Window Wednesday - Apartment, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Apartment room. Dubrovnik, Croatia 2014.

A friend had been there a few years before. I’d seen her photo of the balcony and decided that wherever it was in the world, I needed to go. I’d never seen Game of Thrones. The city might have got more money out of me if I had.

I gave the apartment address to the taxi driver. “It’s a long way up,” he said. “It’s far from the centre but the view will be very nice.” 

We drove a while and then up and up and somehow I arrived.

The landlord was suspicious of me. I’d booked a double room and she wanted to know where my friend was. “Tomorrow” I said, "She’s coming from Germany.” The woman grumbled, then disappeared somewhere down the stairs.

The room was basic but through the window I could see all of the Old Town — off-white stone and red tiled roofs — the wall around it, and a vast blue ocean with sailing boats docked in rows. 

I’d been in grubby hostels for a week and I had some time to spare. What’s a gal to do? Hair removal of course. 

The only mirror was in the bathroom, right at the end of the hall. I was leaning over the basin, getting my face close to the mirror above, when halfway through plucking my right eyebrow my tweezers fell down the drain. Like so many basins I’ve had on my travels, it didn’t have a plug. Just a hole. I was sure it would block the drain and the landlord would know it was me — I was the only guest. I tried fishing the tweezers out with dental floss and chewing gum and walking away and taking deep breaths, but in the end I gave up. I’d lost my tweezers down a hotel basin once before and now I was going to become known around Europe as the serial tweezer dropper who blocked up everyone’s drains.

The tweezers were soon forgotten when my friend arrived. Two summers earlier in Italy, we’d both been students, finding our way through cobblestone streets and a language she mastered more quickly than me. For a few months we spent nearly every day together. We cooked, we shopped, we chatted. Sometimes we did not much at all. On weekends we took slow trains to small towns. We once double-dated in London, and had a four day love affair with Paris. As the leaves were falling and the fog set in, I returned to Australia and she to Germany. Now we were meeting in Dubrovnik having been oceans and a world apart.

We didn’t say much that evening. Just sat on the balcony watching the sun set over the Old Town, everything tinted pink and mauve, eating our cheese and grapes from a silver platter, a glass of white wine each. Comfortable, familiar.

The next morning the air was sticky until the sun burnt through the clouds. We walked all the way down the hill, meandering along the coast and down steep, wide steps, to where the forest met a cove. We walked further along to a sandy beach with blue umbrellas and plastic white chairs, laid down our towels, and told each other everything we’d missed over the last couple of years.

In the late afternoon we walked through the ageing walls of the Old Town and over the polished limestone pavement glistening under the last of the day’s sun. Bells sounded, and up above, swifts formed dark v’s and y’s, darting across the sepia sky. When all turned dark over the ocean we followed the lights up to the old fort to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the open air. The arches of the fort formed a backdrop and its stone floor became a stage, bathed in golden light.

The next day my friend returned to Germany and I spent my last day alone. I did a load of washing at the laundromat, and as I waited I gazed at the fluorescent pink, orange, yellow and green sticky notes covering the walls. Scribbled on the small squares of paper were messages written by people from all around the world who’d sat exactly where I was, watching their clothes swirl round and round. I thought about adding a note to the collection but what I felt didn’t fit onto something that small.

Instead, from the balcony of the apartment, I recorded a video message for loved ones at home.

“All good here,” I said (the drain hadn’t blocked), “Just craving some snow peas, muesli, and a proper shower head so I can wash my hair. I have dreadlocks. Eeew.”

If only our biggest worries were always as simple to fix as matted hair and a lost pair of tweezers.