Croatia: Arrival, Dubrovnik

My cousin Rachel and I started discussing going to Croatia at a Thanksgiving about 15 years ago. Then the economy crashed, I lost my job, moved into freelance, and there went THAT plan. (We’ve joked ever since, “We should have booked our tickets THEN.”) Anyway, we finally got ourselves together and booked a trip. We went through an amazing small tour company, because we didn’t want to do some gigantic rushed bus tour. NO. If I ever go back – WHEN I go back, I might just rent a car and drive myself – it’s all pretty similar to here, bilingual directions, etc., plus driving on the “right” side of the road – although, honestly, the coastline is so mountainous, I’m not sure I could make it along those cliff roads by myself. It was difficult enough being a passenger.

At any rate, I am so glad we went the way we did, even though it was slightly more high-maintenance in the first stages. You reach out by email to this one tour company. You get an email back from an actual person (who, turns out, is the owner of the company – and was our guide in Zagreb) – He asked, “When would you like to come?” We give a range of dates. We narrow it down. So it was really up to us when we wanted to go. It wasn’t like we had to join up with some pre-determined tour date. And instead of being crammed in a bus with 40 other people, it was just me, Rachel, and a guide. (Well, one guide for 7 of the days, another guide for the last days.) So we got to know these men very well! You’re basically just hanging out with them. Eating, driving, talking, etc. They handle everything. The price includes hotels (all extremely nice), tickets into all of these amazing sights – plus one meal a day (and this means the guide takes us to an awesome local place – more often than not, family-owned – down a dirt road, on top of a mountain, whatever, the point being: not a tourist hot spot. In fact, no tourists whatsoever were in these places except for us). It’s slightly more intimate than a regular tour (I imagine, anyway – I’ve never been on a bus tour) – but it really worked for us. We loved our guides so much, two wonderful men named Ante and Davor. I want to go back and I will definitely reach out to Davor again. They’ll be “my guys” whenever I go back, because I WILL be going back.

I flew in to Dubrovnik via Paris. Rachel would be arriving a couple hours later. Ante picked me up at the airport and we drove off to Dubrovnik, about half an hour away. It was hot! A blazing beautiful summer day. I was very jet-lagged and that would continue into the next day (where we both felt somewhat delirious). But I’ve been wanting to come here for so long, and it was a dream so long deferred (20 years?) that I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

It began on an auspicious note, with our conversation as we drove into Dubrovnik.

Ante is from Split, and Split is really the whole reason I wanted to come to Croatia in the first place, ever since I read Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon 25 years ago, 30, who the hell knows, forever ago. I have done my research on Split BELIEVE YOU ME, so I was excited to be talking to a townie! I think he was slightly pleased that I actually knew some stuff about his home town.

A couple observations:

He said “Emperor Diocletian” with such familiarity it was as though the Emperor’s reign ended last week.

He said, “There have been people living in Split for over 2,000 years. No stops. People always there.”

“Just incredible!”

“Continuous for thousands of years.”

Me: “And Diocletian basically built his retirement palace there, right?”

“Yes. And it’s down by the water – not on a hill.”

I wasn’t sure how this related to my question but he went on:

“You build forts up on a hill so you can see who’s coming and kill them.” (Of course.) “but Diocletian —“ (again, like he was saying Joe Schmoe) “built it on the water and to get to it you have to go down a hill.”

I understood now. “So he was chilling OUT in Split is what you’re saying. He felt relaxed.”

“Yes! There are some parts of palace that feel like a fort but mostly ….”

“It’s a beach house.”

“Yes.”

“For a retired Roman Emperor.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe he wasn’t murdered or poisoned.”

“He was one of only 5 Roman Emperors who died of natural causes.”

Now that I HAD known and I thought to myself: Thank you Dame Rebecca.

“Did people like Diocletian or …??”

“Some people thought he was crazy. But he did a lot of good things too.” (with a tone of voice as though we were discussing the Mayor from last year.)

A bit later I said “Okay so here’s a question. I write about movies. Tell me about the movies here. Do you have a film industry?”

He said, “Well … Not really but of course when we were part of Yugoslavia, Tito created a huge movie studio.”

“Oh that’s right!! I saw a documentary about that!” (Cinema Komunisto if you must know. Highly recommended. I reviewed here!)

“And people like Yul Brenner came here and Richard Burton and they made all these war movies for Tito. But it was really just marketing.”

“Right. Propaganda for Tito.”

“Tito wanted to be a big shot movie guy.”

Then he said, just remembering, and laughing: “Do you know Croatia’s favorite movie? Our #1 favorite movie? The biggest hit ever?”

“Oh my God tell me right now.”

“Fiddler on the Roof!” He was laughing hysterically.

“Wait, what?”

“It was filmed here outside of Zagreb and there are still little old ladies who were extras in the movie and they still get interviewed about it. Croatia LOVES that movie because you can see all the places where we live. And it’s not changed all that much. There are still villages with wooden houses and roofs like in the movie.”

“You know I am going to write about all of this.”

And so I have.

One final thing: as we approached Dubrovnik – which is the most beautiful city I personally have ever seen – we came in on a cliff road so you could see the whole city below us. I had read about the destruction of Dubrovnik during the war in the 90s and it was only seeing the city geographically that made me really get how vulnerable the place was. Like Diocletian‘s palace down on the beach. If you want to protect yourself you put your city on a HILL. If you’re down at the bottom of a hill, you’re a sitting duck.

