Neum, Peljesac, and the Mighty Republic of Dubrovnik

After five days in Mostar, we’re heading back to the coast. However, it won’t exactly be to Croatia just yet. We’re heading Neum, one of the few towns on the Adriatic that’s not in Croatia. Neum is on the tiny sliver of the coast that ended up in the political boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina. To the south, there’s an expanse that belongs to Montenegro (freshly having gained independence from Serbia). Just sizing it up on the map, Croatia has about 80% of the Adriatic coast taken up by countries from the former Yugoslavia (or something close to that). They have virtually all of those islands in the Adriatic, too. I suppose if you count the coastline on those islands, Croatia’s share of the Adriatic is something closer to 99% or something ridiculous like that… What a great setup for the Croatians. There’s a skinny strip to the southeast of Neum that really looks like it should belong to Bosnia & Herzegovina. Nope, it’s somehow Croatia’s. I really doubt it’s a recent change, but more likely it’s something that predates the different incarnations of Yugoslavia and just popped up again when the country fractured anew into independent states.

Neum, Bosnia & Herzegovina’s tiny little piece of the Adriatic, is pretty cool. Even though it's a small town, the coastline around Neum is reasonably developed, probably because it’s all that Herzegovina has of the Adriatic. There’s some glaring evidence of the war here too, and Jelena’s mother Diana tells me that this was from Serbian air attacks. Several of the buildings on the coast, especially the large ones with ugly 70’s architecture, are still holdings of the government’s. The country doesn’t have the money to renovate them just yet, so they’re just sitting there with blackened, gaping holes in them. Minus these, the coast is really pleasant. A promenade has been built along most of the best beach property. After unpacking into a home owned by a friend of the family, we take a walk along this pathway before dusk.

The objective of our trip to Neum, aside from relaxing with Jelena’s mother, sister, and her family, is to use it as a launching point for visiting Dubrovnik and some different sites along the Peljesac peninsula. Jelena’s father also owns two pieces of land in a small town on Peljesac that we want to check out. Both trips will require going south, which necessitates crossing the border once again into Croatia. It’s almost a no-op, as the border patrol only ended up even asking us for passports one out of six times that we made the transition around Neum. Still, it’s apparently annoying enough to the Croatians that they want to build a bridge from a point north of Neum that links directly the peninsula to the southwest of the coast (the peninsula sort of grows to the Northwest – look at a map, I guess). We’re going to do the Dubrovnik trip first so we can visit Peljesac as a group when Jelena’s sister, her husband John, and her nephew Marcus arrive on the following day.

For anyone who reads this log that intends to visit Croatia at some point in the future, I offer one piece of advice: if you’re planning on seeing Dubrovnik (and if you aren’t, I just don’t get you…), make it the last Dalmatian city that you visit. The reasoning behind my advice: I don’t think that any Dalmatian city can top Dubrovnik. The city is truly awesome to behold. It’s basically a massive castle perched on the Adriatic with a perfectly preserved stone town encased by the walls. Dubrovnik was actually sovereign for much of its lifetime, an independent Republic of Dubrovnik, and at times controlled parts of the Adriatic coast around the city proper (including the Peljesac peninsula that we’ll be visiting the following day). The city itself is a time capsule, having flourished for centuries with almost no outside tampering by the numerous imperial heavyweights that have stalked the region throughout the past 1400-ish years. In fact, the only assailant that Dubrovnik has been seriously injured by is Mother Nature – the worst damage to the city coming from earthquakes (one particularly bad one in the 17^th century cuts down the city at its apogee).

I like to think of Dubrovnik as the giant sea tortoise of the world’s influential and historic coastal cities (the image probably had something to do with the pet turtles roaming around the yard in the home that we’re staying at in Neum – extremely random tidbit). The metaphor being that Dubrovnik has survived numerous predators, elements, and political currents by being deceptively crafty and making itself an extremely hard target. Just looking at Dubrovnik, it’s clear that the city is unassailable by military means prior to the age of air power. The cities hard outer shell facing land and sea is impregnable. The massive walls are lined with cannons, so if you came too close to Dubrovnik, it would deliver a serious bite. However, Dubrovnik avoided the big fights by buying off whatever power was claiming hegemony over the Adriatic at any point. The Republic built numerous grain stores and underground connections to natural springs as far as eight miles away, helping it weather food and water shortages and making it resistant to siege. I will only summarize, but the Republic developed a political process that kept corruption and internal sabotage from destroying it from within by rotating leaders so quickly that none could really take it down alone. Look into the eyes of a tortoise, and you’re looking at perhaps the smartest and toughest dinosaur put on Earth. That’s Dubrovnik. With a focus on defense, avoidance, and by being generally cleverer than its peers, it has survived intact while other entities have suffered virtual extinction via serious erosion, outright implosion, or radical transformation via outside influences.

We took over 200 pictures in Dubrovnik. There are too many sights to put into a log. Just go there and make sure to climb atop the city walls and walk the full perimeter. If they’re open, visit the museums and monasteries. The food and drink in the inner plaza are ridiculously overpriced, so step outside the city walls to take breaks. Don’t even buy a soda in there, we accidentally spent $10 on two fountain drinks. Ouch. I could easily write several pages about Dubrovnik, but it doesn’t seem like the best use of time given that there’s a ton of great resources available regarding the city and it’s the location that everyone who reads this account is most likely to visit themselves some day. I’m compelled to move on.

The next day we drive south again, but turn west and drive up the Peljesac Peninsula. The drive makes me wish that I was more of a wine buff, as Peljesac is the regional wine capital. We’re going to Stresser, a tiny town near the top of the peninsula (so small that it’s not even really on the map). Jelena’s father has two plots of land in the general vicinity of Stresser. The first one is genuine downtown property, right between the town chapel and the graveyard. It’s overgrown and has nothing on it but an old wooden tool shed. He hasn’t been around in years, but has invited some locals to harvest produce that he planted earlier on the lot. He also has land in the hill overlooking the town that has a home on it. As children, Jelena and Svjetlana would go to the peninsula for long portions of the summer when Mostar became so hot as to be uninhabitable. Following the war, her father has not attended to the property, and the home hasn’t been visited in over a decade.

In a caravan of two cars, the group drives a short distance up the small, overgrown road to their childhood vacation home, not knowing what to expect. We’re informed that we might need a jeep to penetrate the road, but the amazingly hardy Hyundai Getz blows right through rocks, grass, and rose bushes that grope from the sides of the road. The home is in such a bad state that we barely recognize it, with Svjetlana and John driving straight past it in the lead. Jelena and I start staking out the lot while they backtrack, taking in about 15 years of complete neglect. The doors and windows are mostly open or ajar, and the house has obviously been occupied by someone since deserted by its rightful owners. Mattresses and toys are strewn about the various rooms that we can peer into. A few of us want to investigate the whole home, but consensus rules that entering the abandoned home isn’t a good idea. Animals could be taking shelter inside, and the rotting wood floor doesn’t look completely trustworthy. I snap a handful of pictures from a few steps in, but we don’t go upstairs to solve all of the mysteries.

After leaving the old vacation home behind (Jelena seems relieved), we head south again to find a nice sand beach on the peninsula that the family knows about. After spending some time here, Jelena and I head back to Neum (I’m leaving the country soon and it’s time to pack). However, we stop along the way to take a look at another old town called “Ston.” Ston has been inhabited for ages because of its strategic location on the south side of the peninsula. Ston can protect the whole land mass, along with the Adriatic canal nearby. The town was formerly part of the Republic of Dubrovnik, which you can almost guess from the huge walled fortifications around the town hills. Dubrovnik likes to build big walls. Ston’s walls stretch for miles, making it a miniature Great Wall of China. We can only spend an hour or so in Ston, and I wish we could make it a whole day or two.

A return to Neum to re-pack and drive north towards Split caps the vacation for me. I have to hand it to Jelena, her trip plan was perfect. Starting with the Dalmatian coast was a great way for me to ease into the new environment of the Balkans, and Dubrovnik served as a culmination that would have made the other coastal cities that we visited earlier in the trip seem a little anti-climactic. The finale on the coast framed the experience on the interior really well, giving time to mull the different conditions in Croatia and Herzegovina. I leave with a myriad of impressions that are sure to set into vivid memories.

I'm out, Cao!

Herzegovina and the Challenges of Frontier

Bidding a sad farewell to Hvar (and the Dalmatian coast, but only temporarily), we take the ferry back to Split to meet up with Jelena’s sister Svjetlana and her husband and child. We’ll be staying the night in Split in an apartment owned by one of Jelena’s cousins. The visit to Split is brief, however, as the real migration that we’re beginning is an inland trek to Herzegovina. Jelena’s mother, father, and much of her extended family still live in Mostar, Herzegovina’s biggest city.

