Just a quick note to say that I’m back in The States, and all of the stuff I sent from Serbia arrived safely. It might be a bit slow, but the Serbian post office is reliable!

I’ll probably take a short break from blogging to catch up on things here at home. I have to move back into my house today, and I start working at a bookstore next week. It’s amazing what a trip to Europe can do to ones’ bank account.

I spent my first full day home listening to the Mariners game (they lost) and watching the Seahawks beat the Raiders in a preseason game. The University of Washington football season starts today. Go Dawgs! I must say, it’s nice being back in a place where I can talk about football and baseball, and people know what I’m talking about.

I spent my last week in Europe traveling down the Croatian coast. Croatians are blessed with the most beautiful coastline. It’s a rocky coast, and in places, mountains reach all the way down to the Adriatic Sea.

My first stop was Zadar, a walled city on the Central Dalmatian Coast. The city itself is very small — most of it can be seen in a day. At night, the city becomes overcrowded with tourists — it was quite unpleasant, actually. Instead of wandering around Zadar my second full day there, I took a trip to the Kornati Islands National Park. The landscape of the islands is really interesting — it’s rocky with desert vegetation peeking through in places. I noticed that the air was dry — a big contrast when compared with most places along the Croatian coast. There were “wild” donkeys everywhere. They kept fighting, begging for food, and causing a general disturbance.

After my lovely day at the national park, I took the bus to Split, where I met my friend Hillary and her friend Sandra. Split’s Old Town is cute. The focus of the town is Diocletian’s Palace. There’s also a really pretty promenade along the water, near the port. We didn’t do much in Split besides wander.

We took a day trip out to Hvar Island. Hvar is one of the prettiest islands. The Old Town is flanked by two monasteries. It looked like a miniature Venice without all of the crowds. After wandering through Hvar town, we walked out to the best beach on the island — in front of the Hotel Adriatica. Hours of swimming and sunbathing followed. The Adriatic is one of the warmest bodies of water I’ve ever swam in. In the words of a friend of mine, it’s “heavenly.” It’s so salty that it hardly takes any effort to float.

On the way back, we suffered through Mr. Toad’s Wild Boat Ride. t was seriously awful. We were coming back from Hvar Island, and the combination of fumes, choppy waves, and crazy boat driver made everybody sick. People were throwing up everywhere — it was disgusting. I spent most of the ride on the back of the boat, searching for a spot of fresh fume-free air.

When I went inside, I got into an interesting discussion with the Frenchmen sitting across from us. One of them (I didn’t catch his name, unfortunately) and I had an animated discussion about the relations between France and the United States. I told him that almost every American wants to go to Paris. We see it as the center of culture, ideas, and art. He said that many people in France really want to go to the US, as they are great admirers of our culture and natural beauty. It was nice to hear this. I was under the impression that people in France really don’t like us - our governments haven’t been on the best of terms lately. Maybe I will go to Paris in March after all…

My last stop was Dubrovnik. I returned to the place where my love affair with The Balkans began; back to that beautiful walled city. Being able to speak a little Croatian made my trip to Dubrovnik a lot nicer. One of the women in the shops heard Hillary and I speaking Croatian to each other, and she told us that our pronunciation was so good that when Sandra walked in, she addressed her in Croatian! She thought we were from somewhere else in Croatia! That made me happy.

I felt a little self-conscious speaking Croatian. At my university, the South Slavic language is taught together — as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. As my professor is Serbian, he uses the ekavian dialect widely spoken in Serbia as the base. He makes sure to cover the pronunciation and spelling differences between the three dialects (linguistics say that the “languages” aren’t different enough to actually be considered separate languages. They have the same grammar and the same words, for the most part. As mentioned by someone in an earlier post, it’s like the difference between British English and American English). Because I’d been in Serbia so long, I’d gotten used to speaking the ekavian dialect. Along the Dalmatian coast, they use the ijekavian dialect. For example, the word for “here” in Serbia is “ovde.” In Croatia, it’s “ovdje.”

Most people didn’t mind it that I sounded Serb when I spoke their language. Instead of saying “Govorim hrvatski jezik” (I speak the Croatian language), I started saying “Govorim jezik” (I speak the language).

However, some American expats in the expat bar introduced me to one of the restaurant owners in Dubrovnik. He first asked me if I had any Croatian relatives (I don’t), and then he asked me where I’d been learning the language. “Zagreb? Ovdje?”

