

Our Trip.

The late-40’s and affable waiter at the breezy café on top of a gentle ridgeline near Plitvicka pointed at a church tower several kilometers away, sticking up from a jumble of white washed buildings across a green valley.

“I was 100 meters away from the church when the airstrike hit the town. The church fell down but I wasn’t hurt, luckily. Every building in this valley was bombed.” He was describing a Serbian air offensive against the Croats to drive them out of the newly-formed “Kranjina Serpska.”

He said today it is not strange between Croats and Serbs. “Young people go to Belgrade to party, it is not a big thing between us now.” He was incredibly upbeat considering what he’d gone through, the experience of being hunted and undergoing combat.

The Bosnian border lies roughly 20 minutes outside of Plitvicka. Just beyond the border lies the pretty town of Bihač. It sits on the Una River, so named by Roman soldiers who first established an outpost here. We found an Airbnb a couple nights before arriving and booked two nights to check out the area.

Bihač was a Muslim enclave during the war that sustained a siege for nearly three years and the effects of it are evident everywhere. The town is still over 90% Muslim. Many apartment buildings still are scarred with shell splinter holes and the occasional machine-gun pock marks. Our host related how during the siege they lived only in the basement since going outside during the day was too dangerous. Next door to their house was a Bosnian Army administrative building, which was a frequent target of the Krajina Serpska artillery that surrounded the town. This made it extra risky to head out since shells were frequently falling on it, however she said that their house was never actually hit directly.

Bihač sits attractively on the floodplain of the Una river, surrounded by low mountain ranges. Downtown there is a pedestrian promenade with sidewalk bars full of people smoking and drinking. A 700 year-old Mosque sits at one end of the street and the ancient city walls curve attractively around the smoothly-coursing Una river. Fall sunlight streamed through trees on a big park where the kids found a playground and we watched them play with the locals, as we sat on benches alongside women in head scarves texting on their smartphones. 

But visible at the edge of the park was a half-constructed hotel, victim of the shelling during the siege, which now sits on prime river front real estate. It is a jumble of graffiti tags, rusting I-beams and half-finished rooms.

The half-finished hotel. The exposed stairwell sections are a popular hangout for young people since it gives a decent view across the river to the town.

Kids in front of the 700 year-old Mosque. It started out as a Byzantine Church, then changed into a Mosque when the Turks took over. This makes it fairly unique in the region.

The central park that cuts through the middle of Bihač

A tributary canal cut through the middle of town.

Some war evidence next to a car park.

Downtown pedestrian zone.

Colorful bikes in front of a shot-up statue of a mother holding a baby

We always check out cemeteries in the places we travel. But we'd never seen a 100% Muslim cemetery, so this was interesting.

If you look around, you will see the pockmarks everywhere.

A bastion sitting on top of the old city wall.

Another sunrise. Bihač was really a beautiful spot that we were not expecting.

The old City Wall.

Downtown shops and some Bosnian script.

Here we have the kids putting our postcards into what we thought was the mail slot. It turned out to be a suggestion box for the post office.

The river flowed right by our accommodation, providing lots of diversion for the kids.

The next day we hiked outside of town into the Una National Park. The leaves had mostly fallen, so we missed the height of the colors but the trail was all ours. The trail started out as a jeep road then dwindled to a ramble between bushes. Luckily someone had painted blazes on the trees, giving us some idea of the direction to go. I had asked at the park office if we had to worry about landmines, since the front line passed near the park, but was assured we had nothing to worry about.

The guy at the national park office in Bihač had indicated that we could see wolves and probably wild hogs up here. This part of Bosnia also had a bear population, but they were skittish. I kept my eyes open, but with the noise we made going up this trail it is no wonder we saw little wildlife since the kids were creating a cacophony of noises. 

It wasn’t very different from deciduous forest in Ohio for example, but it was Bosnia, and there were likely wolves nearby. Exciting.

