We were right on the Adriatic Sea, kind of in a hotel complex with tennis courts-- clearly a hot vacation spot for wealthy Eastern Europeans and people from all over. There was an old fortress along the winding paths, reminding us of how old everything is in that area. If you followed a certain path it brought you down to the cliffs and the ocean, and one spot was quickly named Mermaid Cove and was the best of them all. Beautiful sunsets and water that was a shimmering, vibrant aquamarine, and whitish beige cliffs.
View from the balcony off of my hotel room-- yes.
Stones and ruins along the walk of our hotel and the Adriatic
Water
The Fortress near our hotel
The Histria
Sunset on the Adriatic
Lighthouse of sorts
Pula was the closest town to our little resort-esque area, and it, like the rest of Europe, had remnants of a very old grandeur. Very, very, very old. In downtown Pula, the landmark was the Arch, which was crafted by a woman and there's some accompanying story of how she had it built to reflect her power and authority over all the men. The little busses would trundle around the winding streets and stop in front of the Arch plaza, or near the Colosseum, or next to a little park snuck into the twisting streets. One of the girls on our trip is Bosnian, and she would negotiate the bus stops and restaurant menus for us, since apparently Bosnian and Croatian are almost the same language. It reminded me of Rome, the area near the Vatican, but at the same time seemed so much older and more... decaying, I suppose. I wished we had had more time (and energy) to visit more of Croatia, because I got the impression that Pula, with its old, decrepit buildings still visible even in the touristy areas, was an example of how a lot of the rest of this formerly war-torn-- or if not war-torn, then war-touched-- area would be. In addition to the Arch and the Colosseum, there was a James Joyce Café-- with a statue of Joyce built into/onto one of the outdoor tables. Wandering around downtown one afternoon, we stopped for another terrible yet addicting and rejuvenating cappucino, and sat at James' table.
Downtown Pula, with the fountain and Roman Arch and brightly painted buildings
Coffee at the James Joyce café
Sittin' with James
Mini model-fountain of Pula
Pula's Colosseum
Advertising on the bus... genius!
Like I said, by this point I was pretty much exhausted. I presented my research on the first day of presentations, and after that I was free! One of our trips into Pula was for Easter Sunday. I hadn't been to church in a very long time, if you don't count visiting the countless churches that seem obligatory to enter throughout European cities. But Croatia is predominantly Roman Catholic, with that piece of identity having played a large role in the country's conflicts with surrounding break-away nations. So I decided to go with a few friends to the service, to see what it was like. We caught the tale end of it, and it was conducted in Croatian. There were a lot of little children and elderly people, and a lot of the people we saw were wearing very casual street clothes. Not what I expected, but I still enjoyed the service-- I thought back to my visit with Olivia and Zahra to the Mosquée de Genève, where we went for our research, and whose service I equally enjoyed. For me this was another great opportunity to absorb or observe a part of a culture, even though we weren't there for very long at all.
Easter Sunday
Colosseum
The Square
One day of the last weekend of our stay in Croatia-- and of our semester, and my year, abroad-- the whole group was taken on a trip to Rovinj, a port city north of Pula. We were to get there via boat-- a cruise through the Brijuni National Park Islands! A quick couple tales of irony-- when we first got to The Histria, I went exploring "the grounds" of the hotel-complex with some friends, and while we were trying to understand a large map of the area posted on a wooden sign, a man came up to us, speaking first in Croatian, then German. Luckily Meghan spoke German, and through a mixture of languages we figured out that he was trying to sell us a large group boat tour through the Brijuni National Park. It was harder to weasel out of that unwelcome interaction-- the raggedy man looked like he was just wandering the deserted playgrounds and fortresses of the complex-- but eventually we convinced him that we would think about it. Then, one day after everyone had finished presenting and we had an actual day all to ourselves, a group of us tried to go on our own tour of the National Park Islands. Personalities clashed and tempers were tested among a group who had just spent a touch too long together, navigating strange lands in strange countries. We missed a bus, ran into some friends who decided not to join us, and when we finally made it to the port city for the boat tour, found out that we were too late to go on the guided tour of the islands. Apparently they do them by language, and no, it was not possible to just go out on a boat and wander around (we asked). This ended up turning into a very serendipitously pleasant adventure-- we wandered around the port town whose name I've forgotten by now, sat at a café for a while watching the sun set and people milling around. Then we decided to forego the nightly buffet (which had begun to get a little monotonous, except for the dessert section, and was making people less and less eager to lay out on the beach in their bathing suits). We stopped in Pula and bumped into some other wanderers from our group (it was a small area and an even smaller city), so we stopped for pizza, then headed home. "Home", in this case, more so than all the others.
