Story and Photos by Ashok Khanna.
Feature Image: Dubrovnik, from Mount Srd, 1452 feet up by cable car.
Link to Part Two: Slovenia and Hungary
Like most people, I was feeling cooped up in the US after the pandemic, especially with the near-daily devastating news of mass shootings and vitriolic discordant politics. But I couldn’t leave until my new passport arrived. When it did, I scoured the Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) website for the first available spot for a single traveler to an interesting destination. I almost never travel with a tour company, but with the Covid virus still prevalent, I thought it would be safer as the company may have arrangements to help me if I got sick. A couple of people had suggested OAT because it catered to small groups and did not levy a supplement for a single traveler.
The “Crossroads of the Adriatic” came up as the most interesting tour, with an opening in mid-June for travels through Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Hungary. These countries were a part of the former Yugoslavia (land of the Southern Slavs) that splintered in the early 1990s. I had traveled through the region in 1962 when I was a student in England while on a road trip from London to Athens. At the time, Yugoslavia was ruled by Marshall Tito, who, along with Prime Minister Nehru of India, led the non-aligned group of countries during the Cold War.
I experienced the dissolution of Yugoslavia through colleagues at the World Bank, where I worked for many years. One colleague’s family was trapped in Sarajevo during the four-year-long siege of that city. Other colleagues, who were citizens of Slovenia and Serbia at the time, had personal stories about that period, too. Intrigued by these connections, I read Nobel Laureate Ivo Andric’s books, “The Bridge on the Drina” and “Bosnian Chronicle.” I also browsed Rebecca West’s travel tome, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon,” before the trip.
I added Budapest at the end of the tour as I had arranged to meet an old friend who offered to show me around. I have been curious about Hungary since I got to know fellow students in England who had escaped during the 1956 revolution against the Soviet-dominated repressive regime. I bookended my trip with a few days in London to visit friends and get a dose of metropolitan culture in a familiar language.
The East European countries I visited have melded multiple cultures, starting from Ancient Greece and the Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Venetian, Austro-Hungarian, and Napoleonic Empires. Because of all these influences, the region’s history is complicated. In relatively modern times, Ottoman rule was the longest, lasting for about four centuries. It was linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse and tolerant: several religions, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians and Islam vied for the population’s allegiance, and Judaism was practiced as well.
The tour lasted 17 days, starting in Dubrovnik in Croatia, wending in and out of that country to visit Kotor in Montenegro, Mostar and Sarajevo in Bosnia & Herzegovina, back to Karnac, Zagreb and Opatija in Croatia, and ending in Ljubljana in Slovenia. We were accompanied by a tour guide throughout, supplemented by local guides to orient us on walking tours of cities and other locals to tell us about their experience during the 1990s War of Independence. There were nine in the group, six from the San Francisco Bay area. All were about the same age, except for one recent high school graduate traveling with her grandmother.
To make it easier to follow, I will relate the journey by country rather than by route.
Croatia: Dubrovnik is a beautiful medieval town on a small peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. It was founded in the 7th Century as a protectorate of the Byzantine Empire and, with periods as an independent maritime state, has come under the rule of Venice, the Hungary-Croatian Kingdom, the Napoleonic Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Yugoslavia. It is now part of Croatia.
The fortified old town was besieged and damaged during the War of Independence, but it was rebuilt to its former glory with UNESCO’s assistance. It is now a tourist town with small museums, restaurants, bars, and shops. Walking through its narrow streets, lined with limestone brick buildings with red roofs, feels like being in a movie set.
A boat trip to the nearby Lokrum Island, and a demanding hike up to the Napoleonic Forte Royale, yielded a stunning view of the old town from the distance. Back in town, the hour-and-a-half walk along the City Wall was taxing on a hot day but rewarding for its views of the city and the clear blue sea. Afterward, we relished the wine-tasting session at D’Vino, where a flight of good white and red wines, accompanied by lots of local cheese and hummus, relieved some of the physical stress. My fellow tourers, Steve & Barbara, professional wine tasters, swilled wine in the glass for its fragrance and in their mouths for its taste. I was happy to just drink.
