Dubrovnik & Duba "Matt's Fatherland", Croatia

(July 2-5) The four and a half hour bus ride to Dubrovnik from Split twisted and turned along the jagged coast. I had been reading an out dated paper in English and found myself getting car sick. With the sun beating down on me and the lack of air conditioning inside the bus I had to take big glups of air just to steady myself. We were bombarded by room seekers again as we deboarded the bus. I meekly turn them down as to not offend. Matt just uttered the name Sado to the horde and they collectively groaned in disappointment. Sado is listed in a couple of travel guides and proudly wears a lamenated name tag around his neck displaying their accolades.

Sado turned on the automated tape in his head and robotically pointed out the sights along the drive to our temporary home. The apartment was an exaggerated closet with faux kitchen and a bathroom. It was windowless and damp like a cave but at least it was our very own place and we had a lovely terrace shaded by fig trees. Sado claimed that the beach was only 150 meters away, and coincidently there were 150 steps from our place just to the start of the promenade to the beach.

Dubrovnik's Old Town is a magnificently perserved ancient city encircled by thick stone walls and turqouise blue waters with gleaming marble streets and glistening red roof tops. It's deceptively larger than it appears and Matt and I found ourselves lost between the small marbly allys. I had been craving fresh fish since Cinque Terre so upon Sado's recommendation we feasted at a popular spot just outside the Old City walls overlooking the harbor. Out of steaming black pots we delighted our taste buds with grilled calamari and shrimp with wine and salad on the side. The meal was only tarnished by the inky blackness seeping out of the calamari turning everything to color of the contents in the black pot. Overjoyed by the cheapness of the meal we treated ourselves to some lounging libations and watched the tourists flow by us in a endless stream of shadows.

After a blissful few days of eating far too well and lounging far too much in Dubrovnik, we rented a car and headed north in search of the origins of the Zibilich clan to a penisula and eventually to a small town called Duba. I fished out of my bag a couple of CD's that I had acquired during our travels creating the perfect soundtrack to our roadtrip. It was unsaid but we were both alittle apprehensive about this home coming of sorts so the music helped to alleviate the tension we were both feeling. We were traveling in familiar footsteps that Matt's parents as well as his brother and his wife had trekked to in the past. They had been openly welcomed. We didn't expect less but then again who's to know. We were coming unannounced, strange strangers from a distant land. It was easy to lay our doubts to rest as we navigated the one-car roads up and over the chalky rocky moutains, through vineyards, olive grooves and along mussel beds. We had to concentrate on the narrow roads so we couldn't think about anything else. Besides the landscape spoke to us and it beckoned us.

There was a moment when we crested a hill and looked out between the two moutain tops forming a natural V when I lost my breath. The beauty of looking down to the apex of the V and seeing red roof tops glimmering in the sun opening up to the turquoise waters bordered by majestic moutains that it just felt like we had finally reached our destination. We slowly descended the hill driving cautiously along the coast until the yellow Duba sign was revealed to us. Thick stone-walled houses stood slightly above the tree lines. The road uncermoniously stopped at a cluster of homes, a childish STOP sign had been painted on one of the sides of the houses detering us from going any further. Duba wasn't a town it was more a collection of old stone homes in various states of disrepair. A church stood in the center, tall and proud. The small harbor housed even smaller fishing boats and a smaller yet church. We expected with the ghost town feel of driving up into the heart of Duba that we wouldn't see anyone on the rocky beach. To say we were surprised at the number of German and French vacationers tanning themselves on the shores was an understatement. Duba is home to maybe 50 locals during the off season and swells to a thousand during the summer time. Not all are coming like Matt and I to search our roots, but many from New Orleans return home during the summer months to rekindle a language, family and a feeling of past simpler life.