It has been quite awhile since we have driven a car to a trailhead! Not something that happens much in Berlin.

Mid-trail viewpoint and snack stop.

The kids stayed down with the dogs while Cass and I went higher up to the viewpoint. Which was named this fun word! 

The hike topped out at a lookout that offered a vantage point over the Una River valley and rumpled green mountains rising behind it. We could see a small band of highway threading South and the post at the Croatian border, a small clearing of distant white buildings in the forest. Nearby our lookout spot was the remains of some sort of dugout, which was likely used as a military observation point. Old wooden boxes with metal corners mouldered half-hidden in the leaves, indicating that at some point someone had brought supplies up here.

Just off the summit was the remains of a camp with some heavy duty-looking boxes.

Sailing back down the mountain. By rights it should have been cold and miserable but we caught Bihač and the park on a beautiful fall weekend by sheer luck.

I shall pick up every stick in this forest.

Saying bye to our companions, who faithfully followed us all the way up the road from the guardhouse to the top of the hike. The kids named them, Raichu, Hundemunde and Fluffy.

Bosnian Coffee. 

On the way back from the hike we stopped at a riverside restaurant to watch the sun set over the mountains and listen to the flow of the nearby Una. Big, stout tables with thick benches, uneven flagstones on the patios leading down to the water. In the summer times they have these dedicated dinner boats, where they serve you dinner on the skiff. Everyone sits around a table in the center of the shallow-draft boat, then they let out the line and you sway out to the middle of the river in the gentle current for your evening meal. When you are done they reel you back in.

Street signs that you usually don't see anywhere except on CNN.

It was too late in the season for such extravagance, so we just grabbed a table on land and ordered dinner. The kids ran off to play in a makeshift playground that featured some homemade climbing structures, a small hut and a very exciting cat who was slinking around the area. A brilliant sunset was obscured by sudden clouds, which then brought rain, forcing everyone inside. Inside, all nature of much-used farm equipment and local objects adorned the walls. Bad taxidermy was also present, including a very ferocious and dried-out river fish with large fangs.

After dinner we ordered Bosnian coffee, because we’d never had it before. It comes in a small burnished copper beaker with a long straight handle that you use to pour into your mug on top of a sugarcube. The idea is to stop pouring towards the end to keep the sludge in the beaker and not in your mug. Water and small biscuits are served with it, which comes on a small tray for everything. It seemed like the Turkish coffee we’ve seen other places, but soon learned that the two are quite different.

Additional research revealed a world of things to learn about the differences between Bosnian and Turkish coffee varieties. Mostly, it is in the preparation and the process of when you boil the grinds, how you add the sugar, and what equipment is used. At a store later we purchased a Serbian-made coffee beaker with the trademark designs and long thin handle, with the idea to experiment in making our own Bosnian coffee.

On the last day I got up early and walked over the river to explore the other side of town. I had a humorous conversation with a shop attendant while searching for a Borek (pastry that comes either with meat or fruit). They had no fruit boreks in the display but after I charaded a story about wanting the fruit kind, she ran in back and produced one from the kitchen. She was very excited that I wanted a borek. I'd never actually had a borek before, but was determined to try one since we were here.

With my borek and a coffee in hand I walked out along the river to a on a high diving platform (that had lost its diving board) and climbed up to watch the Una roll by. There were ducks. And silence.


FORGETTING THE IPAD

We decided to drive south out of Bihač so we could see some more of Bosnia on our way down to the Croatian coastal town of Split. The M5 highway rose out of Bihač over the Vrtoce pass between the peaks and crossed a rural landscape of small farms and villages. Many houses along that road were damaged in the war and the owners never came back, so the ruins sit. When we reached the pass there were more, clustered in groups that before the war probably were a ski resort and its support buildings.

Ruins on the pass.

A rest stop to let Jasper out for some fresh air. 

In Bosnia the minefields are always clearly marked.

