Dialogue of Civilizations

A lot more to our visit to Dubrovnik than these beautiful pictures ... I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

My Mother always spoke of this place and hoped to visit it some day ... I got to do that for her. It was a rainy day, and the St. James Church was packed with people, so I could only get this one picture. I did get to step away from the church and find the alcove off to the side, and lit candles for Mom, Kathi and Grandma. The students I spoke with afterwards - Catholics, Protestants, Muslim, others - were very happy to have seen this pilgrimage site. Medjugorje was on our way out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, heading to Croatia. We also stopped at a Serbian Monastery (photo below) and had intended to stop at a Muslim site as well (sadly, the latter was under renovation, so we had to miss that)

The famous old bridge, or Stari Most , was destroyed by Bosnian Croat forces (aka, bastards) in November 1993; it has been rebuilt thanks to the World Bank, UNESCO, and Agha Khan Foundation. It thus has reconnected the two halves of this beautiful city of Croats and Muslims, primarily. Mostar in general was largely destroyed in the war and while there is a lot of reconstruction, there remains a great many gutted buildings (mostly on the Eastern bank, the Muslim half of the city). We met with the Croatian Democratic Union today and found that the divisions remain between these two "confessions" - Catholic Croats and Muslim "Bosniaks" - at least from their perspective. Others work to promote the "unity" within the diversity (Muslim, Croat, Serb, "other") that existed under Tito; he remains a hero among many in Bosnia, especially Muslims and those from mixed families and non-religious backgrounds who found his "unity and brotherhood" w...

On Sunday , we rode nearly 4 hours by bus to Srebrenica , site of the July 1995 genocide against Bosnian Muslims and now a cemetery and memorial to the victims. After walking among the headstones and the graves of the 8,372-"plus" victims, one of our students, Ali, told me: "you cannot read about this. You can only experience it. You have to be here so you can 'feel it' yourself." We spent a long time at the cemetery and memorial, including the warehouse across the street from the cemetery. In that abandoned factory, a makeshift museum has been constructed. It consists of maps, pictures, and a timeline of the massacres that befell Bosnians (primarily Muslims) from 1992-95, especially July 1995. And it contains artifacts and personal effects of a large number of the victims. In these small memorials to individual victims, we can connect with each person: read something about their life, see their picture, and see a small personal item - pocket watch, wed...

10 pm Friday night. We've been on the road 12 hours, minus 3 hours or so of bathroom breaks, lunch, gas-fillup, but still ... 12 hours on the road. We are 20 Kilometers from Sarajevo and we pull into a gas station to make sure we're on the right road to Sarajevo. By chance, a policeman was at the station and said, "Yes, but you can't go any further. There's been a rock-slide on this road and no buses are allowed to pass." Once I got this translated from Serbian/Bosnian, I could only laugh at this point. And laugh I did - a bit too much I think. At this point, what else could I do but laugh at the one-two-three-four "punch" we've been getting on this particular journey. I immediately explained to the students what I was laughing about - and most of them joined me! As one told me, "better to laugh than to cry." And still, we had an easy "Plan B" - take the winding, less-traveled road that would take about an hour (instead...

“You can’t cross this boundary from here [the Kosovo “border”/Administrative boundary]. You’ll have to go to Montenegro and then enter Serbia from there.” Thus sayeth the Serbian policeman at the boundary/border, yesterday (Thursday) around 3:30 pm. The reason? We had a stamp on our passports that read “Republic of Kosovo”, which Serbia does not recognize as independent nation-state (nor do a small number of nation-states of the international community – Russia, Spain, Greece, and 6 other members of the EU). “Kosovo is Serbia.” What he was proposing was for us to “re-enter” Kosovo (1/4 th of a mile back from where we came); return to the town of Mitroveca (where we just left 90 minutes ago); cut over to the West, and enter Montenegro (another 90 minutes-2 hours); then drive to the Montenegro-Serbia border (another hour); then drive until we catch up with the road we could have been on – only one hour from the point on the map where we were standing that ver...

January 1956, Cairo: Tito and Nasser at a party hosted by Yugoslavia's Ambassador to Egypt "Communist Chic" - what the best-dressed Comrade was wearing, according to the exhibit at the Yugoslavia Museum Tito and Jovanka (Tito's putting on his gloves; Jovanka, wife of Tito, is gorgeous as usual) Balkans group in front of Museum entrance Students at Tito's headstone