We did our homework the first day in Duba and found the whereabouts of Kristo Marino a distant relative of Matt's. The next day we would impose ourselves upon him but not before we soaked up as much Duba beach time as we could. It was the same Adriatic waters as we had swam before but dramtically colder. A shock to the senses anytime you entered the waters. The moment of truth was finally upon us so we headed up to Kristo's door and knocked with held breath. His wife, a lovely young blonde, greeted us in English and told us he was sleeping. When Matt explained who we were she quickly ran up the stairs and woke him. It didn't take him long to piece together the stories of Matt's dad and his brother's visits. Next thing we know glasses of homemade wine, whiskey, sweet wine and herbal alcohols were placed in front of us. Kristo is an oral historian and knew the lives and loves of all who have lived in Duba. He ticked off names, dates and he even walked us around the small village explaining each home and it's significance. Kristo lives what he calls a simple life raising farm animals and tending to his fields. He is one of the only of his generation to have left for a better life in the states only to return to what he considers the best life of all, that of a farmer living by the old ways and methods. I can truly say I have never met a person who loved what they do more than Kristo. The utter joy he exuded feeding the animals their slop was refreshing.

Kristo could not have been more enthusiastic about Duba. His energy and zest for family history was invigorating. Hands down one of the best places that we visited so far was Duba, because it was in every way a home away from home for us.

A Zebra in Split, Croatia

(June 30-July 2) The flight from Pescara, Italy to Split, Croatia was one of the shortest flights I have ever taken. Just when we reached cruising altitude Matt put his tray table down to read and the flight attendent came quickly over to replace it to it's secured position. We were already starting our decent the attendent said out of the side of his mouth as he rushed down the aisle. With our bags and some Croatian Kuna burning a hole in our pocket we took a shuttle bus to the the old town of Split.

Before we even left Italy Matt made arrangements to stay in dorm type rooms with Danica. The phone conversations between the two of them were priceless. Zibilich is not a name that rolls of the tongue easily for those untrained to use the glorious word and nearly everytime we give our name somewhere we inevitably are forced to spell it out. Matt always starts out the spelling like this, Z as in Zebra. Danica heard just the Zebra and rolled with it. Matt Zebra. Already we could tell that Croatia was going to something. Danica's directions off the bus were vague. We were told to just wait and that her husband would come and pick us up. No description of him let alone his name.

The bus pulled into the Old Town depot and people quequed up to get on the bus. We're used to seeing people jockey to get on a bus or a train before other people get off so this did not seem out of the ordinary. It wasn't until we disembarked that I realized the real intent of the mob, they wanted us to take a room with them. It was a motely crew of people with little signs on lamented pieces of paper beckoning us to take a room with them. Trying to turn them down and gather our bags was an ordeal and the whole situation made me alittle bit uneasy. Some of the people were so old and frail that it broke my heart to turn down a room from them because they looked like they needed us and our Kuna. We moved away from the masses and Matt called Danica again. Her husband would be there in 20 minutes to collect us. Great. Still the zombie like people approached us, "is there a problem? no. do you need a room? no. what are you paying for your room? it's already arranged. do you need help? no. " On and on like this. We tried not to make eye contact but we managed to piss one of them off.

I told Matt that if in 20 minutes Danica's husband does not show up we'll take a room with one of these people. One of the women who had initially asked us for a room and we we declined turned nasty said she knew Danica's husband. Turns out he had been standing there then entire time literally right next to us. He was even apart of the mob that swarmed us off the bus. He walked us briskly through the Old City to the rooms that he and his "woman" rent out. We circled up a couple flight of stairs and were lead into their home where Danica showed us our room. Danica was a loud, cheery woman who welcomed us with open arms. Her bright and animated personality blinded our sense so much that when we saw our room we couldn't mutter the shock that we both were feeling. There were two full sized beds in the hot, stuffy room and we got the one closest to the window. The room was barely big enough to fit the beds and all of our bags so I locked my bag ontop of the bed as we went out. The bathroom was in a sad state, over used by the family and travellers alike. It was by far the most cramped and uncomfortable circumstances we've bedded ourselves in yet. Matt look apologetic for the room but I saw it as a golden opportunity to relish in the humor of it. Of course no crazy house would be complete without birds screaching in our ears the entire night. I don't know what it is with us and birds and why they torment and harass us so. Danica, we learned, not only took in people, she took in animals. We knew that she took in Zebras and we were happy for that.