Exactly the point, a few kms from the Croatian border, when we realized we forgot the iPad back in Bihač. So we got to see western Bosnia all over again as we returned to Bihač for it! We then drove over the border in the north and came down the coastal highway to Split, arriving around 8:30 that night.

Bosnian Afterword:

I want to go to Sarajevo now.

Herbstferien in the Balkans, entry #1

"Herbstferien" (Fall Break) Trip: Plitviče Lakes, Croatia

The kids get a couple weeks in October for a Fall break, and so instead of placing them in "Play Care" at the school while we work, we like to take a trip and show them some things. Last year for this period we met up with some Portland friends in Lyon, France for a trip up to Grenoble, then hooked up with Seattle friends who were doing a year in Basel, Switzerland and went up to Grundelwald deep in the Swiss Bernese Oberland mountains. The trip provided a stream of incredible images and experiences and, we like to think, a wonderful education for the kids. We sought to replicate it again, this time heading to Croatia and Bosnia.

We initially played with Sicily, Sardinia, Portugal and Croatia, but Croatia offered the cheapest airfare and accommodation since we'd missed the prime season, so we went there. We booked a few days on either end of the trip and left the middle open to facilitate going into Bosnia (or, if the local information counselled against it, to explore somewhere else. It was a vacation risk, considering the whole 1.5 weeks might be spent in freezing rain, but with the cheap airfare we took it.

On Monday 23 October we flew into Zadar, Croatia, got the rental car, and drove north to the Plitvice Lakes region (indicated on map). It sits right at the corner where the horseshoe of Croatia curves around the corner of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The area is characterized by several north-south mountain ranges, all of which is underlaid by limestone. Limestone degrades with water, which is what makes such great limestone caves around the world. Here the landscape is littered with massive inverted-cone shaped holes ranging from house-size to small valleys. They are the remains of water ponds that eroded their way down through the rock.

The Plitvice area is known for a unique string of lakes which have arranged themselves in a picturesque line up one of the valleys. The limestone forms travertine dams at the bases of the lakes and the water pops through them not in one pour-over but through many little spots where it has burrowed through the rock. So the waterfalls look much different than your typical ones. The abundant water supports greenery along the dams between the lakes, so it gives the impression of a forested wall spurting with waterfall leaks.

The park is one of Croatia's big tourist draws, ranking behind the beaches and islands further south along its Dalmatian coastline. As such, it is well laid-out with full infrastructure for visitors. A system of hiking trails curves around and over the cascades. These are linked with a bus service and a boat service that links up the trails and itineraries one can do. Most people manage a day in the park before they continue further south to the beaches. We would spend three days there and as a result hiked all the trails, rode all the busses and took multiple trips on the lake boats. The weather was iffy the day we arrived, and from then on out it was beautiful fall days.

Clear water shows lots of fish, which fascinated the kids.

Jasper enjoys the brisk morning air on the deck to brush teeth.

We found wonderful hiking in the woods alongside the lakes. We missed the peak colors by about a week but nobody complained since the sun was out almost the entire time. 

  

The bridges over the cascades are sturdy enough in spite of their looks. At one end of one of the lakes the trail rose up into the canyon wall through a huge cave that had been hollowed out.

The kids seemed to enjoy the waterfalls and the boat rides, but they also were quite preoccupied with the local duck population, stick-finding in the forests and tying vines together to create fishing lines. These then turned into flails when they got bored of the fish not biting their vines.

I must admit that I never know what really impresses them from all these trips. You show them 1500 year-old Roman ruins or march them on log bridges over a landscape of spraying waterfalls and all we hear about later is the cat that was spotted in the hotel car-park, or the stick that needs to be brought back to Berlin because it is so awesome.

Apparently, getting children out in the woods is great for their development, so in the end who cares as they achieved plenty of this on the trip. There was lots of them leaving the trail and climbing up into the forest until we couldn't see them anymore. Every so often we'd hear a shriek. Then silence. Eventually they appeared, sliding on their butts down the slope of fallen leaves and grabbing onto saplings to aid in the descent.

