Scuba, Dubrovnik

Here is how I spent a second day in a wetsuit...

It's a funny thing to breathe underwater. Despite the air tank, the neoprene, the certification and the safety procedures, diving gives me the giddy sensation of going somewhere I am absolutely not meant to be. It feels like cheating gravity, evolution and the atmosphere all at the same time. And so it was in Dubrovnik, with Alex the Croatian dive instructor and the big blue Adriatic. Tank, flippers, suits, weights, gloves... It's heavy and awkward to move around with all that equipment on land. It's actually so heavy I have to give in, be "the girl" and let myself be helped the tank and weight belt. This is probably the hardest part for me to swallow.

But I am involuntarily, unnaturally graceful beneath the surface, surrounded by a constant stream of bubbles. Scuba is the opposite of most sports I have ever tried. To be good, you have to breathe slower, move less, try less and push yourself not to push it. Somehow that is still exhausting.

When you are good enough at scuba to remember to forget about everything, then you can look around. This time, I was almost there. We saw an eel and sandy-colored creature that looked like one of the rocks. I floated as still as I could to watch bright little fish flutter away. Alex picked up an octopus and I stroked it with my neoprene-clad fingers until it shot out a cloud of black ink. I ran my hand through that too.

I would like to talk to an astronaut who has also been a scuba diver and ask if zero gravity feels a little bit like scuba... without the bubbles, or the fish. I am not smart enough to join NASA at all, but weightlessness underwater could teach me something. Maybe trying less is something I should do, well, more.

Dubrovnik, or

Alternate titles for this post include:

How I got to wear wetsuits two days in a row, or

No I have not seen Game of Thrones, or

How many stairs is that?, or

Channelling Rick Steves

Brian and I arrived in Dubrovnik by bus. It was the first of many bus trips during this vacation - mostly comfortable and all very scenic. Sure, there was some dried vomit on the seat in front of us, but we had a great view of the coastline.

Unlike Split, Dubrovnik won my heart. Just as touristy, maybe, but smaller, prettier and somehow more charming. Our days in Dubrovnik were filled with organized activities. First on the list was bike riding. But when the reservations guy called in sick, our bike rental became a half-price sea kayak trip. It was half-price because they handed us the kayak, paddles and wetsuits and sent us on our way. Only on the paddle back in to shore did Brian point out that all the other kayakers were in groups, following a guide and wearing life jackets (losers).

From the water, we had a great view of Dubrovnik's solid old city walls, made extra famous as the setting for Game of Thrones. Apparently people get pretty excited about this TV show, which I have never seen. Built in the 15th century to protect the city from the Ottoman navy, the walls worked. Even when it became part of the Ottoman Empire, Dubrovnik (then called Ragusa) operated as an independent state. The walls continued to protect Dubrovnik in 1991, when Croatia declared itself independent from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav army laid siege on Dubrovnik and its locals defended the city from the fortress at Srd, build by Napoleon's forces in the early 1800s. When Croatia fought off the Yugoslavs there was a brief movement to make Dubrovnik an independent state. Much of the town was damaged but the city survived and rebuilt into a tourist-driven economy, with a little help from Rick Steves and TripAdvisor.

 

Brian and I walked up to the fortress after our kayaking trip. Given the abundance of walking tours and organized excursions, I thought it would be a few stairs a nicely paved sidewalk uphill. After all, I live on the 5th floor in a building with no elevator - how hard could it be? Going up was first a question of finding the right staircase out of town. Dubrovnik is a steep city and as soon as you leave the historic center you can only go up (or, in the other direction, underwater). We did not find the right staircase, actually, but walked through a highway overpass (is that in Game of Thrones?) and eventually found the path. Along the way we met up with a fellow hill-climber. Actually she was a fellow Minnesotan living in Germany. Anna is a US Air Force intelligence officer, and an avid reader of Rick Steves travel guides. We had all read about this path up the hill in the Rick Steves guide to Dubrovnik. Brian and I were a little embarrassed to admit it. We are decidedly anti-Rick, but his book was in our apartment so we gave in. When Rick Steves says that you need to be in good shape to walk down the mountain and it will take about an hour, usually that means you shouldn't eat your cheeseburgers during the walk, just beforehand, and you'll finish in 20 minutes while wearing flip flops. This time, Rick was mostly right. When we reached the top panting and sweating (it's also a pilgrimage route, apparently, lined with stations of the Cross images) we ran into some Canadians. It took about two minutes before they mentioned Rick Steves. "Did you download his audio tour of the old town?"

I can't put my finger on what I don't really like about Rick Steves, except that he has a way cooler job than I do. The guy goes on vacation for a living and is (understandably) smug about it.

If I don't know that Rick has been everywhere I am walking, it's easier to imagine that I'm finding the way all on my own. So it was as we walked back downhill, this time finding the right staircase, skipping the overpass and ending up practically at our own doorstep. As I entered the apartment, who was there staring at me from the coffee table but Rick Steves.

