Hvar

By the time I finally reach my next destination, I will have taken one ferry and at least three buses to get there—about 10 hours from hostel to hostel. Some distances are more difficult to cross than others, regardless of how such distances are quantified, but each is a new adventure.

Hvar is a lovely port town that lies just off the coast of Croatia and has a tendency to attract a lot of young college students. I stayed at a hostel where I was fortunate enough to meet a group of young college girls from Britain. We went out together my last night in Hvar, and I left them at close to 1am when they boarded a boat to continue the drunken festivities while I returned to the hostel to prepare for the next day of traveling. (I am, after all, not as young as I used to be, and have never been overly fond of the Dionysian revelry so common among college-aged youths). But it was nice to go out and see Hvar’s nightlife.

As we walked out to the loud, crowded bars, I talked to one of the girls and conveyed to her the similarity I observed between Hvar and New York City. She seemed surprised at this, but for me, they have a lot in common.

Hvar, like NYC, has a lot of history. In fact, Hvar’s history is far longer than New York’s, but like the bustling city, you wouldn’t think to look at it that it had much history at all. Sure, there are buildings here and there that give an echo of what the city’s been, but for the most part, it denies its history, living in the current moment.

You won’t see much of all Hvar’s been walking through the city, besides maybe a distant fort or old church or piece of stonework. Hvar was colonized by the Greeks in about 384 BC, and since then, it has been under control of Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Neretvans (Slavs), Austrians, French, and English… and has been passed off a countless number of times. Yet, you’ll find little to tie the island to its historic roots; that’s not what the city is, not who the city purports to be. It is a city of the now; a city that doesn’t look back, and therefore, like New York, it makes the perfect destination for youths who also don’t have much of a past, and who are interested in the now.

In Mongolia, there is a saying that to visit a land you should drink the water—kind of like a “when in Rome” sort of saying. It’s one I try to follow, so while in Hvar, I tried to forget my history and live in the now: lounge on the beach, go out at night, lose myself a little. But though all of these things are fun, I realize that this culture isn’t really mine. (Accept maybe the lounging on the beach and swimming in the sea; I think I’ll keep those).

And maybe it’s good to lose yourself a little, to live in the now and not let yourself be restrained by old fears or regrets. Traveling, I think, does that: already Hvar is part of the past, and I live in the now of the lovely Croatian coastline moving past me. Dubrovnik is just ahead.

Split

Thus far, the view of my travel from one city to another has been hills and fields and forests and mountains. This time, I look out the window and see the beautiful blue waters of the Dalmatian Coast, islands sprawled over them, peacefully sleeping in shades of blue-green.

I had expected to only spend a day in Split, but ended up spending two; there is so much to do, so much offered up, in this coastal Croatian city. It has an activity that summer elicits and, though I don’t know what Split is like during other times of year, it seemed like the city was in full bloom: young and old enjoying the warm sunlight on both pebbly and sandy beaches; the herds of yachts and boats in the harbor that form a familiar forest of swaying masts; families traversing the white stone streets where stalls pop up like dandelions, selling everything from indistinctive hats and overpriced souvenirs to some beautifully-crafted jewelry and hand-made woven bags.

Pizza shops and ice cream parlors, wine gardens and beer gardens and expensive restaurants and cheap fast-food stalls….

For me, the most remarkable thing about Split is that you’ll find all of these things within walls that are literally hundreds of years old. The Diocletian Palace was built by the Romans in the early 3rd/late 4th centuries A.D., and while it appears like ruins, there are still parts that are well reserved—and still functioning: people live in some of the palace’s old apartments, there are hotels that operate out of pieces of history.

Some people might stand aghast that such an ancient site isn’t partition and conserved and turned into a giant museum with fees for entrance and an exorbitant souvenir shop and café installed. But I love it, just the way it is: it’s a living monument. Churches and mosques were meant for worship, ships were meant for sailing, and palaces were meant for living and working and life: the palace is a statement that beauty shouldn’t be the abandonment of function, but the elegant coexistence with it.

I think there’s something universal about that message. Appearance is just how something looks: appearance is fickle and changes; it doesn’t build anything; it doesn’t create. That comes from the inside, from the drive and motivation of a person, from the way one functions and moves through the world. For me, the world is teaching me how to move through it, with every city I visit, with every site I see, with every person I meet.

Split shows how me how I can transform and re-appropriate the past to enliven the present. California, North Carolina, Tokyo, Pennsylvania, New York, Mongolia--places and people I've loved… somehow the relics of my past form the structures I see and live through, not the walls that confine me, and not the monuments I lock away.

The ferry shuttles me on to Hvar; I look forward to relaxing on the lovely Croatian Island.

Belgrade

Ah, I feel the ground below me rumble and move and the reflective state comes over me like a familiar tide. Belgrade slips through channels leading to the past, though I sincerely hope it will flow back in the future.

Belgrade was, for a me, a town that echoed with a hum of the familiar; with each step I take westward, with each city I pass through, the geographical and cultural arias  more and more contain melodies that resemble those of my home, and I know I'm getting closer.

There were a few melodies in Belgrade that rung familiar: the architecture contains motifs characteristic of Greco-roman art so popular in much of western Europe (including women in togas and reliefs with laurel wreaths); the people adore their pets, particularly their dogs (I saw one small white lapdog with its ears and tail dyed pink); the number of familiar fast-food chains (McDonalds, Burger King, KFC) that have popped up everywhere.

