Letter from Croatia – re: re-returning

Balmy evening in Dubrovnik backstreet

This post comes to you from Dalmatia, or Dubrovnik to be more precise.  Dalmatia, it goes without saying, is the southern end of Croatia, or Hrvatska as she is known locally, where they discovered cravats. Next country south is Montenegro and even closer to the east is Bosnia & Hercegovina.  The physical scars from the all-too-recent unrest, or in the case of Dubrovnik the consequential repairs, are all around. But for now things seems reasonably peaceful here in the predominantly grin-free Balkans.

I like to test each Matathewsiasms post against the three criteria I have set: (1) it must be sharing practical experience; (2) it must be enthusing in some direction; and (3) it must not intentionally be juxtaposing concepts (which is best left to the experts).  Although posts written while travelling are in danger of sounding like a mere travel diary, my Dubrovnik posts are intended to pass the above tests.

But the theme of this post is not specific to Dubrovnik.  It is about the differences between:

• turning up somewhere (the first trip) which offers various dangers, and plenty of novelty, followed by (ultimately) a cosy package of memories of people and places;
• returning to that place (the second trip) whose biggest danger is of disappointment when it doesn’t live up to the expectations based on the memories of the original people and places; and
• re-returning to the same place (the third trip) when, if you get that far, you are probably in tune with the underlying nature of the place.

These three phases could also be known respectively as illusion, disillusionment and balanced, but no doubt professional psychologists have come up with their own more widely accepted terminology.

This is my third trip to Dubrovnik in three years, so it is my re-return, and follows a miraculous survival of my return last year.  My trips are based around a routine of daily visits to Lokrum Island (more later) and socialising with fellow travellers at the Youth Hostel (more later).

I suppose the key message of my crude analysis above is that second trips (returns) must only be undertaken in exceptional circumstances. I can illustrate this with an excellent example, co-incidentally another touristy place in Croatia which I visited with Jenny several years ago. I’m talking about a village called Grožnjan (I pronounce it grodge-nyang, but you can hear someone known as “teapot” saying it properly here.)  Grožnjan is a medieval village (with monastery) which occupies the top of an impressive hill in Istria. The place was deserted for a while (well, it’s awkward being stuck on the top of a hill) until being occupied in the 1960s by a “Bohemian” group of painters and sculptors.  Then it also began to be used for  international summer music schools.  Anyway, although the pressures of commercial tourism have inevitably affected its character, it is (was) still a beautiful and charming place when Jenny and I drove up the winding track and spent a few leisurely hours taking it in.  The sounds of young musicians practising Ravel’s string quartet might be wafting from an open window as you wander round a gallery or tuck into a beer in the shade of a large tree.

So enjoyable and magical was my brief time in Grožnjan that I have many times thought about returning there (see above) as a visitor, or better still as a musician.  But no, I must never go back as I’m sure that spending several days in its confines would almost certainly shatter my treasured magical memories.