Today, waking up in Zagreb, Croatia, I thought about the people arriving tomorrow for a tour through Croatia and Slovenia. Most of them are embarking on the same trek I made yesterday, gathering last-minute items, tugging suitcases closed, and getting to the airport to fly across the Atlantic. My thoughts are with each of them: may their flights be as smooth as mine was and may no suitcases get lost.

Tomorrow evening, the whole group will meet here in the Capital Amadria Park hotel, an imposing Neoclassical building that served as a bank in the Habsburg era. It is easy to imagine the gentility of the 19th century flowing across these gorgeous interiors. What would those historical folks think if they saw people like me in sandals, jeans, or sundresses, with zipper-bedecked backpacks and rolling suitcases, sipping tea on cushy chairs amidst potted palms beneath the same chandeliers that illuminated their bank lobby!

After our all-too-short time in Zagreb, we will depart for Slovenia to discover Ljubljana, a city that boasts many things, including a time when Gustav Mahler served briefly as conductor for the Landestheater. Ljubljana is also the city where Romantic national poet France Prešeren penned his lyrics, one verse of which constitutes the Slovenian national anthem.

After Ljubljana, we will motor to Opatija and the Adriatic coast. People do not exaggerate the beauties of this coastal area. Nor do they overstate when they praise its cuisine. Nor do they inflate the narrowness of the coastal roads and the precipitous drops to the sea, seemingly inches outside the bus windows. If you give it any thought to it at all, you would scream. It’s best to keep eyes straight ahead, fixed on the water’s deep blue.

Today I will embrace two of the most inspiring people in my life. We met in the 1980s through professional musicological events that led us into a lasting friendship filled with touching moments as well as a hilarious ones. The man in question is Stanislav Tuksar, a celebrated scholar whose resume is dizzying to read. He’s achieved every accomplishment, honor, and accolade imaginable from being Professor Emeritus at University of Zagreb, fellow of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, author of seven books and hundreds of articles, translator, field musicologist, mover and shaker, and mentor to at least three generations of students. Yet through all of this, he remains a charming, even boyish, man whose laughter and twinkling eyes will melt your soul.

His stunning wife Vjera Katalinic has her own distinguished resume, as an author, professor, and mentor, and also as a field musicologist. Her work has brought the nearly forgotten, vibrant period of 18th century music in Zagreb and in cities along the Adriatic coast back to life, particularly in regards to the composer Luka Sorkočević whose music matches up in style with that of Mozart.

The fireworks really get going whenever Stanislav and Vjera combine their intellects to undertake vast projects. For example, they spent years literally digging into attics and cellars of monasteries to recoup and catalogue precious musical treasures. One essay like this cannot begin to tell the story of what it was like to join them on a brief leg of this endeavor in Spring 1986. It was the summer of Chernobyl, and, yes, we made jokes about eating radioactive lettuce. What else could we do?

My strongest memories of that venture involve us climbing into a rickety motor boat that took us across the dazzling blue Adriatic to a Franciscan monastery. Once we docked on the island, I was overwhelmed by the fragrant boughs along tree-lined alleyways, the chilly stillness of the ancient stone walls, and the warm hospitality of freshly baked bread and wine offered to us by our Franciscan hosts.

Much of what I genuinely understand about general European history came from time spent at the elbows of Stanislav and Vjera. Watching them, and hearing their observations I began to understand how the Roman, and later Venetian, influences gobbled up this whole area, leaving both tragedy and glory. I viscerally grasped the role monasteries played in Western cultural history, and the various shaping of that culture depending on whether the monasteries were Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Cistercian, or Jesuit. Of course, I had read all of these things in textbooks. But crossing actual monastic thresholds with them provided a very different lesson.

So here I am, about to head off to a late, long lunch with these two precious friends. Despite their accomplishments, they are still at it with the enthusiasm of children digging in the sand at the shore. They’ve returned yesterday from a project in Greece that I’ll hear about when we meet in front of the National Theater. We’ll walk to some obscure café with impossibly delicious food and my ears will ring with their fascinating stories.

They heard most of my recent stories during a long evening back in May when I was last here. You can see from this picture the kind of meal Vjera prepares (and, yes, every room in the house looks like the one above, insofar as books).

The traditions and values of a culture are preserved by all kinds of people. Some are highly decorated scholars like Stanislav and Vjera. But far more are gentle mothers and kindly grandpas who sing lullabies and riddle songs to children or thump out the ballads of yore on the guitar or banjo. Some are the patient teachers who listen to a child learning classic poetry and Bible verses “by heart.” Others are the cafeteria workers and custodians who take time to hear a child’s worries and sooth them with a comforting story from their own youth, imparting an invisible moral lesson as they do.

There are no unimportant figures in the battle to maintain the traditions of a culture. We need scholars and researchers, for sure: statesmen, authors, editors, and publishers. But without the people who day-by-day plant the values and lessons, there is no tradition. Without the moms who sort the socks, slice the sandwich bread, and read fairy tales and Peter Rabbit, the next generation will have no foundation. Their daily work is just as essential as that of a scholar tagging musty volumes of music by composers whose names end with “evich.” It’s just that one set of heroes is commemorated by awards and long bibliographies. The other set of heroes remains largely unsung.

So in this moment of quiet, I am thinking of my group members as they convene here, but also of you at home, my dear readers. May each of you enjoy a clear path as you do both the work that you love, and the sometimes tiresome work that is given you to do. When doubts about the value of your efforts creep in, may you whisk them aside with the flick of your hand. Remember that phrases like “we stand on the shoulders of giants” exist for a reason. Not a one of us would be where we are without the toil of generations who came before us. Those people took the traditions given them, guarded them, and labored to give them to us. In these extraordinary times, we have no greater charge than to cherish such gifts and pass them on.