However, perhaps one of the more subtle melodies was the melody of newness than underlies the city.

Don't get me wrong: Serbia has a long history, with its own prehistoric cultures and times of subjugation and rule. Yet, it's Serbia's last hundred or so years of history that tears down everything that came before. Within that time (the time of two Balkan Wars and two World Wars), the city has been bombed about 70 times, and rebuilt more than 40 times, crumbling into dust those structures that once defined its landscape, its skyline, and its culture (or cultures). The poor attempts of the government at preserving what artifacts remain to Belgrade only encourage the disappearance of Serbia's history under the layers of new brick and stone laid above it.

Belgrade, therefore, despite some of its classically styled buildings, is all fairly modern. Familiar for me, whose country is so young. But Belgrade is unique, too. All cities, I think, have something to teach. Maybe Belgrade teaches people not to be fooled by appearances: what's most important--what a city or who a person truly is--is sometimes buried just below the surface.

Now, I listen to the song of Belgrade fade away, and look forward to hearing the one Zagreb sings.

Sofiya

The sweltering heat of Turkey melted into the temperate cool of Bulgaria under the light shower that greeted us at the boarder. All of us flowed in and out of the bus as we passed through passport control, with the moon and star of the scarlet Turkish flag on one side and the bright white, green, and red bands of the Bulgarian flag on the other—along with another, more familiar one: the yellow ring of stars on the EU’s blue flag. Though the US is not part of the EU, there was something comforting about seeing it waving me onward.

Bulgaria held many small signs of my approach westward, from commercial signs in the form of Subway restaurants, to arboreal signs in the forms of maples and other trees similarly native to the Americas, to cultural in the form of second-hand stores (which I never really saw in Mongolia, ever). Yet, the presence of Cyrillic felt like a comforting tie to the past two years.

Despite its reminders of places past, Bulgaria was still awash with the delights of distinctness. Sofiya, its capital (at least the part of it I saw), is pleasantly walkable, dotted with small shops, parks, etc.--and has all the quaintness of a small town. It carries 6,000 years of history as easily as a bard holds a hum, and the architectures and relics of its time as part of the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, and periods of independence exist intermixed throughout the city, like a garden growing organically as it would. The arrangement lends itself to pleasant surprises and hidden delights.

I took a free walking tour that mazed meanderingly through the streets to many of the city’s major sites, including orthodox churches, catholic churches, mosques, and synagogues, all of which exist harmoniously together. My favorite was, perhaps, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, topped with gilded domes and decorated with ornate carvings.

Sofia is small, and while I likely could have found this and that to see and do to encompass another full day, I feel compelled to press onward. Right now, I am on the bus to Nish in Serbia (where from I can take a bus to Belgrade), watching the hills rise and fall, the cities resting sleepily, and fields of corn and sunflowers soaking up the sun (and the latter splashing bright yellow across the landscape). I am sleepy from rising so early, but it just lends a dreamlike quality to everything.

By the time I post this, I will be in Belgrade.

Istanbul

When I close my eyes, I can still see the lights of the street glowing in hues of yellow and red, hear the currents of voices and laughter, and smell the scent of hookah and beer drifting through the warm air on my last night in Istanbul. I see the lights of the fountain situated between the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, its waters warbling, laughing in the dimness of evening, surrounded with couples sitting close and children playing with glowing toys that street merchants sell for a handful of liras.

Istanbul is one of those cities that holds on to its history while embracing modernity, that keeps its past in every heartbeat of its present. Its efficient trams bus tourists through site-seeing districts and across the Bosphorus. The Grand Bazaar is as it always was, with merchants calling its wears and trying to persuade customers into its stores, only that the stores are filled with western brands of shirts and shoes right alongside traditional Turkish pants and textiles.

For me, Istanbul’s architecture rises above all else, from the intricate designs of the Hagia Sofia to the steep obelisks of the hippodrome to the minarets that steeple over the city like totems to the religious and historical texture of Istanbul. I think, of all of them, I loved the Blue Mosque best; its lovely domes and towers stand as quiet testaments to the beauty of geometry; the unity of its structure, the regularity of its design, the simplicity of its coloring…, stalwartness with solemnity, unostentatious and unobtrusive and unaffected… majesty with modesty.

The cats in Turkey are, for me, utterly delightful; they have little of the skittishness to which I am accustomed, and I found them lounging about wherever they could find a spot of shade: on carpets being sold just in front of shops, in the middle of sidewalks and beneath chairs and tables in restaurant… even on the footpath half-way up to the old church that lies on Prince’s Island.

Istanbul is certainly an international city; it has that feel, and as a tourist, especially one staying in a hostel, I felt the internationality fairly directly: rooming with people from Spain and Croatia and Korea, touring Galata Tower and Dormabahce with a Pakistani, doing breakfasts with a Canadian, and spending my final evening talking with a couple, one from India and another from Serbia.

It’s one of those cities that I could see myself living in one day, if fortune is kind to me. It’s certainly a place to which I hope to return, one day.

Today, the weather has turned a little chilly. It was raining as I passed from Turkey to Bulgaria. The scenery has changed, and while I am loathed to leave Istanbul and those I have met there, I look with eagerness to what may await me in Bulgaria.