7/20 Saturday
One thing we like about getting a
tourist pass is that you have an easy directory to the major sites, some you
might not visit otherwise, like the Marin
Držić House. So we have a few more admissions included that we’ll finish off today.
The Museum of Modern Art is housed
in a great villa, the residential mansion of Božo Banac, overlooking the coast
just a block away from the fortress walls. The villa is huge and impressive in
itself, with great high ceilings, modern wrought iron railings and chandeliers,
and a gigantic terrace that serves as the sculpture garden. It’s difficult to
imagine anyone just living here, even Božo. The exhibit is a retrospective of a
Dubrovnik artist, fauve-flavored landscapes and floral still lifes. It’s very
enjoyable.
We
have one more gallery on our ticket, in the city center. It’s a small
townhouse. At the entry is a room memorializing Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce
under Clinton, who was killed with 34 others in a plane crash coming into
Dubrovnik’s airport while on a mission to support post-war economic
development. This event continues to feed numerous conspiracy theory
enterprises. The room is locked, though, so we continue upstairs to see the
small but elegant gallery showing a modern photo-realist artist.
Our obligations
to our tourist card complete, we pick up our bus to the beach, heading back to
the resort area for a different hotel beach. The Dubrovnik President is a four
star hotel, and the beach area is really nice. We have a pleasant spot near a
cement pier, looking out to the channel and islands around us. Soon, we realize
that we’re at the hang-out spot for the local kids, and our view is filled with
about fifteen or more teenagers.
The group
ranges from very young teens to young adults, mostly boys. They immediately
start up a fairly predictable male hierarchy behavior pattern of harassing and
bothering one another. A round of spitting at each other starts up, and they
all start chasing and spitting until one pushes the limits against another,
over-spits, and the offended party leaves the group. The rest gather around to
chastise the offender, while an ambassador goes off to placate the offended. Soon
they’re all reconciled, and the offended party rejoins with a free punch
allowed on the offender to restore equilibrium. It’s like watching social behavior on Animal
Planet.
They start up a
game of using a towel like a slingshot to launch each other off the pier. Two
guys are designated launchers and the rest line up like at a waterpark ride,
going over an over. A couple of the older guys are serious athletes, making
complicated twisting back flip summersaults off the pier. They are all pretty
entertaining.
1 Video Included
Art and Swim
No comments:
Post a Comment