After three days of exploring the lakes, we moved on into Bosnia to the small town of Bihač in the northwest corner of the country. We'd determined it was safe and booked a cheap apartment the day before. Read on...

Going to Theresienwiese

OKTOBERFEST 17

I suppose it was inevitable that when you live in Germany eventually you wind up at Oktoberfest in Munich. Here's the report.

It takes place at Theresienwiese ("Theresa's Meadow), the celebratory field where Bavarian King Ludwig I married  Therese Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810. Munich's citizens were invited to the event which was celebrated in the fields "Wiesn" in front of the city gates. Thereafter, it was decreed that a celebration should occur in that meadow every year to commemorate the wedding. This grew into what we now know as Oktoberfest.

Early versions of the 16 day festival included horse races, tree climbing and a trade fair. Booths served drinks and of course beer from the local breweries located in town. Around 1890 the concept of establishing large tents was undertaken to provide more room for guests than crowding around booths in the field. Now Munich's storied breweries each sponsor a tent, and in those tents only the beer from that brewery will be served.

The "tents" themselves began as tents, but have evolved into something resembling pavilions now, with heavy load-bearing beams and soaring ceilings. The larger tents hold between 6000-8500 people each, so they are significant affairs.

After the festival ends, the tents are taken down and stored until next year. The Theresienwiese is open again, although since it is mostly paved it isn't really a "meadow" like it was in 1810 of course. In June the construction starts on the tents, which will take about three months to make sure they are complete by mid September.

Oktoberfest is the largest folk festival in the world, attracting around 6 million people. In 2015, those visitors drank enough beer to fill three Olympic swimming pools, or 7,3 million liters.

How did I get here? A Thunderbird friend from Berlin. Dominik Hess runs the T-Bird group there. He's from Munich and his family has the same table in the Ochsenbrateri for the last 20 years. This worked out well since we could get the reservation in advance as Oktoberfest is not the kind of thing you just show up for and sit at an open table. People do that, but you have to let others with reserved tables let you in and you are a bit of a hanger-on if you don't plan ahead. Potentially some of the other tents are different, for example the Hofbrau tent is super popular with the English, Australians, Americans, Japanese and is more focused on drinking than anything else. So that might be a little looser.

Our tent was the "Ochsenbraterei" tent, so named for the large oxen that are roasted on a huge spit and then carved up into dinner. Each ox has a name, and a signboard tells you his name and weight. Our ox was named Robert for example, and he weighed 950 kilograms. Once Robert was cleaned off, "Paul" appeared on the spit.

It is more of a German tent than a tourist tent, so it was a bit calmer since it has a focus on serving dinner as part of the deal. This worked out well because you definitely want some ballast to offset the beer you are drinking. Also, you are around people in the traditional Lederhosen and Dirndls who are not there to get black-out drunk so it feels more authentic.

But you are still drinking lots. Our tent was served by the Spaten Brewery. The Spaten is served in a "Mass" which is a liter measurement that comes in the famous heavy glass steins. Discussions with Oktoberfest vets was that you can realistically shoot for four of them over a six hour sitting with a big Ox dinner in the middle. Pretzel guys walk up and down the aisles so you are also advised to pack away a couple of those during the night to help.

Our table reservation for our group of 15 was for 4pm. We filed into the massive hall, bedecked with Bavarian flags, streamers, and carved wood figures each showing a different part of Bavaria with the accompanying local dress. A band stage sat in the middle. The waitress came over, the same one that has served the table for a decade, and took the orders.

The first hour people are chill. Everyone is sitting. Here and there someone stands up on the bench but they sit down fairly quickly when no one else stands up with them. People are tucking into their Mass beers and scarfing pretzels for the coming onslaught.

