Mostar

George, Chelsea, Alyssa and I went to Hercegovina for the weekend. Caught the bus from the main station in Dubrovnik. It took about three hours to get to Mostar. Because Bosnia & Hercegovina has a little stretch of coast, we had to cross the border into Bosnia, then back into Croatia, then into Bosnia again before heading east to Mostar. The city has about 100,000 people and is the unofficial capital of the mostly autonomous state of Hercegovina.

Though only a few hours away from Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast, Mostar was a world apart. The city has a sizable Muslim population, and there were a number of old mosques and Turkish houses dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. During the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, Mostar was the site of heavy fighting, and many of the buildings there still bear the scars of the war. The Neretva river, which runs down the middle of town, divides it more or less along religious lines. To the east live the Muslims, and to the west the Christians. Locals of either sect, still do not really cross the river, and simmering tensions remain.

Visiting Mostar made much more sense out of the issues that faced Yugoslavia. Dubrovnik and Mostar are separated by only a couple hundred miles and were, until 20 years ago, part of the same nation, but half virtually nothing in common except for language. The food, style of dress, ethnic and religious makeup, architecture and standard of living are all completely different. Unlike Dubrovnik, hardly anyone spoke much English, and outside the old town, the city was made up of drab Soviet style apartment blocs (many still bearing the scars of the 1993-1995 war).

The bazaar district, Kujundziluk, more closely resembles Istanbul than Dubrovnik or Zagreb. I found a coppersmith, named Adnan, who makes and sells Turkish coffee pots, cups, plates and jewelry. He spoke better English than anyone else I met in Mostar. He learned the trade from his father, starting when he was four or five. His family has been doing this for hundreds of years. It's much different from the coast, where literally everyone is involved, in some way, in the tourism industry.

The famous Stari Most was a bridge built by the Ottomans to provide access across the strategic Neretva. At the time it was built in the 1560's it set a number of records as an impressive feat of engineering. The bridge was destroyed in 1993 by the Croatian army. The commander who ordered its shelling, Slobodan Praljak, is now on trial for war crimes at the Hague.

Pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39411431@N07/sets/72157620505547845/

Swine Flu

20:55 June 11
Istanbul

from my notebook

The Turks are crazy for swine flu. On the Lufthansa flight they made a (trilingual) announcement that we had to fill out cards about our potential exposure to the swine influenza. I thought we'd all had our fun with this pandemic and moved on, but no! apparently the Turks have not. Upon exiting the aircraft we were met by a covey of a half-dozen airport personnel bedecked with face masks, taking our remote temperatures. Throughout the airport were signs and booths set up warning of the pervasive dangers of SWINE FLU.

All of this hullabaloo did not, unfortunately, eat up much of my five hour layover. The Istanbul airport is very nice - shiny, clean, a little bit kitschy, full of luxury duty-free shops selling fine whiskeys and perfumes. One shop called "Turkish Bazaar" was filled with Izmir painted tiles, turkish delight and other vaguely oriental fare. It reminded me of the wondrousness of the real Istanbul - one of my favorite cities in the world - but was a poor substitute, and only made me hanker for the real thing. I'm going to have to get back here sometime soon.

My fourth and final mom-made sandwhich for the journey was in a sorry smooshed state in my backpack, so I (with a heavy heart) tossed it and opted for a dinner of turkish meatballs in phyllo crust at a restaurant eatery. I still had three hours left till my flight, and the big sign full of planes going to cities whose names I barely recognized, said that my 21:45 flight to Beirut was to leave from Gate 215. I was the first one there so I read some of "The Leaf Storm" by Garcia Marquez and napped a little. When I woke up I was surrounded by people speaking a language I am sure I had never heard before. I spent a while trying to place it, and couldn't. I thought to myself "this can't be right" and finally decided that my gate must have changed, so I went back to the big board. Gate 215 now said "Almaty." Kazachs. No wonder.

Beirut was now at Gate 213. I moved my stuff, and now I'm writing this. The woman at the security checkpoint (in Istanbul, they're located right at the gate) just said "Beirut passengers, yes please." I assume this means it's time to board. More later.

City Walls

21:56 June 25
Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik's town motto is Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro.

- "Liberty is worth more than gold"

Wednesday morning we met for class in front of the Pile Gate and Professor Wachtel conducted his lecture while walking around the city walls.

Sir Richard Guylford, a Crusader, and member of Henry VIII's court, on his way to Jerusalem, stopped in Dubrovnik, and wrote:

"It is ryche and fayre in suptuous byldynge with marvelyous strengths and beauty togethyr with many fayre churches and glorious houses of relygon....there be also many Relyques, as the hed and arme of seynte Blase. It is the strongest towne of walles, towres, bulwerke, watches and wardes that ever I sawe in all my life."

The Republic of Ragusa hired foreign doctors, and health care was free for every citizen. Dubrovnik also contains Europe's first pharmacy. Still in operation on the same site, in the Franciscan Monastery, where it has been dispensing medicine since 1317.

