d a t e l i n e


"This is Greater Serbia," yet they didn't take the city.
On returning to the region in March I visited the
Dubrovnik I had heard but never seen.
  As I drove along the Dalmatian coast past gnarled
olive trees and black-robed peasant women tending their
gardens, the city suddenly appeared in all its solidness,
fortress walls squatting at the foot of steep cliffs, the
Adriatic Sea sparkling below. Dubrovnik has weath-
ered time and war for so long


that historians remain igno-
rant of its origins. They be-
lieve it may have grown out of
the Greco-Roman city of Epi-
daurus, first mentioned in 47
B.C., and legends place a set-
tlement here a thousand years
earlier.
  Today the city's quiet con-
fidence has been shaken by
the reality of modern war-
fare. "Even Napoleon, whose
army blew off the nose of
the Sphinx, did not touch
Dubrovnik," said Milo, a big,
mustachioed Croatian and an
unemployed tour guide. "The
Saracens, Ottomans, Austri-
ans . . . none of them harmed
our city. But the Serbs, our
neighbors, tried to destroy us,
and we won't forget." He was
drunkenly attacking the Serbs
when I entered the Troubador
Caf~~, housed in a crowded bar
in a 14th-century stone build-
ing just off Placa, Dubrovnik's
main boulevard.


  You hear a lot about revenge in Croa-
tia-~people want to get even, and they
want their land back. (The Serbs now con-
trol a third of Croatia, a slender shard of a
state with Dubrovnik near its southern
tip.) This doesn't augur well for peace or
for the return of tourists, which Dubrovnik


needs. Tourism accounted for 80 percent of the city's
prewar economy.
  Vinko Milutinovitch turned his battered face from
the wheel of his beat-up Volvo taxi and said, "There
were one hundred and twenty taxis in Dubrovnik. Now
there are only seven, and business is still lousy. You're
the first tourist I've driven in two years." Like 70 percent
of Dubrovnik's inhabitants, he depends on Red Cross
food parcels to survive. Once a month, any person in


need receives flour, sugar, margarine, oil, cans of beef,
mackerel oil and, sometimes, clothing.
  One question I asked every official I met was, "If you
were an American, would you bring your family here
on vacation?" Most answered, "No, not yet." It's just a
matter of time though. The city is rebuilding rapidly,
repairing red-tiled roofs, clearing debris. As of last
March, only one hotel was open, the classic Argentina,


but several thousand beds
have become available in
other hotels and private
homes. A few travel compa-
nies are returning: Austin,
Texas-~based Sterling Cruises
and Tours scheduled several
Dalmatian coast trips with
stops in Dubrovnik for the fall.
  During a walk I saw trucks
delivering 250,000 roof tiles
from France; Caritas, the
Catholic charity, transporting
cement to fix a church; a Bel-
gian company unloading Se-
curit unbreakable glass. As a
way of shaking a fist at the
Serbs, the city historian Pro-
fessor Ivo Dabeli~~ was putting
the last touches on a tempo-
rary exhibition of shells, rock-
ets, grenades and bombs
hurled at Dubrovnik by Serb
gunners and warplanes. It took
him 10 days to turn the fa-
mous Nautika restaurant into
a war museum. On the terrace,
with its splendid view over the


city's western walls and the Adriatic, he'd
placed a collection of phosphorous shells
and cluster bombs ("two hundred and
forty-seven bomblets inside").
  Are there still risks? One official said
several grenades are hurled into the
Dubrovnik region every few days. So far
they've exploded harmlessly in fields, but


those responsible for security take seriously a threat by
General Ratko Mladi~~, commander of all Serb forces
in Bosnia, who said he'd "make sure Dubrovnik has a
nice tourist season." His nearest army base is only 15
miles away in Trebinje, capital of the self-styled South
Herzegovina Serb Republic. Serb fighters there are re-
inforced by Russian mercenaries, according to Croa-
tian officers, as well as the notorious White Eagles,
fanatic Serb gunmen accused of raping, torturing and


THE TERRA-COTTA
ROOFS OF
DUBROVNIK,
DAMAGED DURING
THE SHELLING,
ARE MOSTLY
RESTORED NOW.


54 ~ T R A V E L & L E I S U R E  S E P T E M B E R  1 9 9 3
