Earl's Stuff: Dubrovnik August 13, 2021

With the Sarajevo audit completed, we were on vacation. Yeah!

We have never had to contend with traffic quite like Sarajevo. One way roads, sidestreets entering within inches of moving cars, massive traffic, motorcycles following no rules whatsoever, all made it terrifying. Interestingly, there is a major road through the center of town - or rather two one-way streets only a short block from each other. The East-bound street is two lanes with bumper to bumper traffic. The West-bound street is also two lanes, but people park in the right lane, so it might as well be a one lane street. That street ought to carry as much traffic as the other one, but with only one lane moving it is always jammed tight and creeps along. Crazy!

We finally made it out of Sarajevo and took the road to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Our auditing duties were over, but we are still on expense account to get back home. However, Dubrovnik is not on the way, so I cleared with the auditing department that I would not charge them for expenses on this part of the trip, except for the tolls and gas that ARE on the way home. It was approved by the Area Auditor, and everybody was happy. Except President (who asked me to inform him of my itinerary so he could notify Croatia when we go anywhere on church business) decided to disapprove our vacation part of the trip. We butted heads on that. Basically, my view is that it is an auditing trip and they approved it - therefor, it is not in his purview. We gave up arguing about it and I stopped telling him any more details about it. That is very distressing to me. I never imagined we would have friction with a mission president.

Also, he told us we had to rent a car to go on vacation, and I countered that the church charges us car rental to have a mission car, so it will be our rental car for vacation. He said he would check with the Area on that. By this time, we had made all our reservations and were packing our bags. Too late to counter it now. We left and we haven't heard back from him. Next time we see him will be at the Senior Conference, so if he decides to send us home, that will be the time to say so, I guess. At this point, we don't really care which way it goes.

So, off we went into the mountains south and east of Sarajevo. These roads are very narrow, with lots of switchbacks, and very steep. It was white-knuckle driving the whole way. We discovered that the Bosnians love to drive these roads in the middle of the road, only going back to their side (more or less) at the last minute. It resembles a game of chicken in many cases, and since we yielded to all of them, I guess we gave them the thrill of a win - as opposed to instant death.

We also had to watch for road hazards. In one place half the pavement in our lane had washed out. They put out a rock with a hole bored in it and inserted a stick painted with red stripes. Better than nothing, but only barely.

Then we approached a fire. We had seen a fire on a mountain top as we drove to Sarajevo, but this time we came right up on it. Before we saw any actual flames, we had to stop for a fireman in the road. Just past him there was the remains of a car that had caught fire. It had burned completely, including the tires, but was no longer smoking. I can't quite figure it, unless the car came through the the fire and caught fire itself, but drove on for a while. We could see smoke billowing up the other side of a ridge just ahead of us, and this burned out car on the road. The fireman had us wait for a while, and then a line of cars came towards and passed on down the mountain. A police car had led them and he turned around, then the fireman had us follow him back up. When we topped the ridge, there was the fire on our right and it was intense smoke, and lots of ash. As we went on, we started seeing flames on the right side, and then on the left side. The smoke got so thick that I couldn't see the police car with its flashing light, and then I couldn't even see the car in front of me. So, did they slow down? Not on your life! We went faster than ever. It was such a relief when we got past all the smoke and excitement. The police car turned off and we went on our merry way. However, the smoke from the fire followed us and kept re-appearing the entire time we were in Dubrovnik.

That wasn't our last delay, though. As we drove, a tractor pulled out ahead of us. The new tractors have a road speed of perhaps 35 mph, but this was an old one that only went about 20. With oncoming traffic we had to follow him for several miles, and he turned off before we had a chance to pass. Just when we thought it might be smooth sailing we got stuck behind an old car that billowed smoke constantly and couldn't quite reach 30 mph. Again we had to follow along behind him. He finally turned off. I think he went into a gas station and told the attendant, "Fill 'er up with oil and check the gas."

We also saw some interesting natural phenomena, such as hand-carved tunnels, and massive stones.

We also saw a lot of old-timey hay stacks. I didn't know these were still used, because it was more than old-fashioned when I was a kid. This was the way to make hay stacks when fairy tales were new. But they are current production in Bosnia.

This one seems to have a wine bottle holding the hay in place. They usually tie several branches to the pole above the hay to keep it from falling or getting blown in the wind.

