Dubrovnik, Croatia
I'm sitting at an outdoor café, nursing a beer. Kenny Loggins is belting out "Footloose" on a local radio station, but other than that, life is pretty good here.
The sun is sweltering, pounding down through humid air. I like heat and humidity. It's as if the air is giving you one of those smothering hugs you received as a child from some eccentric, over-perfumed relative. Down below me, the Adriatic Sea is spooning a dry, tree-cluttered coastline.
This feels idyllic. And I feel confused.
I feel confused because I'm a humor writer – and specifically, a travel humor writer whenever possible. I'm sitting in this idyllic place, unable to shake from my head the thought that 15 years ago, bombs were raining down upon this town that today feels innocent and safe.
I'm confused because I have learned over the years that humor is born out of incongruities. Squish two ideas together that don't really fit, create surprise and confusion, and voilà! People laugh. But I'm feeling massive incongruity here, between the war that happened, and the serenity today, and I can't find humor in it.
I will say this: I feel happy here. I feel happy because logically, I get what happened a decade and a half ago, but after a night and a morning in this vacation town, I'm not seeing evidence of the war. Two-thirds of the buildings in Dubrovnik were damaged when the Serbs attacked in 1991, but there is little evidence today, other than a lot of construction and the occasional building scarred by what might or might not be bullet holes. If you look harder, you can find more evidence; the tiles on the roofs are all brand new. But the people of Dubrovnik have done an amazing job of rebuilding, recovering, and moving on.
At first glance, it's hard for a naïve outsider like me to understand why anyone would attack Dubrovnik. According to my taxi driver yesterday, only 47,000 people live here. According to my guidebook, the Serbs attacked to cripple the tourism industry – to sting economically and emotionally by striking at what my part-time employer, Rick Steves, describes as Croatia's "proudest, most historic, and most beautiful city, the tourist capital of a nation dependent on tourism."
At first glance, it is difficult to find humor in incongruity here. But I'm finding something better. I am finding smiles, and laughter – not laughter at snarky jokes like the kind I tend to come up with, but deeper, alive laughter among the people who live here, who seem once again happy. Today in Dubrovnik, the only source of oppression is an overzealous sun. Life as it should be has returned.
It would be naïve and insensitive of me to think there are no emotional scars, from a complex war in which innocent civilians on all sides were hurt. But people around me seem calm and content once again – proof that people can and do bounce back from traumas.
Fifteen years later, Dubrovnik is again a vibrant city, a place where life is again celebrated. It gives me hope that innocent civilians in current war zones might also laugh again one day.
(Okay… this concludes my non-snarkified first impression of Croatia. My opportunities to upload blog posts are sporadic here, but stay tuned this week, as technology allows, for less serious ranting from a country where I feel far more lost than anywhere else I've been this year.)
Travel humor, I like it a lot. And I'm trying some of my own, on a much more petty level. I enjoy you work, check out my first day of travel humor blogging if you get bored enough.
Posted by: Jeff | Monday, December 18, 2006 at 11:24 AM