Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik. Did I mention Dubrovnik? You don’t need to go anywhere else in Croatia, just go straight to Dubrovnik.

Again, I walked across the border where I managed to find a taxi. On the road to Dubrovnik, we saw a broken-down rental car, so we stopped. The man, who was Scottish, said the car wouldn’t start. The taxi driver, who didn’t speak any English, pointed to the car and said “diesel!” Upon hearing this, the Scot realized he’d put regular gas into his diesel rental car, which is why it wasn’t starting. His wife looked at him like this was his 800th mistake of their trip. My taxi driver said “no problem” and drove away. Then he got on his cell phone and called someone. I heard him say “Blah blah blah benzina, blah blah blah diesel, blah blah blah kaput.” Then he nodded at me, indicating they would be rescued.

I spent four lovely days there, bumped into a few thousand Americans (they’re buying up all the real estate), went sea kayaking around an island, took a day and went to Bosnia and enjoyed hanging out in this wonderful old city. Felt a bit like being back in Jerusalem. I stayed with a lovely oldish woman named Mellie, who rented me a room, blew cigarette smoke in my face, and told me stories of the war. Eighty percent of the town was shelled – almost all the roofs are new. Even though it’s overrun by Americans and the restaurants are mediocre, it’s a very special place.

5:45 – The crush of people congregating in the Piazza del Campo is overwhelming. And I don’t mean that in the figurative, pretty way. I mean trying to navigate the mob entering the Piazza is literally useless – it is as though everyone is wearing roller-skates and someone very strong in the back of crowd is pushing us along. My girlfriend mentions something about the bathroom. I laugh.

6:10 – We finally make it into the center area along with about 50,000 people. The race track surrounds the perimeter of the field. People spin in slow, tiny circles watching the procession of pageantries preceding the race. I have never been to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, but I imagine this is what it is like, only hotter. My girlfriend comments, “Good thing the race starts at 7:00. I really have to go to the bathroom.”

6:30 – My friends and I all lay 10 euro on a different contrade to win. I choose Seashell. Throughout the course of the race, I refer to my horse as “Seashell.” This is likely very demeaning, although maybe less so than “Goose” and “Tangerine,” which isn’t even a logo, rather the color of a jockey’s shirt. Tangerine did not win the race.

7:00 – The Bishop is parading around the track on a cart drawn by oxen. Oxen, as a general rule, move rather slow. As he passes, the crowd waves the flags of their respective contrade wildly. The Bishop is halfway around. It becomes abundantly clear that 7:00 is a “suggested” starting time. My girlfriend says, “At least the race only lasts two minutes.”

10 Horses. 75 seconds. 3 laps around Siena’s main piazza. It is over in an instant, but in that instant is wrapped up all the emotional tumult of the Super bowl, the World Cup and the Olympics (summer, of course).

It is called Il Palio and it is perhaps the most famous horse race in the world. Why haven’t you heard of it then? Probably because 1. It concerns only the citizens of a mid-sized city in Italy; and 2. You can’t bet on it. (Well, you can if you are an American making 10 euro wages on Seashell to win. But we’ll get to that.)

Traditionally, Il Palio is strictly for the people of Siena. Each horse (there are 17 in total, spread out over two days of racing) represents a different contrade, or district of the city. In simpler times, before things like instant messaging and teleconferencing, back when we still trusted animals to do our work for us, Il Palio was used to settle disputes between districts. These days, it is solely for pride.

I will admit, when I first heard that the big prize was simply a brief moment of glory for one particular neighborhood, I balked. I likened it to Green Bay winning the Super Bowl and everyone in Wisconsin being “proud” that their state had done something other than make cheese. But seeing the reverence that goes into this event, one can immediately tell that this ceremony goes well beyond traditional notions of pride. Men wept with joy if their horse won; women collapsed in sadness if theirs didn’t. (I was told by one local that if you have made the poor choice of marrying outside of your contrade, the husband and wife, who by the way has taken a jar of soil from her contrade of origin to place under the bed in her new home, part ways to spend the week prior to the race with their parents in their native contrade. Note that most contrades are about a ten minute walk from each other. Yikes.)

The source of all the acrimony is . . . well I can’t figure it out exactly. As far as I can tell, it is fierce, historic patriotism. The role a citizen’s contrade plays in their life cannot be overestimated. Each contrade has its own government, coat of arms, elected officials, official territorial boundaries, church and a museum dedicated to its historic travails. Weddings and funerals are all celebrated by the contrade as a whole. Moreover, one cannot gain citizenship in a particular contrade simply by moving there. If you are born in a contrade, you receive two baptisms: one into the church, and one into the contrade.

Meaning that, come race time when 50,000 people (me, my friends and my family included) cram into the center of the Piazza del Campo, it is nothing short of sheer pandemonium. (Note that said sheer pandemonium comes without a bathroom break for four and a half hours.)