I responded truthfully. I told him that I studied Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian at the University of Washington in Seattle. And I told him that I’d been in Serbia for seven weeks at a language school.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. The woman behind him on the steps let out a long “ooohhhh.” And after that, when I made a valient attempt to speak some more, he told me that one of the words I’d spoken was a “Serb word.” It really made me feel like shit. After that, I didn’t try to speak the language with anybody.

One of my expat friends told me later that he had lived in Herzegovina during the Balkan Wars. He probably lost friends, and experienced horrible things.

And I empathize with that. But here’s the thing. Everyone in The Balkans has a horrible story, it seems. It was interesting — afterwards, we started watching YouTube movies in Croatian, and one of the kids there started explaining to me what was going on. He said that the Croatian president didn’t govern for the people, that he was too focused on Europe. He said that Tudjman’s government was corrupt. Funny — I heard similar things when I was in Serbia.

But I want to get back to my earlier point. Everyone in The Balkans seems to have a horrible story. And you hear versions of the same story in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. As Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic writes in “They Would Never Hurt a Fly,” — “Did the Croatian Army commit war crimes or not? It is, of course, a hard truth: the war was about forming a nation-state, which involved ‘ethnic cleansing’; two hundred thousand Serbs were forced to leave the Krajina; their homes were burned and plundered ; some four hundred civilians were killed; Serb civilians in Gospic, Pakrac or Sisak were executed en masse; twenty-four thousand Muslims were detained by Bosnian Croatian soldiers in forty-four concentration camps […] However, nobody wants to speak this truth out loud. Nor does anybody want to hear it, for that matter. This is because in Croatia the truth is dangerous. […] In this, Croatia is not alone. Serbs also have problems with the truth. In their own eyes they are the biggest victims of both Milosevic and NATO. Indeed, Serbian society suffered severe consequences — from embargoes to NATO bombing — as a result of the wars it waged against its neighbours, but the whole truth about what happened has not yet surfaced or become part of the public debate. In this respect Serbia and Croatia share a consensus about the lies of the past ten years. The reason is simple, one that goes beyond the Tudjman-Milosevic ideology. Too many people were in some way involved in the war, and too many of them profited from it. It is easier, and much more comfortable, to live with lies than to confront the truth, and with that truth the possibility of individual guilt — and collective responsibility” (15-17).

Earlier, Drakulic describes the differences between what Serbs today are taught about the war, and what Croatians are taught. Croatian children, she says, are taught that the war was a defensive war. And as a defensive war, Croat soldiers cannot have committed war crimes. She says that a child in Serbia would grow up “in denial about the war” (10), implying that they would not even learn about the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in school.

Everybody has a horrible story. Nobody talks about it. There is no established historical “truth” about the Balkan Wars. Drakulic believes that this is the task of the International Criminal Court, a body which, as she explains later, is not regarded highly in either Serbia or Croatia.

Someone told me once that after the Holocaust, children in Germany had to learn about it. In order so it would never happen again. So why, after the worst war in Europe since World War II, are children in Croatia and Serbia taught different things? What Drakulic was describing sure sounded like propaganda to me. And if these stereotypes and misrepresentations of history aren’t addressed, and soon, there is a very real potential that the Balkans could be a powder keg in the future. As Drakulic states in “They Would Never Hurt a Fly,” people and countries in The Balkans need to acknowledge their responsibility for what happened during the 1990s. It’s like the region needs to collectively air its dirty laundry, face up to the facts and findings of the ICC, agree on what to teach children, begin building ties again, and move on. There will not be a lasting peace without it.

Croatia will join the EU in 2010 or 2011. Serbia will probably join the EU in the future, after Croatia. What happens if Serbia joins the EU, and there’s all of this baggage between Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia?

I think it was Desmond Tutu who said that we cannot have peace without reconciliation. And we cannot have reconciliation without peace. So we’d better start working on it.

It’s been an interesting summer. Thanks for following along with me on my travels. I know I’ll be back in this part of the world. There’s something about The Balkans that just captures one’s heart and soul and won’t let go. I can’t explain how. I can’t explain why. But I know that I will always be coming back here. I am, like the title of Mark Mazower’s book, another fool in The Balkans.

Good night, everybody.

I included this as a rather long comment to an earlier post. I put it here, for those of you who don’t click on the “comments” link.