Briefly on Split – it’s an interesting city. I’m not charmed in the same fashion as Hvar, or even Trogir. However, Split has a lot going on. The bustling metropolis has a sophisticated populous, a developed infrastructure with better roads than other Croatian cities I’ve seen, and a large "old town" that’s steeped in a deep history all its own. The towering communist-era housing structures and the highways have misled me, Split is deceptively ancient. Jelena and I take part of the evening to walk the old town, getting a good view of the city by climbing the chapel bell tower.

The museum by the chapel was unfortunately closed, so I had to “wiki-dive” to learn about the city history when I had an Internet connection later on. I’m just going to summarize, as Split’s history is too rich to go into in a log that’s supposed to be about Herzegovina. The gist that I got is that Split has been inhabited for ages, but really exploded with the decline of the Roman influence in the region (capped by a neighboring ancient city, this time “Salona,” falling to outside invasion). There’s a pattern with other Balkan cities like this – a Roman city falls, and another city springs up to fill the space. In the case of Split, Romans and others fleeing an invasion of Northern barbarians (Slavs!) grow Split, almost overnight, from a retirement palace for the departed emperor Diocletian into the most influential city on the Dalmatian coast.

The next morning we are on the road to Mostar. Crossing the border into Bosnia & Herzegovina, I’m struck by an almost instant decline in the condition of the towns and infrastructure. Croatia is just better off. Of course, we’re also leaving the awesome Adriatic behind. I miss it right away. Herzegovina has a beautiful landscape, however, and I’m pleased to see farms and a lot more greenery in general. I’m also seeing mosques, and the first one pops up almost immediately after crossing the border. A Croatian flag is conspicuously draped over a power line right by the mosque, the first indicator of a semi-cold war between Muslims and Croatians in Herzegovina. It’s almost tit for tat – if there’s a mosque, the Catholics are going to make sure you can see a cross or Croatian emblem somewhere close by without even turning your head (and vice-versa).

Herzegovina is sustained by a series of rivers, and the major sights are located next to them. We decide to stop for a quick break in one of them, an old Turkish-built town called Pocitelj. I’m really glad we did, as this ends up being a really interesting visit. Pocitelj has a fortress, mosque, and Turkish bath. Its origins are probably military, and I think it served mostly as a fortification during the Ottoman dominance of the region. The town has been hit hard by the war, but the damage almost makes it more interesting. They’ve repaired the mosque, but other parts of the town are a lens for what happened to the historical parts of the Balkans during the civil war.

Mostar sprawls compared to the other Herzegovina towns we’ve gone through. The outskirts give way to the downtown, situated on Neretva River. The distinguishing feature of Mostar is the “Stari Most,’ or the old bridge that connects the two sides of the town – Muslim and Croatian (Catholic). I think a bridge has been there since the town was originally founded, but the version that made it famous was built by master engineers during Ottoman rule of the region. This makes it an ethnically-charged monument, and the bridge was definitely destroyed by Croatian forces during the war – Jelena has told me this. I know that it’s a huge point of historical contention in terms of recounting the Bosnian wars, but I definitely get the sense that the Croatians destroyed the bridge for reasons beyond mere strategic initiative. The ancient bridge was an emblem of Turkish (Muslim) influence in shaping Herzegovina, becoming the defining feature of the city (it’s even named after the bridge). I should probably stay out of it.

Anyway, the bridge is back. It’s been totally rebuilt, but Jelena can tell the difference when we get really close. It makes her sad. I can glean from her and others that a lot has been done to rebuild the city in the past 10-odd years. Still, it’s a shadow of what it was before the war. This saddens Jelena, and I can’t really relate. I try to think of what it would be like to return to Portland (or Hillsboro) after a civil war that shatters or burns most of the landscape. That puts things in perspective. Still, there is proof that the rebuilding effort is ongoing – Jelena’s old high school is being rebuilt while we’re visiting.

Mostar is truly where East meets West. There’s probably another town that serves as a boundary marker in this way, but I can’t think of one off hand. If there is, I would be surprised if it can delineate the separation as sharply as Mostar has come to since the wars in Bosnia. The afore-mentioned “pseudo-cold war” is being waged in earnest between the two sides of the city. Mosques face off with chapels with big crosses on them. Croatian flags fly. As far as I can tell, the score is pretty even. Well, the Catholics have managed to plant a big cross up on the hillside above the town, and I couldn’t pick out an answer from the Muslim side for that one just yet… You can stand in the middle of one of the other bridges in the town and look at the two sides, Muslim and Catholic, reaching across the Neretva river. It’s best if you look at the Stari Most (old bridge)– and I’m struck that the destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the bridge make it a symbol of the city in a transcendent way that it would not if the bridge had never been destroyed. Ties were broken. Damage was done, perhaps irreparable, but the city is trying.

