All posts by djarmul

I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova, in Eastern Europe, serving in the small city of Ialoveni with my wife, Champa. We are from Durham, N.C., where I was the head of news and communications for Duke University. You can follow our adventures on my blog, notexactlyretired.com.

Signs of Death

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Here’s something you don’t expect to see if you’re an American taking a walk near your home: a poster telling you that one of your neighbors just died.

We’ve seen these death notices throughout our travels in the Balkans and now in Italy.

Gjakovë, Kosovo

Across the region, families place notices about their departed loved ones on public walls and elsewhere. The posters typically include a photo of the deceased and facts such as their age and next of kin, along with funeral plans. In other words, much like a death notice or brief obituary in the United States.

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

However, the posters are much more public than a typical American notification. They’re a quick way to alert neighbors who may not be connected online or read a newspaper.

As the comedian George Burns famously said, “I get up every morning, read the obituary page. If my name’s not there, I have breakfast.”

Durrës, Albania

I’ve found something comforting in how this tradition is being maintained, in both Christian and Muslim communities here, while our own methods of announcing deaths evolve rapidly. Published obituaries in local U.S. papers have given way to Legacy.com, Facebook memorials, e-mail chains and other online systems. Social media is now the first place we learn of many deaths. The notifications themselves may be less formal, more personal, even funny.

Bari, Italy

I didn’t expect to spend time thinking about death customs during this trip but the posters are omnipresent. As someone who publishes almost exclusively online these days, I like how these posters brave the elements and slowly decay, like death itself.

When I’m back home in North Carolina and taking my daily walks, I’ll miss seeing them.

Naples, Italy

Top photo: Naples

Exploring the Balkans

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We loved the Balkans during a three-week visit we just completed — well, except for one famous spot I’ll mention in a moment. (Hint: we survived it better than Cersei Lannister did.)

American tourists have visited Greece for years but only recently began exploring the rest of the Balkans in southeastern Europe. Croatia has become very popular. Both Montenegro and Bulgaria, which we visited previously, are attracting growing numbers, too. Albania is emerging from decades of mystery to become a new hot spot. 

Zagreb, Croatia

Other Balkan countries we visited on this trip — Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina— still feel off the beaten track, but their tourism infrastructure is expanding as well. Slovenia, which was among our favorite stops, was part of the former Yugoslavia but is northwest of the Balkan Peninsula.

Kotor, Montenegro

Why are Americans and other foreigners finally taking note of the Balkans? For starters, they’re beautiful, with a history that spans the Roman and Ottoman Empires through Communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia. Bloody conflicts that raged in the 1990s have given way to peace and growing prosperity, as we saw in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tourists find reasonable prices, safe streets and local people eager to welcome foreigners.

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

We wanted to experience the Balkans before they become just another stop on the European tourist trail. We’re glad we went when we did. 

The map shows where we stopped. We visited Slovenia and Croatia on our own (see my post about Ljubljana and Zagreb), then joined a small group with an excellent Albania-based company, Choose Balkans, to tour the rest. We spent extra time in Albania’s capital, Tirana, then ended in the historic port city of Durrës for an overnight ferry to Italy — the next leg of our trip. 

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Here are just some of the many memorable places we visited, ending with the one place I didn’t like, namely Dubrovnik. It’s Croatia’s spectacular walled city, the most popular spot in the Balkans, attracting 1.35 million visitors in 2024. Dubrovnik was the setting for King’s Landing and the Lannisters in Game of Thrones. To me, though, it felt like an overpriced Disney theme park, swarming with tour groups and people taking selfies even after the peak summer season. 

I’m sorry to say this about your home town, Cercei. Thanks for not tossing me off the fortress walls or blowing up our Airbnb.

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina


Shkodër, Albania


Prizren, Kosovo

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Top photo: Church of St. John at Kaneo, Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia 

Rest Stop Paradise

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I’ve discovered paradise in an unlikely place: highway rest stops in the Balkans. 

They have great food at reasonable prices, comfortable dining rooms, immaculate bathrooms and other amenities. They’re places you want to stop. 