Split

Despite having a name that is a lot of fun to say, I did not love my time in Split. The main attraction was a direct flight from Hannover (for us) and Diocletian's palace (for most people). This ruined Roman palace isn't a building so much as the old city - which Emperor Diocletian must have designed for tourism. Fragments of his palace still stand, beside medieval-era buildings and enclosed by the old city walls. Throughout it all roam groups of tourists and men dressed up like Roman soldiers, ready to take a photo with you. They even let you hold their swords. There are fancy shops and clusters of tourists at every turn. If there is a Croatian part of EPCOT Center, this could be it.

Perhaps with a little more time and a chance to get out of the old town, Split would have won my affections. But after just one night we had to, well, split.

Two disclaimers before I begin...

Disclaimer #1:
It seems that, in the last year or so, this has become more of a travel blog than a blog about expat life in Hannover. My excuses and justifications for this abound. The one I'll stick with are that, after more than five years, the little aspects of daily life that would confuse, frustrate or delight me now feel pretty normal. While I may not get it right the first time, I seldom have to try over and over again. And so I don't post about that stuff any more (how many posts about dairy products and swimming pools would you really want to read?).

When I move back to the US there won't be so much travel, with less time off and barely any foreign destinations just a few hours' flight away (Manitoba, anyone?). What will become of this blog-writing part of me then? I've heard that moving back is harder than moving away. And I worry that giving up my blog, sometimes neglected though it is, will be hard too. Maybe I will keep it going, and write about raising urban chickens...

Disclaimer #2:
I have nearly used up my my old-school composition notebooks, so I wrote all of the Balkan trip posts in an unlined notebook. As beautiful as a blank white page may be, I end up writing in all different sizes and directions and sometimes I doodle a picture in between paragraphs. So if these posts are jumbled and make no sense, it is because I have grown tired of deciphering my own handwriting.

Goodbye Farrah

I got my last German haircut this week.
As he was cutting my hair, Michael, the most competent hair stylist I've found in Hannover (after kissing a lot of frogs, figuratively speaking) asked whether I'd like to do anything different with my hairstyle. "God, no!" I wanted to shout. 

I've made it this far - through the mushroom cut, the triangle cut, the Farrah Fawcett layers, the 'how long does this take to grow out?' cut. Maybe my last two hair years have maybe not been as exciting, but they have been reliably decent.

The haircut battle is not really about hair. I thought of it today I successfully navigated the crowded swimming pool - the only disorganized place in Germany - like an aquatic obstacle course. I swerved around pedestrians in the bike lane. I answered emails at work in German. I know the temperature in Celsius. I tried over and over again and I have adapted. It took me a while to get here, and I'm not taking any chances now.

So, Michael, you can lecture me on the use of a round brush as much as you want. I'm not really paying attention. I am just glad that the Farrah cut has returned to the 80s where it belongs.

Note it in the log

Each time you scuba dive, you fill out a page in your diving log book. You list the date, depth, visibility, and name of your buddy. Scuba was one way that Brian got me interested in visiting Tunisia in the first place. But as the diving day approached, I got a little nervous. I hadn't gone into the depths for two full years, and was worried I'd forget the hand signals or how to deflate my vest or, you know, breathe. Most things that are mildly scary and also exhilarating, and so it was with the shipwreck dive in Monastir. After a mild freak-out at first, I remembered how to breathe and stopped feeling cold and started to notice the little fish peeking out of the wrecked fishing boat, covered with tiny sea plants and lit by sunbeams shining through the water.

We had peeled off the head to toe neoprene and shivered as we got in the van.
"There should be a log book for life," Brian said as I scribbled in the depths of our dives and the amount of air we used up. And he's right - how great would it be to complete a page for every little achievement? Every significant event? What would you include, anyway? Maybe this blog is my log book for expat life.

Kairouan and El Jem

I wrapped a scarf around my head before we went into the Great Mosque of Kairouan, and kept it on for most of the afternoon. Kairouan seemed to be the place for a hijab (or hejeb as you say in Tunisia). It's a very religious town. Plus, I dig the hijab. I think it looks classy, especially with some dark eyeliner and a hip-hugging skirt. Part of the problem with globalization is that people around the world start to dress more or less the same. At least in Tunisia, traditional clothes seem to be limited to tourist shops and few very old people. Jeans and sweatshirts seem to be the world uniform.

Back to Kairouan - other than the site of the Great Mosque (built by the Arabs in 800ish) it is the place to buy rugs and has a beautiful old city where we ate hot date-filled pastries and saw a camel ("a very senior camel", tour guide Mohamed said) pulling buckets of holy water up from a well. After an enormous bowl of couscous with fish (still working on getting those little bones out of the way) we headed to El Jem.

Great Mosque, Kairouan

Kairouan's famous camel

Kairouan

El Jem is the site of the third-largest amphitheater of the Roman empire. It was built in 238 AD and held 35,000 people. Much of it still stands - the seats, the stairways, the concourses. It's easy to imagine the stands full while the gladiators battled wild animals below. You can almost hear a guy selling peanuts and hot dogs. Under the floor are the basement cells that housed lions and leopards in their cages, or prisoners awaiting battle. There's even an underground tunnel used for rolling the dead bodies of losing gladiators outside. Forget the Colliseum in Rome - just come to El Jem, the lines are much shorter.

El Jem

El Jem

El Jem amphitheater

El Jem amphitheater