Reading has continued to dominate our trip and during our time in Montenegro and the Balkans we managed to consume quite a variety of books, from Balkan histories and travelogues to various novels picked up at Belgrade’s English bookstores.
In 1915, Great Britain made a treaty with Italy that was quite simple: if Italy declared war on the Austrian Empire, they’d get to rule over all of Croatia once the war was over.
But I am in no way different from her in that sense and there is always something exploitative and selfish in traveling. Like any traveler in a foreign land, she is using the place and its people to advance her own self, to improve and advance her own life, just as I am.
No place can be understood from a single visit nor through a single book, but combining the two opens up the past in a way history alone often can’t.
Adam and Molly Go 