Regarding Croatia breaking away from Yugoslavia, I don’t think it’s as easy as saying “Croatia wanted independence. Serbs didn’t. So they went to war about it.” We’ll probably never find the definitive answer as to why there was war in Yugoslavia. In sociology, we have a concept called “collective memory” – basically, the memories of a group. Serbs in Croatia had horrible memories of the Ustashe regime. After Tito took power, all nationalist talk was banned – including mentioning Chetniks and Ustashes (this comes from Glenny’s book, I believe. Most of my sources are at home, and I will double-check this, if I can remember it). People never really talked about what happened during World War II. It was replaced by talk of “brotherhood and unity.”

I have a friend, half-Croatian half-Serbian, who says, “every time I look at the Croatian flag, I see Ustashe.” One of the narrators on the BBC series, I believe (and again, will double-check this), described the Croatian national flag as something like “waving the Nazi swastika in the face of Jews.” People have long memories. The symbols and rallies of the fledgling Croatian state clearly terrified some Croatian Serbs. And with the propaganda coming from both Belgrade and Zagreb, is it really any wonder that they started arming themselves? In the Croatian history section of my guidebook (Lonely Planet – not a scholarly source, I know), it states that Croatia did not adequately protect the rights of the Serb minority in its initial constitution. According to the BBC series, many Croatian Serbs were absolutely terrified, and wanted to stay in Yugoslavia in order that their rights would be protected. They wanted the assurance that they would be safe at home.

I’ve been to Vukovar. I went to Ovcara. I do not in any way excuse the Yugoslav Army, Mladic and Karadzic for what they did to that region. The psychological trauma that people in Vukovar experienced won’t go away anytime soon. I know that Serbian nationalism frightened Croatians – just as Croatian nationalism frightened Serbians. I understand the Croat desire to live in a separate state. But when you have peoples that have intermingled in a region for years, that separation is not going to be easy, especially during a time of extreme nationalism like the 1990s.

As for your comment about Gotovina – yes, I would say to him in person what I wrote on this blog. Nowhere have I said point-blank that he is guilty. He has been accused of some horrific things, and I’m perfectly fine telling him what those are. Granted, from my post, it is clear what my opinions about his guilt or innocence are – I realize that. However, it’s not up to me to decide his guilt or innocence, it’s up to the International Criminal Court. It is my hope that the court is looking at this issue with as unbiased an eye as possible. His actions during Operation Storm, particularly towards Serb civilians, need to be examined. Bringing him to trial, as well as bringing other wartime leaders to trial before the ICC, may help this region heal. Guilty or innocent, if that happens, I think that is a good thing. Quite honestly, I do not know enough about the workings of the ICC to have an opinion on whether or not it is a useful or helpful institution.

My opinions about what happened in Yugoslavia have really changed because of my travels. I’ll probably spend my whole life trying to figure out why things fell apart in Yugoslavia so quickly. I used to think the answers were simple – that Milosevic and Serbia were to blame for the dissolution of Yugoslavia. But I don’t think that anymore. I don’t think you can blame an entire country or just one man for something that really was a tangled mess. I do not think it’s helpful to lay blame – I do not think that will help people heal, nor will it help build and/or strengthen connections in the region. If we start blaming, we will never stop. Right now, I’m here in Croatia, thinking hard about forgiveness and reconciliation. If people don’t forgive each other for what happened in the past – both during the 1990s and during World War II – I do not think this region will know a lasting peace.

[Lightly edited to protect identities. I didn’t even add punctuation.]

My friend: so now I don’t know what to do about my blog. I think I’m not going to privatize it.
me: ok.
i mean, either way
as long as you don’t stop. i like reading it.

My friend: I don’t like privatized health care, so I don’t like privatized blogs.
me: hahahahaha
but
they don’t really relate to each other
My friend: duh
[…]
I deleted my post about taking the blog down. But that […] person read it again!
This is part of the fun, finding all these crazy people reading your blogs.
I should write a blog dedicated to randomes who read it.
thoughts?
me: i think you are highly unfocused right now and you are acting impulsively
and i mean that in the gentlest way possible
i think you’re overanalyzing it
if you want to keep it open, then don’t make it so personal
if you want to be more personal, make it private and put up a password
or hell, put a password on some posts but not others
My friend: I don’t want to make it private is my whole thing.
me: so…
then that’s settled.
My friend: And I don’t consider it “too” personal…
if I don’t use names.
me: you just don’t want random people reading it?
My friend: I mean, if you know me, you know who it’s about.
I just don’t want random people to know it’s written by [the most amazing blogger ever].
me: but i don’t understand how that would happen
me: you confuse me sometimes
My friend: Why do I confuse you?
Now I’m confused as to why I’m confusing you.
But you’re right, I overreacted to the blogging thing.
I just didn’t want [some guy] making fun of me.
but that’s an inevitability.
Are you mad that I asked you not to link to me?
Seriously, it’s fine. After all, if only [these two guys] read it, no biggie.
me: no, it just seems that you were being very…. out of sorts
and i was confused about what your concern was and what your motiviation was
i mean, do whatever
My friend: Weird. I didn’t feel out of sorts……just overreacting.
me: also, i have like a head cold and everything is therefore inherently confusing to me today
sure, call it that
My friend: blah. now I feel weird about you feeling weird about how I was acting.

