Dubrovnik #6

After exploring the Jesuit Church, with its riotous colors of blue, pink and gold and swirling images portraying biblical stories on its dark interior walls, we returned to the cold wind and limestone of the square outside. At the edge of the square is a long flight of steps based on the Spanish Steps in Rome. Adjusting to the bright light again we took our time descending the steps, and there we found a cat huddling from the wind. 

Creatures are everywhere in this city. The stone walls are lined with various carved animal and human faces and bodies. The cats darting everywhere are the most visible and interactive ones however. For the most part they seem healthy and friendly, often getting scraps from shop owners or sidewalk cafe patrons. No sooner did I squat down to say hi to this one on the steps before he was in my lap, burrowing his face in my jacket. Just as kids fall limp to make it difficult for adults to move them, this purring cat fell limp across my thigh when it was time for us to go.  

  

  

Dubrovnik #5

The sea was rough during most of our several days in Dubrovnik. On our way somewhere it was often easy to stop for long periods  and watch the heaving aqua blue waves breaking on the city's cliffs. It's also easy to imagine back to when this was an independent city-state. A lot of trade funneled through here, making it a desirable target for conquest by the Venetians across the Adriatic or the Ottomans further east. As complicated as the development of Croatian nationhood is, Dubrovnik has always had an independent streak. The slogan printed on all city owned vehicles and buildings is Libertas.

    

    

Dubrovnik #4

Dubrovnik's street corners and bus stops hold groups of teenagers whose attitudes seem to give them the ability to recline while standing, holding their cigarettes and looking at the world over their shoulders. Vespas holding couples weave around the slowpokes on the steep streets around town. The evening corso in Dubrovnik saw groups of guys sauntering down the Placa Stradun as if their collars were up. 

All this mediterranean looseness contrasts with the very strict reputation the city maintained for hundreds of years. The city council that ruled the once powerful republic of Ragusa (as it was formerly called) tightly controlled the way the city was built. This is reflected in the orderly street grid, the uniformity in facades, building materials and even shudder colors, all coming from the middle ages.

  

  

Dubrovnik #3

Everywhere you look in Dubrovnik there is limestone. Most buildings are made of it and all of the sidewalks are laid with it. Most of it has been polished smooth by foot traffic, and can be bright and shiny in the sun or slick and shiny in the rain. Over the course of several days we regularly passed a fish market and then a flower market, and later in the day when the vendors were cleaning up the hoses would be dragged out to spray the markets clean. After a day of shoppers grinding scraps under their feet, it didn't seem to take much at all for the markets to sparkle again in the pale, warm colors of the limestone.

    

    

Dubrovnik #2

Dubrovnik is saturated with heavy, damp air filled with smells. Wind whipping in off the Adriatic carries salty mist and that scent of sea which doesn't quite go as far as fishiness. The wind rushing down off the high ridge behind the city brings pine, lavender, rosemary and sage. The planters along the sidewalks and between traffic lanes are filled with the silvery herbs. Occasionally a septic problem or exhaust would punch through the perfume. The wind, however, had a way of constantly scrubbing the odors if never clearing the humidity. 

  

  

Dubrovnik #1

Funneling down the ferry ramp to the dock in Dubrovnik, we could see the same crowd we'd encountered in train stations elsewhere in Eastern Europe gathered around waving their laminated signs and hawking the rooms on offer. All of their signs had an image of the room they would like to rent to us or a map showing how close to town their place is. 

This time of year, when the ferry arrival only happens twice a week, the event must take on more urgency for these people. The ones that hadn't snared a departing passenger by the time we were squeezing through would say "Do you need a room? I've got one very cheap!" And when we'd gotten through this gauntlet and made it across the street, a couple of them spotted us taking out our map and came after us with the same questions, and wanting to compete with the place we supposedly already reserved. 

    

    

Coastal ferry daydreaming

Some time during the night I realized the ship began groaning more forcefully and frequently lurching. Early in the dawn we were woken up by our wine bottle being knocked off the tiny desk and onto the floor by one sudden jarring of the metal ship hull. After we'd gotten up I could see that we were passing alternately between long islands and out to sea. While we were on the seaward side of the islands the waves were much bigger, naturally, and the ship's movements weren't coinciding with my insides'. A half of a dramamine calmed things down, but so did the ship's accelerating speed. It soon became apparent that the captain was ramming our boat through the rougher waters, and when I looked at where we'd been sailing overnight, I realized that our noisy, rattling sleep was certainly preferable to the nauseous one it could have been. 