On another day, we traveled by cable car to the Imperial War Museum on Mount Srd where. perched 1452 feet above the town, it is housed in a fort built by Napoleon. There, we heard the wrenching story of a survivor of the city’s siege during the Croatian war. The view of the town below, the feature photo above, provided high relief. I had lunch at Nishita, a vegetarian restaurant recommended by a neighbor who had spent a year in Dubrovnik. My tofu and vegetables with noodles dish was bland, but my taste buds came alive when I laced it with chili sauce.
That afternoon, we drove to a farm away from the tourist area, where the owner, a showman, regaled us with the excellence of his olive oil. The oil was indeed good, but the meal and wine he served later were not. The accordion music during dinner and the cajoled conga dance afterward were downright hokey. Such is life on a tour.
There are no hotels in Dubrovnik town. Kompas, our comfortable modern hotel by the Adriatic Sea, and the best on our tour, was in Lapad, the adjoining modern city. It was at one end of a semi-circular arc of a long promenade, with hotels, restaurants, apartments, and houses rising up on the hill. Our access to the sea was from the other side of the arc with step ladders down into it. The clear blue water was cool, lightly salted, and very inviting after walking in the old town under a blazing sun. A stroll along the promenade that evening was especially lovely with cooler temperatures and shore lights reflected on the water as it gently lapped the coast.
The tour arranged an overnight stay at a farm in Karanac in the fertile Baranja district in the northeast corner of Croatia, 7 hours from Dubrovnik (547km/ 339 miles) near Hungary. As we made good time, we stopped for a while in a nearby small town, Davoko, which boasts a huge cathedral built by architects from Vienna. By chance, a wedding party was approaching as we walked by. In their jollity, they shared local schnapps with us while we listened to their small band as the wedding party gathered.
The longish, narrow farm in Karanac was rustic with a simple dwelling area in front, lined by storage sheds on one side and newly built rooms on the other, as well as animal shelters and farmland farther back. After a few years of catering to OAT tours, the owners spoke English well enough to explain a fresh cheese-making process to us and talk about the farm. A cousin came in the next day and engagingly demonstrated how to make pottery. As the farm owners had catered to tourists several times a year for a few years, it felt a bit staged. Such, again, is life on tour. Still, I can hardly complain as I was awarded the gold medal for my pottery sculpture, and the morning walk through corn and sunflower fields was authentically rural.
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, and its Habsburg architecture conforms to its status. Beautifully renovated buildings and parks cover the downtown area. On the evening of our arrival, there was a jazz concert in the garden of the Exhibition Hall near our hotel. Next morning, we were taken on a walking tour to all the main sights, such as the Neo-gothic cathedral, a large farmer’s market, the parliament building, and museums. Later, I walked by the other main historic buildings and botanical gardens. It is indeed a lovely city.
I visited the Museum of Naïve Art, which had some unusual pieces. Near its entrance, I noticed a plaque for Nicola Tesla, who worked nearby. The Museum of Broken Relationships was, as its name implies, full of sad stories and memorabilia. It was hard to read too many of them. Needing an uplift for our spirits, we soon found that tasting good wines at Borstein’s, a winery located in a 200-year-old brick cellar, was our elixir. The owner, an Australian Croat, delighted us with a lively discourse on the wines, three white and three red, and they were indeed flavorful despite their difficult-to-remember names.
We drove from Zagreb to the gallery of renowned sculptor, Antuna Augustincic, in Klanjec, a small town where he had lived and had his home studio. His major work is displayed outside the UN building in New York. A guide explained his sculptures, which were shown in his house and garden. In design, it was a miniature version of the Rodin Museum, whom Augustincic greatly admired. He was also a friend of Marshall Tito, whose statue had a prominent place in the garden. We drove farther to Tito’s village, Kumrovec, not far away. Actually, it was a rebuilt village that was made into a museum. A guide walked us through, explaining life there during Tito’s time, and filled in some details of the leader’s young years. Close to the Slovenian border, the countryside was lush green with undulating hills and fields planted with corn and vines, among other produce. We stopped for lunch at a rustic restaurant with a gorgeous view of a castle on a hill. My mushroom soup and vegetable risotto were pretty good.
