departure depression

Well, Cathy and I are now counting off the days... "today is our last Monday here..." It's hard to believe we've been here a whole month and fly home in a matter of days. As much as I have missed, and will love seeing, my family and friends, being someplace familiar, having my Dunkin Donuts coffee, Dubrovnik has also become familiar to me. Saturday Cathy was not feeling well, so I made a solo trek to the grocery store, an hour's walk from our apartment. Despite my frustration in not being able to find peanut butter (but knowing enough to ask for kiki riki namaz, if I had decided to), I felt the most like a native since I had arrived here. I knew which yogurt to buy, I knew to have my zucchini weighed before I went to the checkout, I knew the difference between tissues and feminine products (don't laugh! without pictures on some of the packaging, god knows what I would be buying!). Purchases in hand, I waited (like a big girl :) for the bus to take me near to Upper Hell, for the 174 stairs up to 13 Bruna Busica, my Croatian home away from home.

Sunday Cathy and I headed to the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary; one of the churches in Old Town. The Sunday before as I wandered about I heard the choir and decided I had to attend the service. Again a service completely in Croatian, but I could understand some of the parts of the mass from my Catholic upbringing. And the choir was wonderful; probably a dozen members but with the high vaulted ceilings and acoustics it sounded like 50.

We wandered through Old Town, stopped at the college and then hit Fuego for an early dinner. Maybe it was the heat of the day (or the heat accumulated from so many days) or the salmon pasta or just, as Mr. Vincent termed it "departure depression", but the trudge up the stairs that night was especially exhausting. A quick shower outside and I laid down at 6:30p, not to get up again until 6:00a.

The summer festival begins here Thursday. It's weeks and weeks of different events, music, dancing, fireworks (we will get to see those :)... and we realized we would be missing almost all of it. On one hand, it will be nice not having to jostle with the crowds of tourists unleashed on Old Town from the tour busses and cruise ships. On the other hand, I will miss the sounds of squeaky toy birds and the wonderfully fresh food and gelato and the pace of European living. This experience has been marvelous; to work and sightsee, sometimes simultaneously, is a pleasure very few people get to have to themselves. I do realize how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity.

But... all good things come to conclusion... and one should remember to smile because it happened, not cry because it's over (yeah, yeah, sappy cliches, but I can be like that :).

One or two more posts, then I'll be flying home... but with memories and pictures and the experience of being in a foreign land and absorbing all it has to offer.

Adio for now.. and mir.. annette