Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Croatian Trip Report Part 5

Croatian Trip Report Part 5

On entering Dubrovnik after that stunning bus ride from Makarska, I saw that we were going to bypass Gruz, the commercial port. I had wanted to see where I had moored our boat thirty years before. Even the glimpses I got convinced me it had changed so much I would never find the location. I still owe some Yugoslav a debt from that time. When I was away on an errand, one of my daughters, about five years old at the time, fell off the boat into the harbor. Some guy dove into the water, scooped her up, and presented the dripping, frightened tike to my practice wife. He then just left, before she even had a chance to thank him, much less get his name.

When we got into the bus station in Dubrovnik I had reason to regret not having done my homework. I had neglected to look up where the bus station was in relation to our hotel. We had reservations for two nights at the Villa Adriatica. http://www.dubrovnik-online.com/villa_adriatica/, which I had gotten after rave reviews on this Forum. As we got off the bus we were approached by a guy who wanted to rent us a room. We explained we had reservations, but weren?t sure how far a walk it would be; that it was near the Ploce gate. He said it was too far to walk but he would drive us there for 100 Kuna. I felt we were getting hustled, but since I wasn?t feeling to well we agreed. It did seem a long way, but he could have been driving the long way, for all we knew. We chatted about Prims, of course, and he said if we contacted him later he would make inquires, ?-- because I have a cousin, who ??.

He dropped us close to the Hotel Excelsior, and we walked down the hill toward the Ploce gate. We figured it must have been shady for him to taxi us because there was no reason he could not have dropped us right at the Gate, except there is a taxi stand there.

As we walked downhill, we passed a sign for the East West Bar, also touted in this Forum. As we approached the bridge to the Ploce gate we started asking for the Villa Adriatica. One lout, who seemed drunk, dismissed us with a wave of his hand. I asked in a small Konzum (a chain grocery store). They had no clue. Finally, I noticed a small blue awning over a travel agent right on the corner. It was marked ?Perla Adriatica?. I went in and the young lady said, ?This is it. I?ll call them.?

Teo, the son of the owner, soon came and led us a few doors back up the street to a rather scabby red door. Through the door was the fabulous Villa Adriatica. I noticed a bell beside the door, so presumably one could get admitted if the travel office was closed.

The Villa has been described before in this Forum enough so that I need go into no details, but we had the larger room that does not open onto the terrace, but that still has a view of the old harbor from the window. Among the wonders of this room was not only the satellite TV, but the first toilet roll holder we saw in Croatia. Every place we had stayed before just had a roll sitting on the toilet tank or alongside somewhere within reach.

Occupants of all the rooms can use the living room and kitchen, as well as the terrace. Teo showed us where the pads for the lounges were stored and asked us to bring them in when we were not using them and to take down the umbrellas so they would not blow away. We did not use the terrace as much as we might have, but we did go a few doors down to the Konzum and get crusty rolls, ham, cheese, beer, and other goodies to have a couple of picnics on the terrace as we watched the transport boats from the cruise ships scramble with other water taxi boats for places to unload in the harbor.

What can I say about Dubrovnik that has not been said. It is just wonderful! Too many people, of course, but still just marvelous. There were a series of cruise ships there while we were, but never more than two at a time. I shudder to think how crowded the place must be in high summer when seven or eight arrive at once.

We first went to the East West Bar I had heard so much about. I?ll bet it is a really swinging watering hole in the season. The place has a stylish restaurant up above, and the bar is just above the level of the beach, filled with modernistic white, low, benches and curved couches. A curved bar is built into the back wall, and one looks out through structural cross braces, well padded so you can lean against them, at people lounging on beach chairs. Good music is playing, but the mood was muted when we arrived as there was only one other customer, reading a book. We had a drink and talked to the waiter who said things would pick up a bit later, but the season was waning.

