Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast

November 27, 2011
Ron and I are ‘sluts for travel’, in his words, so any time he has work we try to take a trip to explore an area new to us. When we finished the assignment in Tbilisi we headed to Croatia. We arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia and were met by our apartment host, Nives. Unfortunately our luggage did not arrive with us. The drive from the airport was beautiful, along the Adriatic coast.

Our first day, we took an early morning walk through old town and came across two women selling hand made table linens. We bought a few pieces and continued on our way. We stumbled onto the ethnological museum and loved it. It was housed in a building originally used as a grain storage house. The displays were simple but very educational. The building was fascinating.

The weather in Dubrovnik was sunny and warm, so we only needed our sweaters. We had left TBS in our winter parkas because it was snowing when we caught our 5:00 a.m. plane to Munich. In Croatia, we sat outside at an outdoor café and had espresso drinks mid-morning and again at lunch where we sat outside and by this time we had shed our sweaters. We continued to explore the town and then took the City Walls Walk. The walls were built around the city as a defense in the 10th century and modified in the 13th century. The guards could walk along the top of the walls and now so can tourists. It took about an hour, stopping to take photos. We had great views of old town and the islands off the coast. We took the cable car up the hill overlooking the city to take photos of the sunset which sets at 4:15, much earlier than TBS. When we got back home our luggage had arrived.

On day two we had a slow morning, enjoying coffee and pastries in the room. Ron and I are coffee snobs, being from the land of Starbucks so we travel with an electric teapot, good coffee and a cone with filters so we can make our own coffee. We then went to the Franciscan monastery built in 1317. Still standing was a fountain from 15th century in a lovely garden in the center of the monastery. There was a pharmacy that has been in use since 1717 and has displays of various items used in the pharmacy. We also visited the museum that contained various religious items. Next we visited the Rector’s palace, an important political and administrative center of the Republic of Ragusa (this area at the time was Ragusa). The building was built in 1435 and was a wonderful structure and contained many items of interest from the various periods in history. The beautiful locking trunks fascinated us with their intricate locking devices. We saw some
exquisite Italian ceramic vessels used in pharmacies from the 15th century. We bought a traditional Croatian Easter egg at the shop there. The eggs in this part of the world are most often dyed a deep red color and here they decorate them using a batik technique.

November 30th
Today was our 26th anniversary and we rented a car and drove up the coast for four hours to Split. Along the way we stopped in Ston on a recommendation from Penney, a friend and from our host in Dubrovnik. What a lovely area. A lot of oyster beds are found here and we first stopped at a sweet hotel on the water and had coffee outside and enjoyed the sunshine. We explored the area taking in the salt pans that have been here since 1000 A.D. We went back to the hotel and ordered a simple lunch, deciding to split an order of ‘crispy fried oysters’. The order came and we ate the first oyster and ‘had a moment’ as Sandi, Ron’s sister likes to say. The oysters were perfect: hot, light, moist and tasted faintly of the sea. After eating the plate of oysters we looked at each other and decided more was better and ordered another plate of oysters. Heavenly. Back into the car and we continued up the coast exclaiming about the beauty the entire way.

When we got to Split we were surprised to discover it is a very large city and we were lost in terms of how to get to our hotel. But after two stops and a lot of frustration, I asked a man in a parking lot if he spoke English. Lucky for me he did. He did not know how to find our hotel so called and lo ad behold he told us to follow him and he took us there. We were so grateful as we were so lost.

OMG, I about fell over when I walked into the lobby. I have learned of this hotel from Trip Advisor and never looked at the photos of the hotel online. Ron and I love simple traditional, homey kind of places. This place is out of this world. The entire lobby is white: white high gloss furniture with purple or lavender accents pillows, silver floor tiles, stark white walls. The white light fixtures are too strange to describe. Our room has a glass wall between the bedroom and bathroom so one of us can sit in the bedroom and watch the other one bathe. Weird. Our carpet is bright strips of bright aqua, soft aqua, deep purple, lavender and two tones of taupe about three inches wide. Our light fixture shades look like the three foot fringe off of a leather jacket Cher wore in the 60’s. The curtain that can be used on the glass wall between the bedroom and bath is silver. The desk chair is modern molded plastic. All the furniture is stark white with a high gloss finish. The tile wall behind the toilet is heavily dimpled and totally iridescent purple. Who ever decorated this place was very good at consistent design concept but OMG what taste. It is so not us. We managed to survive however.

We spent the next day in Split exploring what had been Dioclenitian’s palace, the Roman emperor from the fourth century. Our hotel was five minutes away from old town. It was interesting to observe how parts of the original structure had been incorporated into 16th century churches and homes of wealthy nobles and modern day shops and cafes. In its day the palace was huge. We relaxed in the afternoon with Ron working on a report and me reading on our balcony overlooking the waterfront. We got up early on Friday to drive back to Dubrovnik. We had planned to take photos of the spectacular coast but unfortunately there was a lot of haze and it made no sense to try and take photos. We arrived at the airport in good time and read until departure at 4:00. We flew to Zagreb, changed planes for Munich and changed again for TBS, arriving bright and early at 4:00 a.m. We got to bed at 5:30 and took a pill and slept until 10ish. We are staying at Leslie’s house while she is at a wedding in FL. We got up and walked to a couple of nearby shops for butter, eggs and bread for our breakfast. Ron spent the day working on his report and I lazed around the house and managed to do a load of laundry. We went to a nearby Indian restaurant, our fav and asked our friend Rick to join us as he lives nearby and his wife Dorothy is in the US recovering form surgery. Rick is the Peace Corps director here and as we were waiting for our dinner, 11 of his volunteers came in for dinner. PC volunteers in Georgia make 250 GEL a month, that’s about $130 a month. They were in town for a meeting as they all live in rural areas of Georgia. As we were leaving Ron and I paid for their dinners as a random act of kindness. We asked the cashier to wait until the volunteers were ready to pay their bill before telling them and to thank them for their service.

