At the Airport

June 22, 2009
5.17 PM

I have arrived at the Dubrovnik airport and am waiting for check-in to start (in another hour or so). It’s pouring - I can hear the rain over the music of my mp3 player.

There are two buses a day from Herzeg Novi to Dubrovnik. The first would have been too early and I was worried the second was going to be too late. I asked the bus driver to stop at the airport, and he agreed (I had been told he’s known to stop at the airport on the way to Dubrovnik). Otherwise, I would have had to go to Dubrovnik and worry that the airport bus wouldn’t match up with my flight time. So although I arrived at the airport four hours before my flight, this option was preferable (and seven dollars cheaper!)

I didn’t manage to get out of the internet café until about noon. I actually wasn’t even sure I was going to go to Herzeg Novi until then. The rain almost stopped, so I decided to go for it. I walked quickly to the bus station thinking I would be waiting awhile. I bought the ticket and was pointed to a bus that was backing up. I ran for it. I couldn’t have timed it any better. And bonus: the bus was 50 cents cheaper than I had been quoted.

Rain fell the entire time I was on the bus, so I was actually expecting to end up sitting at a café in Herzeg Novi for a couple of hours. Fortunately, the rain stopped long enough for me to explore Herzeg Novi a bit. Fortunately, the old town isn’t big and I had no trouble seeing the town in an hour or so.

Old town entrance.

Main square in old town.

The fortress.

New town.

I headed back to the bus station early, just in case. I was anticipating something going terribly wrong - I couldn’t imagine 3 buses, 1 airplane, and 2 trains all going without a hitch. Surprisingly, my only hitch (so far) has been a problem with the bus ticket between Herzeg Novi and Dubrovnik. When I arrived in Herzeg Novi, I asked to buy a ticket thinking that I would spend the remainder of the money. I was told that I could only buy the ticket on the bus. Apparently, the bus driver hadn’t heard that, because he sent me back to the cashier to buy a ticket (which she did). I suppose it depends on who is working. Fortunately (how many fortunatelys is that?), the driver was really nice and told me not to worry, just get the ticket and come back; he would wait.

Unfortunately, since I wasn’t sure how much the ticket would cost (I was told 8 Euro, but I didn’t quite trust that information), I couldn’t spend much of anything. I got a couple of small snacks, but I am sitting here starving and will very possibly be starving until tomorrow morning. Even if I had money to spend, there really isn’t much of anything in this airport and nothing worth spending money on.

I need to move. The woman next to me is driving me crazy. She’s pacing around eating a banana and just sprayed herself with a ton of deodorant.

The Island of Lokrum

13 June 2009

Since we were still exhausted from yesterday (our day trip to Mostar), we decided to stay closer to home base today.

By that I mean that we took the #4 bus to old town, walked to the old town port, and hopped on a boat to Lokrum.

Lokrum is an island near Dubrovnik (near enough to swim to).But we, like everybody else, hopped on the 40 kuna return trip boat.

As soon as we arrived, we set out to explore the island.The island was full of peacocks.

We found some peacocks, the monastery and botanical gardens and after some intense uphill hiking, found the fortress.Hiking to the fortress.View of Dubrovnik from the top of the fortress.

After exploring, we set out to find one of the many beaches on the island. It turns out that there are no real beaches on the island, only rocks and cliffs. We found some particularly pokey rocks and plopped down. It seems to me that most of the beaches we've been to (and maybe most of the beaches in Europe even, are rocky or pebbly at the very least).

We relaxed in the sun until the last boat back docked.

7 passport checks, 2 countries, 1 really cool bridge

13 June 2009

Yesterday, we daytripped to Mostar, Bosnia from Dubrovnik, Croatia. I had been wanting to go to Bosnia, and finally I made it. Country number 35 (36 if you count the US).

We spent 3 and a half hours on the bus to get there, and 3 to get back, and a total of 5 hours in Mostar itself. Our passports were checked 7 times, but not stamped even once (I really wanted a Bosnian stamp!). We had to wake up before 6am and we didn't get back until about 10pm.

Was it worth it?

YES!

Bosnia is a really interesting combination of people. In Mostar, for example, control is divided between Croats and Bosniaks. Although we had no experience with this ourselves, apparently the division is apparent with each ethnicity claiming one side of the main street even. Something else I find interesting is that in Mostar specifically, Orthodox, Islam, and Catholic exist side by side. Christian crosses can be seen in close proximity to mosques. Minarets peak the skyline, crosses on the tops of churches in between.

