August 17th – 19th, 2016

STRANGE SHORE: Dubrovnik

SUNDRY LAND: Croatia

WANDERING WAY: King’s Landing, Westeros in “Real Life”

Yes! Dubrovnik IS where the brilliant creators of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” shoot all the scenes located in King’s Landing! Joy! Is there a more amusing activity than eavesdropping on an excited Italian tourist pointing out the exact spot where they displayed Ned Stark’s chopped-off head?

I was so thrilled, but then several stark realities came to light…

After my painful experience in Sydney, Australia this past winter, I take warnings about sunburns in deadly earnest. So when my little “Eyewitness Travel Dubrovnik” guidebook commented, “Sunstroke, sunburn, or dehydration can spoil a holiday,” I took special note. Keeping in mind that this advisory was intended for an average human who doesn’t burst into flame as soon as a sunbeam touches her vampyric skin, I slathered copious amount of 70 proof sunscreen over my healing mosquito bites every single morning. Despite this preparation, I still couldn’t stay outside for over an hour. At first, I didn’t particularly mind, given the clamoring masses stuffing the streets with their body odor, crass remarks, and ugly clothing – whew, Dubrovnik’s tourists really put tourists anywhere else to shame in their, um, “happiness” – but I did want to see the sights. How was this sightseeing to be accomplished?

Dubrovnik is beautiful. Fact. But how can a fair-skinned introvert, such as I, enjoy its gorgeous ramparts given the hot air ripening with human stench and noise pollution? Hmmmm.

Four-Part Solution: 

1)I awoke at 5:30am this morning to walk the around the inner-streets as the sun rose, and then…

2) I waited at the entrance of the “City Walls” or “Ramparts”, which open at 8am so that I could be first in line, and then…

3) I quickly climbed the stairs and gained a good quarter of a mile on any other tourist so I could take amazing early-morning photographs without a soul in sight,

and then…

4) I finished this circumlocutory tour in time to catch a cable car up the mountain and take panoramic photographs of the city before 10am. Ha!

Brilliant plan. Thank you. Please reserve your round of applause until after you see the snaps.

Given that one must be swift of foot and sturdy of leg to accomplish these physical feats of photographic ingenuity, I’m happy to share my pictorial booty with the dear readers of “Strange and Sundry,” who may enjoy the medieval extravagances of Dubrovnik without having to climb hundreds of steep steps in the early morning. I fully admit you could also watch “Game of Thrones” to glean this same experience, but my photographs do not involve multiple beheadings, which might be an incentive or deterrent depending your own penchant for morbidity.

TWO MORE REALITY CHECKS:

1) Given my incapacity to stroll around Dubrovnik for any length of time, you may be wondering how I spent the other forty-three hours of my visit. Some hours were spent sleeping and eating, yes, but I also learned a bit more about Dubrovnik’s real history (as unfiltered through the recent fictional occurrences in Westeros). Reading about 1991/1992’s “The Siege of Dubrovnik” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Dubrovnik) makes me wonder how in the world Dubrovnik is still standing. It’s one tough city! There’s still shrapnel in the walls – everywhere in the walls. Moreover, “Eyewitness Travel” casually comments,

“Most of Dalmatia has for years been clear of landmines laid in the war of the early 1990s, but they do still exist. Around Skradin, Krka National Park, and the border area with Bosnia, fields and even whole villages still have signs warning of landmines. Walkers heading off the beaten track should use a recent map, stick to trails, and seek local advice about the possibility of mines.”

Even if I had been able to walk “off the beaten track” outside Dubrovnik’s city limits without my skin igniting, this little caution might’ve encouraged an alternative indoors activity.

Yes, the recent history of Croatia is fascinating and tragic. For further reading, I’ve been turning to Christopher Hitchens’s introduction to Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”(https://www.amazon.com/Black-Lamb-Falcon-Penguin-Classics/dp/014310490X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471633029&sr=8-1&keywords=Black+Lamb+Grey+Falcon), and I just bought “The Bridge Over the River Drina” by Ivo Andrić (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature) for more information on the area before WWI(https://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Drina-Phoenix-Fiction/dp/0226020452/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471633081&sr=8-1&keywords=Bridge+Over+the+River+Drina). There’s so much to know about Dubrovnik, which you wouldn’t guess if you only judged the city from its partying tourists from the US, Britain, Italy, and France.

