As mentioned below, we will be travelling next week, and I’d love to share in this format some observations from the trip. This likely means that I will be posting more and therefore sending more emails for those who subscribe. Just a fair warning in case you want to update your spam filter to include “emails from that guy whose newsletter I can’t quite figure out”. In any case, I hope that doesn’t cause you to want to unsubscribe - I get enough of those just in the normal course of things! Thanks as always for reading.
A week from today, my wife and I head on our first ever trip to Europe together.
That’s not counting that one time on our way to the middle east when we went through Paris, aka home of the most confounding airport in the galaxy. The French are certainty lovely people, but every time we found ourselves at a loss for how to navigate the maze of seemingly unconnected hallways and roped-off areas and construction tarps, we would ask for help from whatever employee we could find who would then inevitably, while not in a rude way, act surprised that we were there, as if we had entered their living room to ask where we could find Terminal 3. “Trois. Trois!” In retrospect, maybe we were not talking to actual airport employees - the French are known for their cutting edge fashion.
Anyway, as can happen herein, I digress (and have no simile’s left to explain how badly).
Our final destination is a place called Korcula, an island in the nation of Croatia. For a child of the 80’s and 90’s, I have always associated Croatia with the civic unrest of the region, of wars for independence and ethnic identity struggles. Just the mention of the name summons that ubiquitous 90’s news anchor voice, which is probably an amalgam of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Geraldo Rivera, rather than a real person, saying something like “Good evening. Tensions are escalating in the Balkans tonight as the Republic of Croatia has officially declared its independence from Yugoslavia. . . stay tuned for a very special episode of Major Dad.”
To be fair, and perhaps to solidify my point, I had to look up that part about Yugoslavia. I had no recollection of who exactly the Croats (as their friends call them) were fighting; I best knew Yugoslavia as the originator of the Yugo automobile, which every kid from the 80’s knew because it was the punchline to many of “Yo Mama” jokes due to its low quality. As a 47 year old man, I look at the Yugo now and think, “Looks like it gets great gas mileage!”
In any case, I was surprised to learn that Croatia is actually a fairly popular destination for Westerners and Europeans alike. Everyone I have mentioned it to in the states has said something like, “Oh, nice. It’s beautiful there”. Many of my European colleagues, particularly those living in Germany, have been several times and are going again this summer.
Of course, my European friends, ever the active bunch, will be doing things like biking, running, kayaking, sailing, island hopping, and probably jumping from helicopters into ancient ruins. I on the other hand am going with a loaded Kindle and a reliable hat. If things get crazy, we may walk to find a local fruit brandy-like drink called Rakija, and/or peruse some historical sites.
Sometimes travel to unknown-to-you places can be exciting, challenging your identity and waking you up to a broader world, both external AND internal. Maybe I’ll encounter the Croatia I thought I knew as a kid, if even just in passing, experiencing new layers lain upon an old set of uninformed perceptions. Maybe history will, as can apparently be the case, “come alive” and ignite a passion for the region. Maybe I’ll meet people who will similarly make my world larger, reminding me that I am a part of this global network of souls that God has made, and that I cannot live as if that were not true.
Or maybe we’ll find the Rakija early and I’ll sleep on and off to the sounds of the Adriatic sea, perpetually on page 2 of my new book.
We’ll see.
First stop? Rome.