By contrast, most highway rest stops in the United States are, at best, functional. Their food options typically range from vending machine candy bars to overpriced Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabons. You often have to wait in a long line to buy coffee or a burger from an overworked employee, then eat with plastic utensils at a nondescript table. Toilet stalls in the rest rooms may be broken and noise from the hand dryers can be deafening. 

Not all U.S. rest stops are so grim, of course, but plenty are. They have to serve a much larger number of people and vehicles, with facilities that may be aging, but few even aspire to genuinely good food and ambiance. (They are vastly better, however, than some disgusting places I’ve seen in South Asia and elsewhere.)

I was surprised when I encountered the first highway rest stop of our Balkans trip, in Croatia. Their cafeteria served a variety of attractive entrees along with freshly baked breads and pastries. I enjoyed a pistachio croissant with a cappuccino. 

As we continued to travel during the next two weeks, I kept finding good food, good prices and pleasant surroundings — all in a part of the world that’s still “developing.”

By way of example, here are some photos from our stop on Wednesday at the NBT Oil gas station in the Mirdita region of northern Albania, heading on the highway towards Kosovo.

Their cafeteria offered steak, chicken, fish, lasagna and other entrees, along with local specialties, homemade soups, fresh vegetables and desserts. The prices were the same as you’d find in a local restaurant, without the big markup we expect at rest stops back home.

They also had a well-stocked convenience store, a fresh fruit stand, a car wash, an outdoor cafe, a bar (presumably for non-drivers) and a Buddha statue outside the bathrooms, which were large and clean. The gas pump areas were sparkling.

Take a look:

Unexpected discoveries like this often linger the longest with me after a trip. The next time I find myself at the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, I expect I’ll recall the Balkans fondly. 

Bosnia Remembers

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Decades before Russia invaded Ukraine, and before the latest conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, Bosnia commanded the world’s attention for the suffering it was enduring.

In the early 1990s, Serbian forces shot civilians, including women and children, in the streets of Sarajevo. They massacred thousands of Bosnian men and boys in Srebrenica. They killed and terrorized Bosnia until NATO finally bombed Serbia and brought the fighting to an end. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was later indicted for war crimes. 

Bosnia, which is now part of the nation Bosnia Herzegovina, has largely recovered in the years since then. Its economy is growing. Foreign tourists are visiting, as we just did in Sarajevo and Mostar, home to the famous novi Stari Most bridge, above. 

But Bosnia Herzegovina has not forgotten. 

Many buildings in both Mostar and Sarajevo remain pockmarked with bullet holes.

Both cities have museums displaying the atrocities that occurred. Their street memorials honor the victims. Special exhibits document what happened. When you talk with people, almost everyone has a story to share. 

Yet they have tried to move on, like people we met in Cambodia or those I remember from my youth who escaped the Holocaust. Just like a child growing up amid war crimes today, they will never forget what they saw and endured yet they still have the rest of their lives ahead of them. 

I was moved by these powerful reminders of Bosnia’s ordeal but was also struck by something else we saw in the city. 

Sarajevo is also where a Bosnian Serb shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, beside the Latin Bridge shown below. That’s the car the royal couple was riding. The assassination led to World War One and millions of senseless deaths, which in turn led to World War Two — all sparked on this street corner in Sarajevo. 

Today the site is a tourist attraction, a curiosity rather than a raw wound. Visitors take selfies there. Nobody weeps. A century from now, maybe the same will be true at the memorials commemorating Bosnia’s conflict with Serbia, and perhaps for future generations in today’s war zones. 

Or maybe not. Visiting Bosnia reminded me how war and genocide take a toll long after bodies are buried. Their pain endures for generations. Their grip is relentless.

Other nations and other conflicts have replaced Bosnia in our headlines today. But having just visited Bosnia, I know these new memories will persist long after the headlines fade. 

Croatia’s Coast

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It’s obvious why Croatia has grown into one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. It’s beautiful, full of history, easy to reach and more affordable than many European destinations.

We began our trip there by traveling from Slovenia to Zagreb, Croatia’s capital and largest city. Then we took a bus to Split, the largest city on Croatia’s long Adriatic coast. There we visited Diocletian’s Palace, toured the city, took a ferry to Brac Island (Supetar, top photo) and visited the gorgeous Plitvice Lakes National Park. The photo gallery below provides a few glimpses of what we saw.