(Part 2 next week)

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

Of all the places I’ve ever visited – Shanghai, Monte Carlo, Cleveland (all lies), of all the five star hotels I’ve ever stayed in (none), of all the times I’ve proposed to a girl while steering a gondola down a canal in Venice (two), I’ve still never been anywhere quite as comfortable as home. And I’m not talking about the 10×12 shoebox of a smelly apartment I call “home.” I mean the home where your parents live, the home where you don’t pay rent, the home where there is more than one closet, the home that’s a house – because anyone that’s ever said “Home is where the heart is” clearly never had a whole room set aside just for eating.

This past weekend I went to my parents’ house on Long Island. Because I’m poor. And there’s meat there. Which brings me to the first reason I love visiting them:

1. Food: They have it. I don’t. Normally, going on vacation requires a food budget. The only thing I spend on food at my parents’ house is energy, opening and closing the refrigerator and chewing. Or, lacking energy, I call the best pizza delivery in the world:

Me (yelling from my bed): Mooooommmm, I waaaant pizza!
Mom: Sure, honey. Thin crust or regular?

2. Laundry: I’ve been paying the not-stereotypically-just-plain-old-Korean guy 85 cents a pound to wash my clothes for six years. He hates me, mostly because I request that he air dries my lucky underwear. And, I think he’s been stealing my socks. At home I pay my not-stereotypically-just-plain-old-white mom nothing, and she doesn’t steal.

3. Air conditioning: It’s cool.

4. Backyard: Even at the best hotels you only get a balcony, which is still nice because you can fart freely without offending your girlfriend or having to blame it on the dog. But having an actual backyard is even better. It’s like going to Brazil. Because it’s filled with space and grass, and you can play soccer back there, theoretically, if you felt like it, and you found the old ball in the basement, and the air pump, which even if you found it wouldn’t have the needle. Me, I didn’t feel like playing their fake football. I felt American, so I just lied in a chaise lounge, dreaming about the outlet mall while people barbequed around me.

Of course, this list excludes countless advantages of a trip home, like dishwashers, housekeepers, personal drivers and landscapers – all of which are actually just your mother. Proving once and for all that you can go home again. To my home. Your parents may suck.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

Americans like big things that go boom. Maybe we didn’t invent gunpowder-infused color rockets (the Chinese did), but we’ve certainly embraced them. While some of you will be trekking long and far to backyard gatherings of sparklers and smoke bombs (like me), others will be lacing it up real high with truckloads of illegal morning glories and whipperwhils and devil cannons and nerd hunters. Boom boom boom.

If you’re one of the explosive at heart or lucky enough to live close, you might even seek out one of Americas’s top ten fireworks shows, from Thunder Over Louisville in Kentucky to Welcome America! (I wonder who they’re welcoming) in Philly. Should be some outrageous, color-me-brite cartoon-eccentric Americana bliss-blast. Don’t forget to wear protective goggles when handling mini-sticks of dynamite.

What’s the deal with all these fireworks? Regulations vary from state to state. Annually, the US imports nearly $200 million worth of fireworks from China and Japan, of which, nearly 60% go off on the 4th. Those numbers don’t even factor in the booming illegal market. Fold in the 10,000+ injuries per year and you have once spicy enchilada of American Freedom celebration, yeah!

Keep it safe. Enjoy the view. R.O.C.K in the U.S.A.

In general, paying for things sucks. But paying for vacations is the worst. Because after it is all said and done, the only thing you bring back with you (besides maybe a wife or a donkey) are memories. And when times are tough and you can’t make rent, you can’t sell your memories on eBay. (Or so David from their legal department told me, despite my desperate pleadings.)

Which is why I was so excited when I got an email last week from iTunes advertising their travel podcasts. For all their popularity, podcasts just never caught on with me. I had tried loading a few on my iPod one time, but when I listened to my entire library on shuffle as I am wont to do, suddenly someone would start talking to me about a new book coming out or the current events in Iraq from two months ago. It just didn’t seem worth it.

But this advertisement got me interested. In general, if I have to choose between actively seeking out information or it being fed to me, well let’s just say I’m lazy. And now with the advent of video podcasts I can be even lazier. To wit, here are a few that caught my lazy eye:

National Geographic (video): While National Geographic may have a reputation for skewing intellectual (read: nerdy), admit it – every time you pick it up in the doctor’s waiting room you wish you could take it back to the exam room with you. Imagine that, but in video form. And you can take it with you, everywhere you go. So the glistening sunrise over the Serengeti can brighten your sulky morning, and the person sitting next to you on the train can wonder why the hell you have a video of mating African Bush Elephants on your iPod.

Travel with Rick Steves (audio): Yes, I was a little intimidated when I saw that these podcasts ran almost an hour long. And while I won’t say that I listened to any start to finish, I will say that on my 40 minute commute home yesterday I learned more about the German Black Forrest than I ever needed to know. For example, “Black Forrest Cake” does not grow there. Good to know.

The Rest of Everest (video): Start with the first installment and follow 23-year old Ben Clarke on his journey to become the youngest climber ever to summit Everest. A portion of the 80 hours of video taken during his trek was cut into the documentary film “Everest: The Other Side.” These podcasts, culled from the remainder of the footage, show in detail the arduous climb. This may, in fact, be my favorite one. Not just because it is visually stunning, but because I can say with certainty that this is one trip I will only experience vicariously.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

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