2) My morning walk made me acutely aware of how hard the average worker in Dubrovnik is toiling every single day in the service of these tourists scuttling through every crevice and crevasse of the city. In my observations, a Croatian working in the Old City of Dubrovnik must be rising by 5am to 6am and going to bed around midnight, and who knows how far any of these workers are commuting? As the sun rose, I watched the locals collect garbage from every conceivable corner, set up tables, make food, and open shops – all of this preparation began a day devoted to the backbreaking service of fulfilling the tourists’ every whim.

I have no doubt you'll find similar working circumstances in New York, London, Paris, Prague, Budapest, or any other tourist destination, but Dubrovnik traps everyone together in a small space encompassed by thick medieval walls. These close quarters make the imbalanced tourist-server dynamic especially apparent.

Forgive the long quotation, but I couldn’t help recalling George Orwell’s commentary about working as a plongeur (translation: the guy who cleans all the dishes in a hotel or restaurant) in his autobiographical Down and Out in Paris and London as I watched the workers of Dubrovnik get ready for a long, hot, summer day:

“FOR what they are worth I want to give my opinions about the life of a Paris plongeur. When one comes to think of it, it is strange that thousands of people in a great modem city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on—what purpose it serves, and who wants it to continue, and why I am not taking the merely rebellious, fainéant attitude. I am trying to consider the social significance of a plongeur’s life.

I think one should start by saying that a plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison. At this moment there are men with university degrees scrubbing dishes in Paris for ten or fifteen hours a day. One cannot say that it is mere idleness on their part, for an idle man cannot be a plongeur; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.

The question is, why does this slavery continue? People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagreeable job, and think that they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary. Coal-mining, for example, is hard work, but it is necessary—we must have coal. Working in the sewers is unpleasant, but somebody must work in the sewers. And similarly with a plongeur’s work. Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilization, therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.”(Orwell, Ch.22, https://www.amazon.com/Down-Paris-London-George-Orwell/dp/015626224X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471633342&sr=8-1&keywords=Down+and+Out+in+Paris+and+London).  

I reconsidered the futile, wasted work of Orwell’s plongeur as I watched the Dubrovnik locals catering to the bustling, braying tourists as they bought silver, drank wine, and gobbled lobster. I’m a tourist, too…I bought a little bracelet, drank some wine, and ate a lobster tail. It’s a “tourist economy,” but is it right? Ethically speaking?

So yes, walking around Dubrovnik this morning made me feel really, really guilty even as I enjoyed the spectacular view. Every time I smiled and said "good morning" to a shopkeeper, food-seller, or cleaner starting the day  – a greeting seemed natural enough since we were the only two people standing on a high medieval wall – the shopkeeper, food-seller, or cleaner inevitably beamed with surprise and gratitude. Oh man.

Having occasion to observe the crowds from shady indoor windows away from the sun, I began to wonder about the tourists, too. What makes tourists so awful? You may have heard people tell of the "Ugly American” tourist (http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-behaved-tourists-2013-5), but it’s my opinion that this ugliness has nothing to do with a particular nationality. (Possibly a self-serving view since I’m American…)

No, it's tourism itself, or the fact of an otherwise unremarkable, average, and essentially normal human being going on vacation to “escape” life/work for a week or two, that causes reasonable adults to transform into ugly, terrible, demanding monsters. In “escaping,” it seems the regular codes of conduct are null and void. An obvious point? Maybe, but why is this behavior indulged? Even if the tourists are pouring money into another country's economy, does money always excuse bad behavior?

After living in the tourist destination of Naples, FL for four years (shudder), I've observed that anyone who can rightly be called "on vacation" or "a tourist" is awful. (I'm not excepting myself -- I always try to be polite, but it's inevitable that my own Freudian "id" should crawl to the murky surface, particularly when I’ve been waiting to pay a bill for over thirty minutes.)

Anybody who has the task of bartending, waiting tables, keeping shop in a tourist community is called upon to augment the “escape experience” by offering a pleasant demeanor even while coping with obnoxious adults who've regressed to their disgruntled or drunk teenage selves. It makes me wonder... As I walked the walls, did the workers return my "good morning" because they felt coerced by the prevailing manners of a bustling tourist economy, or were those greetings genuine "good mornings" to another individual starting the day? I'll never know.

So Dubrovnik. It's wonderful and it's awful all at once. You’re stunned by the breathtaking views; you're happy that a populace that’s been so battered by war has created a tourist industry; working in the service industry takes the patience of a saint and the endurance of a steam engine; selfishly, I wish that all the tourists would go away. Maybe the Croatians could find some gold or oil?