Here are some pictures from the walls:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39411431@N07/sets/72157620420197411/

Dubrovnik

3:14 June 25
Dubrovnik, Croatia

For the sake of convenience, I am going to abandon chronology here. I have a lot to say and show about Lebanon, but I'm going to jump into what's going on now in Croatia, and pepper in posts about Lebanon from time to time.

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I didn't sleep my last night in Beirut, going to the hip district of Gemmayzeh and climbing the Holiday Inn (more on this later) for incredible views, before heading to the airport at 4am for a 6 o'clock flight. After connecting through Istanbul and Zagreb, I arrived in Dubrovnik around 4pm.

I am living in a dorm at the Center for Advanced Academic Studies in Dubrovnik, a branch of the University of Zabreb. It's in a great old building, built in 1901, with a large open courtyard in the middle. The dorm is nicer than my room at school, complete with a small kitchen (and cooking implements!), bathroom, and staircase to lofted bedroom. My roommate is named George, an Arab from Florida. We seem to have a lot in common. Classes are in the same building, one floor down. It's a very nice setup. The institute it a five minute walk down to the Pile Gate, the main entrance into the old city.





















Dubrovnik was founded in the 6th century, and rose to a position of power and influence in the Mediterranean as a major trading center. Then known as Ragusa, the city was built on a rocky promontory, separated from land by a lagoon, which was eventually turned into the city's main street: the Stradun.


Along the Adriatic coast, storms usually approach from the north-east, and the promontory's natural open port is ideally located on its southern edge. Additionally, the peanut shaped island of Lokrum just off the coast, shelters this port from any storm that comes from the south. The location was ideally suited for the city state to transform itself into the commercial powerhouse that it would become.
















Monolithic fortifications were built around the two sides of the city surrounded by land, and thanks to an impressive system of 8 km of aqueducts and sluices that piped fresh water from the hills above into the city's fountains, the city withstood innumerable attacks throughout its history. In 866, it survived a 15-month siege by invading Arab tribes.

The water system still functions. Onofrio's fountain (named after the Neopolitan architect who designed it in 1444) occupies a prominent place at the beginning of the Stradun, just inside the city walls. The fountain's water is still drinkable. Indeed, it tastes better than the bottled water you buy in the market here. I fill up my water bottle here on the way back from the city now.



























In the long history of this part of the Balkans (the coast here is known as Dalmatia) changing hands between different empires and principalities, Dubrovnik was always the exception. My Balkan History textbook repeatedly states "The area was then brought under the dominion of the Ottomans/Venetians/Austrians/etc, with the exception of Ragusa."

By 1200 it had achieved its own identity as an autonomous city-state, free of Byzantium. Ragusa was a republic, in which an oligarchy of 500 moneyed families passed around control of the city's institutions for more than half a millennia. The patrician class was not land-owning, since there was little cultivatable land close by. Instead, they occupied the role of cultured, cosmopolitan shippers and merchants, who shared a collaborative interest with the common citizen, in the development of the city's infrastructure for the trading and transportation of trade goods.

So afraid were they of a usurpation of the city's traditional republic institutions that the chief executive, the rector, could serve for only one month, and during that month was now allowed to leave the Rector's Palace (the columned building on the right in the picture below).














By 1426 the republic extended 45 miles up the coast, with a population of 25,000 in total (5,000 in the actual city). The government was both abnormally involved in the minutiae of city management, and highly efficient. The city's archives are the most complete of any medieval European city, and remain a valuable resource for scholars of the period. In 1272 the city's statute had already incorporated 45 sections for regulating and guiding urban development.

In 1667 a severe earthquake destroyed many of the buildings inside the city's walls, so most of the city today dates from the decades of rebuilding that occurred in the Venetian baroque style of the late 17th century. The city's autonomy ended when it surrendered to Napoleon in 1808, and became part of his "Illyrian Provinces" and then, after his defeat, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During the wars of Yugoslav succession, Serbian nationalist forces shelled the city for 11 months in 1991-2. Many of the orange-tile roofs were knocked off, though the Serbs were careful not to destroy the buildings, because they were aware of Dubrovnik's enormous value as a lucrative tourist destination, and they never entered the city.














Dubrovnik is one of the most picturesque cities I have ever seen. Unfortunately, this means that it has become somewhat of a tourist trap. During the days, thousands of tour groups unload, from bus and cruise ship, and clog the city's arteries. The narrow alley-ways of the old town are full of cheap tourist kitsch and overpriced pasta and seafood restaurants. All these visitors bring a great deal of money to the area, though one can't help but wish that Dubrovnik was not as overexposed. Still, it earns its nickname of "Pearl of the Adriatic."

PS. Click on any picture for a higher resolution version.