Navigating Mostar is an amazing experience if you’ve never witnessed the aftermath of war (especially a civil war). It seems like half of the buildings have visible war damage still. You can turn on any one spot and find a building with bullet holes or grenade damage. Perhaps the most shocking, all of the inner city parks are now full-on graveyards. They just didn't have enough places to put those who were dying in the war. People are bustling about, carrying on with their lives. Red-tagged buildings that look ready to fall down have cars parked right in front of them. Too busy, need to get to work. Many of the buildings were stone, so they still stand even after suffering fire and ammunition. Burnt-out hulls, some of them with trees growing out of windows and open wounds to the sky. Jelena tells me that they’d like to repair all of the damage, but people just don’t have the time or money to do it quickly. We’re both amazed at how many cars are jamming up the narrow streets of the town. Jelena tells me that it wasn’t that way before the war. The city seems poorer and slightly shell-shocked still, but more people have cars. We’re not sure that’s good…

There’s another reason that the town is in poor repair, one that can be summed up on the principal of the “tragedy of the commons.” Like a lot of cities that are newly out of Communism I bet, Mostar is struggling with public works projects, cooperative ownership, and a general lack of wealth to begin with. Jelena’s mother lives in one of the condo buildings built during Communism (by the look, I’m guessing during the 60’s or 70’s). Jelena tells me that party members were given these homes or condos after staying in the party for a time. This was the sort of deal struck by the government – join the party, you get a free place of your own, or maybe a job – different perks. Party membership was incentive driven, but the administration of government and law was an absolute dictatorship (Tito). The rejuvenation of these housing structures in the aftermath of the war is a perfect illustration of the tragedy of the commons. That is to say, they aren’t getting fixed up much at all. You can see “stripes” on some buildings where a frustrated but motivated owner has fixed “their part” of the building. Nearly nothing gets done in concert by the collective owners. There’s little in the way of co-ops, home-owners dues, etc. Jelena’s mother tells me some stories later in the trip of her frustrations trying to get improvements done to her building. She says she’s given up, but I think things are moving (just way too slow for her and other motivated owners).

We visit Jelena’s father in the town’s “suburbs” (less than 10 minutes walk from the urban center where her mother lives). To me, this part of the town is more pleasant. Since the homes are all single-owned, they’re in a lot better shape. It could also be that the people in this part of the town have more resources to make repairs. Her father lives in a house here, but he really lives in his garden. His backyard is a fascinating community all on its own. With chickens, bees, fruits and vegetables on hand – his home is completely self-sustaining. Jelena says that he really only needs to go to the store to buy milk when it really comes down to it.

Mostar is family time on our trip, and during the visits I get to see a good portion of the countryside of Herzegovina around the city. Again, everything is situated along the rivers. We take a trip to the waterfalls at Kravica, which are pretty impressive for their breadth and number if not for their height. Touring around the city is a quick lesson in defensive driving on single-lane roads. People take serious risks when passing, and the winding switch-backs that climb the hills offer little visibility. Jelena does a really good job, and she still gets stressed out by people who bully her from behind and surprise us with passing maneuvers that come uncomfortably close (at least, for us) to head-on collisions. We both notice that the real assholes are driving nice cars. Mercedes, Audis and BMW’s. I imagine them muttering, “I’ve got air-bags bitch, side-airbags. You better get out of the way, because you’ll be the one dying while I shop for a newer model of this baby.” It’s really, really annoying.

I don’t know how to sum up a visit to Mostar for a visitor like myself who’s new to the region and hasn’t lived through war. I suppose that there was a good dose of culture shock, in retrospect. The funny thing is, I never felt threatened. The town is completely safe. People are really friendly (except on the roads). It’s the striking images of shattered buildings, bullet holes, and converted graveyards that shock the system for someone like me. I can only try to understand how it feels for Jelena, and others who have returned to the city after the war. Like other locations that astonish and challenge, Mostar made me slightly uncomfortable in the moment, but you keep thinking about the experience long afterwards.