On Sunday we had brunch with Kirsten and her son Aquil who also live nearby. We have massages scheduled next then over to Lily’s for more goodbyes. Gia will pick us up at 2:45 in the morning for our 5:00 flight to Munich, Washington DC then on to Portland, a mere 27 hour trip! OY!

lies, damn lies and statistics

November 23 2011

Ron and I read a daily Georgian English language paper here. Today’s paper had a small article on the unemployment figures in Georgia. You have to love this. Just more proof about how useless statistics can be. I quote “Official statistics claim that unemployment in Georgia is 16.3%. Official statistics identify an unemployed person as someone who is older that 15 who was not employed for even one hour for the last seven days who has been searching for a job for the last four weeks and was ready to start working in the following two weeks. One cannot be considered unemployed in a rural place if one possesses at least 10 sq meters (a meter is 39 inches folks) of land. (Emphasis is mine). Of those employed 17.4% live on approximately GEL 2 a day. (a GEL is 60 US cents). A total of 80% of the rural population is self employed. That means they work on their land. (that probably means they are growing some veggies to prevent starvation). If we add up all those figures and assess the reality then unemployed is around 60% in the country.” End quote. OY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I went to my former housekeeper’s home for a visit. I had never seen her house and she wanted me to see it. Nino and Zura started building their house about eight years ago when he had a good job. Before they finished the house, he was laid off and he hasn’t had regular employment until he started working as a guard for the embassy in August 2010. So the house remains unfinished. Most of the downstairs is completed although it was not heated. The kitchen and dining area are heated and that is where we visited. Zura’s mother lives with them and she prepared tea for us. When we sat down at the table, there was a bowl of fresh fruit, three kinds of ‘preserves’, two kinds of juice, something that looked like a hamburger bun, some salami and ketchup. Zura wanted me to try everything. I cannot handle much sugar so literally ate a quarter of a teaspoon of the preserves and about two inches of the juice. Zura’s mom comes from a rural village so making all these items is common. Unfortunately there was so much sugar in each of these items I could not taste the fruit. Just about then Nino’s mom came over. She lives next door. She brought cake with a half inch of sugar frosting and two kinds of pastry that I thought it might just be baked dough. No such luck. They were filled with sugared fruit. I took the thinnest slice of the cake. I thought I was going to throw up on the way home from all the sugar. I wanted to eat a teaspoon of salt to counteract the sugar.. They were curious as to why I didn’t eat more but I explained that I had eaten breakfast before coming and that I had a noon lunch date. Mind you most people in the family are overweight. No surprise there given the diet.

My friend Steph from MN said her mother-in-law who is Georgian offered to boil them bake a turkey for her family for Thanksgiving. When Steph asked why would she boil and bake a turkey she discovered that turkeys are so tough here that boiling is necessary to tenderize the bird. No Norbest or Butterballs here folks! You can also assume the birds are much smaller if she has a pot big enough in which to boil a turkey.

November 24, 2011

Today is Thanksgiving and it is cold. With the wind chill factor it is 28 outside. It is gray but dry. The hills are covered with snow and the clouds are hovering over the hills obscuring the tops. I walked for 30 minutes to pay for a scarf I bought a few days ago from a local artist. I didn’t have the money on me at the time but she insisted I take the scarf. Great technique so I couldn’t change my mind.

After I returned to the hotel, there was a knock at the door and one of the housekeepers handed me a replacement shoe shine brush. I had set the dried up one by the trash can this morning. After she handed it to me she said in a thick Georgian accent ‘Thank you for the money’. I leave tips for the staff. Then she said ‘Happy’ and she tried so hard to remember the word and I said ‘Thanksgiving’. Her face lit up and she smiled brightly. I thanked her and off she went.

After describing the weather today and the hills, the sun came out and the beauty of the sun on the hills made me weep. Or maybe it was the housekeeper’s gratitude.  This place can be so grim and yet it can transform into a place of such beauty.

Ron and I ate a simple dinner at a nearby German restaurant.

Black Friday. We woke up to a snow covered Tbilisi and were grateful it was a light snow that was dissipating by the time we got up. I walked to the laundry and it was bitter cold, the kind that makes tears come into my eyes.

Today is Ron’s last day of work. He will teach half day then go to the office to do his paper work. We will have dinner with our friend Leslie at one of our favorite restaurants, Vong, an Asian fusion place. Tomorrow we will pack up and store two suitcases at Leslie’s and have brunch with Lily, Adey and Fantanesh, our friends from Ethiopia. At 4:00 a.m. Sunday we will fly to Croatia for a mini vacation. We will be there for six days then return to TBS for two days before flying home on the 5^th.