Onward to the great beyond

Dubrovnik, Croatia, avtobusni kolodva, main bus station:

Dunes flew home this morning with his four legs of flights. I am waiting for my bus to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, which departs in about 45 minutes. I am trying to get to Sofia, but there are no convenient flights, buses, or trains! By road, the distance is not too great but it takes you through some places with countries not yet completely reconciled to each other after the last war.

Yesterday, Dunes and I had a very plesant lunch with Elsie Ivancic Dunin, a dance researcher who taught at UCLA long before I was born and who has since retired and moved to Veliki Zaton, a small town just north of Dubrovnik city. She even danced with Tanec when she was young! We had some very interesting conversations about her research with the Roma of Skopje, Macedonia. She spoke about the changes in the Shutka community there as reflected in the St. Georges day celebrations in May. One change came with the more conservative missionaries in the decade prior to the war in Kosovo. After that war their was a large influx of Albanian muslims and since then, there has been a significant conversion to islam. The connection to dance is that in Islam, the dances cannot be public and so the St. Georges day celebrations have shrunk and only some families now participate.

She also is researching the linked sword dances of Korcula, Croatia. Since it is a type of dance found no where else in Croatia or nearby she has linked it to outside introduction via English and Dutch hired mercinaries in the 16th? century who were stationed on the island for long periods of time. It is also interesting that only men from each specific town can dance this dance. Even men from another town just nearby cannot join in another villages dance, still to this day!

What else? The sailing portion of our trip ended very well. We were all happy to find showers again since only one of the ports along the way had facilities. Dunes really enjoyed himself and is ready to go again :) I admit to being happy to put my feet on solid ground again. Actually the last two days were quite pleasant. We really had only one rough day that made me seasick. Overall, it was really neat to be introduced to a town via the port and we saw a lot of fishing boats being used. We even saw some spear (trident?) fishing at night. The fisherman used a flashlight. Our lead crew was fantastic and I wish we had had more time to just talk with them. We enjoyed making dinner and eating with some of Dunes coworkers on the last night and then joined the rest of the crew and flotilla for a final dinner gathering before we all parted ways.

Ok, off to catch my bus!