Balkan Odyssey Part 18: Dubrovnik, the Pearl of the Adriatic

by Neil Woodburn on

Even during communist times Dubrovnik was a hot destination for Western European vacationers and even some Americans. When communism fell, however, and war raged through the area, Croatia was shelled like everywhere else despite it having no military value whatsoever.

Naturally, this scared away tourists and continues to do so despite the war being long over. Although everyone is touting Dubrovnik as Europe’s newest hot spot, it still hasn’t reached its pre-war tourist numbers.

There’s good reason why Dubrovnik was so often visited even though it was locked behind the Iron Curtain: it is an absolutely perfect walled city situated on an absolutely perfect expanse of water. Just check out the above screen capture from Google Earth.

There are many accommodation options throughout the greater city of Dubrovnik, but the place to stay is within the Old Town’s city walls where cars are prohibited and narrow cobblestone alleys rule. A great site is Dubrovnik-Online.com. This is where we dug up a fantastic one-bedroom apartment with bathroom, air-conditioning and a small kitchen located just above 17th century Gundulic Square. Placa Dubrovnik has three apartments available to rent. Ours cost just 65 euros a night ($83) and included a complimentary airport pickup by Tonci, the friendly, English speaking proprietor. The photo above is taken from our window overlooking the square. My girlfriend and I were very pleased and highly recommend the place.

So much of Old Town is narrow alleyways punctuated with stone stairs such as these. Restaurants and bars are squeezed in wherever there is room, but not so drastically that things seem crowded. And the restaurants are amazing. I found them rather expensive, but the quality was excellent for the most part. We began choosing restaurants by their locations and almost always scored a hit. The seafood was great and the Italian food as well. The cheeses, however, weren’t as good as those I had in Albania and Montenegro. One of the stranger things I ate which I wasn’t too fond of was a plateful of tiny, inch-long fish deep fried in batter. You eat the whole bite-size fish; head, bones, eyes and all. The taste was a little odd and the crunchiness unnerving.

Dubrovnik also has its share of bars and cafes. One of my favorites was a place with live jazz called Troubadur (on Gunduliceva Poljana). Undoubtedly the nicest place to sneak a drink is a tiny bar which clings to a rocky outcrop on the outside of the city walls. Café Buza, is a little difficult to find, but the view (above) is amazing. Walk along the interior side of the ocean-facing wall until you find a hole with a sign above it reading, “Cold Drinks.” On the other side are perfect sunsets and a wonderfully mellow vibe.

Walking the city walls is an activity not to be missed. At 25 meters high, one can circle the entire Old Town and soak up aerial views of life below, or linger on the ocean-facing sections and stare out to sea. The distance is misleading, however. The circuitous route is more than a mile long and many choose to duck out half way through.

The Croatians I met in Dubrovnik were some of the friendliest locals I’ve met anywhere. I found this surprising because the small town is so overrun with tourists and normally when this is the case, locals grow to hate such an invasion. It made me wonder if such friendliness was the result of the war where an entire city which lived and died by tourism was slowly dying as visitors stayed away en masse. I would guess that having lived through such tough times, Croatians no longer take tourists for granted as do other places like Paris. Or, and this is probably the correct answer, the Croatians are simply very nice people. If you want to see what I’m talking about, stop for some scoops at the ice cream shop on the Placa nearest to Pile Gate. The two brothers who own the shop inherited it from their father who inherited from his father. A lifetime of scooping ice cream and they are as happy and jovial as though they had just started that day. Incidentally, this is some of the very best ice cream in Old Town.

Dubrovnik really is a wonderful place, so wonderful in fact that George Bernard Shaw’s oft-quoted “paradise on earth” description no longer seems excessive once you’ve visited. The exception, however, are when the increasing number of cruise ships dock. One morning we awoke to discover 4,000 American tourists had disembarked and flooded Old Town like locusts. By afternoon they were gone, however, and Dubrovnik returned to its heavenly state.

