July 2 - Mostar

Patricia and I were joined by Rachel from Australia this morning as we left the hostel for coffee. I'm experimenting with my coffee order - most coffee is served in a thimble-sized cup and although very strong and flavorful, it encourages slow sipping. I've tried ordering coffee with milk, coffee long with milk, cappuccino, nescafe with cream, Bosnian coffee, etc. And still your morning coffee is a short-lived experience unless you drink slowly.

After coffee, the man who showed us to the hostel the night before rode past on us his bike, giving us a big greeting and pointing us in the right direction to the turkish house tour. A rich Bosnian family in the turn of the century lived in still- existing traditional Turkish home. Saudi, the tour guide, told us to take our shoes off, and pointed us into the garden and the rooms for the men and women. A wife would indicate she was ready to entertain her husband by draping a white cloth over her door. The men's room was beautifully suspended over the river by columns outside the house. The ceilings were ornate beechwood mosaic. Saudi hinted that we could dress up in the traditional clothes kept in a trunk upstairs. She then told us to go tour the oldest and most important mosque in Mostar and to tell the man at the entrance that she said we didn't have to pay the entrance fee. You should have seen face when we said this, but he let us in for free.

July 1 - Korcula to Dubrovnik to Mostar

The early morning bus hopped the ferry to the mainland and arrived in Durbrovnik with plenty of time for me to wander back to my favorite internet cafe until the afternoon bus for Mostar, Bosnia. I was excited to go to a new country. Croatia had been generous and friendly but I was done with the island vibe. I was getting the travel bug - my curiosity and the hints of the past war with Bosnia, seen in the mortar holes in the tile of my rented bedroom and in the conversations with Croatians, made me ready to move on. My time traveling alone was short-lived - on the bus I met Patricia the Canadian, in the beginning of a two month travel from Italy to Turkey.

We arrived in Mostar around 7 pm, found our hostel, checked in, and wandered down to the old bridge that gives the old town of Mostar its reason for initial existence. The influence in this country is Muslim and Turkish, with a smattering of Autro-Hungarian in later centuries. In the 15th century, the bridge across the river Natadve was built to connect the East and West traders. This geographical spot seems to be where Europe and the East intermingled. And the town of Mostar, between buildings blown up by mortar fire between the years of 1992-95 by Croats and Yugoslavian forces during the fall of Yugoslavia, still has a strong Muslim presence. For the first time, I heard the 5 times daily humming of the call to prayer from loudspeakers on the minerets of mosques. It was beautiful, like evening crickets in summer.

June 30 - Mljet to Korcula

Sara joined our little impromptu group last night for dinner and singing, hailing from England. She had left her 'wandering eyes' traveling companion for greener pastures and found us. This morning, tempted by the rumors of Ullysses' Cave hidden on the island, we rented a scooter (unfortunately not the bunny one in the photo!) and putted up the mountain roads into the interior of the island. Between the rocky mountains lie sloping valleys of vineyards and lush family farms. After asking directions in a small town post office where a man laughed at me the entire time I inquired, we found the path between old orchard trees of olive, lemon, and fig.

It was hot, hot, hot. Sweat drenched my clothes. The rocky trail wound down to the coast, about half an hour hiking, and suddenly below us gaped a cave opening like a dark mouth. The only entrance seemed to be jumping into the ocean and swimming into the cave, which we left for another trip. Deep in the cave, a few abandoned row boats dotted the entrance sand, and some wooden steps dropped into the water. On the edge of the cliff over the ocean some old stone cottages looked out towards Italy. After shooting some photos, we climbed back through the cliffs and orchards, along deep paths below stone walls, to the scooter. The cool air was a welcome relief on the ride back. Thanks to Sara's expert driving, we handled the hairpin curves and the speeding cars that regularly cut the corners with finesse.

Then Miguel the Sombrero Waiter drove us as fast as he could, cutting the corners to test our courage, to the ferry boat to Korcula, a nearby island. Korcula has a old walled city similar to Dubrovnik's in smaller scale, and was very influenced by Venice in the 16th century. If we were looking for a party, we had found it. The celebration of the half new year was tonight, a chance to dress in costume and get very very drunk and play loud music in the town square until the early hours. However, I was looking for quiet places to write, so I welcomed the resurgence of partying music blasted from loud speakers at 5 am as an alarm clock to make it to the bus station in time for the first morning bus out of there.