We also cast about for the Buza bar everyone talks about. I could lead you to it, but no way could I tell you how to get there. Well, I?ll try anyway. If you enter by the Ploce gate and enter the Stradum (main drag), turn left and left again, hugging the city wall. As you must turn right along the wall you will see a varnished wooden sign that says something about ?Great view, Cold drinks.? As you climb inside the wall, you will eventually see another varnished wooden sign shaped like an arrow, saying, ?Cold Drinks? on your right. Dive through the hole in the wall to your left, and you are there. It would be bloody hot there in the heat of a Summer day, but we got there as sunset approached. We sat, listened to the music, and had one of the advertised cold drinks while we watched the light dim. There are steps leading to lower levels, and we watched people swimming off a rock by the sea and a couple of guys fishing. Very pleasant.

I hate to keep cluttering these pages with our search for that damned Prim, I hardly expect any of you will be buying one soon, but it was getting to be an obsession with us. The girl in the Perla Adriatica travel agency said there was a music store up the hill (of course) from the Ploce Gate toward the Blaise Gate, in a side street to the right. We dutifully hiked up, only to find it closed. The sign on the door said it should be open, but it wasn?t. We tried twice more that day (Thursday) with no luck.

On Friday we decided to tackle the wall. We were walking along back streets shortly after 08:00, intending to have our morning cup of coffee before heading for the Pile Gate and the Wall, when we were passed by a group of young Croatian kids in folk costume. One of them was carrying a guitar. On impulse, I whirled in my tracks and chased after them. I stopped them and asked the guy with the instrument if he knew where we could buy a Prim for our son. Tammy whipped out her picture of Steve in Croatian costume that she had shown so many people over the past days. The chap said he had a Prim, but played it. An attractive woman with them said she was an event manager, and was with the group on their way to a performance. She said they were going for coffee and while they had their drinks she would make a call to the group?s music teacher about where to get Prims. We were welcome to tag along.

They went into a café and we, not wanting to intrude, sat at an outside table to have our coffee. After awhile the event manager came out and gave us a piece of paper with the name of a man who lived in a town north of Zagreb who was supposed to be the best traditional instrument maker in Croatia. We thanked her and I popped into the restaurant, cornered the owner and paid for the group?s drinks. We figured we would write the maker from the States and try to arrange to buy Steve?s present.

To the wall. This is the only truly must do thing in Dubrovnik. I did not note how much admission to the wall was, but I think it was 30 Kuna for the two of us. I also invested in one of those multilingual tour telephones. You rent them for another 30 Kuna, and it is a wonderful investment. Not so much for the superb commentary and information you are able to listen to at each of the over 20 stations on the wall, but for the perfect excuse they give an old guy to stop at the top of a flight of stairs and recover.

The city itself is bounded by the walls, which are a over 400 meters on a side. That makes the city wall only about 1900 meters long. The problem is not with the length of the walls; it is with the ups and downs. I?m in reasonable shape for a guy in his seventies, but I really got pooped. It was handy to punch the button on the phone and spend a couple of minutes listening to the history of that part of the wall, and then hand it to Tammy. By the time she had listened to that segment of the tour, I had caught my breath to go on without too much loss of dignity. The views, plus the history literally takes your breath away --- without those damned stairs.

We went around counter-clockwise to have our final stop be the top of the highest tower. As we stood, listening to an old guy wheeze (me), we heard cheering coming from near the Pile gate below us. The commotion seemed move from right to left through the town, so we figured there must be some sort of demonstration taking place on the Stradum. Shortly thereafter Tammy pointed out a big cloud of smoke rising from the Ploce end of the Stradum, probably from the square. I thought they must have a fire, as I kept hearing crowd noises. The smoke cleared and then another big cloud arose. We thought no more about it, but came down from the wall and walked down the Stradum toward the Ploce Gate.