So I was thinking that as I stared down on Dubrovnik… and maybe he was too because he said, “75% of Dubrovnik was destroyed in the war.”

“My God.”

“The Serbs were up there,” he said, pointing at the surrounding mountains.

And the way he said “Serbs”…. gave me a little chill. It wouldn’t be the last time we heard the word “Serbs” in that tone so thick with associations and memories and … other things you can’t even really name … history, really – so thick it was almost impenetrable. But you could feel it.

Again with the sense that all this happened yesterday. Which makes total sense. I respect it.

Ante checked me into the hotel, a gorgeous place perched on the edge of a small cliff. (Which resulted in much hilarity and confusion when we tried to take the elevator. We never really got the hang of it. The lobby was on the FIRST floor, the rooms down below. So to leave the hotel, you had to go UP. Rachel and I, jetlagged, were like bumbling fools each and every time. The humor of this didn’t really hit us until later in the trip, mainly because we were so jetlagged those first two days, we were delirious. But later, discussing it at dinner one night, we started laughing so hard we were CRY-ING.)

As the porter took me to my room, he glanced at me and said, “You’re American?”

“Yes.”

“Sooo …. Trump?”

I said, “I know. We’re very very sorry.”

I had been afraid we would be treated with hostility because of 45, but this was honestly the only time it came up. And it was a completely benign and somewhat humorous interaction.

The view from our room made me almost cry. There it was, the Adriatic. Mountains all around. I grew up a 5 minute ride from the ocean. I know oceans. I’ve spent my whole life near an ocean. But not like this ocean. Because it’s a giant inlet, basically, protected by Italy on the other side, there’s no surf. There aren’t crashing waves. So it’s calm … except maybe in a high wind, which might whip up some waves. Other than that, it’s calm, serene, with white sails dotting the blue. The sun was blinding. It was hot, but dry. Perfect weather. We had a balcony overlooking an infinity pool on the rocks – I mean, come on – and below that was the little beach area for our hotel: all rocks, and stairs cut into the rocks, which descended into the water. People were swimming. I was so exhausted I felt transparent. I wanted to get in that water so bad my limbs ached. I had flown out of Newark at 6 p.m. which basically meant I didn’t sleep. I tried, maybe I got 2 hours, but the time change screwed me up royally.

I have wanted to see the Adriatic for so long, this storied coastline, famous back into antiquity, inhabited for millennia. Here it was.

I organized my stuff around the room. I sat out on the balcony, quiet, staring. I tried to just sink into the present. I waited for Rachel to arrive. My dear cousin! We were starting off on an adventure. Finally, there she was. We were giddy. We were thrilled with our room. Thankfully, she’s a water-baby too. We were very in sync with just how much we wanted to go swimming, how much the beaches called to us. For the majority of our trip, it was in the 80s, even higher. Suddenly, in the final days, the weather wildly swung around into fall. It got cold and windy, with torrential rain, thunder, crazy clouds, etc. I had packed for summer. So had Rachel. We were FREEZING the final two days. I said to Rachel, “In a 24-hour period, the season completely changed.” Rachel said, “In a 10-minute period, actually!” And she was right. We chose the right time to go. Swimming every day, multiple times, is the way to go.

We couldn’t wait. We put on our suits, our flip-flops and got in the elevator to get to the pool. (Elevator hilarity and confusion should be assumed.)

Down at the beach, there was an outdoor bar perched on the rocks, right over the infinity pool. We picked up towels and made our way down to the “beach.” I say it like that because to me – a Rhode Islander – beaches have sands. Croatia’s is all rocky. When there’s a strip of land, it’s all rocks. Here, at the hotel, there were slabs of rocks, making a huge patio type area with beach chairs, and then stone steps to a lower area, which then had little mossy steps – or a ladder, should you so choose, going down into the water.

Once we were in the water, our trip really started. We let go of the stresses of almost 24 hours of travel.

It was cold, but not too cold. The bottom was rocky, so you had to be careful. The Adriatic is so salty that you’re buoyant. Rachel and I kept joking how you don’t even need a “noodle” to just bob in the water. The sea is salty but you can see all the way to the bottom, which is why it is such an unbelievable color, especially when the sun shines on it. Sometimes it blazes into a kind of turquoise-green, almost tropical. We swam and swam, all as the sun set. We got out and sat on deck chairs, reveling in the view. We went back in the water. We ordered glasses of wine from the nearby bar. We discussed our confusion about kuna, the local currency. (A couple days in, we got the hang of it, with the help of our calculators.) We swam again. We sat in total silence, watching the sun set. It was awe-inspiring.

Here I am, swimming in the Adriatic. As you do.

We were both still pretty out of it. We watched the sun go down in total silence. Drinking wine. It was so beautiful you couldn’t even really talk about it.

I have had many dark years. That’s no secret. But I’m still here. I have always wanted to visit Croatia. Wanting to go is so much a part of my life that it’s almost like I’m one of the three sisters dreaming of Moscow. I am very grateful, humbled, thankful, that I am still here, that I was able to take this trip and see the places I’ve long dreamt of.