me: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
it’s ok, i’m over it
i’ve moved on

In case you were wondering what I actually do all day, the above pretty much sums it up. My life would be empty without Gchat. No, not quite. That would be sad if it were actually true.

On the bus between Zadar and Split, a middle-aged man sat across the aisle from me. He turned, looked at me, and said “Bijela.” I smiled, thinking this was a compliment. After all, “bella” in Italian means pretty, and there are quite a few Italians here.

But then I got to thinking. He distinctly said “bijela” and not “bella.” The word for “white” in Croatian is “bijelo.” Adjectives match the gender of the noun, and he looked at female me and said “Bijela.”

Once I put two and two together, I realized something. This guy just called me “White Girl” in Croatian. Now that’s funny.

Guess my inability to get a tan due to my Irish heritage really makes me stand out, huh?

Dear Readers,
We’ve decided to start moderating all comments on this blog. The tone of some of our discussions have turned a little bit personal, and I’d like to make sure we keep things civil around here. So far, most people who comment have refrained from making insinuations about the author’s background, ideas, and sympathies.

I thought about deleting all the comments. I actually did delete them, but had a change of heart. I hold the First Amendment dearer than just about anything, and I’d rather not commit such a blatant act of censorship. So all the comments are there, restored, with original language intact. Check for yourself.

If you want to disagree with me, go right ahead. I ask that you keep your comments civil and scholarly. If you wouldn’t say it to me in person, don’t write it here.

Thanks,
Anna

Maverick went in to everyone’s favorite VW service center this side of the Cascades the other day. Last week my glove box decided to stay shut. Well and good, except that my registration and insurance were stuck in there. They said that one of the latches was broken and (of course) they had to order me a whole new door. $146 is what they said it would be. Shudder. Really? For a hunk of injection-molded plastic with a bunch of plastic levers inside? You know that somewhere in China or Germany there is an entire bin of the little 2-inch-long, 25-cent latch pieces like the one that broke in my car. But no, let’s not distribute those. No, these sucka car owners need to get bled for all their worth.

So fine, I kind of wanted the thing fixed, since after diagnosing the problem, the glove box door was dangling, extremely ajar, from the left latch. They ordered the gold-lined plastic glove box door, and Maverick got it installed on Monday. After I handed over my keys at 8:45 a.m., the dude printed out my “estimate”… $300.

$300? Evidently they had to take my entire dashboard apart to install the new door. Great. You know, for $300, you’d expect to get your tranny flushed or your wheels aligned or your sparkplugs replaced (or all of the above), but no, this was strictly cosmetic, and of course not covered by my warranty because the glove box is “trim” and that warranty ran out two years ago. Insert disappointed sigh.

So I took off in the cream-colored Beetle loaner while they disassembled my interior. This is the same car that Shmeila dubbed “an embarrasment.” Nice enough I’ll grant, but cream? Driving through the Reed Market roundabouts, I dwelled on the ridiculousness of the repair job, how I was such a sucker, how I should have just gaff-taped it shut, and how I was possibly the only bearded guy driving a cream-colored Beetle in the state of Oregon.

This story sort of has a happy ending. The VW place called that afternoon to inform me that everything was done and it came in “under estimate.” I stifled my non-existant glee. It was $233 in the end. Next time, remind me to suck it up and deal on these things, rather than shelling out for it.

I know, it’s been a while since my snark has graced these pages. We’ll ease back into it with a roundup of the last few days.

