Projecting Narnia: A Search For Talking Animals in Dubrovnik

Where as Sarajevo felt well worn and lived-in, the walled city of Old Town Dubrovnik felt kind of like a theme park. It was gorgeous, but was purely a tourist attraction. Its noone's home today. The striking difference lent itself to grandiose metaphor.

But we rose to the challenge and came up with this:

If Sarajevo is fallen royalty, tarnished but regal, then Dubrovnik is royalty that's been frozen into statutes by the White Witch of the Narnia stories, complete with pigeons roosting in the crevices (and by pigeons, I mean souvenir shops).

And just as Adina and I came with this allusion, we stumbled on the movie theater, which was going to be showing Prince Caspian at 9:00 PM. Not in the mood for a bar, we decided to indulge ourselves. It somehow felt appropriate: the movie looked could have been filmed in Dubrovnik, and, ridiculous as it was, the city seemed a little more magical because of it. (Sex and the City is playing in that theater this week. THAT, we couldn't have justified seeing in Croatia.)

The next day, we jokingly kept an eye out for magical creatures (and cute swordsmen). On the Island of Lokrum (ten minutes from Dubrovnik by ferry), we came up this guy, undomesticated but just sitting on a forest path. Now, if only he had been able to talk: