Olympics Cities Destination Quiz- Berlin to Stockholm

Though it has been a tragic day here in the United States, as all of us are mourning the shooting victims at midnight premiere screening of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" at a theatre in Aurora, Colorado, but we are going to go ahead with our plans to conclude this series.

We finish this series up with a look at the distance between Berlin, Germany, which hosted the very controversial 1936 Olympics, in which Adolf Hitler promoted Aryan supremacy, and Stockholm, Sweden, which hosted the more sanguine 1912 Olympics.

American track and field athlete Jesse Owens (1913-1980), a black man who is the subject of a folk song by Greensboro, NC, singer/songwriter Bruce Piephoff (a personal friend) entitled "Jesse" (2008), was able to prove the absurdity of Hitler's concepts as he won four gold medals in Berlin.

On a more tragic note, I learned from an exhibit about the 1936 Berlin Olympics at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, that Endre Kabos (1906-1944), a Hungarian athlete of Jewish heritage who won gold in Berlin in addition to his gold medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics was among the millions of Jewish people killed during World War II.

Kabos was sent to a concentration camp, but his death reportedly came on the battlefield after he escaped. His Hungarian teammate Attila Petschauer* (1904-1943) who won gold medals in fencing at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics was killed in a concentration camp.

Just this week, Hungarian officials detained Laszlo Csatary, 97, for alleged role in deporting Hungarian Jews to concentration camps.

On a lighter note, today's Berlin features stop lights, featuring little green men  and little red men, which are one of few surviving relics from East Germany. In 2004, several German cities, including Dresden introduced female counterparts for pedestrian stop lights.

As for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, among the gold medalists were Finnish wrestler Kaarlo Koskelo, Italian gymnast Alberto Broglia and Australian women's swimmer Fanny Durack. The above pictured dish is a popular one in Sweden during the holidays.

And, even though he has nothing to do with either Olympics, we will mention Bruce Jenner, the American 1976 Montreal Olympics track champion, since the mere mention of his name assures significantly more hits for our blogs.

So just how far apart are these two cities?

A) 454 miles

B) 479 miles

C) 504 miles

D) 529 miles

http://www.ushmm.org

http://www.jewishsports.net

http://www.washington.org


*-I happen to share a first name with the Hungarian Jewish athlete. My first name is Attila. My late Turkish father Mehmet Gokbudak chose to give me the Hungarian spelling as opposed to the Turkish spelling which is Atilla, which has assured that people in Turkey, including passport officials, do not spell my name correctly.

Things We Learned from the Internet Today-Devekusu is the Turkish for Ostrich

Since I lived in Turkey for two years as child from 1977-79 and my late father Mehmet Gokbudak (1921-1983) was from Turkey and made a strident effort to teach me Turkish even when I was more interested in Dr.Seuss' books as a child, I am able to speak fluent even though I grew up in rural, remote Welch, West Virginia.*

So, as it is, I am about 90-percent fluent in Turkish. Hence, as a result, there are some words I'm not aware of, and 'devekusu' (literally means 'camel bird'), the Turkish word for ostrich, is one of them. So, if alex Trebek asks: "What is the Turkish word for an ostrich?" on Final Jeopardy; the answer is "devekusu."

Also, we learned today that most things trending on Twitter had to do with the Major League All-Star Game which will be played tomorrow in Kansas City. The exception was Channel Orange, which is the name of the new release from singer Frank Ocean, who made headlines by coming out as being gay recently. We were wondering if he was related to our favorite two or three hit wonder Billy Ocean ("Caribbean Queen."). We asked both Google and Bing this question; we got no response. 

*-This is a slight white lie, I grew up in Roanoke, Va., which is not quite as removed from the world as the small hamlet in eastern West Virginia that I was referring to.

Casualties of Modern Technology (11 of 12)_ Slide Projectors

Back in the 1970s, while other families

were watching "The Love Boat," my late father Mehmet Gokbudak would get out the slide projector and we would watch slide shows featuring images of backyard family trips (we lived in Roanoke, Va) of Highland County and from the two European trips we took. One famous slide was of me posing besides a street sign for Attila Josef Street in Budapest, Hungary, in a Dallas Cowboys hat and jacket. Since Attila is my name, this seemed very cool to my dad. And, I had no idea who Attila Josef was until today (a legendary Hungarian poet who died at age 32 in 1937).

Another famous slide was one of a crocidile at a restaurant in Warsaw, Poland- of all places. The croc was a gift from Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. We have no idea what the croc's name is, but we learned from Google that the croc came to the establishment in 1972. He may well still be the only crocidile in Poland.

As for the slide projector, it was very popular and hip from the 1950s to the 1970s, as it allowed slide prints to be displayed on a screen. But, today, many manufaturers have quit making both the prints and the machines.

http://www.highlandcountyva.org/

Since Monday was National Children's Day in Turkey, the country of my late father Mehmet Gokbudak, we thought we'd feature this image of a Turkish girl that we believe was taken at a large holiday festival in the resort town of Kusadasi.

During the last year when I lived in Turkey (we resided in Zonguldak province in the western Black Sea from 1977-79) Turkish Radio Television, also known as the TRT, started an international children's festival with delegations from other countries around the world.

This year, the participating countries included Egypt, Finland and South Korea.

Here in the United States, individual Turkish-American organizations, such as ATA-NC in Cary (Raleigh), NC, hold local events in honor of Children's Day.http://www.ata-nc.org

While researching this piece, we discovered that the most-celebrated Children's Day is actually on June 1st. It is celebrated in many former Soviet republics, including Armenia, Azerbaijan and (of course) Russia as well as former communist country, including Turkey's neighbor Bulgaria.

Quote of the Day/Week- Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci, one of Italy's greatest living directors, is an Academy-Award winner who has also directed the Italian film "The Conformist" (1971) and the highly controversial film "Last Tango in Paris" (1973). He Oscared for "The Last Emperor" (1987).

My friend New York-based film critic Bilge Ebiri has an exceptional profile of Bertolucci in the Australian web journal "Senses of Cinema."

Here is Bertolucci's quip:

"I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns and tanks."

SIDEBAR: We were aware that Greece, obviously a country going through a very hard time right now, had a thriving heavy metal scene with bands like Acid Death, Black Winter and Rotting Christ.

But, there is apparently an all girls punk rock band which formed in Crete called Barbed Wire Dolls. The band is now based in Los Angeles, and they perform in my hometown of Roanoke, Va., at the Horseshoe tomorrow night.

We first heard of the Greek heavy metal bands through the North Carolina State student-run college radio station WKNC (88.1-Raleigh) which airs "Chainsaw Rock" with host Lucreita tonight at midnight.

In Greece's neighboring country of Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country where my late father Mehmet Gokbudak hailed from, heavy metal is also surprisingly popular, and there are local bands, such as Pentagram, which have large followings.

Even more astonishing is the fact that the Israeli-based heavy metal band Orphaned Land is also very popular in Turkey.

The Rabbit Ears Quiz (1 of 12)_ Lolek and Bolek

Today we start our The Rabbit Ears Quiz series on both of our blogs. We begin with "Lolek and Bolek," a very popular cartoon in its native Poland, but it is very obscure here in the United States. Though I was delighted to find out that Netflix actually offered collections of the Polish cartoons, which originally aired from
1963-1966.

I actually came across "Lolek and Bolek" in 1975 when our family lived in then-communist Poland as my late father Mehmet Gokbudak, a Turkish immigrant to the United States, worked for a Polish factory for six months as part of a program with General Electric, his employer.

While researching a piece about "Lolek and Bolek" a few months ago, I was stunned to learn that one of the cartoon's main novelties is the fact that it was the only cartoon shown on television in one of the following Muslim countries. Is the answer:

A) Saudi Arabia
B) Iran
C) Iraq
D) Syria
E) Egypt

There were 150 episodes of "Lolek and Bolek," which were usually about eight and a half minutes in length. One can now watch entire episodes on Youtube.

The two boys frequently traveled to other parts of the globe, including one curious to the American West! A monument to the characters was unveiled this year in Poland. The show still ranks as the most popular cartoon in Polish television history.

SIDEBAR: In case you were wondering, the answer to our last Road Trip question is "B."

Father's Day Kitsch

This is basically a complementary entry to my tribute to my father Methmet Gokbudak
(1921-1983) and my second stepfather Donald Sullivan (1918-2003), two men I always remember on Father's Day.

When my mom recently relocated, I came across two vinyl records that I will always associate with dad and Donald.

One is a collection called "German Beer Drinking Music" which was recorded in Germany by Hans Braun and his chorus. I tried to find information about the record on the Internet which was to no avail. Shockingly enough, Diplomat Records in Newark, NJ, which made the record happens to be the name of a rap music label that was founded in 2002! Though I can not confirm when the record was released (my guess is 1962), there was an image of the album and a web site was offering to sell the record for $9.99.

More information was available regarding "The Fading Giant," a recording of steam engines made for O. Winston Link Railway Productions. The record was made in 1958 in conjunction with Link's famous photographs of trains in places like Roanoke, Va. (my hometown), Bristol,Va/Tenn. (there are two Bristols in two neighboring state which border each other), Rural Retreat, Va. and Welch, WVa.

The photographs taken by Link (1914-2001) became quite famous, especially in Europe and there is now an O. Winston Link Museum, housing many of his famous photographs, in Roanoke.

Donald was very fascinated with both trains and airplanes whereas my father was more into bicycles and his Porche.

I suppose all of us are defined by our favorite modes of transportation. I find the old slow boats in Istanbul, Turkey, where my father grew up to be very fascinating though it always seems like the boat to the Princess Islands will NEVER reach Kinali Island, the small island that is the first stop on the way to Buyukada, the largest of the four Princess Islands.

But, ultimately, I most fascinated by buses. I recently saw an abandoned passenger bus marked Knoxville, Tenn., on Route 220 near Martinsville, Va. I wondered what its' journey was, and how the bus ended up being left along a road that is some five and a hours away from its origin.