Globe Corner Blogs

Montenegro Has A Fjord!--photo by Lisa

I am constantly asked why I am trying to speak Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian. Most people assume that I have some relative that came from the area and I am trying to reconnect with my heritage. There is always some confusion when I explain that my grandparents were from Norway and being Norwegian and having black hair are not mutually exclusive properties. Most of the my fellow students have Croatian or Bosnian background and I must admit sometimes I get a bit jealous when they reminisce about growing up with the foods, playing Tamburi (folk music), visiting various cousins in the area, and all the colorful swear words that they learned from some uncle.

Then I always begin to feel a bit guilty about neglecting my “homeland.” I am a bad Norwegian.

I speak a total of ten Norwegian words and none of them are swear words. I have never met any of my cousins, nor have I visited the small, isolated village where Grandpa was born. I hate lutefisk and I have never successfully made krumkake.
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Moon Handbook to Austin, San Antonio, and The Hill Country

In a few days I will be headed down to America’s favorite neighbor to the south: Texas. (Houston and Austin, to be specific.) Ah, Texas; home of cowboys, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, Cowboy Cheerleaders…Shiner Bock…and most importantly, my boyfriend’s family. This will be my first trip to the state and I’m quite excited. And by excited, I mean terrified. I feel like Gulliver about to stumble into Brobdingnag, land of giants: enormous spans of land, monstrous oil thingies, belt buckles the size of my head. I am not sure exactly where this anxiety is stemming from; after all, my boyfriend is Texan and I like him all right… There are just so many stereotypically Texan traditions that are so atypically me — guns and steak being the first to come to mind. Now, I know that no one in his family was going to hold a gun to my head and force me to eat a flank of cow, but my boyfriend’s next revelation shocked me: they were scared of little ol’ meat-free me!

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Let's Go Thailand

This is my first contribution to the Globe Corner blog — unfortunately grad school usually leaves little time for reflections on travel (I should really find a dissertation topic that will allow me to collect data in some exciting locale…), but today I’m finally done with work for the summer, and in about seven hours, I hope to be completely packed and on a plane from JFK to Tokyo. Tokyo will be my first stop on a three week trip, which also includes Hong Kong and a beach in Thailand (TBD: I have a flight into Krabi and some vague desires of white sand and warm water.)

This whirlwind tour of half the continent will be the exact opposite of my last (and first) trip to Asia, as a researcher-writer for Let’s Go Thailand. I spent two months in the north of the country, combing the region for guesthouses, bus schedules, and cooking classes. I was traveling alone, moving every other day, and visiting every last wat (monastery) in each town on my route. I got to know the region extremely well, and in fact, the north is synonymous with all of Thailand for me, since I had to return to the States almost immediately at the end of my route, and never got to see the rest of the country.

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Time Out Croatia

Ok, so I think that I lied a little bit in my last post. Not everything is the same in Dubrovnik, and I am discovering  tons of new things. Being a dedicated red wine drinker, I actively search out new places to drink wine and justify my indulgences by convincing myself that my Croatian skills vastly improve after a few glasses of a local wine.  One of my brand new haunts is a new wine bar, D’vino. This cleverly named bar (vino is wine, D’vino roughly translates as wonderful) is brand new and one of the few places to offer not only a wide selection of Croatian wines, but also a huge selection of wine from around the world. It is tucked away on a small side street in the old town. The prices are a bit steep, but it is a classy alternative to the other bars in town. Although it has only been open for a month, it has already become a regular for expats, locals, and tourists that are interested in sampling some of Croatia’s wines.

According to Time out Croatia, one of my favorite guidebooks for the country, Croatia has a long tradition of producing wines (both red and white) that goes back to the Roman times. The most famous are Dingac, Plavac, Prosek, and Babic. Most of these are grown along Croatia’s stunning coastline on Peljesac peninsula which quickly became a popular day trip from Dubrovnik.  Wine tours are becoming popular, but there is a lot of room for growth.

In the meantime I am just enjoying researching the vast world of Balkan wines.