Yesterday’s Post: The Long Road to Dubrovnik
Tomorrow’s Post: Kotor, Europe’s Southernmost Fjord

Balkan Odyssey Part 17: The Long Road to Dubrovnik

by Neil Woodburn on

In today’s modern age, getting from Point A to Point B is often very easy. Of course, there are exceptions; such as when Point A is Ulcinj, Montenegro and Point B is the Dubrovnik airport where your girlfriend is flying into.

I sort of got the hint before embarking on my solo journey of Albania that if I wasn’t at the Dubrovnik airport to meet my girlfriend when she flew in, the rest of my trip would be solo as well.

So, here was the challenge: I had to travel the entire length of Montenegro, cross the border into Croatia, and be standing at the arrival gate by 3 p.m.

There is a very convenient bus that travels this entire route but it left Ulcinj at 12:45 p.m. and arrived at Dubrovnik too late to get me to the airport on time. The lady at the ticket counter suggested I take the 7 a.m. bus that traveled a town called Igalo near the border. I figured I could easily find transport onwards from there.

So, I woke at 5:30 a.m., caught a taxi to the bus station and jumped in a minivan. The coastal journey north towards Croatia is a very nice drive with plenty of scenic ocean vistas and wonderful homes and chateaus tucked in the hillsides. My girlfriend and I were planning on coming back to Montenegro after spending a few days in Dubrovnik, so the journey gave me a chance to scout out possible locations to visit.

Igalo, my minivan’s final stop, had appeared to be a small town right on the border when I consulted my map at the Ulcinj bus station. This was not true. The minivan dropped me off in front of a beachside hotel in Igalo which turned out to be about ten kilometers from the border. To make matters worse, there was no transport whatsoever to continue my journey.

A helpful woman at the hotel’s reception desk sort of laughed when I explained my predicament and told me I had to go back to the main bus station at Herceg Novi, a town I had passed through on the minivan about ten minutes earlier. To get there, I grabbed a local bus just outside the hotel and rode it nervously as it headed in the wrong direction for a long time before circling back and eventually dropping me off at the bus station.

Despite quite a bit of activity at the station, there was only one bus scheduled to head across the border to Dubrovnik. It left at 3 p.m. I was a bit angry to discover that it was the same 12:45 bus from Ulcinj which I didn’t take because it would not get me to the airport on time.

My only option at this point was a taxi. Unfortunately, the driver wanted 50 euros for the journey. So, I came up with a far cheaper solution. I’d take the taxi to the border for 10 euros, walk across, and grab a taxi or bus on the Croatian side. Easy enough. I’ve done it before and it has always worked out.

When the taxi dropped me off, however, the border post was almost completely empty. There were no busses waiting to cross or even taxis. I walked up to a window on the side of the building to get my passport stamped but the official waved me over to the little outdoor booth where two cars were waiting in line. I had to go and stupidly stand behind the last car, breathing in its nasty Eastern European exhaust, and wait my turn.

I thought it strange they didn’t have a window for people walking across the border. But, I quickly discovered why.

Once over the border, I entered No Man’s Land, that strip of earth that lies between two borders. Normally this area is less than 100 yards. But, as I started walking, I realized I couldn’t see the Croatian border post. The frontier was in the mountains and the road was curvy but every time I came around a bend expecting to see the border, all I saw was more of No Man’s Land stretching out before me. This was bad. I would have hitchhiked but not only were there no cars passing by, but I really doubted anyone would pick up a stranger in No Man’s Land. That’s like offering to carry someone’s bag through customs.

About a kilometer into my journey, all hot and sweaty, I stopped for a break and was taking a pee in No Man’s Land when I heard a car coming around the corner. I just had time to zip up before it blew past me, stopped for a moment, then slowly backed up. There was a man and women in the front seat but the back seat was empty. Without saying a word, I pulled open the door, threw in my bag and jumped in after it.

“Hi,” I said. The couple was all smiles and said hello back. Juraj and his wife were from Slovakia and had been vacationing at a friend’s house in Montenegro. They spoke a little English and I spoke a little Czech and suddenly my Hellish journey into No Man’s Land turned into a very pleasant one.

