Sunday, December 6, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 88.69 km
Total trip distance: 2416 km
Max speed: 59.62 km/ hour
Average speed: 17.16 km / hour
Total time biking: 5:10
Total days biking: 42
Spending: 378 kuna (about $75)

We’ve agreed to reform our cycling strategy. We realized that stopping for a warm lunch is not only expensive but takes a significant chunk out of the few daylight hours we have and thus limits the number of kilometers we can ride. So last night, we bought groceries for lunch and tested our new approach this morning. We figured eating a quick bite on the road, instead of searching for and stopping at a restaurant would save us at least an hour and a half.

Croatia is shaped like an upside-down horseshoe and the bottom of its coastline is interrupted by a 10-km stretch of Bosnia--the country’s only coastline.  Apparently this phenomenon dates back to 1699, when the independent Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) sold a small amount of territory to the Ottoman Empire in order to avoid sharing a terrestrial border with the advancing forces of their rival, the Venetian Republic.  

We hit the road at a quarter to nine with more mountains and good weather and planned to be in Bosnia in time for breakfast.

The lone outpost of Bosnia on the Croatian coast, the town of Neum was a disappointment (Although we did not venture from the main road to the city center/port in order to avoid having to climb back up to the road bed). It lacks charm and identity; but for the coastal customs control and the Bosnian currency, the Bosnian mark (KM), it might as well have been Croatia. We didn’t even get a stamp in our passports.

We stopped at a café owned by a quiet woman in her fourties with reddish hair and a gap between her front teeth. She was distant at first, but when we asked to change euros for some Bosnian money, she happily gave us our “souvenir”. She told me that her mother and three brothers had fled to Utah during the war.

“Life here, very bad,” she said, constantly shaking her head, almost as if she had a nervous twitch. I couldn’t tell if it pained her to say more or if she simply couldn’t express herself well in English. I asked if she ever considered leaving for America like her family.  “Life in America? No, I cannot. I don’t leave my country.” This, despite the fact that “…no money here.  Life in Bosnia very bad.”

We pedaled out of Bosnia to the smell of full lambs roasted on a spit. The border back into Croatia was marked by a dark splash of asphalt and a simple sign post.





(Hrvatska is Croatia's real name)

Our time-saving plan worked. We stopped to eat our chips and sandwiches on the side of the mountain road, and were in Dubrovnik before the sun set, around 16:30.



At the entrance to its walled, medieval city was a large white placard with a city map identifying the areas damaged by the 1991-92 attack by Serbians, Montenegrins and the Yugoslav army. The scramble of red and black triangles, circles and rectangles on the map covered almost every inch of the city.

After running into a couple strangers on the street, who offered us rooms for rent, we rented an apartment from a Muslim Croat called Amira (same name as my sister!) www.villa-san.com. Almost immediately, she told us all about her son’s upcoming wedding. She was in the process of cleaning the house for the big day, Saturday, when she expects to receive 30 guests for lunch. The itinerary for the day? Lunch at the groom’s house (The guests normally bring household presents, like TVs or tablecloths, but in today’s modern world, they give money instead). Then drinks at the bride’s house. Then off to the mosque to be married. Then off to the government to be married again. Then to a restaurant for dinner. Then to a hall for dancing the rest of the night away. Long day.

We settled in for the night and after a long day of biking, I was asleep in no time. I had barely opened my eyes the next morning when, rather than “Good morning” Richard said very seriously: “We need to discuss Albania.”

He had stayed up late the night before reading the entire Lonely Planet section on Albania and had some concerns about us cycling there. Until recently, it was considered the most closed off country in the world.

“They’ve only had cars for about 10 years, so the drivers aren’t any good. Likewise, they’ve only had roads for about 10 years, so the roads are no good either. There doesn’t seem to be a single hospital in the country; for health care you must go to a Baptist clinic that treats people in the capital. And even they don’t do trauma. So if we’re hit by one of the bad drivers, we’re screwed. You can only use credit cards in the capital; it is almost mid-December; and I still can’t find a map for the country. I haven’t even told you about the blood feuds. I don’t know about this.”

This, of course, was just a front. Richard has been eager to visit Albania from the very beginning and it didn’t take long to remind him that this was exactly the adventure we were looking for after two months of churches, medieval cities and easy-to-navigate Western Europe.

I might add here that back in Kenya we were warned by an Eastern European that we should, at all costs, avoid Albania because “they will steal the shirts off your backs. They make the Somalis look like sissies.” That being said, we have heard good things about Albanian hospitality and we are keen to see something truly different.

Ok, I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Dubrovnik.

As we descended from our apartment Monday morning into Amira’s main courtyard, we noticed her cat scamper off around the corner.

“She’s scared of us!” I said to Amira. That launched her into a lengthy explanation of her “crazy” neighbor who poisoned 10 of her cats and left the remaining two traumatized and scared of strangers.

“He’s a crazy man,” she repeated over and over. “Crazy man.”

“I can understand people who don’t like animals,” she went on. “But to kill them?... He thinks I crazy because I feed stray cats. Everyday I go buy box of cat food. But I’m not crazy. I’m just human being.”

She told us of the man’s son, whom she once caught shooting cats and birds with a rifle.  “You put that thing away right now,” she told him, “because if anything happens to my son, I’ll kill you.”

To hear those words coming out of the mouth of a pleasant woman like Amira was yet another reminder of the violence these people have experienced and presumably become accustomed to. But she tells me that since the war, tensions have eased, and Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Orthodox all live together, intermarry, share in each other’s festivities.

Like everyone, she was touched by the war. “I lost 25 relatives,” she says. “But I can’t hate. Hate is a very bad word. Even the man who poisoned the cats, I think he is evil. But I don’t hate him.”

We spent the afternoon walking on top of the fortified city’s walls, looking over the town, the port, and the islands in the distance. We had a specialty of the area for lunch: risotto with squid and its ink.

Tomorrow, it’s off to the mountains of Montenegro!