Spaces in Between: Picking up the Pieces of Hope, Sorrow and Orthodoxy

O how all things are far removed from one another

and long have passed away.

I do believe the star,

whose light my face reflects,

is dead and has been so

for many thousand years.  

--Rainer Maria Rilke

The incense stung my eyes as I walked for the first time into the Preobraženjska crkva, the main Orthodox cathedral in the capitol city of Zagreb, Croatia. The only country in the Balkans with an overwhelmingly Catholic populace, I had assumed I was just walking into another Catholic church to snap some pictures and leave. But as soon as the incense hit my nose, the icons hit my eyes and the silence hit my ears, I knew this was Orthodox. It was the first time I'd been in an Orthodox church in months. But this church felt somehow different.

After making my way around all the icons, I finally realized why: it was all that gold. And, as may not be clear from pictures, we're not talking golden-rod paint here. We're talking solid, gold plating--the kind that gleams and glimmers in the least bit of light. And it was everywhere.

...All that gold.

It's not like I'd never seen a lot of gold before. 

For people who aren't acquainted with religious icons, or art history in general, it may come as a suprise to learn that images and artwork have a language of symbols that is just as rich and communicative as words in a poem may be. And in the language of icons, gold surfaces tell the viewer that the person in the image is bound up not in the time and space of this world but that of the divine world. In many pictures of saints, or Jesus and other biblical figures, there is often no background--say, that of a landscape or architecture like one would find in famous secular paintings like the Mona Lisa. To paint that kind of background would necessitate depicting some kind of depth or perception--dimensions of this life. Instead, Jesus and the saints typically "stand out against a plain gold-leaf background, with neither decoration nor background scenery. Viewed in such a way outside of either time or space, they command our attention by their spiritual presence" (http://nazarethstudio.com/index.php?icons/i_symbol). They stare out at us from a heavenly place, subsumed in God's endless light in a place where there is no night--or, apprently, time as we know it.

In short, icons call out to us from eternity, penetrating into our world of time and space to remind us of the eternal which lay beyond.

So I'd seen single saints and icons surrounded by gold before, but this... This was somehow different. Why did all this gold leave me filled with both grief and a quiet, inner joy?

Sets of doors leading out the side of the nave into the various receiving rooms of the metropolis next door. Note the depth and perception--the spatial dimensions of this world.

As in most of Europe, Christianity in Croatia--particularly Orthodox Christianity--is not without its pitfalls and scars.  As far as Christianity in general, we shall save the term "Post-Christian" for the cultural philsophers. So too shall we save the definition-izng of what Christianity even is and whether it is even possible or laudable for a country, culture or society to be a "Christian" one. My mere experience, however, is that there is a lostness in European culture I don't sense anywhere else. It is a lostness, and a latent hopelessness--as though something, or many things, have been unhinged. It calls to mind the 1882 words of Nietzsche's Madman:  

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?

Since those words were written, Europe has become a continent that scourged by countless revolutions, two world wars and the political attrocities that caused them, and Cold War of communism and its aftershocks. Whether by their own doing or not, the 20th century has traumatized Europe in a way that the US hasn't been. Something in Europe has been broken that, in the US, still remains somewhat intact, and I don't really know what it is. And I am not the only one who feels this. A French friend once summed it up by saying, "You [Americans] still know who you are. We [French Europeans] forgot who we are a long time ago." And I wondered if what she meant was that in America, it is still a little easier to remember that people are icons of God, that they have dignity because God has dignity. Because in the same conversation, she also said that she admires people of faith and wishes she could be one. "I am the most devout atheist I know," she laughed, "Because I want God and I want to know Him, and I want to believe He exists. But, I can't, you know..." She made a gesture as though gazing at all her surroundings. It is what I call her "historical gesture," by which I understood her to be pointing out every single war fought, past or present. The French friend is a military historian who spends her day wading through the blood of past wars, and waiting for history to repeat itself as it all too often does.

So what do you make of the churches that still exist in Europe? I don't pretend to know all the theory and answers. What I do know is the Orthodox side of things, the experiences I've had for over a year and a half. The nameless churches with little to no address, that are impossible to find even with GPS. The insular, cultural cliques who refuse to even converse with a non-member of their culture. This is the legacy of communism--people have forgotten what church really is, and remember only something that vaguely resembles a secret society.  I've shared my perceptions now with several people who know Europe even better than I do, and one is a missionary in Eastern Europe, only to find that yes, this is really the way it is. Yes, Orthodox has some brokenness. Yes, it's very sad. People who are missionaries in Europe tell me that Europe needs churches more than third world countries do, and they need missionaries who will not just talk to them about the Bible and Jesus, but about existence. About how to live and not kill yourself in despair. About hope.

The Holy Trinity. Chilling in heaven.

The day I stepped inside the Cathedral was the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ--coincidental since the church was named "Transfiguration."

Even still, between all the language barriers--English --> Croatian --> Serbian-- it took me a few tries to figure out when the next liturgy was. I finally resorted to writing a letter in Croatian via google translate in my travel notebook and showing it to a lady that was managing the library/book store. "Hello," I wrote, introducing myself by name. I explained I was from the US/ Germany and wanted to attend liturgy. In an Orthodox church, it is common practice to introduce yourself before taking communion. People want to know you are Orthodox Christian and taking the Eucharist seriously. She was overjoyed and called over two more people to help draft a letter back to me. When I got home, I translated her letter back into English:

"Dear Nicole--we have services at 5PM on Saturdays and 9AM on Sundays, please feel welcome! And yes, of course, you are welcome to take communion! Thank you so much for yur letter and God's blessings to you!!!"

I wondered if, finally, I was going to be able to attend a service that was welcoming rather than exclusionary, warm rather than secretive, and reflective of the love Christians are to have for God and their neighbors.

 

Standing in the pew-less church the following Sunday, my expectations once again were obliterated by the reality of Orthodoxy in Europe.  The friendly bookstore lady was nowhere to be found and when it came time for communion, no more than four of the hundred or so parishioners partook. Before doing so, they all had some kind of thirty second pow wow with one of the 4-5 priests. The chalice itself was only out for a few seconds--not even enough time for me to walk briskly up to the front of the church before it was taken away again. It all happened so fast--like a conveyor belt or something. I wanted to scream at someone. I wanted to tell someone how important it was for Christians to be united in Christ, in communion. That's the one thing we have that we were commanded to do by Christ, it is the staple of our lives. But no one understood English or German or even the little bit of Russian slavonic I'd picked up in the last 2 years. 

So I didn't scream, I just stared up. And up. At all that gold. And wondered what it's all there for.

And I wondered what all that gold was there for. It was not like in other single icons, where the gold just stays in the background and the icon itself is framed in wood. In this cathedral, the gold was everywhere--behind and in between every icon. Was it supposed to harmonize all the biblical events and people and saints from the ages depicted in the icons? That is, was the gold making the Church one unifed tapestry joined into eternity together? Or was it isolating everything--was each icon just an island unto itself?

I realized the gold was doing both, and that to be a real member of Christ's Church, one has to see both--one had to see the harmonizing potential but isolating realities of eternity. One has to see the wholeness of life when it is joined to Christ in eternity, but one also has to see and bear witness to the scars of sin, history, attrocities--all of which break up, fragment and isolate us from one another and from the eternal. 

 

Now that I've been back to the Western Hemisphere, I find myself thinking back on that Zagreb Cathedral fairly often. I am thinking not of how angry I was at that parish's attitude toward communion, but rather of all that gold.  Here I am, transitioning back into life on this side of the ocean, transitioning into writing a dissertation, into living in a new city surrounded by new people, new things and, essentially, a new life. I find myself sewing one more tattered rag onto the "places I call home" patchwork quilt. I find myself wondering about the verse that Christ talks about putting new wine inot old wineskins, and I wonder what it means to be sewing a new patch onto an old garment. I find myself wondering if all of the places and people in my life are a harmonious whole or just separated islands on the verge of dissolution. I find myself praying that even if I must see and experience both brokenness and wholeness, that the wholeness one day will win out. I find myself back in North American culture, my feet firmly on the ground, wondering if my European experience was a dream. 

I find myself wondering if those haunting gold-plated spaces in between the icons at the Zagreb Cathedral were real, or if they are just an optical illusion my camera happened to pick up.

Well, either way, someday they will be.

 

The Split Survival Guide

One of my main reasons for visiting Croatia was to see the Dalmatian Coast, i.e. the southern part of Croatia, a thin strip of mainland and more than one thousand islands that sprinkle the Adriatic Sea (not unlike the spots of a dalmatian dog, which were first bred here). Even though Croatia's coastline is more than 500 miles long, Dalmatia is no wider than 30 miles and sometimes as narrow as a mile or two--which basically means that, when it came to getting ports, every other eastern Balkan state got shafted after Yugoslavia fell in the early 1990's.

  
Originally, I had really wanted to visit the southern-most city in Croatia, named Dubrovnik. There are no train rails, however, that go that far south--and the bus coverage is too spotty to be able to plan ahead. Before seeing Croatia, I assumed the lack of transportational infrastructure that far south had to be because of its status as an emerging developing economy. That was before I saw the coast for myself, which basically consists of steep, sheer rock mountains. I wouldn't want to build a train track through that, either.

Note: that tiny thread-like object in the center of the picture is not a snake. It's the road.

So, I finally settled on visiting Split (on the mainland) and Bol (on the island of Brac, a 1.5 hour's ferry ride from the coast). My first impressions getting off the train in split were: a.) HOT; and b.) BRIGHT. And that was at 7AM. It's a good thing I did not know in advance that temps in this part of Europe linger for most of the day (and evening) right around 40 degrees Celsius (that's 104 for my Fahrenheit folks)--and let's not even get into the humidity measurements. The hotness and brightness were multiplied in Split due to their fondness for paving absolutely everything in polished, white marble: roads, sidewalks, buildings, parks, household pets... It all goes back to Emperor Diocletian, who in the third century made Split the site of his retirement palace. I'm guessing he had a really could 401K, because the palace was absolutely huge--so huge that much of Split lays within the boundaries of its ruins. When you walk around, you have all these layers of architecture--from 3rd century stone arches with rogue grasses growing through the cracks in the mortar, to modern low-level sky scrapers and mysterious little alleys and promenades and churches, and all with a generous helping of cafes sprinkled everywhere.

 Other than the millennia old late-Roman imperial palace, Split is pretty much your average harbor town. The key is not to let the garish sunlight, stifling heat, pore-suffocating humidity, or overwhelming stench of boats and seawater get to you. You have to come up with a survival plan. Mine was

I found Figa at about 10:30 AM, purely by accident, wandering in from some narrow, arched alleyway or other during my disorienting hike through the city. I felt a magnet pulling me in through the shadowy, open doorway--the Croatians are like flies, attracted to light in everyway. Their cafes, restaurants, shops and everything else is done in no less than direct sunlight at all times. So when you find the rare instance of an indoor restaurant--one that is practically carved into what seemed to me 600 or 700 year old, roughly hewn brick--you linger. And linger. Over coffee. Over breakfast--a crepe stuffed with rucola and freshly cooked salmon. Over another coffee. And maybe some water after that. And then maybe you ask the waiter if you can charge all your portable electronic appliances. And then maybe he is generous enough to spend 10 minutes searching his office for a plug adaptor for you, all the while teasing you that you are just like his girlfriend--you carry around that big, heavy purse that has everything in it but the things you really need. Yes, you explain, but you have two varieties of wet wipes. And vitamins. Surely those are necessities, too. And you just keep lingering, because you don't want to go back out into the heat. But, at some point, the lingering must end. And you must find another way to survive the humid, fish-smell-soaked heat.

 Water come to mind.

 

This is the closest thing to a watering hole I've ever seen. The people of Split flock to this synthetic waterfall in the middle of the city square and unshamedly dunk their hands, feet, faces and children into the water--which is clean enough to fill up one's water bottle with.

  

Yes I photo-stalked this little girl. She was standing by that fountain for ages and did everything I felt like doing--just lounging by water and practicing some form of ancient aqua-boredom calisthentic thing. Cute!

After locating water--which is easier said than done in a HARBOR TOWN SURROUNDED BY THE SEA for heaven's sake--I felt I had more energy to explore the things that Split is famous for: one of the biggest and oldest fruit/vegetable market in Europe, for example, or discover even more architectural wonders. I managed to survive--and get to experience walking a piece in the life of another place and culture, something that I consider to be invaluable no matter what the cost (or degrees celsius). By the time I caught my ferry to Bol/ Brac, I had started to get a glimpse of the beauty and "different-ness" I'd heard about in regards to Dalmatia. I hope you can agree!

Setting the table in a 1,700-year-old dining room?