Saturday, we headed to Bend Brew Fest with a bunch of my compatriots. This being my first, I didn’t have any basis for comparison, besides, you know other various nights of heavy drinking. I gotta say, the ATMs being completely out of money by 8 p.m. was a poor move. It turned me into G’s ATM, but I didn’t really mind. Nor, either, did I mind the lack of souvenir mugs by the time we got there. They were all plastic, so it’s not like I would have actually wanted to keep the thing. It dutifully held round after round after round of beer.

No, what got me was the array of beers. One, and call this totally my bad for coming Saturday night instead of Sunday night, but a number of the brewers were already tapped out. Stone? Gone. Rogue? Done by 9:30. Weak sauce, kids. We agreed that we really could have used additional signage. Seeing “Ninkasi” through beer goggles doesn’t help when I’ve never heard of the brewery. We really wanted signs like “IPA” or “Pale Ale” or anything similarly vaguely descriptive. But the beer we got, man, that’s where coming on Saturday night really shined. I’m not sure I got a single four-ounce pour the whole night. Most were more like six. A number were full 12-ounce mugs for one token, which is only supposed to get you the four-ounce taste. Way to go, guys. It made unloading my tokens at the end a very boozy experience, but no complaints over here.

My favorites: Klamath’s Cascade Golden Ale, Full Sail’s Session, New Old Lompoc’s LSD and whatever it was that I got from Dick’s at around quarter to 11. Things were fuzzy then.

[Edited to fix link. –P.]

First, sorry for the clumsy English. I am on a German keyboard, and the apostrophe key is not working.

I am in Zadar, Croatia. Already I am noticing a difference between my trip this year and my trip last year. Little old ladies understand me. I walked down a street past some women selling their crafts. I must have looked interested (actually, I was trying to figure out a way to take their pictures), as the last woman invited me into her bit of sidewalk. We chatted for a while in Croatian. She was very warm and friendly, and allowed me to take her picture. A friend of hers came over, and we also talked for a while.

The Balkan friendliness is something I will miss in Seattle. They definitely made me feel like less of a tourist.

“Govorim hrvatski, i ceo svet razume,” the craft-seller told me. Funny, they say that in Serbia, too.

I have been speaking BCS with everyone I can. People seem really surprised to meet an American who speaks their language. The craft-seller asked me if I was Italian. It will be interesting to see what happens to me in Dubrovnik. That area has a ton of tourists.

Quick observation. There are pictures of Ante Gotovina all over Zadar. They adorn buses and shop windows. General Gotovina was responsible for “Operation Storm” against the Croatian Serbs of Knin. According to Wikipedia, between 200 and 250,000 Serbs were driven out of Knin and 150 were murdered. Apparently, the Croatian army under Gotovina destroyed buildings so Serbs could not return home. Gotovina was captured in the Canary Islands, and is currently awaiting trial in the Hague. (His trial has been postponed a couple of times.)

Every time I see these pictures, my stomach turns just a little. Why is this man a hero? In Serbia, I did see people selling pictures of Mladic and Karadzic (both responsible for horrific crimes in Bosnia). But I only saw two picture sellers. Now, it is possible that I was not in areas where Serbian nationalism is so high that there are pictures of Mladic and Karadzic everywhere. I saw more signs demanding that Mladic go to the Hague than venerating him.

I have to admit that it is a little bit scary to me that there are pictures of Ante Gotovina everywhere. What does this mean for reconciliation in The Balkans?

I read an article in the New York Times recommending a Bosnia-type solution for Iraq. Let´s divide the country into ethnic territories, appoint an international head of state, and then we´ll have peace and harmony. Right? But the problem with Bosnia´s governmental structure, as I have mentioned here before, is that it´s completely ethnicized the voting process. People can only vote for those of their declared ethnicity. (Bosnia´s rotating presidency consists of a Serb, a Croat, and a Bosniak.) The country itself is divided into two entities — the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska. The international community has decided that, after 10 years, it will leave Bosnia to govern itself. The international head-of-state (he has a fancy name, but I cannot remember it), right now, has final say over everything in Bosnia, and has the power to veto laws should they affect one ethnicity too greatly. There is a perception among the people that the sitting president only governs for his own ethnicity.

Okay. Can we honestly say that Bosnia is a stable country? There is definitely the potential for those tensions to be there — the same tensions that led to war in the first place. What does this mean for reconciliation in The Balkans?

How does one create national feeling? How does a region heal after extreme trauma? Can a region heal after such trauma?

I hope that, in ten years, I no longer see pictures of Gotovina in Croatia.

