Dubrovnik

Our first stop on the cruise was in Dubrovnik. I was first here 49 years ago...it was my junior year summer abroad. I had been studying (well kind of) in Oslo. When school was over, I traveled to Rome with a friend; we took the train to Ancona and crossed the Adriatic on a ferry/freight boat of some sort. We slept on the deck. We spent a few days in this city at a hostel. I sketched (in a note book I recently found), ate figs, drank wine, sat on rocks which went down from the city walls to the sea.

But this time we only had hours to visit. We disgorged from the ship, got onto buses, and were driven to town to mix with other thousands from other cruise ships. We did not join a tour group...did not follow around a person with a sign saying "K" or "12" but we were to experience that later...




Instead we wandered down some of the narrow streets (doing some shopping along the way "How many kronos in a euro?") and up a flight of stone steps...a rather long series of steps....and found



the ethnographic museum. Housed in a stone granary built in the 15th century to supply towns and cities along the Adriatic with grain, especially when wheat became scarce. The edifice took 42 years to build...as long as the initial phase of a cathedral...perhaps due to price fluctuations.

The museum housed examples of folk art, clothing, farm implements, embroidery...well displayed...sometimes with explanations in other Serbo-Croatian (though I remain very unsure of Slavic languages)..







But the really impressive sight in Dubrovnik was the bridge spanning the river to the north of the town.








Dubrovnik was bombed and attacked in the war with Serbia which broke out when Yugoslavia fell apart. The city and its environs were shelled for a period of months before it was liberated by a reorganized Croatian army.

So few physical scars from that war...just twenty years ago...remain, though posters in the town remind one of the emotional and psychological scars carried by folks whom we meet, working at the ethnological museum, working in the stores selling souvenirs for our grandchildren, serving at the cafe where we have wine before heading back to the ship. War, for them, is not something that happens somewhere else.

So much is unsaid.

Location:Hvratska/Croatia