 At first I thought the boy was just trying to show off for the gaggle of cute girls standing 'round the fountain.

 To my horror and surprise, he and his dad and his little sister put the fish in a plastic shopping bag filled with water and took it home... to eat?

 One of Empreror Diocletian's windows.... Overlooking the harbor.

 This is with the white balance and brightness settings on The Fiancee's camera turned way down low! Needless to say, it is not easy to take good pictures in Split! Too much darn light!

By the time it was time to take the ferry to Bol, I was interested to see what lay next on my journey.

A Journey (and i mean journey) to Croatia!

Nursing a thimble-sized cappuccino, I am huddled over my journal under one of the very few instances of shade in existence at 11AM on the Croatian island of Brac. Lush but fruitless grape vines have ambled up the rustic, stone wall next to me. Just beyond them glistens the Adriatic sea several boats have saddled up to the shore, simultaneously unloading wares from the mainland and haggling passersby to accept a boat tour or excursion. And, in the midst of it all, I find myself smoking a cigarette, or rather the equivalent thereof, thanks to the two stocky old men sitting just upwind of my table, deep in conversation about what appears to be a business contract they have spread on the table between them. They have smoked at least three or four since I sat down here a half hour ago for a sumptuous broccoli omelet. Ordinarily, I would have requested another table long ago, or taken the opportunity to put The Look to good practice. But in this part of the world, which (surprisingly even more than Germany) seems to be unaware of the Surgeon General, one would be walking around all day to find a refuge from cigarette smoke, possibly up one of the gray-stoned, brush strewn mountain sides—and by then you'd have the garish, Adriatic sun to deal with. It took me this long to find some decent shade around here. So I will stay—at least until the sun chases me from this tiny haven of shade, too.

WHY CROATIA?

I have “always wanted to go to” Croatia. I don't say this very loudly, because there are many places I have always wanted to visit. Due to current geopolitical situations, countries closer to the top of my list (right now it would be nearly impossible to even get a travel visa to Turkey, Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, for example; and, for some reason, Greece recently suspended international rail services which makes it difficult to get in and out by train; Israel will never be without risk, but I'd at least like to take that risk with The Fiance... And then there's Russia, but two weeks is unfortunately too short a duration to complete the transiberian railroad...) So, next on the list were the Balkans, and more specifically Croatia.

It's hard to say when and why exactly Croatia even came to be on the Places I Want to See Before I Die list. Perhaps it was all those hot summer days as a teenager oscillating, with my youngest brother in tow, between swimming laps at the old YMCA and lazing around the air-conditioned Oshkosh Public Library just one street over from the Y. It was then that I would feed my penchant for languages by perusing the generous foreign language holdings at the library that consisted of countless cd-sets and phrase books in every language I could imagine, all the way from Albanian to... Zimbabwish. (That is not actually a language, but I couldn't think of anything else that ended in “Z”--but if there were such a language, the Oshkosh Public Library would probably have a phrase book of it.) For whatever reasons, the books on Croatia are still the most memorable to me. In particular, there was a brand new cd-set packed with a delicious glossy box-cover of a gleaming blue sea and mountainous coastline dotted with tiny villages. If I actually committed any Croatian to memory, I don't remember any of it now. I do, though, remember listenin to the cd's—not to remember the language, but to comfort myself that other people existed, other languages and cultures. Sort of like the flagging of faith listen to beautiful music or the melodic silence of peaceful places in order to remind themselves of the presence of God in a noisy, distracting world. I listened to the cd's, too, to connect the dots of the world, to compare Croatian to the cultures I already knew. To do this, I had to determine how it was both like and unlike other cultures I already knew about. The language, for example, was slavic—like Russian—but unlike Russian they do not use the Cyrillic alphabet (sort of like the Polish, I figured). Unlike Russia or Poland, though, the Croatians have a highly maritime culture, thanks to the obscenely long coastline they got after Yugoslavia broke up (look on a map, it's absolutely ridiculous. Poor Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Albania). Like Italy, their heritage is predominatley Catholic with very little influences of Protestantism (or Orthodoxy, as I now know, despite the fact that all its Balkan neighbors are predominately Orthodox). And like so many other places in the Balkans, the Croatians have been threatened over the centuries by marauding Turks, Italians, and other colonial powers. Yet unlike the rest of their other Balkan neighbors, Croatia seen less internal civil division.