June 29 - Polace, Mljet

I woke up to the sounds of boats leaving for their morning fishing sessions. After less than 24 hours here in the tiny fishing and tourist village of Polace, I needed to hide at a different cafe down the street from the friendly people I've met so far in order to find some uninterrupted writing time. I drank a coffee on the patio and ate a cheese omelet as I wrote in my journal looking out over the harbor. This afternoon I rented a bike and rode into the park again along the edge of the lake. Within the sweet smelling shade of pine trees I dropped my bag and jumped into the warm ocean water. About 100 feet up the shoreline, two older European women sunbathed. They skinnydipped, laughing and chatting. I sat by the lake for a couple hours as the dark thunder clouds rolled across the still water.

Finally, I left the peaceful place and rode the bike up and down a small mountain to a nearby port and then back to Polace. Little did I know the restaurant, Konoba Ankora, would complete its adoption of me and my friends tonight. I met up with Yolanda and Gorge for a beer there just as three Croatian families, each in their own sailboat, docked across the street. They ate dinner at Ankora and as the night progressed, the waiter donned a sombrero, another Croatian man appeared with a guitar, Paulo the owner sat down to sing, two women stood up to dance, and blueberry brandy poured.

June 28 - Island of Mljet

I think this island emits an energetic friendliness - even before I boarded the ferry early this morning leaving Dubrovnik, I befriended a couple from northern Spain, Gorge and Yolanda. Here we are having lunch once we arrived on Mljet - that's an anchovie hanging in my hand, caught about ten minutes before I ate it. It was delicious. The legendary belief is that Mjlet is the island inhabited by the Sirens that lured Odysseus from his trip and trapped his sailors for some time before they could escape the generous hospitality. The island is heavily forested and in the middle of the island is a salt water lake open by a fjord to the ocean. And on that lake is a small island with an old monastery, St. Mary's. I rode a bike around the lake this afternoon and took a small boat out to the monastery. A cross stands before the ocean where sailors can pray for good weather before they sail. I ate the excellent anchovies at Konoba Ankora, the restaurant I am now having dinner at - a fresh plate of homemade goat cheese and proscuitto salad. Life is good in Croatia.

June 26 - Dubrovnik, Croatia

I found a private accomodation last night around 7:30 pm after getting in from the bus station. I'm staying with widow Maria in her extra room. She brought me into her kitchen and told me to ‘sit’, and poured me some orange syrup and water in a glass, a refreshing drink after 8.5 hours on the bus from Zadar. She made some big gestures of something coming down from the air, or maybe from the rocky bare hillsides above town? I thought maybe she was referring to the bombing by the Yugoslavian army in ’92. I asked her if she stayed or if she left town, that it must have been scary, trying to show compassion on my face because she spoke no English. She made big booming noises with her hands above her face motioning something. I thanked her for the juice, confused. Then as I was dressing to leave for dinner, thunder cracked above town. She came down with an umbrella, made the booming noise again and the hand motion, and handed me the umbrella for the evening. She was talking about rain.

I was exhausted enough to sleep in the lumpy dipped bed, shaped like the country of Croatia, with a large mountain range splitting the coast from the interior valley. But I only had to walk half a block down the narrow stairs to find a cafe this morning with wi fi.

This city is marble streets, narrow stairways, hanging gardens, cafes and churches. People speak an unimaginable amount of different languages in Croatia. A tour guide I met spoke ten languages. In a street table, writing on my computer now, tours walk by me every 15 minutes - a different group, a different language. Chinese right now. And the smokers – the train from Zagreb to Zadar took a ten minute smoking break for everyone. Everyone cheered and rushed off to stand in the rain on the platform.

Today I walked the massive fortified walls of Dubrovnik. This independent republic city survived a 15 month siege in the thirteenth century. The Maritime Museum is filled with old documents of ship logs, legal agreements, contracts. The oldest contract recorded in the world was enacted here in Dubrovnik in 1260 or so. It seems this independent republic city has been protected and prosperous by shrewd trading and negotiations since 800 AD.

June 25 - Bus to Dubrovnak

The bus ride was 8.5 hours long, but passed quickly as I spoke with 3 different traveling partners. A woman studying in Zadar and living south of there, studying French and German, told me she may teach, or maybe with her language knowledge work in tourism. Then Mario sat by me on his way to Split, a friendly mechanical engineer from Zagreb. He gave me lots of info and will be checking my blog. Hi, Mario! And finally, Carl and Amber, from the US but now from the UK, entertained me with their world travel experiences. I enjoyed a risotto dinner with them last night in old town Dubrovnak on the harbor. The rain poured off the umbrellas around us in torrents. Tomorrow I explore Dubrovnak.