It was another 4-5 kilometers before we hit the Croatian border post. I would have been walking a long time if they hadn’t picked me up. I asked where they were heading in Croatia and they told me they were dropping off their rental car and flying out of Dubrovnik Airport. Perfect! I asked if could catch a ride the rest of the way and they had no problems with that.

Juraj did, however, want to visit Dubrovnik first before going to the airport. What I didn’t realize was that the airport is on the road between Montenegro and Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is actually another 20 kilometers beyond the airport. I’ll bet that 12:45 bus from Ulcinj would have gotten me to the airport only a little bit late and I probably could have taken it after all. Damn!

So we spent a quick hour in Dubrovnik (that’s Juraj above on the main street in Old Town) where I learned that, in addition to picking up strangers in No Man’s Land, Juraj and his wife run a small hotel in Kremnica, Slovakia called Stefanshof. Be sure to visit it if you’re in the area. We then headed back to the airport just in time to catch their flight and to meet my girlfriend at the gate.

Mission Accomplished!

Yesterday’s Post: Ulcinj, Montenegro
Tomorrow’s Post: Dubrovnik

Balkan Odyssey: Or, What I Did on My Summer Vacation

by Neil Woodburn on

Today begins a short series on a long trip from which I’ve just returned. As you can tell from the title, my journey took my through the former Yugoslavia. Fifteen years ago, the majority of my trip would have been a visit to a single country. But today, after far too many years of horrific civil war, Yugoslavia has split into five separate countries. I was fortunate on this trip to have visited three of them as well as some of their neighbors. In the following weeks, this column will take you through Serbia & Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, and Albania. Straying slightly from the Balkan theme, I ended my journey passing through Hungary and Austria.

I would have liked to send dispatches from the road, but part of the allure of where I visited was that internet bars were not on every corner.

The aim of this column is to hopefully introduce the reader to a handful of countries, rarely visited, that have much to offer. The column will be part travelogue, sharing my experiences and adventures, as well as part guidebook, where I hope to offer enough practical advice to help future travelers through a region covered very poorly by guidebooks.

Lastly, this column will temporarily replace Red Corner, seeing as everywhere I visited was once part of the old communist empire-except, of course, Austria. So, jump on board and join me on the Balkan Express. The trip exceeded all of my expectations and this column will hopefully exceed yours.

Tomorrow’s Post: Getting to Albania

Red Corner: Balkan Location Scouts

by Neil Woodburn on

You can tell a lot about a country by the stand-in work it does for other countries. For example, my first exposure to Prague was when it stood in for Vienna in the movie Amadeus.

There is a lot of money to be made for lesser known countries to stand in for more expensive locations–or simply, for these countries to be the primary location for a Hollywood shoot. This is why a contingent of representatives from the Balkans are in Cannes pitching the natural beauty and inexpensive filming opportunities that abound in and around the former Yugoslavia.

Blessed with beautiful mountains, scenic coastline and numerous islands, the countries of Croatia, Serbia & Montenegro, and Slovenia all have something to offer Hollywood location scouts–and tourists, for that matter.

Robert Welkos from the LA Times article interviewed a few of the representatives in Cannes and left slightly amused at their honesty in speaking about the poor roads and distant film processing centers which would make filming a definite challenge in this part of the world. But as for the scenery, oh my!

Red Corner: The Joys of Croatia, Montenegro and Albania

by Neil Woodburn on

I was a bit surprised to run across the following article, “Trip Lives up to Eastern Promise: Croatia, Montenegro and Albania provide a rewarding alternative to tourist traps,” for the simple reason that those are exactly the same three countries I will be visiting shortly.

Writer Cath Bennett did somewhat of a whirlwind tour in order of the most commonly visited (Croatia) to least commonly visited (Albania). She writes most fondly of Dubrovnik where she basked in a luxury hotel and strolled the town’s 13th century city walls. Montenegro, however, presented some hotel problems (no running water) but redeemed itself with the ancient city of Budva–a “veritable maze of winding streets featuring a mix of museums, shops and bars.”

Lastly, Bennett spent time in Albania–which she describes as a fascinating country of extreme contrasts where ox carts and Mercedes share the roadway.

It’s not the most detailed article, but it still gives a flavor of what to expect when traveling through this region of the world.