Pizza in Pisa, Football in Florence & Rest in Rimini

(Rimini men in the old town square)

(June 25-28) With such a wonderful experience in Cinque Terre I was reluctant to leave Italy so soon. We had an option of taking a cheap flight to Croatia giving us nearly two weeks there but I was anxious to see more of Italy. What we hadn't figured on was the heat. It was stifling. The farther we got from the coast the hotter and more muggy it became. We got off the train in Pisa to literally eat lunch (pizza), snap photos of the leaning tower and leave. I will be kind and say Pisa is a dump. That seems harsh, but it is kind like I said. It is a lonely, run down town with dirty buildings and crumbling plaster. The leaning tower is both beautiful and disappointing. The atmosphere around the tower is like a carnival with people selling worthless junk. I felt like I was back in West Africa with the number of Senegalese selling cheap sunglasses and knock-off purses on little swatches of fabric. With the picture taken of the tower we collected our bags from the valet bag service and hopped back on a train.

Our next stop was Florence. We started melting as soon as we got off the train. We had been spoiled by the efficiency of the trains in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Those trains were nice and air conditioned and easy to figure out the destinations. The Italian trains are old with worn out seats and no A/C. The air that does come into the small crack in the windows is warm and makes you feel even sicker. Annoucements for the next trains are made in Italian but there's no board at the track indicating the schedules of trains arriving and departing. We manage to get on the right trains but we always end up in the wrong seats and have to move to a crowded car with sewer breath people slumped over in the small seats next to us.

We got off in Florence and walked two blocks through town, heat radiating off the concrete, and found an overpriced room to rent on the third floor. No elevator, no A/C, no fan in our room so it was an oven. We had a shower and I rinsed off twice in twenty minutes just to bring my body temperature down. The heat in Florence made us feel as though we were trapped in a sauna. As a result Florence became the first city to suffer the chopping block on our trip. Instead of admiring all the art, architecture and vast history of the city we left it to others to discover and headed for the coast.

We got on a train the following morning and headed in the direction of Ancona. It's a port town with a ferry to Croatia so it least it would get us closer to Matt's motherland. The guide had nothing good to say about Ancona so on a whim we got off in Rimini because it was called the Ibiza of Italy. I've never been to Ibiza but I think the claim that Rimini made was a huge stretch. There was seemingly endless coastline of beach so we would find salvation in that. We got an inexpensive hotel a block from the beach and we did nothing more than utterly relax.

We've discovered during our travels that even we need a vacation from our vacation from time to time. The concept may be difficult for you to grasp because you must think, why do two people traveling the world for year need a vacation? Every place we go provides a new adventure and a new challenge. At times we run around in endless pursuit of absorbing as much as we can in a place. My spongelike brain becomes full and I need places like unremarkable Rimini to purge the voices in my head and catch up on my journal and catch up on just doing absolutely nothing at all. It's a way of recharging our batteries for more exciting towns and places.

Our final stop before setting off for Croatia was in Pescara. Matt found us a cheap flight that took only an hour flying out of Pescara. It was a hard choice between the quick flight and a 9 hour ferry ride at night. It didn't take us long to find a dumpy hotel that boasted of 3 stars for the night. We have the knack for arriving in towns during the siestas time so everything is usually closed up and we haunt the streets in search of anything open. Pescara was similar to Pisa and to Florence with it's abundance of Senegalese. My Wolof skills came in handy when I needed to ask for something or to refuse bootleg copy of the Da Vinci Code. I speak none of the romantic languages yet Wolof, a language I learned in the bush of Africa, has served far more helpful than even English at times.

Our gambles on places like Rimini and Pescara did not pay off. They served a purpose as a means to an ends. We are realistic that we will not strike gold in every town and country we enter. It will just help to make those treasures that we do find shine that much brighter.

Cinque Terre, Italy

(Riomaggoire, Cinque Terre #5)
(Vernazza, Cinque Terre #2)

(June 22-25) The five villages that make up Cinque Terre are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. We were staying in the eastern most village of Monterosso at the eastern most part of town. After our wonderful cat nap recovering from the night bus we slapped on the sun screen and went to the beach. The beaches in Italy are facinating. From end to end all you can see is the colorful umbrellas and lounge chairs of the private beaches. The public beaches, for those like ourselves who are too cheap to pay for shade, are typically sandwiched in a sliver in the middle of the umbrella nation or given a small rocky patch at the end of the beach. Matt and I were the proscuitto in a ciabatta sandwich on the beach of Monterosso. After a good dip in the cool clear waters we collected provisions of local food and wine to take back to our apartment. I had been looking forward to stuffing my face with pasta in Italy but the ability to cook for ourselves was too good to pass up. We ate well at the apartment with simple gourmet meals using fresh herbs, lemons and olive oils grown all over the hills of Cinque Terre.

