6 hours ago
Monday, June 23, 2008
Croatia
Early in the morning, I could see the coastline of Croatia. We had crossed the Adriatic Sea and were landing in Dubrovnik. I remember a friend from college who was proud of her Croatian roots, but I was not sure why. I had never heard much about it until the war with the Serbs in the early nineties. I knew the Croatians used a cyrillic alphabet, but it was not the same as Russian. The coastline was very rugged, rocky, and hilly. It looked as though life would be difficult there. Still, it had a beauty, and nearing port, I saw a lonely building on a rocky outcropping with a cross on top. It was a monastery, and it looked as rough and difficult a life as I could ever imagine. Upon entering port, however, the whole scene changed. It had a very riviera-like feel, a world-class scuba diving port, beautiful new buildings, modern roads, and an extremely tall, long bridge near which the ship anchored. We couldn't see the old walled city-fort from our pier, but I got a good view of it from the road to Cavtat (pronounced sahv Taht). One noticeable discrepancy was that all of the roofs were new. This city had been bombed and in great disrepair just fifteen years before, but you could not tell there had been a war, except for those new clay tile roofs. On my tour, the riviera-feel continued at the villiage of Cavtat, and indeed, it was a place where the upper class europeans summer. Croatia had its own currency, but frequently accepted euros. I was hoarding my euros, so I went to the banks, but found them closed. Finally I went back to the equivalent of a western union office to exchange my dollars and found the same old lady arguing with the clerk for the fifteen minutes it took me to find the closed banks. I made a few small purchases and looked at beautiful crocheted tablecloths. I found the local churches and the bell tower. There were huge pine trees that shaded the crushed shell walkway and rained small cones everywhere. I also discovered the clearest seawater in any harbor I had ever seen. It was so clear you could see the fish and the sea urchins on the rocks underneath the tied dingies. Still, I was glad to be on my way as it was quite hot and sunny, and I was wearing long sleeves and no sunblock. We then went to watch a folk dance performance. Originally, I meant for Brianna to see it, but my mom took her only to the walled city. The dancing was fantastic - really well done and absolutely worth the time and expense. It started with 14 and 15 year olds, with progressively older age groups coming out to dance,most of them no older than 25. The guitar and mandolin players were older men. There were elements of square dancing, the quick-footedness of Irish dancing and beautiful period costumes. Afterwards, I walked through the walled city over stones smoothed by hundreds of years of thousands of feet. The ramparts could be hiked, but it meant an expense of an additional 15 euros for the priviledge and the shuttle back, so I declined. The main drag of old town Dubrovnik was like a shopping mall set in a 400 year old fort, with the addition of a bunch of sidewalk cafes and a thousand gawking tourists, so I just kept walking through to meet the bus and go back to the ship. I would love to visit again, show Brianna the dancers, and walk the ramparts.
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1 comment:
One thing I forgot to comment on was how these really old forts, castles, battlements and 15 meter thick, 30 meter high walls make the Spanish fort at St. Augustine look REALLY lame.
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