Returning to Zagreb at about 4:30 pm, we went to the Mirogoj Cemetary, the resting place of many of Croatia’s intellectuals and artists. It is a vast area damaged in a recent earthquake. We walked around the memorials, some remarkable, in intense heat and humidity, which diminished our attention. For relief, we again turned to tasting wine at “Time 4 Wine,” the Chardonnay and Traminer were quite good, but the Cabernet and Syrah that followed, were young with muted flavors. Maybe when they grow up, things will improve.
The next day entailed a drive to Opatija (175km/109 miles) with a stop at Plitvice Lakes. Sixteen pristine lakes are linked by waterfalls and cascades in 114 square miles, the largest national park in Croatia, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. With a local guide, we ambled along a wood and dirt path by the clear turquoise lakes to take in the views while carefully leaving the flora, fauna, and wildlife undisturbed.
A few hours’ drive later, we reached the Adriatic Sea near Split and drove along it for an hour and a half to Opatija. A resort town of yore, it featured historic grand villas with elegant facades, some of them updated. Our hotel was an older building adjacent to the botanical gardens and a short walk down to the beach where the sea was warm. Here, the promenade stretched for a couple of miles in each direction and led to other resort towns. After almost daily long bus rides, I was happy to be still with the opportunity to walk around the town and enjoy a swim. I had been hunting for a good “black risotto,” made with squid ink which was a recommended specialty of the region. Having tried the dish a few times without much to impress me, I gave it one more shot at Roku, a restaurant near our hotel. Here, the seafood risotto, enhanced by the nuttiness of truffles, fully satisfied my curiosity.
Again, to make it easier to follow, I will relate the journey by country rather than by route.
Montenegro: The tour arranged a day excursion from Dubrovnik to Kotor in Montenegro. As its name implies, Montenegro is a small, hilly country and the only one in the area to avoid Ottoman rule. After the bus ride, made longer by a border crossing, we stopped at a village to board the boat that took us on clear blue Kotor Lake, past a small island with a church built in 1630, to the town with the same name, a medieval city, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Kotor is smaller than Dubrovnik Its narrow, cobbled stone streets, an obstacle for large armed invasions, leads to mansions, houses, churches, and squares. But, like Dubrovnik, it has gone entirely to tourism. A local guide walked us through the town and informed us of its history. We then lunched in a restaurant known to serve Kotor’s renowned mussels, which were plump and salty, moderated by a light wine sauce.
I had intended to walk through the town again and climb steps to a high point to get a better view, but just as I got to the main square, a huge Viking tour ship docked in the deep natural harbor and disgorged hundreds of tourists, making it difficult to manage the narrow streets and steps. On our way back, as our bus climbed the hills, I noticed the bay was surrounded by a necklace of small villages with whitish red-roofed houses and a church spire reaching higher. Very picturesque indeed.
Bosnia-Herzegovina: After finally leaving Dubrovnik, we traveled towards Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As we got closer, our guide briefly related the history of Bosnia. The main difference from the other countries on our tour was that 40 percent of Bosnia’s population follows Islam, and that is reflected in their dress, food, and architecture of buildings and markets. Also mentioned was the bridge across the Neretva River, Stari Most, and the town that was named after it. She related that the iconic bridge had been destroyed during the war when Yugoslavia splintered into several countries and was rebuilt in 2004 with a loan from the World Bank. That got my attention because, being a policy person, I had never seen a physical project funded by the World Bank.
