Three conversations in Dubrovnik

After finding the room in Dubrovnik, we decided to go directly to the city. We walked around in the old, white center and see all the touristic places. This is such a difference with the things we were doing the other days. Here we aren’t the only visitors, so it’s much harder to get to know the people that live in the city. But we managed.

Walking toward the old city wall, we passed three men sitting, having a beer. Behind them were some ruines that looked interesting to me, so we go there. After seeing the oldest part of the city, one of the men told us later, we continued our walk to the walls. But when arriving we found out that we had to pay too much money to walk them… so we went back the same way. The three man where still siting there, togheter with a young kid.

“Good beer”, I ask. He smiles to me and ask where we are coming from. After two more questions he offers me his beer. I thank him and tell him that he may finish himself. So he does, get’s 20 kuna out of his pocket and tells his friend to get five beers. A few minutes later we are sitting on a small wall, having a beer and talking about football, the weather, Croatian women and fiki fiki.

After the beer we continue our way, we haven’t seen that much of the city yet. We make some touristic pictures, talk with a strange American couple that finds it interesting that I made a picture of some ‘dirty laundry’ (I still don’t understand why she said dirty, who would hang that?). And the lady concludes that Paolo looks more like an Israelian than an Italian.

We pass a small square, where two men are sitting in the shadows of the buildings. We enter thru a small doorway up a stair. We greet the man and I ask if I can make a picture. No he knocks and I accept this. We start a conversation in German about the city, all the tourists and that they all want to make pictures of him. Afterall, he is photogenic. After some minutes he starts complaining about the pension he get’s from the goverment after working all his life. I feel sorry for him.

Enough talking, now we have to see some of the city. We do, but after a few hours we have seen it all and decide to go to the beach. But the beach adventure ends within 30 minutes after arriving. The sky get’s dark blue, thunder in the background. The bad weather is slowly coming our way. “Let’s go”, I suggest to Paolo. He agrees and we try to find our way to the apartment.

Big rain drops are falling down the sky. We start to walk faster, but more rain is coming. After two minutes it’s raining cats and dogs, and we find a place to hide: a garage of a house. We sit down and watch the rain changing into hail. After ten minutes sitting a door opens. A woman in the sixties is looking surprised to us. We can come in.

No English, no German, no Italian, no Romanian, no France, no Dutch, just Croatian. We sit in a four by three meters room. The walls are white and empty. In the corner there is some table with pictures on it. The only thing the old woman can tell us that the young girl in the picture is her granddaughter. After one sigaret the shower is over and we continue our way back home.