Around 5:30, you start to notice groups of people standing up. The band is now going, and this prompts people to start getting excited. I expected the band to play traditional German folk tunes but lots of American 70's music was coming out. "Country Roads Take Me Home", "Sweet Caroline" and "Sweet Home Alabama" surprised. Germans love these songs. Especially Sweet Caroline, the place definitely jumped up a notch when that came on.

We ordered our ox. The kitchen organization that moves ox platters out to 6000 people is truly something to behold. Waiters roll out with meter-long trays packed with 6 plates each, flitting amid the growing chaos of the field of tables and bench-standers. Waitresses manhandling various Mass beers on each hand bob and weave around the pretzel vendors, singing people, and other back-forth tent traffic. Over it all the strains of beer toasts are belted out by the band:

"Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit!"

We finished the ox. Then you stand up and that is the rest of the night. For the next 4 hours you are standing on the benches doing stereotypical things: linking arms with everyone, singing the repeating toast songs, pacing yourself on the beer. I finished my fourth Mass and didn't dare order another. 

Some pics of the events:

Sequence of events on the weekend: I flew down Saturday afternoon and came downtown to meet our group for dinner in the Altstadt.

Munich's Old Town (Altstadt) area. This is the clocktower on the Marienplatz, the main square. The other long-standing breweries are all within a 15-minute walk.

We met at the Schneider Weisse Brewery. Weisse = 'Wheat." It is the biggest name in wheat beers in Germany. Historically, wheat beer could only be brewed by the Bavarian royal family in their state breweries, but in 1872 King Ludwig II halted royal production of wheat beer due to declining sales. He sold the rights to Georg Schneider, one of his royal brewers. Schneider's family had been brewing wheat beer since 1607 with a state contract and now he went out on his own with the dissolution of the royal production concept.

The ingredients adhere to the Bavarian "Reinheitsgebot" law, which stipulates the only thing you can put in beer is water, barley, wheat malt, hops and yeast. All the breweries in Munich subscribe to this law. The ingredients come from farmers in the region who have special contracts with Schneider. the beer is actually brewed 100km north in the small town of Kelheim, but they kept the Alstadt location as one of the classic beerhouses in Germany.

Schneider Weisse Brewery.

Sunday afternoon we met outside the Wiesn. Dominik gave us the admission bracelets to the tent where we had the table reserved and we dove into the madness.

What you see as you approach the Wiesn. The famed "Bavaria" statue and the hub-bub of Oktoberfest.

Bag-checkers.

The troops file in.

Our tent.

These waitresses carry six Mass at a time!

Dominik and Pelin. He's Bavarian. She's Turkish.

The signboard for the Ox who is currently being roasted. Poor Robert! He was a good ox.

Ox meat good with bier JA!

Some people from our group have been doing this every year for the last decade. 

The traditional Bavarian Frau-outfit: The Dirndl. Lederhosen ("Leather pants") on the right.

At 10:30 we left and wandered around the amusement park rides (also set up for the fest). For some reason we rode the chair-swing one, which spins you around in centrifugal joy. This one was exciting because it does all this on top of an 80 meter central pole structure, which really makes you realize how important it is to hold onto your phone in the middle of the spinning.

Chair spinner, high upstairs.

They shut down the rides at 11 and people start wandering off into Munich's night streets towards home or their hotels. The moon came out over the twin domes of the Frauenkirche and the rain slacked off finally.

We went back downtown to an Irish pub. It was a nice walk but ultimately I should have just gone back to the hotel. Did not need anymore partying that night.

I jumped on the plane the next morning back to Berlin to meet my parents coming back up from Italy. You can't really wear Lederhosen in Berlin, people in Northern Germany think the Bavarians are crazy, and why would you wear what cuck-coo crazy people wear. So I shall just wear the lederhosen around the house. They were originally worn as work clothes, the Carharts of the 1800's, and are quite durable as a result. So they should stand up to the beating that the kids give me.