Despite major efforts to restore the city, war damage is still existent and obvious. There are hollow buildings inhabited only by trees and birds. The main symbol of the city is the bridge which was more or less destroyed in the war and painstakingly rebuilt.

The main sites are the mosques in stari grad (old town) and the restored bridge. We admired the bridge and took plenty of pictures. We even witnessed a couple of guys jumping from the bridge into the Neretva river below (something like 100 feet down). What a scam! One guy would go around asking people to pay to watch a different guy jump off the bridge. We didn't pay, but saw the jumping because we happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness the "feat." I bet they make a pretty good living jumping a couple of times every hour. Greg said he saw a 20 euro bill in the hat the guy was passing around.

I think that is going to be one of my new jobs. Bridge jumping. My slogan will be: "I'll jump for a Mark." But the trick is, I won't. I'll only jump once I have 20 Bosnian Marks in my hat (10 euro). If I jump 6 times a day, that's 60 euro and surely enough to live on in Bosnia.

I don't think I've mentioned my other new jobs I'm planning on (all borrowed ideas from people I've seen working here). My first job is definitely going to be rabbit fortune telling (I saw this one in Turkey). My business plan is to buy a bunny, train it to sit on a box, handwrite some crazy fortunes, and then write up a sign that says "Pet my bunny and he will tell you your fortune." I will lure kids in with my bunny (of course they will want to pet him, and when they do, "Aha! That will be 1 Turkish lira please. Here is your fortune.") My only business cost would be carrots and lettuce! But of course, I would need more income than my bunny could provide me, so I would have to diversify. I would also sell jewelry on the side of the road, tie bits of string around unsuspecting tourists' wrists and then ask for a euro, carry around a bucket of ice and bottled water, and participate in other such nefarious get rich quick schemes.

Sixteen plus hours after we left, we ambled through the door of the sobe. I was so tired I couldn't think. I showered quickly and almost immediately fell asleep.

Dubrovnik

12 June 2009

"Did you see that?"

Cat #2 hopped through the window and onto the chair and had run out of the room.

"What do we do?"

There are two cats loose in this house.

"Is the front door open?"

"I hope so."

Seconds later Cat #1 returned to the kitchen and jumped out of the window. We were still trying to eat our dinner. Our "hostess" had insisted we eat some plumbs (from her garden?) and sit in her kitchen to eat. By the time the cats started jumping, the others had retreated to their rooms and we were alone.

The meal itself was grim. The canned corn was our main staple at the meal. Everything else was there for decoration. How do I explain this? We were only going to eat the corn, but the hostess, her family and guests (we can't tell who is a guest and who is family) were all witnesses to our pathetic meal, so we brought in all the food we had: chip crumbles, avjar (eggplant and pepper sauce), 2 dried bread heels, and leftover pasta salad. All of this old food was just for show. We were sitting in our hostess' personal kitchen, so we already felt awkward - we didn't want to feel any weirder by having her see us eating only corn.

Sobe are rooms in someone's home for let. Sometimes you end up in a shared apartment situation and sometimes you end up falling asleep staring at photos of somebody's kid. This sobe is somewhere in between.

We don't know this lady's name or even her address (I'm not positive we could find the sobe on a map), but we are staying with her for as many as four nights.

All we know is that she is very generous and had ten toothbrushes in various states of decrepitude in a cup sitting on her medicine cabinet. I'm pretty sure that at least some of these toothbrushes are currently in use. Hopefully, they are all used for different cleaning tasks (the grout in the tub, around the faucet, etc.)

The lady at our last sobe (whose name we also don't know) set up our stay in Dubrovnik (which was really nice seeing as we had no internet and no way to reserve anything ourselves). Although, if we had arrived without a reservation, there would have been no end of little old ladies trying to rent their extra room to us. As soon as we stepped on the bus, we were swarmed. I'm glad we didn't have to sort through the little old ladies to try to find a decent one. We lucked out in Korcula when we did exactly that, but I'm not sure how long our luck would have lasted.

Dubrovnik is spread out like Brasov, Romania. The bus station is some distance from old town, and our sobe is somewhere sort of in between.

Yesterday, we spent the middle of the day in old town Dubrovnik walking around and taking photos.

We spent the afternoon lying on rocks like iguanas at the ocean. We swam a bit, but the water was so cold I couldn't feel my toes, so I wasn't in for long.

Our day ended with the discovery of internet at our sobe and our meal of corn and dried up bread.