That is what the glossy cd-set taught me. My knowledge of this part of the world has expanded somewhat over the years, through my BA in interntional studies as well as preparing for this trip. But as I sit here, sipping my tiny little cappuccino and gazing out from underneath a giant restaurant umbrella and whithering pine tree over the rippling little waves of the sea, for a moment I wonder if I am really here, or if I am simply back in my fifteen-year-old self, gazing at an obscure box cover in the cozy old public library. And then the moment ends, when I realize I must be n Croatia—the Oshkosh library, after all, used their air conditioning liberally. Even if it was ten or fifteen degrees fahrenheit cooler than it is in Croatia.

A CHANGE OF PLANS. As is usually the case, living out a childhood dream does not often come to pass without any number of struggles and trials along the way. What should have been a 13-hr train journey here turned into a three day debacle that began with a surprise downpour at 5 AM, only a 10 minutes after leaving my apartment to get to the Wolfenbuettel train station. Apparently, the cheap duffle bag I'd bought for the journey is made of biodegradable material, as I deduced when the whole thing appeared to dissolve and fall apart three minutes after it started raining. In total, the otherwise pleasant train trip to the Adriatic coast ended up consisting of missing one train, getting on the wrong train and realizing it three hours later when we arrived in Ulm instead of Munich.

MUNICH.

Due to my disembowled luggage, missing a train, and getting on the wrong train, when I finally made it to Munich, the German rail company totally rerouteded my traveling itinerary to get me on my way to Croatia. What should have been a 13-hr, pleasant train trip all the way from Wolfenbuettel through eastern Europe and over the Croatian border turned into a 3 day journey laced togetehr by two overnight trips (#1 from Munich → Zagreb and #2 from Zagreb → Split, Croatia). In between these train trips, I got to work off my over-exhaustion by exploring Munich, Zagreb (Croatia) and Split (Croatia).

Munich, I discovered, is the dirtiest, most touristy and overpopulated city in Germany. Having come from tiny old Wolfenbuettel, I felt like there were people and noises EVERYWHERE, and green space NOWHERE. I spent most of the day walking down side streets and wandering in and out of the many churches and Cathedrals there. I also found a new duffel bag (this time with wheels!) for 20 Euro in Munich, whose streets were lined with import stores, mostly owned by Muslims of various nationalities. I especially like the Turks, they can be a lot of fun. In the end, my Euro ended up going to a particularly peristant and burly Turkish man, who boasted about the biggest handlebar mustache I'd ever seen before.

I nee

“I am on my way to Croatia, and my first duffle bag has already fallen apart,” I told him sourly. “Will this one fall apart, too?”

“No, no!” He waved his hands passionately. “No, not dees bag. Dees bag very goo—ood! Llast forever!”

“Then why is it only twenty Euro?” I asked him.

“Because I no cheat my customers. I geeve you lifetime warranty. You no like bag, you come back and I geeve you new.”

“But I can't come back, that's why I said—I'm going to Croatia,” I pretended to be angry. He seemed to think about that for a while, then smiled.

“Ah,” he smiled, his white-handle bar mustache brimming with pride. “Then, you keep. Have nice trip.”

St. Paul's Catholic Church with Subway, Munich

MUNICH → ZAGREB, CROATIA. After a long, hot day of haggling with Turks and finding side streets to rest from the crazy tourists of Munich, I was looking forward to what I'd hoped would be a restful night en route—I almost always sleep well on trains, with that luring rhythm of rail on rail. Alas, God must have had other plans, that evidently had something to do with strengthening my moral character, because I was granted the extreme pleasure sharing a six-person cabin with seven other people, including a screaming, old Croatian woman who kept trying to speak broken Italian with everyone at the top of her lungs. When this strategy of making friends failed, she moved to another: waking us all up at 3AM in order to disseminate a shopping bag full of dubiously half-melted German chocolates.

My first day setting food on Croatian soil was not only the first day of a fast in our Orthodox calendar, it was also the one month anniversary of Croatia joining the EU on 01 July 2013. As I pulled my bag off the train, I was greeted by the friendly light of the sun and the dirtiest train platform I'd ever seen—a juxtaposition the intrigued me. Juxtapositions just followed me, for as I entered the station, I found walls plastered in graffiti, and in the center of the main hall an immense bazaar of used Croatian books.