A free breakfast came with our cabin tickets, and we made it to the on-board restaurant just in time to dish up our plates from the buffet, and then watch the crew take it down while we ate. Jen had a bowl of cereal with milk that had long ago come to room temperature. I was jealous. The water was separating from my scrambled egg curds and the jelly was balling up as I tried to spread it on my toast. I really can't blame the ship, however, since there couldn't have been more than a few cabins occupied on the ship that night.

  

  

The rest of the day was spent alternately getting lost in thought, reading with cappuccinos, and being so overwhelmed by the scenery we'd stand out in the blustery wind until it wore down our skin. As the hours passed, we drifted in and out of the straights between the islands. The mountainous ridges rising straight out of the sea were mostly wild and forested, and the lines exposing the layers of bedrock arched steeply down into the earth's crust. Over time, small stone villages with uniformly red roofs would drift momentarily into view, clinging to the edge of the land. Occasionally we'd spot a small church high up a mountainside, a clue that roads must snake along them somehow.

At one point in the afternoon the ship was backing into a port, and we went out onto the deck in time to see a tall and compact village easing toward us. Korcula is surrounded by a partial wall from the middle ages that is so high I felt like I could help someone aboard from it. I later read in the Rough Guide to Croatia that if you don't go to the island of Korcula, and you see it from the ferry as it makes a stop there, you'll immediately regret it. I suppose I should've read ahead, but the trip wouldn't have been long enough, and anyway Dubrovnik was only three hours away.

 

 

 

Adriatic at night

There were very few people aboard the Marco Polo the night we departed. After dropping our stuff off in our cabin (a budget version, with two bunks and a bench), we went to the top deck to watch Rijeka recede away after the ship's horns sounded. On deck there was a small family in flapping windbreakers and a guy talking on his cellphone to someone on shore. -I could tell because when we were too far to see people anymore he stood up on the railing and waved his scarf. 

After a while we set about exploring the ship. Over the cavernous vehicle bay were two or three floors of narrow halls lined with cabins. On top of this was a floor with a duty free shop holding liquor, a large brightly lit room with tables and chairs with a few people spread out reading or snacking, and a large dark lounge with a bar, comfortable banquettes, chairs and a couple TVs. 

A few more people were spread out here, chatting quietly, reading or playing cards. I sat there with a Campari and the Rough Guide to Croatia and after a while noticed that a number of people had staked out large quiet corners of the place to spread out their sleeping bags. 

I somewhat regretted spending the extra money for the cabin, as we had slept fine in the lounge several years ago on an overnight ferry in Newfoundland. I guess I'd been influenced by what I'd previously read regarding the large numbers of people traveling along this coast, but hadn't realized how much it drops off this time of year. 

Oh, well. The cabin did allow us a shower, and more privacy to snack on the bread, chocolate and wine we'd bought at the grocery store. 

The glaring lights of the outdoor deck made the sea look empty and black. However, the waves outside our small cabin window, gently lit by the glow off the side of the ship, were even more haunting. Here we could actually see how black the mystery is beyond the foamy green turmoil on the surface.

Time enough for the korso

It became obvious that Rijeka is a port city as soon as we got off the train. The station was surrounded by a large series of silos, presumably storing grain from inland fields before it's loaded onto mediterranean ships. The city, surrounded on three sides by steep hills sparkling with lights, sits at the upper end of Kvarner Gulf along the eastern Adriatic Sea. The warm humid air filled our lungs thickly, a formal announcement that we had entered a new climate.

It seems that in all mediterranean countries, the evening korso, or promenade, is ritualized to the point that at least a few main pedestrian streets in the heart of any town fill with socializing strollers of all ages on any given evening. We had a few hours to kill before our ferry would be heading down the coast, 

so we joined them here for a while before grabbing a pizza and stopping for groceries for the 20-hour trip ahead of us. 

The Ljubljana-Rijeka Line

It was a short two and a half hours by train through Slovenia down to the Croatian port city of Rijeka. The two cars pulled by the engine were barely full and it seemed like most of the passengers were people who'd spent the day in Ljubljana and were going home to small villages in the countryside. 

The scenery lives up to what I'd read about Slovenia being one of the most forested countries in Europe. The leaves were well on their way to their fall peak as large areas of bright yellow mixed in with dark hills covered in pines. Tidy terra cotta-roofed villages took on an alpine look as we wound our way through the hilly Karst region, crossing into Croatia at dusk and descending to the Adriatic coast in the dark.