The Deal

I'm spending six weeks in Croatia with a study abroad program through Northwestern University. There are fourteen other kids: 10 Americans, and four students from the Balkans (Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria). The approach is inter-disciplinary. So much so that we have 9 different professors, each with different areas of expertise, who all teach us for a few days, giving different approaches to understanding the culture and identity of the Balkans: history, literature, film, linguistics, folklore, etc. I'm getting credit for 2 courses (half of a semester):

Comp Lit 375-z: Literature and the Arts: Dalmatia and the Mediterranean
This course focuses on the study of the concentric circles, cultural influences and borrowing centred on Dalmatia's role as an intermediary between the Balkan hinterland and the Adriatic basin. Topics include the common roots in antiquity and early medieval Christianity, Byzantine commonwealth and the rise of the Latin West, the Renaissance and the Baroque in the shadow of Ottoman conquests, Enlightenment and the rise of national cultures, the culture of Napoleonic revolution and Byronic romanticism, and modernity and its discontents.

History 391-z: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia
This course is a survey of Southeast European history and society from the early medieval period to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Topics include implications of Ottoman and Habsburg rule, nationalism and wars of independence, crises leading to the Sarajevo assassination, the interwar national question, occupation systems and Communist revolution, and contemporary politics with an emphasis on security and human rights. Specific focus is paid to the aspects leading up to the dissolution of former Yugoslavia.

I am currently in Dubrovnik, at the very bottom of Croatia's Adriatic "tail" but my time here is divided up between different cities in various parts of the country. After two weeks here, we head to the capital, Zagreb, about 10 hours away by bus. Despite the fact that they share a ethno-linguistic heritage, he histories of these cities are completely different. Dubrovnik has a very Mediterranean feel, with a great deal of Italian influence in the architecture, accent and cuisine. This city has always identified with the West, whereas Zagreb is very much part of Central Europe. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the food and customs there are apparently much different from the coast.

From Zagreb, we head back to the coast, spending two days in Zadar, visiting a national park on an archipelago, and then a week in Split, a city built around, and within, the remains of the massive villa constructed by the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 4th century.

Beyrouth Photos

Beirut, Lebanon
June 29

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39411431@N07/sets/72157620409842670/

Mare Internum

Dubrovnik, Croatia
18:13, June 22, 2009
















This summer I will be spending 10 weeks around the Mediterranean.

June 11-June 21 in Lebanon
June 21-July 30 in Croatia
July 31-August 4 in Turkey
August 4-August 21 in France


The name Mediterranean comes from the Latin, "medius" meaning middle and "terra" meaning land, so, Mediterranean means literally "in the middle of the earth." The Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum, "Our Sea" or Mare Internum, "Internal Sea". In the Bible it is called "The Great Sea" or simply "The Sea." The Arabs knew it as لبحر الأبيض المتوسط: "the white middle sea." In Hebrew it is named Hayam Hatikhon: "the middle sea."

All of these names for the sea emphasize it being in the "middle" or "interior." Just by looking at a map, one can see the crucial dominant role that the Mediterranean has played in the shaping of Western civilization. Its centrality is not merely geographic. The fact that it lies at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, both connecting and dividing the lands around it, means that it has determined every aspect of our foods, languages, religions, and ideas.

I started this trip last week in Lebanon, the site of the Phoenician who flourished on the Levantine coast three thousand years ago, by being the first to the Mediterranean their From the cities of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre (which are all still there; I saw them with my own eyes) the Phoenicians established colonies all around the Mediterranean, from Carthage in North Africa, to Genoa in Italy, and Gadir (Cádiz) in Spain. One Phoenician expedition, led by Hanno the Navigator, sailed down the West African coast to Guinea.

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Phoenicians however, was their alpahabet: the first linear (non character-based) alphabet in the world. Every script in use in the world today, with the exception of Chinese and its derivitives, can be traced back to the Phoenician. The prosperity of the Phoenicians, and endurance of their alphabet, was made possible by their mastery over the Mediterranean. They were the first to fully utilize the potential of the inner sea as a conduit for the flow of goods and ideas. Take for example bronze.

Bronze, one of the most innovative inventions of ancient times, involves the smelting together of copper and tin. Since these two metals almost never appear together in the same place (except for one site in Iran and one in Thailand) its creation has always involved long-distance trade. From their colonies in France and Spain, the Phoenicians traded for British tin, which they then smelted together with copper from Cyprus to produce the first bronze in the world outside of Iran. The spread of this metal led to the Bronze Age, and significant advances for Western civilization: all thanks to the Mediterranean.

That was probably too long-winded, but I hope I have impressed the reasons for my interest in this place. The Mediterranean is integral to the history of many aspects of our modern world, and the mixing and building of the innumerable cultures and civilizations that have lived around its shores, make them among the most complicated and multifaceted on the planet.

In this blog I look forward to providing future insights into the ways these themes have evolved and express themselves today. Alongside this, I will post pictures and notes about I'm up to and what I'm seeing. I hope some of you follow my adventures, and comment with your thoughts, ideas and suggestions. As they say in Croatia, Dobrodošli! (or in English, Welcome!)


Pigeon Rocks, Raouché, Beirut