Luft-off – Flying to and arriving in Dubrovnik

Welcome back. It’s been more than a year since my last adventure and more than a month since I’ve returned from the 2016 excursion. As always, my plan is to take you along with me – this time to Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Budapest. We start on August 7 and, since day one is principally a travel day, this means I’ll have little to report. Then again, I do like making something out of nothing, so I’ll bore you a bit.

The 1200 or so words below this paragraph represent the only writing I attempted on the trip. Those of you who read my 28 August email know of some of the “gremlins” that beset me once the meat of the trip began. For those who didn’t, this began with problems captioning photos I was able to take and ended with the loss of my camera and more than 600 photos in Budapest. Thus, this journal will be heavily illustrated in the early entries and at best be thinly illustrated in the later ones.

Because I can’t link to an album where photos are meaningfully captioned, I’ll also be inserting more individual photos when they’re available than I have in past blogs. Finally, I expect this journal will lack some significant measure of personal memory and anecdote because those lost photos would have served as a stimulus to recall what happened particularly now that more than a month has passed since my departure. As always, though, I also hope to bring some of the region’s history to light as well.

My trip started with the appearance of the Super Shuttle at 18:30 so I was at Dulles Airport at about 19:10 for a 22:30 flight. I discovered a last-minute problem with my cat’s water bowl and (and some of you may find your mouths agape with incredulity at this) left without my hat. I’ll have more on that in a bit.

Fortunately, the long wait at the airport became easier because our tour leader, Damir, called me (okay, he called everyone) from Croatia about a week in advance of our departure to see if I had any last-minute questions in preparing for the trip. I noticed there was someone else in the group from the DMV and he told me we were on the same flight from Munich to Dubrovnik so I thought it was a good bet that we’d also be on the same flight to Munich. Judy and I got in touch and arranged to meet at the airport Sunday evening.

We sat down in Vino Volo at about 20:00 and learned a bit about each other while I had wine and cheese and she wine and crab soup. Judy is a practicing clinical psychologist who grew up in Maryland (and received her master’s degree from UMCP) but now has the misfortune of living in Reston, VA. I chose not to hold that against her.

I found three things about the Lufthansa flight on an Airbus 300-330 worthy of inclusion. First, although the choice of movies was rather pathetic, they did have a live stream BBC sports channel, so I was able to watch the great swims of both Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps. Second, this plane also features a live camera and that’s kind of fun to watch for the last 20 minutes of the flight. Finally, the landing was one of the smoothest ever.

Now, about the hat. Knowing he would meet Judy and me at the hotel Monday afternoon, I sent Damir an email from the airport asking him to be prepared to tell me a place I could purchase a hat. He responded within the hour despite it being 02:00 in Dubrovnik. He pointed us to the nearby promenade and I now have one (and, who knows, may purchase another) new hat for the trip.

Although it’s about an hour’s walk from the Old City, the hotel is modern and in a lovely setting. It’s also sited with that nearby promenade of charming cafes and shops. The layout has a main building and several outlying “villas.” Our group is staying in the Villa Park which is quite new. The construction used local material to produce an older look but its newness is evident. As you can see from the photo below, my room has an enticing spot to relax with a beer of an evening.

The group gathered at a “Welcome” meeting before dinner (which was an included buffet at the hotel) where we briefly introduced ourselves. I put welcome in quotes because we also have a “Welcome” dinner but that’s not until tomorrow night. Two couples had to cancel due to health problems so the final group size is an even dozen. I am one of only two people who have not traveled with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) – the other is Alison who is from Washington, DC and whose presence I somehow missed when scanning the list of travelers OAT sent prior to our departure. While several people have traveled on this company’s tours upward of 10 times, one woman is making her 30th trip under their guidance. I am also one of only two men and the only single male on the trip. Art and his wife Linda are from Princeton.

A bit more than half the group was already familiar with one another because they had taken the pre-trip extension to Albania. There’s nothing of note to report about the dinner. It was a buffet in a private room and as we chatted, the early tribal alliances began to take shape.

I should mention that although Damir used a minute or two in the welcome meeting to ask us to leave American politics and especially those of the presidential race behind, we didn’t respect his authority very long. Only minutes, in fact because it only took until dinner for some political discussions to arise. I get the sense that, with one exception, the group is left of center politically which is perfectly fine with me.

Before I get to the next chapter of actual travel, I’ll first urge you to remember from the Conventions and Conversions post that time of day will appear in military or universal format (e.g. 7:00 means seven in the morning and 19:00 the corresponding evening hour) distances and other measurements will conform to local practice and use the metric system and the same will hold true for currency.

In Croatia, the currency is the kuna. Use an exchange rate of 1 USD = 6.5 HRK. (The Croatian word for their country is Hrvatska hence it is HRK on the exchange markets.)

Montenegro and Slovenia both use the Euro. Estimate that 1 USD = .89 EUR

When we get to Bosnia and Herzegovina, we will used the Bosnian Convertible Marka (KM on the currency but BAM on the exchanges). A dollar bought about 1.75 Markas.

The fun country is Hungary. Hungary is part of the Schengen Area so driving from Slovenia into Hungary is like driving from Maryland into Virginia. No Customs. No Immigration. There’s barely a Welcome to Hungary (or Magyarország as it’s called in Hungarian) sign. In Hungary, they use the forint. One dollar exchanged to about 270 Forints so a dinner with drinks that ran to say 5,000 forints was really about $18.50. After a while, the numbers seem to become meaningless.

I suspect for many of you, the first thing that comes to mind when I mention the Balkans is the sectarian wars of 1991-1995 and, indeed, reminders of that turbulent time were so present and ubiquitous that it almost became another traveler in our group. The roots of those ethnic and religious differences run much deeper than even the history of Yugoslavia under Tito. Thus, I believe that it’s important to have some idea of the longer history that still affects the region. So, before I start with my experiences in Dubrovnik, I’m going to take you through a relatively brief examination of some ancient history.