My vocabulary is sparce and my spelling (in a hurry at internet rates) horrible. With that disclaimer you may find pitty on me, and I hope Cinque Terre does too, because of my inability to describe how truly magnificent a place it is. The five villages are a mosiac of color. They look like a colorful version of Jenga played by a steady hand dangling them so carefully on rocky steep slopes above crystal clear and deep blue waters. I marvel at the vibrant wooden shutters and the clothes that hang out from windows drying in the breeze. The buildings are made of stone with a plaster finish and the paint is often barely clinging to the walls peeling away in a lazy manner.

The villages are separated by walking paths that wind through vineyards and olive groves. The first trail from Monterosso to Vernazza is described as the most challenging and they did not exaggerate. On our first hike Matt and I found ourselves at a crossroads with signs in either direction saying do not enter. We found a hole in one of those gates and squeezed ourselves through it. We then navigated carefully down slippery jagged rocks to the water down below. We had read that the first path was difficult we just couldn't imagine it would be this much of a rock climbing expedition. We stumbled upon a lovely cove with calm bath tub like waters. We passed a little old naked man with a tanned ponch singing lovely songs in Italian. He would swim out with his bare butt cheeks to a rock in the middle of this oasis and sing his heart out in his birthday suit. We knew we made a wrong turn because the trail certainly could not have us climbing over rocks along the coast the entire 3 kilometers but we at least found this precious singing Italian so it was worth the detour.

We back tracked and figured where we made our mistake and set off on trail #2. It is a narrow path that climbs and climbs into the heavens. I would have needed a computer to tabulate the number of stairs we trudged up. Luckily the path wasn't totally exposed to the hot sun above so we were able to sip on our ice cold water under the shade of olive trees. Matt had geniusly frozen our water bottle the night before. The hike took us about an hour and a half to Vernazza. The best part about the hikes between the villages is that you can almost always find a path that leads to a beach, or to rocks where you can refresh and float in the waters. At Vernazza there was a beach in the middle of town so we rested our feet and had a picnic of leftovers. We lingered an hour and walked to the third village of Corniglia. There we rewarded ourselves with gelatos and more water time.

Our days in Cinque Terre were all like this. Hiking, swimming, lunching and gelatos. The order sometimes changed but the receipe was always the same. On our second day of hiking to the two final villages of Manarola and Riomaggiore our goal (Matt's goal) was to find a bar or restaurant in one of these towns to watch soccer at. He had visions of watching the game with the water in the background. We had no luck in Manarola fulfilling this vision. We had plenty of luck finding good swimming at a rocky little perch with our Ipod playing as we swam. Riomaggiore seemed to be a disappointment too, for soccer not for scenery. We took a dip in the small marina as leathery fishermen fixed their nets. On our way out of town Matt happened to glance up at a bar and saw a large flat screen tv showing World Cup pregames stuff. We quickly sat down and delighted in our find. Matt got his wish of watching the game with the water just outside the door. The screen was perfect and the wine, local, was chilled and light. We snacked on the little nibbles they left us and enjoyed the 90 minutes of wonderful soccer. The various setting we get to watch the games seem almost unreal. No place during our travels provided us with as much joy, beauty, scenery and exercise as Cinque Terre. Swarmed as it may be with tourists, it is a destination not to be missed. We already plot when we will return.

