This week, I am traveling in the Balkan region, and it has been an incredible adventure. There is so much history and beauty here, but also scars of past pain. Over the last few days, I have visited 5 countries, and we are only halfway through our trip. Many of these places have shared history, sometimes problematic and sometimes mutually beneficial. The scenery has been awe-inspiring as we have driven through the Albanian Alps, walked along city walls that are centuries old, and stared into the clear turquoise waters of Adriatic Sea.
Traveling from place to place has been an interesting experience regarding border crossings. Each country’s procedure is slightly different, and it might take 5 minutes before we are waived through at one border, and two and a half hours of bag-checking and individual passport checks at another. There is also a difference in the border experience between EU and non-EU countries that was fascinating to see. There are many more rules and regulations when entering the EU member countries.
Before there were modern border crossings, though, there were still boundaries that cities put in place. One of my favorite parts of this trip has been all the history I have learned from the guides. In Montenegro, Croatia, for example, we stood at the foot of the mountain looking up at the remnants of the city walls that were originally built in the 9th century during the Byzantine era. The Black Forest rises thousands of feet up the mountains, and seeing those fortifications that began even centuries earlier when the Illyrians first built a fort in the 5th century BC was incredible. Eventually, the walls were expanded to encircle the entire city, providing safety to the citizens.
Another city with walls and sea-facing fortifications is Dubrovnik, Croatia. Our guide in this capital city was engaging and informative, and he is a generational inhabitant of the city. We walked around the Old City, right on the Adriatic Sea, and he explained the history of these resilient people. In Dubrovnik, the community tends to be more welcoming and open to outsiders than many of the other sites we visited. Our guide spoke about how they pride themselves on multiculturalism and acceptance of anyone as long as they are there to contribute. However, the city is located in a prime location for trade access. As a result, the people of Dubrovnik had to become good negotiators and be very politic in their dealings with the people living inland and those visiting their shores. Rather than going on the offense, Dubrovnik decided the strongest defense lay in deterring any would-be invaders. So, they built walls around their city beginning in the 7th century, slowly adding and updating the wall and defenses through the 12th and 17th centuries. Defenses included a moat and a drawbridge, and they would empty oil into the water in the moat and then light it on fire if invaders were trying to gain access. Mostly, though, their defenses lay in how difficult they made it for attackers. This allowed them to focus instead on developing diplomatic relations and building their trade and commerce.
For these cities, walls not only protected them from harm, they also allowed the people to thrive. These days, we might not be actively surrounding our cities and towns, or our yards and neighborhoods with rock walls, turrets, and cannons, but we can still recognize and benefit from boundaries.
In “Mending Wall” Robert Frost talks about boundaries between neighbors: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, The gaps I mean, no one has seen them made or heard them made, but at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go… He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”
Tabitha Bozeman is an instructor at GSCC. Email at tabithabozeman@gmail.com.