After crossing the border, we stopped in Mostar for lunch. We arrived at about noon and were let off our tour bus near the old town. We were led through a narrow bazaar lane paved with small stones. I had to concentrate to keep from twisting my ankle, but caught glimpses of the tourist shops and food stalls on both sides. Our restaurant was close to the bridge’s entrance. I was shown steps down to the river to get good photos. and walked down to the pebbly bank where several young people were sitting, taking in the sun, eating their lunch, and some were swimming.
With a modern eye, the bridge does not seem exceptional. Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned Hayruddin to build it under the pain of death in 1557. Not confident that it would stand, he prepared his funeral as the scaffolding was being dismantled. It was then the longest man-made arch and an outstanding example of Balkan Islamic architecture.
The bridge was destroyed during the recent war by a Croatian General, which our Croatian tour guide omitted to mention, and rebuilt in 2004 under the aegis of a UNESCO-established scientific committee with funding from several sources, including the World Bank. Divers searched for the original stones and supplemented them from a nearby quarry. Hungarian and Spanish army engineers cooperated to rebuild it, and among other dignitaries, the president of the World Bank attended the opening ceremony.
The bridge now has another use. People jump off it into the river, some for 50 Euros. It has become an annual diving competition organized every year at the end of July where young men of the town leap from the bridge into the Neretva. As the river is very cold, this is a risky feat and requires skill and training.
We finally reached Sarajevo late in the afternoon. Our hotel was by the Miljacka River, about a mile from the heart of the old town. Here, the river bank path leads to the old town and market. The main road through the local market ends at Pigeon Square near Sarajevo’s City Hall, a pseudo-Moorish building with a decorated vaulted ceiling inside. The ornate old City Hall was damaged during the siege and slowly restored with support from the EC and several European countries. Along the way though, the architecture is a curious mixture of Hapsburg-Austria and Turkish-Ottoman.
After lunch, I walked the span of the bridge where time and wear had created a smooth, polished stone pathway. Our tour guide had warned us that a woman on a previous tour was injured there and had to cut short her trip. With that in mind, perhaps, there were slightly higher cross layers of stones every couple of feet to keep people from sliding. Shops lined the other side of the bridge for another half mile until a city street with a mosque came into view.
In my wandering, I found a small art gallery with abstract art, the only store not selling tourist kitsch. A lady dressed in a black burqa greeted me. She told me the artist was her husband. Soon, he arrived, a burly man in his 40s sporting a full beard. He immediately noticed the small MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) on the side of my baseball cap rather than the big NY Yankee logo in front. I asked if he had visited the museum. He replied that he had not, but it was his dream to go there. I liked his work and his spirit and so I bought a painting.
The next morning, the walking tour of the old city emphasized religious tolerance: we visited a Roman Catholic Cathedral, Orthodox Christian Church, Jewish Temple, and the main Mosque. We also stopped at the spot where Duke Ferdinand was killed, triggering the First World War. Later in the afternoon, I hunted down the National Art Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The special exhibit was colorful and flamboyant, but the permanent collection had realistic paintings and mostly dark.
Our tour emphasized the 1990s war of independence, especially in Bosnia: the siege of Sarajevo lasted for four years, and the suffering inflicted on the population was far worse than in Dubrovnik. A survivor of the war told us of his harrowing experience. The next morning, we drove to the “Tunnel Museum,” where we learned more about the siege and the tunnel’s role in supplying Sarajevo during those years. The tour also arranged dinner for us in the home of a “normal” family living in a socialist-style boxy apartment building. We dined with a grandmother and her daughter-in-law, who worked as a cashier in a supermarket. The grandmother made the meal, and the daughter-in-law told us about surviving the siege and later bringing up children in independent Bosnia. The apartment building was in “sniper alley” during the war when our hosts had to sometimes dodge bullets to get food or go to school.
After hearing so much about the tragic war, it was difficult to pluck up the courage to visit the gallery and museum documenting war atrocities, especially the massacre at Srebrenica, but that is another story for another time. Unfortunately, much can be learned from history and suffering, but it is all too often forgotten in war’s heated anger.
Our tour continued in Slovenia and Hungary, which is described in Part Two of this series.