Overlooking Dubrovnik - and other things

 As we all know there are few things rarer in the world than good pictures of me, but I think this almost qualifies as one. Laura snapped this of me on our trip to Croatia, overlooking Dubrovnik.

It's hard to imagine I lived that life.

Dubrovnik Street Scenes

 Yes, more scenes from the past. I keep trying to keep ahead of melancholy, which just intensifies the melancholy. The problem is that when we think about the past and paths not taken, it's easy to forget that there were reasons at that time that we didn't take the path. Of course, that doesn't mean the reasons were good, especially in regards to the long unfolding of our lives, but it's important to keep in mind that the decisions weren't made in a vacuum. The Croatia trip was supposed to be a grand goodbye, but instead it became a confirmation to try and stay together, and we did, at least for another year.

Squid

Just thinking about the Croatia/Montenegro trip from last year.  My big culinary discovery was squid, which I had a lot of and which was almost uniformly delicious.  Apparently the key is to just cook in in a little quality olive oil and not to overcook it.  It gets rubbery real quickly.

A great meal at a little place a couple blocks off the main square in Dubrovnik.

Sun Setting

Just looking back at some pictures of a wonderful vacation to Croatia and thinking of happier times.  Here are a couple kids grabbing a swim along the extraordinary walls surrounding Dubrovnik.  The camera can't begin to capture what an amazing night it was.

Sometimes the walls are so high that both shadows can't make it inside together.

Road to Orebic

Obviously, one of the great advantages to renting a car is that it frees you up to do some exploring.  Here's a picture I snapped in Croatia as I began the descent to Orebic to catch a ferry.  I chose this particular picture because, if you look to the right, you can just see the wall where I, forgetting that I'm fifty-two, jumped up onto and blew out both my knee and my hamstring - which led to some uncomfortable driving, let alone walking, later in the day.  Still, it is a beautiful picture.

Fortunately, the pain was not quite horrible enough for me to lose my balance and fall, although the phrase "fell to death from Croatian mountain" would definitely jazz up my otherwise dull obituary.

Night in Croatia

Here's a nice picture I snapped from the dock outside of the walls of Dubrovnik.  The moon is rising over one of the nearby islands.  It's somewhere between amazing and infuriating that the pictures I take with my Droid or Blackberry are routinely better than the pictures I take with my camera.  Now, to be fair, the camera I own now is more designed to be indestructible than to produce award winning photographs.  After destroying/losing four straight cameras I decided that dependable was better than delicate.  At the same time as this picture I did use the destructo-camera to take dozens of shots of two little girls jumping into the water near the tall city walls - more on that later.

As the temperatures soar in Abu Dhabi I can't tell you how much I miss swimming in the Adriatic.

Cafe With International Flights

Someday soon I'll devote a blog to the lovely cafe culture of Zagreb (in addition to the amazing Caffe History Club, of course).  In the meantime let me post a quick picture that I took outside the Zagreb International Airport.  As befitting a city with just about the most laid-back atmosphere I can imagine, the airport at Zagreb is appropriately very relaxed.  Here's the cafe outside the side door, complete with cars leisurely parked out front and surrounded by trees (whose shade and green were greatly appreciated after a year in the desert).  It felt like a nice cafe which specialized in international flights, and I'm not certain I wouldn't go there on off-days just to grab a cup of coffee and dessert.  Oh, and even though it was the international airport of Croatia's capital city I think it was smaller than the Burlington airport, which is really saying something.  Again, I love Croatia.

"I'd like an Ozuksko, a cheeseburger and a round-trip ticket to Dubrovnik."

American Donut

I always think it's funny or sobering or humiliating or enlightening what your country is associated with overseas.  I guess this picture that I snapped in Zagreb, Croatia says it all.

All I know is that Andy Burkhardt and I would be eating here all the time.

Caffe History Club

Back home I have a running debate with my friends over the identity of the best academic discipline.  While they make compelling arguments and I respect them and deeply appreciate their brilliant scholarship, heartfelt collegiality and dependable friendship, they are, of course, completely wrong.  History is the uber-discipline, and all the others are amusing little sub-disciplines.  The picture below, clearly, settles the argument once and for all.  I stopped at the Caffe History Club in Zagreb for a delicious and frosty Ozujsko, a Croatian adult beverage, and enjoyed the intellectual banter.  I passed the Caffe Anthropology Club, the Caffe Economics Club, the Caffe Sociology Club, the Caffe Political Science Club, the Caffe Literature Club, the Caffe Folklore Club and the Caffe Biology Club, all of which were sadly, and rightly, boarded up.  The Caffe Philosophy Club was open, although I think only for lunch - however, and appropriately, its bar was well-stocked.  I saw only two figures in the Caffe Philosophy Club, who looked suspiciously like David Kite and Alfonso Capone, alternately discussing the duality of good and evil and their recently completed squah match (which were somehow related), before eventually ordering another round.

The heart of Zagreb's entertainment and intellectual universe.

Goooaaaallllll!!

The European football championship was winding down when I arrived in Croatia but everybody was still insanely excited.  Croatia had been eliminated, sadly, but there were obviously a lot of Italian fans.  The matches were on all the TVs in the pubs and also broadcast on huge screens in the public squares.  And when I got off the plane in Dubrovnik I found this waiting for me in the restroom at the airport.

This is now tied with the sign I saw above a urinal in western China that read "move forward, like civilization" for weirdest bathroom humor.  Hopefully we can avoid a penalty kick.

Museum of Broken Relationships

The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia is easy to find.  Just head up to the upper town and follow the signs.

Here is a nice summary of the idea behind the museum, which apparently began as an exhibit but was so well received that the decision was made, wisely, to turn it into a permanent museum.

This is one of the first exhibits I saw, and it grabbed me right away.  I guess it's a duh statement to say that a museum devoted to broken relationships would be deeply personal, both knowing it and feeling it are two very different things.  It makes you think about the physical and emotional artefacts we leave behind as we pass through other people's lives.  What's that line from Lucinda Williams - "all I ask is don't tell anybody the secrets I told you."

This picture was written by someone from Bloomington, Indiana (the state where I grew up), and even though my sister Beth graduated from Indiana University she denies that she sent in the picture.

Not surpsingly there were several items representative of the more physical side of relationships, including an utterly bizarre set of styrofoam breasts.

Some of the items were actually very artistic, including this one where a woman glued a love letter to a piece of glass and then smashed it.

A lock of hair from a woman who, in the despair after a failed relationship, cut off all of her hair.

I'm a big fan of the Lonely Planet series of travel guides, and heaven knows how many of them I own now.  In fact, I think I have multiple copies for some of the countries.  That said, I'm an even bigger fan of just following my instincts when I'm overseas and seeing where I end up.  While walking around Zagreb I came across a sign for the Museum of Broken Relationships, which, for some unkown reason, didn't end up in my Lonely Planet Guide to Croatia - and it should have.  Initially I thought it might be one of those novelty museums, such as the Seriel Killer Museum in Florence (although visiting there did give me the opportunity to buy my nephew Garrett the absolutely coolest t-shirt of all time).  As it turns out the Museum of Broken Relationships is an amazing museum and has received several awards/recognitons for being the most innovative museum in Europe. Essentially it is a collection of donated items from broken relationships, along with short and highly personal back-stories.  Some of the items and related stories are very funny, while others are more artistic - and many are just heart-breaking.  Granted, it's not as magnificent as the Dental School Museum that Sanford and I stumbled across, and couldn't get into, along US 50 in the middle of Ohio, the Museum of Broken Relationships has become one of my all-time favorite museums.  I even bought the museum guide, which I almost never do.  So, if you're in Zagreb - and you should by all means go to Zagreb - definitely include a side trip to the museum.

Broken relationships create a lot of shrapnel, including this innocent garden gnome who was in the wrong place at the worng time.

This ax is from a woman whose female lover left her for another woman.  She used it to destroy one piece of her ex-lover's furniture every day, and by the time her ex returned to claim her now destroyed furniture she felt a lot better.

I found this one to be both devastating and also redemptive, which I guess you could say about the entire museum.

Paging Mr. Herman

You know that you are a VIP when the hotel sends a driver with one of those personalized signs.  This is the one that awaited me in Zagreb.  Despite the initial confusion I absolutely loved Zagreb.

After sending this picture along to my friends back home it took Mike Lange about seven nano-seconds to propose that the sign was supposed to say Douchebag.

Croatian Beasties

I love this sign.  It's a picture I snapped out on the Peljesac Peninsula on the way to catch the ferry out to Korcula Island.  It reminds me of camel crossing signs in Oman and moose crossing signs in Vermont, although probably more like the Vermont equivalent because I didn't actually see any wild boar (much like the fact that I've been in Vermont for over a decade and have seen exactly four moose).  Truthfully, I'm glad I didn't see any wild boar because they are supposed to be pretty mean-spirited.  It is nice to know that in spite of development there is still a lot of Croatia which is still unblemished.

The other reason why I'm glad I didn't see a wild boar is that I think I ate his cousin once in Vienna, and I suspect there would have been some attempt at revenge.

Squid

Not surprisingly, Croatia is a place where you can get some extraordinary seafood.  I think I ate more squid last week than I've eaten in the fifty-two years up to that point, and would go back today for more if I had the chance.  Here's a very simple and delicious meal that I had out on Korcula Island.  My friend Cyndi immediately wanted to know the recipe, which consists mainly of: throw the squid on the grill, don't make the mistake of grilling it too long (it gets rubbery - or even more rubbery), and then dash on some olive oil, lemon and salt.  Huzzah, you're done.

And this isn't even the best squid meal I had, but more on that later.  Does any blogger, who isn't a chef, talk more about food than I do?

Dubrovnik

And the first of many pictures of the trip to Croatia.  For a long time I'd heard about the beauty of Croatia, and still the advance press didn't do it justice.  I'll be posting many pictures of Dubrovnik, but here's one to get us started.  I snapped this one from the top of the amazing walls that surround the city, and protects it from both sea and land attack.  It's sad to think of the city being bombed during the bloodbath that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia.  I can still remember TV reports of the bombing at the time, but it was before I went overseas for the first time and it just seemed to be happening in a different universe.  Of course, this is one of the main reasons to travel abroad - so that you can gain some appreciation and empathy for the rest of the world (and it's the single biggest reason why I started the Global Module project in the first place).  I'm so happy that it has been rebuilt and that the region is at peace - and that I had a chance to visit this magical place.

With its natural beauty it is almost impossible to take a bad picture of Dubrovnik, although, of course, I did.  Happily, this is not one of them.