137. Balkan Tour (4)

4. Dubrovnik to Split

Reviewed notes and checked Wikipedia last night for what I missed from the guide in the Serb-Montenegrin shelling of Dubrovnik.  Here's the Serb side:  Croatia had seceded and the S-M's wanted to keep Yugoslavia together.  They would have let Dubrovnik become an autonomous republic within an enlarged Serbia.  They didn't shell or besiege, they just blockaded.  Those weren't columns of smoke from a shelled city; they were the Croats burning tires to make the TV public think so.  Croatian side: The Serb generals and politicians just got their citizens worked up with a lot of propaganda, saying (yes, the Wikipedia entry says, they really did say these things) that there were "30,000 armed Ustashas and 7000 terrorists ready to attack Montenegro," part of "an aggressive imperialist Catholicism."  Wikipedia fact: "Croatian military forces in the area in September, 1991, were virtually non-existent."  The Serbs are the ones facing the most serious charges in the International Criminal Tribunal.  In a few days we'll get their side of the story and see what kind of people they are.

From Dubrovnik a beautiful all-day drive along the Dalmatian shore with a short shot inland.  Think Amalfi Coast and Poudre Canyon, raised a couple of powers.  Sweet Dalmatian a capella ("clappa") voices on the player.  Pass the longest military wall in Europe (10K), built 300 years ago by the Austrians to hold off the Venetians, or vice versa.  Go through a 7-mile strip of Bosnia which, to be a buffer against the Venetians for the Ottomans, had to have an outlet to the sea.  Bus detained at each boundary.

Nice things:  Thorough, careful restoration of art and architecture after the 1979 earthquake, which was far more devastating than our slim news coverage (or selective attention) ever comprehended.  Next to the gouges from artillery shells you can see a long crack carefully mortared all the way to the top of the wall.  After shrinking from the passionate citizenship in these small countries you are drawn to its apparent civic consequences: no crime, no homelessness, no begging.  Is it behind the strict gun-control laws Delf mentioned?  You'd need it for the support some of the town festivals get.  Herceg Novi, within whose boundaries seventeen kinds of mimosa can be found, has a big (and costly, I suppose) annual Mimosa Festival.

Saw a remarkable little island fortified and developed since the Greeks first settled it in the 3rd century BC (Trogir) and had a walking tour through a 180 x 212m Roman palace (Diocletian's, in Split) continuously occupied since 300 AD but you know European fortifications and palaces.  The surprise is they're here, and just as good, in what we had thought of as barbarian country.

And we're getting cool, in the Elderhostel way.  Around a table for beer we hear the church bells suddenly jangle.  They do that sometimes as a warning.  "Earthquake or Serbs?" our quicker buddy asks.