The border crossing into Croatia was very easy and fast, so that was nice. The sun was setting as we got there and it took another hour and more to get to Dubrovnik. It amazes me that we manage to get to our hotels late and fall into bed exhausted so often. On this leg of the trip, the white-knuckle driving had us both beat down.

Dubrovnik is famous for its Old Town that is entirely surrounded by a massive stone wall. We decided to get to it early in the morning, because it has been entirely too hot lately!

Here is Liz at the front gate of the Fortress.

Behind her is the drawbridge over the actual moat ( but the water has been drained.)

The fortress is immense, and there is no other word to describe it better.

This from the drawbridge, looking out towards the sea. To the right edge, you can see just the edge of another fortress across a little waterway. It was built to protect its flank from attack by sea.

This is where we bought a ticket to climb the wall from "The Society of Friends of the Catholic Church." They maintain the wall, so they get to collect admission. It is free to enter the Old City, but the wall has to be climbed to be believed.

We had to stop and rest half way up the wall, and I took this photo showing the higher levels. We opted not to climb that direction, because there were just stairs after stairs. We opted to take the more nearly level route, and that one made my knees ache.

This is the view from the top of the wall, across the little inlet to the smaller fortress. What looks like a ramp on the right is the edge of a stairway, and there were people on the stairs when I took this photo. It was too far for them to show.

They rent out kayaks under those tents at the bottom of the photo. They go out in groups with guides, and it was kind of funny to see some of them struggling with learning how to row. They are in many of my other photos. Gaggles of Kayaks.

This is Liz taking a photo of the little fortress, and you can see the kayaks below. We kept walking up from here.

This is looking down into the fortress to a part of it that is ruined from the wars. During the Civil war in 1992-95, the city was shelled regularly. And then Montenegro, who sided with Serbia, continued to occasionally shell it from sea until 2006. The repairs are well done, and the biggest sign of it is when they used new red roof tiles. We climbed up to just below the tallest building in this photo before we gave up and returned. It is possible to walk all the way around on the top of the wall.

This is looking down on that same ruined area, across the Old City to the other wall.

And this Panorama shot is from the highest point we reached.

Back at street level there is a wide street across the Old City. It used to be a canal, but now it is a pedestrian way. But its width meant that the sun had full power to heat it up and it got hot early. We ventured into the smaller streets.

This narrow little street has gift shops and touristy things near the central street, but then turns into residential areas. The tourists have driven many residents to seek quarters elsewhere, but there is still a sizable permanent population inside the wall.

This the market square at the end of the main street. We bought some cups of fresh cut fruit, and it was delicious. The day was heating up quickly and we wanted shade!

There are lots of feral cats in the Adriatic and their fur is much more varied than U.S. cats. While feral, they are friendly, especially to anyone who feeds them. I saw a woman go into a grocery store, and when she came out she opened a package of meat, which she tore into little chunks to feed a cat. Soon there were three, and she continued feeding all of them until they refused any more. Then she walked off down the street. Everybody seems to think the cats belong to the community.

There is a church near the market, so we went inside.

Its an old church, but quite deluxe compared to ours.

I loved the light streaming through the stained glass windows.

At first, I thought this was an anchor, but it is Jesus flanked by the two Marys.

And, of course there has to be a painting of St. George slaying the dragon. In this one, his spear has already pierced the dragon's head, but it has broken. It seems that over time, paintings of the "event" depicted the spear intact. It was a small painting and it hung high on the wall. Sorry about the low quality of the photo.

From the steps of the church, we sat in the shade for a few minutes, and contemplated the back gate onto the piers. This is a panorama including the market and a rather elaborate building just at the back gate.

It was so hot, we decided to get out on the water. We saw signs for a glass bottom boat, so we signed up. It wasn't too expensive, and it was much cooler out on the water.

As we went out, I was watching the bottom. At first, I saw a lot of ropes and pipes, wine bottles and other trash. A little further out I saw a pile of dinner plates - I bet those were not dumped intentionally. But only a few little fishes. Most of the time the water was too deep to see anything through the glass bottom.

We went out of the bay and around a privately-owned island. I was trying to get a photo of the caves on the island shore, but these girls seemed to think I was shooting them. I wasn't. At the end of the island, there were people sunbathing on the rocks. The men got up to wave at us and they were not clothed.