Change Happens Slowly

Bill and Maya arrived safely and are in good shape. The first evening Maya and I went for a walk. First we checked out the "gang of market cats". Maya claims the white one was the same one we rescued and gave eye drops to in 2009. Then the same red scruffy dog came by for pets. Finally we ended up at the Bounce Park (has inflatables for kids to jump on, almost never open). It was open with a few kids on the trampoline. After jumping for about 15 minutes, she asked another girl for her name, it was the SAME girl she used to jump with in 2009! Maxine.

Hopefully she can find Maxine again, to be her Croatian friend.

Maya and I went with a bus load of Study Abroad students to the Island of Korcula for the Good Friday Procession (Bill was too jet lagged to go). My film students shot video, so maybe I will post a link soon. We stopped at the Matusko Winery and Maya got to pet the same dog, a Burmese Mountain Dog. They probably could charge to pet this dog it was so sweet.

Onward onto a little boat to the Island of Korcula, birthplace of Marco Polo. The gray clouds lifted, the sun came out.

Trip to STON

Trip to STON, a set on Flickr.

Croatia - the Sequel

Cat/Maya/Bill in Croatia 2012!

Yes, I made it to Dubrovnik on March 12. It was a very rough trip, with 3 little planes and 1 big plane. The BORO got me! The Boro is a wind from the north, that blows down the Swiss Alps in little gusts. When the Boro blows, the planes will not land at the Dubrovnik airport. The plane lands at the Split airport, which is a 5 hour bus trip from Dubrovnik (my sister Diana might remember this). Lucky for me, I got on the first bus seat, so I had a view of the Adriatic coast until dark. Someone from the college met me at the bus station and took me to my very lovely apartment.

The apartment is across the street from my last apartment, it is cheaper, but very nice. All new kitchen and appliances, fancy lighting, very comfortable. Bill and Maya will be joining me April 4, and we should all fit just fine.

The students are adjusting well, they drink like fish, beer is cheap. They roam around old town till dawn. Not sure if I will be able to get them to do any film work. They have a lot of field trips for all their classes. Since I have a small group (5 students) we join forces with the Sketchbook Class.

Tomorrow we are going to STON, to film the shellfish farmers. Hope the camera doesn't fall in the water. It is oyster season so I am going to have to down a few, I have never had an oyster in my life. I guess this is one thing I can still try, even though I am almost 60 years old!

E-Gads, who is that old lady peering back at me in the mirror?

GOOD BYE Croatia

Mysteries of Croatia that will remain unsolved:

Why Croatians are all slim but they sit around cafes all day and night eating and drinking, in addition they do not exercise?

Why only 1 building in Dubrovnik is orange and yellow, while all the others have to confirm to strict laws; white buildings, green shutters, no signs, and orange tile roofs?

Why there is a bin of fresh ginger at the supermarket, yet no dishes seem to be made with ginger?

Why the peanut butter is always in the cooler at the grocery store, but the milk is always on the shelf?

Why the Croatian bank does not print lots of smaller bills, so that the clerks do not scowl, every time you hand them a 200 kuna note?

Why all the politicians on the billboards are bald, but I never see a Croatian man that is bald?

Croatia taught me I can live without the following:

Twist ties, rubber bands, and paper clips.

My own car.

Walmart, Target, and K-mart.

Big cups of coffee, fast food, Styrofoam containers, plastic ware, paper ware.

Fruits and vegetables not in season.

Divided highways, 4 lane highways, any road you can drive more thatn 40mph.

What I learned in Croatia:

How to gut a fish, and cook it Croatian style.

That grilled squid is really good.

How to sit in a cafe and make a tiny cup of coffee last 2 hours.

How to drink Grappa (home-made brandy), even when it is offered at 11am.

Venice - We Are ALL Tourists Here!

To see photo stream, go to March entries, Honor's Dinner.

