Pat and Don "Do" Dubrovnik

Monday, March 26, 2012

View from the top of Dubrovnik and the suburbs to the North

We had a very full day touring Dubrovnik. Our apartment is very conveniently located: we have a supermarket, the bus stop, and the cable car stop about 300 meters from our apartment (after we climb about 50 steps to get up to the street level). This morning we rode the cable car to the top of the mountain which overlooks Dubrovnik. We got lucky with the weather for our second cable car experience. Don will post some of the pictures from the ride and the view from the top. Today was a beautifully sunny day and the ocean water just sparkled; you can even see it sparkle in the pictures.

Poster announcing the exibition

What we didn't expect was the Imperial Fort tucked around the corner from the spanking new cable car building. It was a museum dedicated to telling the story of the attack on Dubrovnik during the "Homeland War 1991-1995." It was a very touching exhibition of what happened to the town and its people as well as a description of the defense and destruction of Dubrovnik We spent a good hour in there reading the not-objective-at-all accounts of the war.

After that moving experience, we walked the 4 kilometers of walls surrounding the city. They were heavily damaged during the war, so what we walked was largely, I suspect, a reconstruction.

A view down one of the "streets"

The Libertus Flag flying above "Fort Minceta"

The prettiest view on the city wall tour

Looking through one of the battlement openings

Looking back up to one of the Round Towers

There were lots of steps and special spaces to take pictures, so we spent another hour-and-a-half doing just that. Apparently you can rent an audio tour tape, but that must be during the high season as we didn't see any place to rent one when we walked the wall--one of the drawbacks of being in the off-season--but of course, we had the wall mostly to ourselves this afternoon--a few Japanese tourists and a person here or there.

Between the two of us we took over 150 pictures today. Digital cameras really make this possible.

Years ago when travelling, we had to carry the 35 mm film around (besides the expense it took up a lot of room), and then you had to pay to get the pictures developed after you got home. About 25 years ago when we and I walked the Wall in China, the photo developer lost the roll of when we walked that wall--never again!

Don's Commentary....

Dubrovnik is a city of ups and downs for me - that's physical, emotional, and psychological ups and downs.

The physical part is the most obvious. The city is built in a kind of bowl-shaped hollow between the sea and the mountains that run along the coast. When one stands at the north gate one is at least 75 meters above the main street of Dubrovnik - the Stradun - so entering the walled city means walking down flight after flight of marble steps - all rather uneven and a little slippery. Leaving Dubrovnik means climbing back up those steps - no mean task even for one with two new artificial knees. Hiking the walls involves literally hundreds of steps, so one moves cautiously always aware of forthcoming ups and downs....

Emotionally, the ups and downs come from the juxtaposition of Dubrovnik, the city of arts and culture (there's an art gallery everywhere you look and posters on every wall announce forthcoming musical events) and our growing outrage about what happened to this beautiful city during the War of the Homeland. On one wall, just inside the North Gate a map of the city marks every spot  where a shell made an impact on the pavement, a roof burned, or a whole building went up in smoke. Despite the efforts to rebuild, pock marks identify where bullets and shrapnel ricocheted around the stone walls. A memorial just inside a church at the East end of the town keeps the victims of the war, a whole generation of the youth and vitality of the community tragically lost, on everyone's minds. And for what? The siege of Dubrovnik lasted 13 months. Our preliminary research finds that defeating Dubrovnik was largely a symbolic act for the Yugoslav Army and the Montenegrin Army more than a strategic or even a tactical military action. It's hard not to feel great sympathy for the residents of Dubrovnik who had their psyches so damaged. And yet the beauty and the spirit of the city are eminently tangible.

The psychological ups and downs for me result from having been here in 1977. They are familiar to anyone who has lived through visiting a place that seemed innocent and accessible and now seem almost overwhelmed with commercialism and opportunism. I loved the old Dubrovnik, maybe not more than this Dubrovnik, but certainly in a different way. I told Pat one of my cherished memories of my visit back then was walking the wall (when it did not cost 70 Kuna - about 12 dollars) and happening upon a pickup, after-school soccer game between about twenty teenage boys and girls in a field littered with broken stones and goals identified by tipped-over chairs. They played with great intensity and even greater joy and abandon. Today, as far as I could determine, the athletic fields are paved with astroturf, the game is basketball, and it is played by older kids with little abandon or, as far as I could see, joy. But we did see groups of preteens kicking soccer balls around as soon as adults seemed to stop needing the streets - something we saw in Split as well. So, maybe things are not as changed as I think they are. At least we didn't see Croatian children with their heads in their mobile phones....