As we entered the square by the church we heard amplified voices and music, and ran into a huge crowd who were wildly cheering someone up on the steps of the church. We could see it was a young chap with buzz cut hair that had been shaved and died in the checkerboard pattern of the Croatian flag. It was Mihovil Spanja, a local lad who had won the 400 meter freestyle bronze medal for Croatia in the recent Olympics in Athens. As we watched, the crowd hoisted him on their shoulders and paraded off down the Stradum, with him waving and smiling at the multitudes, with his medals swinging from his neck. Made me think this is how the people of Duubrovnik must have honored their heroes through antiquity. Tammy picked up a torn poster from the steps, so we could remember his name.

We went by the music store three more times that day, hoping to find it open. The Ploce Gate had been closed by street work, and the only way from the city to Villa Adriatica was either to climb the million steps to the city?s North gate (Blaise Gate?) and down the street outside the walls, or to follow the route a local showed us. You enter the restaurant just to the left of the entrance from the square to the harbor, and go through the passage outside the kitchen to the shore. From there a series of wooden planks have been laid down from boulder to boulder at the base of the wall. If you walk along these, they seem reasonably stable as they are fastened with iron straps on at least one end. You eventually come to about a 20 yard stretch with no planks where you have to step carefully from rock to rock. This leads to a blind corner where one sometimes meets another person coming the other way, and you do a little dance. Finally, you reach a small area of the harbor just below the bridge crossing to the Ploce Gate. Walk under the bridge and around to the Villa Adriatica, Hotel Excelsior, etc. Sounds hairy, and at night it was, but we managed.

On impulse, I suggested that we try the music store one more time and even climb those damned stairs. We did and THE PLACE WAS OPEN! The nice fellow immediately said he had met a man who made Prims the previous year and picked up the telephone and called him. He quoted a price range for beginning to professional instruments and asked, ?Do you want a G, D, or E?? Dumbstruck, we raced down those zillion stairs to the Poste to call Steve. He said he was playing a D instrument. We raced back up the quadrillion stairs as the shopkeeper had said he had to leave shortly. Tammy left me puffing on about the third landing, and by the time I arrived at the shop she had ordered the top of the line Prim. The maker, who lived in a town North of Zagreb said he would find a shipping company that worked on Saturdays and if all went well we could expect it to get there by Monday.

We were leaving Dubrovnik the following morning and made arrangements for the shopkeeper to call us at our next hotel when the thing arrived, and we would come back to pick it up. We left feeling really pleased, and Tammy practically danced down to the hotel.

We had made arrangements to meet the rest of our Sister Cities party at the Hotel Astarea in the town of Mlini (no, that is spelled right, means place of the mills) south of Dubrovnik. We planned to leave by around noon on Saturday. I had a really dreadful night, with almost no sleep. I had been getting sicker since I first came down with what I thought at first was a head cold the previous Sunday ? hacking and coughing and with the ?quick step?. By Friday night I was having trouble breathing and I coughed all night. I got up early and packed. I woke Tammy and told her I was going to the hospital. She was to pay the Mr. Tonsic our bill, wait until 10:00 and then take our bags out front to the taxi stand and have the driver take her to the Hotel Astarea and check in. I would contact her there.

I got in a taxi and went off to have an adventure in Croatian medicine. Croatian hospitals are not like American hospitals.

The driver took me to the Western part of the city near Gruz to a huge modern hospital built on the top of a hill, and dropped me at the entrance (70 Kuna). I went through the glass doors into an enormous tiled lobby. It had a snack bar and a gift shop to the right, and an enormous reception desk a considerable walk across the impressive foyer.

Nobody was manning the reception desk. I waited awhile, coughing loudly for attention. Nobody came, and I started wandering. I walked down to the radiology department. I wandered through oncology. I meandered past other specialties but saw no staff. There were a few patients wandering around, but nobody who looked like medical personnel.