We decided to go to Venice, since it was right across the Adriatic Sea.  But it is not easy to get from here to there.  If you look at the map, it shows a ferry going from Dubrovnik to right below Venice, but not at this time of year.  So we flew to Zagreb, and rented a car at the airport, and drove across Slovenia into Italy.  Slovenia has divided highways most of the way and is part of the European Union. But it is still a 5 hour drive. We left the car in a car park and got on a Vaporetto to go to our hotel. Our hotel was near the famous Saint Mark's Square, and was a converted palace with a very fancy lobby and modest rooms. We only had one and a half days to explore Venice.  The next day we went to Saint Mark's Square which was jammed with tourists (it was May 1st, a holiday in Europe), after walking around we decided to escape to Murano Island which was less crowded.  We loved seeing the glass artworks in the showrooms and Maya liked watching them make the glassware.

The next day we got up early to be at the front of the line to go into the Campanile Tower to see the views all around Venice.  We took a gondola ride and Maya bought a carnival mask, which she wore in the gondola ride. Every time we went under a bridge, tourist snapped photos of the little girl in the Carnival Mask on the Gondola. I am glad we visited Venice, there is no place like it in the world, but after a day and a half, the crowds of tourists and the cost of just being there got to me. It is a hard place to drag a kid around in, especially when it is so noisy and crowded. Back in Dubrovnik the tourists are also making life a bit harder. The bus is jammed, the traffic is slow, the old town is busy.  I think back to those days in March when we had everything to ourselves.  

War and More War

Photo Stream at end of Posting 2:

We traveled to Bosnia last weekend for a 3 day field trip with the students.  The first city we headed to was Mostar, Bosnia. On the way we stopped at our first Turkish town Pociteli, which is also a 9th century walled village but it was very different from the coastal town of the Dalmatian coast. It was our first view of Turkish architecture, with a mosque and slate roofs.

We climbed up to the fort on top and had a beautiful view of the Neum River. In Mostar we saw the 9th century bridge that connected the Islamic side of town to the Christian side of town. It was blown up in 1992, but rebuilt in 2004, using the same technique they used in the 9th century.  We also had a first hand look at the war damage, as many buildings were skeleton ruins, or covered with pock marks from shell hits. We went inside a mosque and climbed to the top of the minaret.  We spent the night in a hotel, and set out for Sarajevo the next morning.

Bosnia is almost all mountains, and there are no highways. We had 2 vans, with 3 seats across, so the middle seat person bounced around on every hairpin curve. Sarajevo is set in a mountain valley and hosted the winter Olympics in 1984. It has since seen a lot of war, with 10,000 deaths in Sarajevo, 1500 of them children.  It has very interesting architecture, a mix of Turkish Ottoman, Austria-Hungarian, and new modern Islamic buildings, with a mosque every few blocks. We started out in the old city Turkish Souk, which was crowded with Saturday shoppers. I took a group photo of my students in front of a Islamic water fountain, and Bill noticed a young man in a t-shirt sitting in front of the students with his girlfriend.  His T-shirt was from The House of Guitars, Rochester, NY.  He was from Slovenia. Small world.  

I bought some examples of "trench art", which are hammered decorated vases made out of bomb shell casings.  You can buy anything in the Souk, much like a Moroccan souk, with narrow alleys and wares piled high.  Eating was tough in Bosnia for vegetarians, they are big meat eaters. Not much English is spoken here, so it was hard to figure out what to order. Maya did well as she survived on kabobs and civapis (lamb sausage in flat breads). We saw the Assassination Bridge where the Archduke was assassinated and WWI started, and went inside a Serbian Orthodox cathedral. 

The next day, we took the rode less traveled, 5 hours of hairpin turns to get to a National Park and the last remaining virgin forest in Europe. There a huge monument stands to honor the WWII battle (Sutjeska) where 3000 troops died fighting the Germans in a battle that was the turning point of the war. Back in the van for another 3 hours of bouncing around, going through Serbian part of Bosnia, where Zoran said we couldn't even stop for food. Why? Because if they see the Croatian licence plate, they will spit in our food. There was a concentration camp at Bileca, where many Serbians died at the hands of the Croatian.  We are all getting a little weary of war, imagine a history where there is no war. When we finally arrived back in Dubrovnik, it felt like home.