Anyways, those were the two times we did not go the the Brijuni Islands, but when we did, it turned out to be beautiful. There were crumbling, half-standing fortresses and construction on these little tiny islands that created a sort of obstacle course for our boat to sail through. We saw in the distance the port city where we had been the other day, and eventually, after much sitting and a lunch of too-fresh fish down below in the ship, we got off at the town of Rovinj. There was a pretty modern-looking sculpture right off the deck, which looked out of place when you looked past just a little and saw winding cobble-stone streets receding into the distance, with an open air market in the foreground. We were met by a guide and taken through the winding streets, and I felt like I was in a medina all over again. I was Morocco-homesick and at the same time amazed by the beauty of it all, with flowers and vines blooming somehow in the cracks of the brick and stone buildings, and the shop doors open with some wares spilling out onto the already-too-narrow alleys. The stones we walked on were uneven, and I saw-- and took pictures of-- so many doors. I was called out on this by some passing tourists, whose nationality I could not guess, who asked why I was taking so many pictures of doors, and then answered their own question, somehow. I was amazed by the similarities that I saw, and wondered again at the power of globalization, or the coincidence of it all.
Group trip through Brijuni Islands National Park
Scattered ruins on the islands
Rovinj!
Olive oil booth at a market, Rovinj
More doors in the small cobblestone streets...
Moroccan-door blue?
Brijuni Islands in the distance
Inside the Rovinj cathedral
SIT
Medina-esque streets...
Sailing away from Rovinj
We were, as a whole, a very cohesive group. We saw each other every day, and smaller groups formed, but the people on this program were so amazing and different and unique, and I know we'll be in touch for a long time. Even through the summer we've been in communication. I couldn't believe this or foresee it, though, when in the beginning of the semester, a few kids had the idea to make an "SIT Prom" at the end of our time together. Well, when we got to Croatia it was the moment of truth, and we actually pulled it off-- superlatives, video montage, and all! These are the kinds of things that result from being with the same 30 people for 4 months, through super-highs and frightening lows of all kinds. Now that I've been home for a while, it is that constant presence of these people that I miss the most. This is probably because of the amount of concentrated time we spent together those last 2 weeks in Croatia. Meals when you could walk down to the buffet and sit with whoever was there and feel at ease, countless loungings-about on the beach at Mermaid Cove, the eventual bus trip from Pula to Zagreb... and of course, prom to celebrate all the fun we had with each other. We held it at the conveniently located bar in the hotel complex-- the owners, a few Croatian men, couldn't object, seeing as how we had given them a large pre-season boost in sales and traffic already.
It seemed impossible that we would have to separate-- truly impossible. We tried not to think about the end, instead staying up late on the hotel's terrace or playing kickball on the front lawn. But eventually the day came, and that morning I woke up to a text and an email saying that the US had killed Osama bin Laden. We all came down to breakfast talking about the implications, questioning with scared faces the implications of the photos we saw plastered across the online newspapers of ragingly happy American youth-- my peers-- in front of the White House, celebrating his death. It's funny how being abroad will change your perspective of so many things, and here we got a prime example. A bunch of us took the bus into Zagreb to catch early flights the next day, after tearful goodbyes and one last mooning from the jokester of the group. We reached our hostel after walking with all of our luggage instead of bothering with navigating any more public transportation in a foreign language. We settled in and then found some pizza across the street. Our small, amputated group discussed the semester, and I reflected on my year. Back in the hostel after stopping to get one last gelato, we were hanging around when all of a sudden two girls from the group just walked in with all of their luggage! We found that SIT goodbyes will really never end. We decided to prolong the night, and went across the street to a local pub, sitting outside reminiscing more. Eventually it was time to sleep, and then too soon time to wake up. We saw more friends at the airport-- those who had opted to sleep there for the night-- said more goodbyes, by this point less tearful, more "I'll see you soon". One plane for me, a layover in Paris and then Norway, and then.... I arrived in Logan Airport, instead of Rabat-Salé. This was a jolting, disorienting turn of events, in addition to just leaving Croatia and the group in and of itself.
SIT prom!
Kickball on the lawn of the Histria.
So this is the final end-- the end of what, though, is the question. I guess it's the end of a year I had planned for and looked forward to for more than a year prior. People ask you if you think you've changed, which is something that is just so hard to gauge. I know I'm not the same person I was before I went to Morocco, and the person I was before I went to Switzerland has been altered too. But how? Hard to pinpoint. I am more tolerant of some things, and less tolerant of others. I am more aware of the consequences of my actions, and the world seems smaller-- I experienced globalization firsthand, especially through my research following North African people and events in Switzerland. I am more appreciative of where I am, and I seek to understand what makes that place special. I still have the travel bug, especially to explore more of my own country. I am proud to be an American, but have had the opportunity to view my country through the eyes of others, and so my perspective has been widened and enriched. I've learned more that I could have imagined. I've met people who I love and will cherish forever-- I am so lucky to have met my friends and to have stayed with my host families. I learned from them, and in an exchange more powerful than language we learned from each other. I don't doubt that I'll return to these places-- that's the other thing. At one point in the near future, I believe I'll be back. Because nothing ever really ends, at least something like this, an adventure like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment