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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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.

Dubrovnik Bradt Guide

I have been in Dubrovnik for almost a week and have successfully sunk into a daily pattern. I have a lot of free time as I only have four hours of class a day, giving me plenty of time to explore every nook and cranny of the old town. The old town of Dubrovnik is actually quite small, and I have spent many summers exploring it, so I feel very much at home and have become a familiar face. Every summer it seems like not much has changed from the last.

People are still strolling or strutting down the main street enjoying ice cream. The cafes are jammed with locals and tourists reading the newspapers, gossiping, and nursing their coffees. Others are just hanging out watching the spectacle. After a while all of the nights start to seem the same, so I am always happy when I stumble upon a new place.

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Women Travelers by Christel Mouchard

I have only had one “major” problem while traveling by myself. This happened way back in 1998, when I was working as a teacher in Romania. During my two week Easter vacation my sister and I went on a “sister-bonding” trip through Scandinavia. After dumping her off at the airport, I just wanted to get home and relax. Against my better judgment and multiple warnings from my surprisingly travel-savvy 5th graders to “NEVER EVER TAKE THE NIGHT TRAIN FROM BUDAPEST TO TIMISOARA!!!” I decided to go ahead and take the dreaded night train to Romania. The whole thing was a disaster. Once I got to the train station I was unable to buy a ticket for the “Romanian” portion of my trip, due to local bureaucratic peculiarities that were (and still are) baffling to me. I finally decided that I was going to take a chance and try to buy a ticket from the conductor once I crossed that border, and started to settle into my compartment. While stashing my luggage in the overhead compartment, I was suddenly relieved of my purse by a charming Hungarian petty thief. I channeled my inner Powerpuff Girl, chased the guy down, grabbed my purse back, screamed Romanian obscenities that made no sense whatsoever coming from a girl, momentarily incapacitated him, and made my way back down the corridor to a chorus of “bravos” from all of the Hungarian men that witnessed the event, but didn’t bother to help me. As I sunk into my seat, a large majority of these men surrounded me, pinched my cheeks, told me to be careful, asked why I wasn’t married, and persistently tried to sell me their watches.

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Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The store just got in a new paperback that I’m very excited about: Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski.   A brilliant and richly detailed chronicle of Kapuscinki’s half century as a foreign correspondent and author, this memoir shows his journey as a young man just out of university in post-war Poland across the ensuing decades and all of the inhabited continents.  As one of Poland’s state newspaper’s first post-war foreign correspondents, Kapuscinski expects to perhaps be sent across the border to Czechoslovakia, and instead gets India–the start of a career that will make him witness to wars fought over soccer games, the liberation of nations from colonial bondage, coronations and overthrows of kings, and get him sentenced to death in absentia by a number of different regimes for simply reporting what he saw as he saw it.  He has in other words one of the all-time most kick-ass c.v.’s of any author since Sir Richard Burton or T. E. Lawrence.

Being a procrastinator, it is very odd for me to start thinking about packing my suitcase more than a month in advance of my departure. I typically pack at the last minute, having perfected my method of loading my clothes directly into my suitcase from the dryer. However, I am flying myriad budget airlines in Europe, and due to their luggage requirements, I can only take 20 kg with me! Usually this is not a problem, however my itinerary is a little “scattered.” Continue Reading »

The first time I went to Sarajevo, I met a group of guys in a bar. After a few beers, one of them told me the following joke.

Two guys were running across Sniper’s Alley… Continue Reading »