At last I came back and wandered down another corridor, which took me behind the reception desk. I could see an older guy in jeans sitting in front of a TV monitor in a small room behind the reception desk. I got his attention and asked where I could find a Doctor. He had mostly German, but I gathered I was in the wrong place. If I was sick, I shouldn?t have come to the hospital but to the Emergency Room. He gestured that it was out the front doors and to the left down the hill. Out I went and, as I passed some folks in white clothes having a smoke outside another entrance, I took the opportunity to ask them the same questions. They had English and assured me that this was the Hospital Department, and I needed to go about two blocks down the hill to the Emergency Department.

I trudged down the hill until the sight of ambulances parked by another building gave me hope. I went in the entrance to find no medical staff about here, either. I found a young lady typing in an office and told her my tale. She asked me to wait and went away to rustle up a Doctor. In due coarse a lady Doctor appeared and took me into an adjoining space and had me strip to my waist. She thumped me and bumped me and listened to my chest. She said I had a respiratory infection, and that one lobe of my lung sounded funny to her, indicating possible pneumonia. She said that a full workup would take days, and since I was leaving gave me three prescriptions, including strong antibiotics, along with instructions to drink lots of fluids, see your doctor at home, and blah, blah, blah.

I thanked her and got dressed. I asked the young lady in the office whom I should pay; here or at the hospital? She said I should pay her, and wrote out a bill. I had trouble reading the number. ?Is that 68 Kuna?? I asked? She nodded, and I handed her a 200 Kuna note, the smallest I had. She looked at it dubiously, snatched back the bill, and said, ?Nothing.? When I looked puzzled, she said, ?Go away and get better.?

When I could speak again I said, ?Now I know for sure I am not in an American hospital!? She grinned and I went back up the hill to the hospital to catch a cab.

There were no cabs, so I had to wait for an hour or more until the bus standing there left. The driver said I could wait in the bus if I wished, but I preferred going inside to the coffee shop to wait. The driver said one had to have a magnetically coded ticket to ride the bus, or put the exact 10 Kuna change in the fare machine. The tickets could be purchased at the hospital gift shop for only 8 Kuna. Since I only had my 200 Kuna note, I first went to the coffee shop for something to drink and a roll. I paid the waiter, and he had to run all over the hospital to get change. He got a big tip. Then I went to the gift shop and was able to buy my ticket.

The bus dropped me at the Pile gate and I hustled along the Stradum. It was already past 10:00 and I feared I had missed Tammy. I really didn?t feel up to climbing those stairs, so elected the restaurant kitchen scramble over the rocks route. I came wheezing up to the Villa Adriatica and looked up at our room window, which faced the street. I managed to croak a weak ?Tammy?? She had been pacing the room anxiously waiting for me and was rather concerned. We put the bags in the hall and hopped from rock to rock back into town to the nearest pharmacy, which happened to be right on the Stradum.

While the hospital was free, the medicines were not. I don?t know what kind of super antibiotic the Doctor prescribed, but they cost $8.00 per pill.

While we were in the pharmacy, three Italians came in. They were all upset about something, with the biggest fat guy shouting at the woman, who was in tears and near hysteria, screaming back at him and trying to tell the pharmacist something. I couldn?t hear what the pharmacist was saying to me about how to take the medicines and the pharmacist had to shout to the Italians to quiet down. They just got louder, and the Pharmacist just exploded, and she really told them off. Told them to leave or the cops would be called. I had noticed an antipathy by the Croatians toward some Italians before, but it was really apparent that day.

Back to the Villa Adriatica for our bags and then a puff up the hill outside the walls and one street over to a bus stop to wait for the #10 Bus. When the bus came we motioned to the driver that we had bags. The conductor guy got off and put them under the bus, but indicated that in future we should do it ourselves. It cost 10 Kuna to Mlini, and he didn?t charge us extra for the bags. We weren?t sure of where to get off for the hotel, so as we approached Mlini I asked a passenger about the Hotel Asterea. She said it was well beyond the town and the driver would stop at the driveway, which he did.

I see this is getting too long, what with my superfluous tales of Prims and Hospitals, so I?ll leave Mlini, Cavtat, and Montenegro until the next part.