I arrived at Centraal Station around 9 PM. I looked at the pay phones in puzzlement, looked at the phone number I had for my friend Stefan, and wondered – how do you dial a plus sign? In the US, we don’t differentiate between cell phones and landlines by dialing a plus sign.

I finally figured it out – it’s 0.

Stefan and I wandered around Antwerp for a little while, trying to find me some dinner. Antwerp is a city of statues and cobblestone streets. The city’s maritime heritage is everywhere. After dinner, we passed a statue of Neptune the sea god on the way to get a drink.

Belgian beer definitely lives up to its reputation! I’ve tried a lot of beer, and Belgian beer is definitely my favorite. I’m not a big beer-drinker. Usually, I make a funny face while drinking beer. But with Belgian beer, no funny face.

I spent a lot of my time in Antwerp just wandering. Walking around a city alone is one of my favorite things in the world. Especially on a drizzly day. Antwerp reminded me a little of my own port city, Seattle. It looks a bit like Pioneer Square, except older and grander.

At the waterfront, I saw the second-funniest statue I’ve ever seen. The only funnier – Prague’s “peeing men” statue. Two small figures are pointing directly at the crotch of a giant. Stefan told me the giant’s name (he’s a bad giant who is demanding tribute for passage through the port), but I can’t remember it right now. Once I figure out how to put pictures up here, I will!

The Steen looks just like I imagined a small castle would look. I ducked into the maritime museum at The Steen to avoid the rain (even the weather is like home) and marveled at the collection of model ships and ship art. I have always loved ships and boats. I think this is the natural result of growing up in a port city. There’s nothing better than sea-wind in your face, and hearing foghorns in the morning.

A couple in a car asked me the way to a museum. I don’t speak any Dutch, so I figured I must look like I belonged in the city. I want to come back to Antwerp and spend more time there. I came down with a cold while there (and am still suffering from it here in Zadar, Croatia), and couldn’t do as much exploring as I wanted to. I left some of the things I really wanted to see (like the photography museum) for my next trip.

That night, my friends Pieter and Arne took me to a concert of Balkan music. It was a great Macedonian jazz band. I really enjoyed it. I’m not much of a dancer, but the music really made me want to move. We met up with a bunch of their friends – all male. I was the only woman in a group of eight Belgian men, and I loved it.

They kept buying me beer. I tried Duvel (which I don’t recommend for anyone with a low alcohol tolerance), and a couple of other things I can’t remember. In Antwerp, one can walk around the streets with an open container of beer – you definitely can’t do that in Seattle! The guys were a lot of fun. I was a Boy Scout camp counselor when I was younger, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed my “guy time” – swapping stories, drinking beer, and being silly.

When I introduced myself to some of the guys, they said “welcome to Antwerp – the capital of Europe, the capital of the world!”

I hope to come back to Antwerp sometime this winter. I will be back in Europe, and am planning on swinging through Northeastern Europe – Ireland, France, and England. Antwerp’s not so far out of the way. Maybe then I can come back and see some of the places I missed.

I’m now in Zadar, Croatia. Flying over the dark blue Adriatic brought a smile to my face. I smiled again when I realized I could understand it when the flight attendants spoke Croatian over the loudspeakers! I will only be here a couple of nights, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with them. A nice young woman told me about a boat tour to the national park, and I think I may end up doing that – that sounds like a nice way to spend a day. If so, I’d better go to the city tonight. I’ll bring my swimsuit just in case.

I have a feeling that the hostel I’m in is going to be loud. I wonder if I’m getting too old for hostels.

The woman I met on the street was surprised that I spoke Croatian. She said that she doesn’t usually meet many Americans who can speak the language. I’ve been to the Dalmatian coast before (last summer), and couldn’t speak a word of Croatian. I wonder if my experience this time will be different. Yes, I am a tourist, but maybe I will have a more authentic experience this time, as I speak the language here.

One week left, and then I’m home in Seattle. I’m starting to miss my city of water, mountains, and green. While showing Stefan some pictures, I was surprised by how new Seattle looks. My city is really only a little over one hundred years old. The oldest buildings are from 1899 – the year of the Great Seattle Fire. The old buildings of Europe are so interesting and neat to me. Would I appreciate them in a different manner, had I grown up around them? Would they seem as interesting?

I will keep up the blog when in Seattle. Hopefully my new readers (I’ve learned there are quite a few in Belgium!) will find it just as interesting.

Okay. Off to find the old town. And a beach!