Night Bus to Cinque Terre, Italy

(June 21-22) Matt and I got on the one and only bus that leaves from Tossa to Girona, Spain at 7:30 am. It took alittle over an hour and I got car sick from trying to read on the winding road. We had two options to get to Genova, Italy which would eventually lead us to Cinque Terre and eached looked alittle grim. We could either take a 15 hour train ride and get into Genova at 2 am or we could take a 10 hour bus ride that didn't leave until 8pm and get into Genova at 6am. We didn't want to risk getting into a town in the middle of the night so we decided to kill some time in Girona and wait for the night bus. We locked up our bags and set off in search of the unknown.
Nothing kills time better than sitting in a cafe, eating a croissant, drinking a cappucino and surfing the internet. Since it was my second cup of the day, at only 9am, I was twitching. We had received some sad news about a relative so we found ourselves not only wandering in a foreign town but wandering in our thoughts. The internet keeps us connected but in times of tragedy or even great joy it make us realize how disconnected we really are. With the heat and our hearts feeling heavy we did what we could in Girona, stopping often to rest and reflect. We cooled off in an Irish pub and watched some footie on the telly. We even had our last round of tapas.

The night bus wasn't as horrid as I imagined. The bus was very large and modern. The toilet didn't permeate the air and make me want to vomit. The bus wasn't full so we were able to sprawl out and have our own row. They even showed a crappy Leonardo Dicapprio movie in Spanish. We managed to catch a couple of winks in between gas stops, smoke breaks, passenger drop offs and international border checkpoints.

Once in Genova we caught a train to Monterosso the eastern most village of Cinque Terre, the five fishing villages along the coast. We both struggled to keep our eyes open on the short train ride to Monterosso. Everytime I vowed to myself to stay awake I found my eyes betraying me and my head bobbing. The bobbing would startle me back awake but only momentarily. I was worried we would miss our stop.

The train literally dropped us off on the beach at Monterosso. At 8 am the sun was blazing overhead and the clear blue waters were calling to us but we couldn't play until we found a place to stay. Backpackers approached the train station from both directions so we figured we'd have an easy time finding a room somewhere. We walked to one end of town, nothing. We walked through the cool tunnel to the other end of town and were shocked at what some of the hotels were asking.

We consulted the guide book and set off to find the hostel they listed. We paused briefly to verify an address when a woman who chanced upon us with our largely awkward backbacks asked us if we needed a place to stay. One of the fantasies I had about traveling with just this type of encounter, a kindly person approaches and asks if you need somewhere to stay and next thing you know they are making you dinner as you sip on chilled local white wine on a veranda overlooking the ocean with the sun setting in the distance. But in the fantasy we hadn't taken a bus all night and we were not exhausted and skeptical of people riping us off for a "room" so reluctanly we said yes we did need a room. She made a few calls and found us a room. She said she would take us to her friends place if we paid for a cab to the other side of town. Um, ok? There were no cabs to be found so she told us to wait in front of a certain hotel and that someone would come and collect us. We had no map and although she said she was from there, Matt and I guessed otherwise, she could not give us any other logical or illogical directions to our rendevous point so we just heaved our packs back on and set off to the other side of town. We figured we would try our luck with this hunt for buried treasure or we'd find something else. It was only 9am we had the day in front of us.

The hotel the woman told us to wait in front of was not listed on any of the free town maps. We just wandered to the last street in town and turned opposite the ocean. I was just telling Matt how I was broken. We had already walked this similar path not an hour earlier and here we were doing just what we had when we first got off the train. We had no idea where to go let alone who the mystery person would be that would take us to salvation. We stopped in hopes that the signs pointing to hotels would have the one we were looking for, they did not. A middle aged Italian man in shorts, flip flops and a small back pack hanging off his shoulder approached us and asked us if we were looking for a room. We decided we'd go with him if he was our contact or not and by luck he was the man we were looking for.

He lead us on a short walk to the end of the street followed which lead into a path that hugged a dry creek to a condo complex. Lizards scattered as we tried to keep pace with him. The climb was slightly uphill and it was hot and we were both puffing for air. As we grew nearer to the condo I kept thinking we'd be staying with him and his family in a spare room that used to be their oldest son's who now lives in Milan with his wife and small baby. Even as he opened the door to the apartment and we put our bags down it still took me several minutes to process that he didn't actually live there and that the whole place with kitchen, living room, bathroom and two bedrooms was ours for the taking. We were worried that at 30 euros a person we were going to end up in a dumpty little room with a bed on the floor, but 60 euros for an apartment where we could cook and watch soccer matches in our chonies was beyond ideal it was priceless. Satisfied that we scored such an amazing pad we slept soundly with big fat smiles on our faces.