The first goal was to exchange my Euro for Croat Kunae. I found a desk the station with a picture of Euro, Dollar and Kuna signs and had something in Croatian that looked like a currency exchange. But when I got to the front of the line, the woman explained they no longer—she pointed through the large windows outside the train station, to a green park across the street.

“There. Shopping center,” she explained. “They change your money there now, in shopping center. Not here.”

After locking my luggage in a locker, I brought my Euros and a change of clothes with me. I walked around the park for over a half hour, looking at several vendors selling berries and about three kiosks selling newspapers. Unless the Croatian kuna were code word for wild blackberries, none of them looked like they were equipped to change Euros. I needed a coffee and a piece of breakfast bread, I couldn't think straight. Back in the trainstation bakery, I explained my predicament to the clerk as she made me a cappuccino with plenty of froth. She smiled, and handed me my coffee.

“Yes, across street. In shopping center,” She said.

“You mean, in the kiosks? All I see are newspapers and berries. And a park,” I explained, grasping the coffee with true gratitude in my heart. The lady chuckled. She thought of how to explain something in English.

“No, you no understand,” she gestured with her hands towards the floor. Had she dropped my bread? “The shopping center... On the floor! No, under the floor.”

I looked at the floor.

“Oh, underground!” I said. She nodded, as though all shopping centers were underground. “Go, walk around park. You find the way there. It is under park. You see. VERY big.”

Well, I walked around the park for nearly an hour, not quite sure what I was looking for. A sign of some sort would have been a logical guess, but none of the signs seemed to say anything about a shopping center. I wondered if it would be something like an intergalactic portal, because I didn't really know what those looked like, and I probably would miss it even if it slapped me on the face. I asked two people I heard speaking English, but they were looking for the same thing. I asked a beggar on a bench, but he didn't know English. Finally, I stumbled upon a set of stairs—no sign, no markation of any kind, nothing in its appearance that would suggest that beneath these stairs lay one of the biggest and most modern shopping experiences I ever expected to find underneath a picturesque, baroque park.

When I finally located the exchange booth, I experienced an even greater miracle than finding the shopping mall: my Euro were exchanged at a rate even more favorable than the one online, for no fee. I loved Croatia already.

The second over night train found me in a cabin with a much more pleasant crowd; directly across from me in the cabin sat a woman who was probably about my age but who had a wise look about her eyes that made her seem older, and though she never spoke to anyone, everytime I startled in my sleep, I could see her face in the moonlit cabin, smiling at me with a comforting and motherly look that made me fall back asleep. Next to me was an old, tanned skin Italian? man who had brought his young grandson on a trip. At the beginning of the journey, he blew up a tiny inflatable pillow and made a bed for the grandson out of both their seats. Tucking the boy in for the night, he chirped a little song in a melodic Italian dialect, said some prayers, and crossed his grandson with his own hands just as the boy's eyes were drifting shut into sleep. He then stood the entire journey, pacing in front of the open window in the hallway, and every five or ten minutes sat on the edge of the boy's “bed,” and just stared at him lovingly while he slept.

Had it not been for a highly expressive and disgruntled poodle in the cabin next to ours, and the even equally expressive and disgruntled Croatians of various other cabins (who felt the need to bellow obscenities at aforementioned poodle periodically throughout the night), and the even MORE disgruntled train security guard (who, by the ominous force of his own loud voice, frequently attempted to stifle the breakout of civil war between aforementioned Croatians and aforementioned poodle), this second overnight train ride would have probably engulfed me with the simplicity of human love and care that can be observed in simple strangers. In a lot of ways, I witnessed the best and the worst ends of the human-compassion spectrum. I decided I hated overnight trains, but that I wouldn't stop taking them, because where else can you witness all of this weird loveliness.

And, finally, yesterday, I got to the city of Split—on the coast of the Adriatic sea. All that was left was an evening ferry ride to the island of Braç, where I'd be staying. For now, though, I had the whole day to explore the ruins of Diocletian's palace, built in the 4^th century, and boil alive in the positively indescribable Croatian heat. Speaking of heat, it is really picking up here. The burly Croatian men have long taken their business dealings and cigarettes elsewhere, my cappuccino has long been sipped to emptiness, and I haven't even gone swimming in the sea yet. So, goodbye for now!