Split to Hvar

Day two of the trip is spent in transit to the island of Hvar. We'll be seeking out the town that the island is named for and spending three nights there. Croatia has, as I've been informed (and now witnessed), hundreds of islands. Many of them have historically important and vibrant coastal towns, of which Hvar town is one of the oldest & coolest. We leave Trogir after lunch and take a ferry from Split to the island's ferry landing near Stari Grad (one of the other towns on the island, perhaps even older in origin than the town of Hvar - the name literally means "old town."). There's a ferry landing in the town of Hvar, but it's smaller and the schedule doesn't work out. We still win, however, as we get to drive across the island from Stari Grad to Hvar town, taking in the landscape (at least, I win... she's doing all the driving).

Hvar town itself seems like an upgrade over Trogir to me. Jelena is there for the first time as well, and she classifies Hvar as a "mini-Dubrovnik." This bodes well for the climax of our Croatia travels - in Dubrovnik. I digress - Hvar beats Trogir on several fronts. To start, it has a huge fortress that looms over the town from atop the hillside. The town is situated on a small bay lined with docks. Fishing boats and million dollar yachts are keeping company along the water line, and a stone promenade curls around the town and stretches some kilometers along the coast on either side. This forms a natural town center, punctuated with a spacious stone plaza.

We have lunch here, and again pay too much money for mediocre pizza. This event begins a set of sessions of pure whining about the restaurant food in Croatia and Herzegovina. The menus blur together. Meat. Pizza. Pasta with Ketchup (huh?). Prices that seem too high even before the bad exchange rate factors in. Some of the restaurant names are even comical and slightly pitiable: “Meat and Fish House,” “Croatian Slow Food” (as opposed to fast food…), “Café Hello.” The restaurateurs truly don’t seem to know any better – they think they’re giving tourists what they want. Maybe they are for the general tourist visiting Eastern Europe, but Jelena and I are already yearning for vegetables and sauces that are suddenly scarce. My system is not handling all of the meat and grease very well – I want a bran muffin.

On the Dalmatian coast, almost everyone is looking to rent you an “apartman,” or room. If they aren’t, they have a relative within shouting distance that is. There are other common names for rooms for rent – “sobe, zimmer” (I think “zimmer” is German, but there are a lot of German tourists in Croatia). They just lump them all on the same advertisements, so half of the buildings have the words “apartmani, sobe, zimmer, room” pasted across them. We stop for directions at a crummy looking “apart-hotel” and end up getting recruited by the cook – now our host. He’s got a house overlooking Hvar and the port with several “apartmani” for rent. The price seems like a total steal until I realize that the queen sized bed is actually two doubles pushed together. Bummer. The price is still pretty good.

Hvar is really, really old. You can just feel it – things have been happening there for a long time. I feel compelled to start learning the history of the region. It turns out that Hvar Island has some of the oldest known settlements in the entire Dalmatian coast. Hvar itself stems from the Greek word Pharos, meaning “lighthouse.” Pharos was an ancient settlement on the island where Stari Grad (the town next to where we got off the ferry) now sits. The people were already there; the Greeks just gave it that name (and colonized them…). Wikipedia tells me that the name gradually mutated to Hvar mostly due to the Romans and later the Slavic people. The Romans chose to refer to it as “Pharia” instead of “Pharos,” and the Slavic speakers replaced the “f” consonant with the more natural Slavic “hv” consonant. I don’t know what happened to the “ia” at the end. Saving that technicality, we have a story for how “Pharos” became “Hvar.”

We’re in Hvar for almost a full three days. It’s really worth more than that. I could envision staying there for a week or more. The pathways around the town are great for walking and navigating the area by foot. There are beaches all over the island, but there are even some decent ones within walking distance of the downtown of Hvar. The “fortica” (fort) on the top of the hill is a nice afternoon hike and is a genuine attraction. There’s a dungeon, decent resources for learning about the history of the town, and it provides incredible views of the town and port. The structure is in great shape, as it wasn't really destroyed by warfare and earthquakes in the way that many other Dalmatian monuments have been. Apparently the Turks burned much of the town down once, but the fort survived (along with the Hvar population that managed to get within the walls of the stronghold).

Jelena wishes aloud that she could go back in time and see ancient invaders approach the town with their warships. The best invaders we can get today are some gaudy yachts. These invaders don’t want to burn the town down, however. At least, not literally. They’ve come to party, and there’s apparently no curfew. Bad disco music bounces off the bay, the hills, the fortica walls that repelled Ottoman invaders – my eardrums… until as late as 4am one night (maybe later). It’s probably awesome if you’re in town to get down every night, but it’s not good for sleeping in “apartmani” that overlook the bay…

In some ways Hvar was the highlight of the trip for me. It has the history and natural beauty of the Croatian coast in a nice, “contained” experience. As noted, there's even a potent nightlife. You could ferry directly to Hvar town and spend a whole week or two there without a car. The restaurant food is mediocre and overpriced, but that seems to be the norm. This is the only thing that I would change about our stay on the island – we could have purchased food at the market and cooked most of our meals in a rental that had a kitchen. No biggie. Hvar was a smash hit.

Arrival, Trogir, & Whimsy...

My first real European vacation. Jelena has planned a trip for us that begins in Croatia, and then moves to Mostar (Bosnia & Herzegovina, but I’ve learned to just use “Herzegovina” because many of the Croatians in the region, who I will be spending all of my time with, prefer it for a mixture of reasons, some obviously not related to absolute rigor in naming one’s present location…). After Herzegovina, we’ll be heading back to the Adriatic coast for a few days to finish out the trip.

The flight to Croatia is mostly uneventful and not at all the tiresome trek that I’ve been prepared for. I think this is largely due to luck, and having a good travel companion (Jelena). I’m also greatly repaid for investing in an expensive set of noise-canceling headphones, which almost completely screen out the constant hum of the jet engines and make my iPod sound really great. Our travel plan is Seattle, Dulles, Frankfurt, Split. Upon switching planes in Dulles, I start to notice subtle differences in the make-up of my fellow "putnici" (travelers, for those not trying to learn Croatian…). There is a pleasant mixture of languages floating around the cabin of the large Airbus-made plane heading to Frankfurt. The dress is also a little different, but only in a way that I can describe as “more European looking” – and that’s from someone who’s barely traveled to Europe. Still, I feel that my categorization is accurate enough for someone from the states, just as I always knew that Jelena was from some part of Europe even before I ever heard her utter a single word. Along with the interesting/good, there is also the bad: many of the men have body odor, but we are mercifully spared from this in our immediate seating area (sadly, this would not be in the cards for me on the way back…).

Split airport is tiny. The customs check is a no-op, and we’re soon fitted with our “compact” rental car – a Hyundai “Getz.” It looks like matchbox-car toy from my childhood and probably weighs a third or less than the truck I’m forcing through the streets of Seattle back home. I feel the need to kick the ridiculously small tires once just to make sure they don’t pop, as they look like something that should be floating around in a cereal bowl to me at first glance… It’s a stick shift, so Jelena is going to be doing all the driving (yes, I know, I’m lame). The smatterings of street signs throughout the region are almost completely in Croatian, so it makes sense for her to do the driving anyway. We share a joke that I should gesticulate at every major turn as if I’m directing her, if only to keep from causing general confusion and unnecessarily setting off insecurities in the Croatian males that we encounter. Upon reaching the town of Trogir, our first destination, I see two macho guys riding together on a miniscule scooter, one with his arms hugged around the other so as to not fall off helplessly when stopping or turning. Convenient, as this vision pretty much cures any gender insecurities of my own with regards to the division of driving duties for the rest of the trip.

Trogir is what I will come to understand as a typical coastal town in Croatia. That is, it’s a picturesque mixture of new and old architecture, mostly old as perceived by a Seattleite. The buildings are stone, brick, and concrete. The roofs are almost all tiled red. And of course, the most distinguishing and remarkable feature is the Adriatic itself. Crystal clear, radiant aquas and bright blues. I’ve only looked at it on maps prior to – long and skinny. Here, in person, it looks huge and wraps all around the horizon. Even though I’m probably well-traveled compared to most Americans, I feel painfully underexposed in that I can’t quite compare the Adriatic town to anything I’ve seen. Parts of Trogir actually remind me of Zanzibar, only much cleaner. Trogir, like many Croatian towns, has an old stone town at its center. Stone buildings, some of them old chapels or perhaps monasteries, cluster at the heart of Trogir. These are the most interesting. My initial guesses at the age of the buildings are in the range of the 16^th and 17^th century, which was probably close in hindsight, however only due to the fact that Trogir was razed and rebuilt many times (like the majority of the towns in the Balkans). I would find out later that Trogir has been settled since truly ancient times, and that some of the oldest artifacts and ruins from the whole darn trip were probably right there in front of me on the first day. I wish I could go back and look for remnants of the Illyrians (or perhaps something even older?), but we were jetlagged. Instead, pizza and a hotel room (both too expensive).