Grammaticaster

April 24th and 25th, 2009, were supposed to be spent in Sarajevo.  And we did, indeed, drive the hours upon hours from Tučepi, Croatia through the rough roads and sad little villages of Bosnia and Herzegovina to get there.  And there we discovered that, while it was an extremely interesting place to visit, we weren’t in the mood to drag our luggage through dingy streets filled with destitute people who were already crowding the car looking for handouts.  If I had been by myself, and carrying a knapsack on my back, it would have been a different story.  I would have loved to have walked the streets discretely snapping photographs of the buildings and the signs of old and new life in that uniquely multicultural metropolis.  But, with my wife in tow, and having just come from the quiet and pristine shores of the Adriatic, I just didn’t see spending two nights in a city where our presence would have felt intrusive and a little ‘hey cute little European people look at how we tourists are gawking at your plight.’  So we turned around and drove the hours and hours back to the Croatian coastline, not sure where we were going to stay.

As it happened, we hit a town called Mali Ston on the highway between Split and Dubrovnik (our ultimate destination 2 nights away).  With a total population of 165, it lies at the entrance to the Peljesak Peninsula – a prolific wine-growing region jutting out into the crystal clear Adriatic Sea.  Known for salt mines and oyster harvesting, this little jewel was absolutely marvelous.  We stayed in a little bedroom over a restaurant where, as the only customers in the entire establishment, we had an all-oyster 7-course dinner for a cost that was next to nothing.  We strolled around the bay after dinner, taking in the quaint village life – little boats in the harbor, old men with their dogs sitting on little benches.  Rows of houses that looked positively ancient… most bearing the scars of missile attacks suffered in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990′s.

The next day we drove the length of the peninsula and visited Korcula town – reputed to be the birthplace of Marco Polo.  (Another entry is required for a proper discussion of Korcula.)  We returned in the evening and elected to stay another night in the tiny restaurant/guest house.

Once that was decided, and since there was some traces of daylight remaining, we hiked up a small hill to take a gander at the ruins of a castle that overlooked the town.  Expecting a museum of some sort or at least some marker denoting the fort’s importance (it was, in fact, a major fortification and part of a defensive wall that is the largest in Europe – built in the 1300′s), but instead we found the entire ruin unattended and largely untouched.  We climbed ancient steps without any guardrails, we walked along the walls sans protective ropes or barricades.  We stood atop the lone standing tower with nothing between us and a terrible plummet hundreds of feet to the ground below.  It was extraordinary.  I felt like Indiana Jones.  The picture above is just a sample of the volumes of pictures upon pictures I took from every angle.  Nothing had been disturbed.  The well in the center of the court still had water at the bottom of it, covered by an ancient iron cover.  I could spend hours describing it, folks.  It was an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.  A true adventure – and all by happenstance.

We ate another incredible meal at what was pretty much the only other restaurant in the village and then retired to our little room.  The next day we departed for Dubrovnik, the final stop on our little Eastern Europe exploration.  There you have it.  Mali Ston.  I never even knew it existed.