Then it was on to Dubrovnik, the beautifully preserved walled town that served as King’s Landing in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Its stunning medieval architecture draws huge crowds that propel the local economy. We were lucky to stay within the walled area and live briefly amid the spectacular setting.

You can see for yourself why Dubrovnik has become so popular — too popular, as it now wrestles with overtourism, like Venice, Barcelona and other hot spots.

We loved our time in Croatia but have now turned our sights to its less-visited Balkan neighbors, beginning with Bosnia and Herzegovina. We expect to find more mosques and fewer Game of Thrones souvenir shops in the days ahead. We’ll keep you posted.

Danger on the Road

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I was deeply saddened by the funicular tram accident in Lisbon on Wednesday, which claimed 15 lives, including foreign tourists.

I could have been one of them, since we rode this tram when we visited Portugal last year. I remember spotting it from the Bairro Alto neighborhood where we were staying, right after we passed the street demonstration shown below. We rode the tram later and I snapped the photo atop this post.

The crash illustrates why some people fear traveling, especially to foreign countries: Something terrible might happen to them. They feel safer staying close to home.

I know from personal experience that bad things do indeed happen around the world.

In Sri Lanka, where we traveled earlier this year, the 2004 tsunami rose to the height of this Buddha’s head, killing tens of thousands of people. As in Portugal, we were lucky to not be there when this happened.

In 2015, we visited Nepal shortly after an earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and caused extensive damage, as with this rubble pile near where we stayed. The earthquake could have struck while we were there.

We’ve also visited countries where we saw frequent reminders of recent wars and bloody violence. This exhibit is at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, which we visited two years ago.

In neighboring Cambodia, we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, with its chilling displays of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal reign.

Last year we saw this small memorial in the Plaza de Mayo of Buenos Aires. It honors the mothers who bravely protested the “disappearance” of their children during Argentina’s military dictatorship.

So I’ve seen plenty of examples of things going badly around the world, and I haven’t always been able to avoid them. Back in 1976, I made the mistake of visiting Uganda when it was ruled by the dictator Idi Amin. This photo shows me with a guy we met on the train while traveling there from Kenya. My friend, Mitch, and I were detained at this police station in Gulu and suspected of being spies. We were lucky to leave Uganda unharmed.

But bad things happen in our country, too. This photo shows Champa checking out the menu at a restaurant in Maui where we celebrated a special wedding anniversary in 2019. A few years later, much of Lahaina was destroyed by a wildfire, including this restaurant and the Airbnb where we stayed. They’re all gone, and it could have happened while we were there.

Some people we meet during our travels are scared to come to the United States because of all of our shootings and other violence, not to mention feeling unwelcome as foreigners. When I look at some recent notable shootings — Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Orlando and many more — I say to myself: Been there. Been there. Been there. In other words, just as with the tram in Lisbon, I was in the wrong place but at the right time. So here I still am.

Now here’s another shot from our Portugal trip, taken in the Douro Valley, the renowned wine region. As you can see, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit there. It was a wonderful day, one we would never have experienced if we’d stayed home, where we could have died in some random accident anyway. And it was just one day in one trip in one country of the many we’ve been fortunate to visit.

I’m writing this in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a place I’d long hoped to see for myself. It’s even more stunning than I expected. Tomorrow we’re heading to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we’ll confront the horrors of the 1990s conflict, including in Sarajevo, but also meet interesting people, try new foods and learn about a country that cannot be defined only by its worst moments.

My heart goes out to all of the victims of the Lisbon tragedy, and their families, both Portuguese and foreign. Having traveled where their loved ones died, I feel a connection to their loss. But I will not let breathless news reports, recency bias or anecdotal evidence distort my assessment of actual danger, which I still consider very low if I’m careful.

That’s true back home and it’s true on the road. My conclusion is to keep traveling, enthusiastically, mindful of potential dangers but realistic about how dangerous they really are.

Plitvice Waterfalls

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Plitvice Lakes National Park is a national gem in Croatia filled with waterfalls and scenic views. This one-minute video, also available on YouTube, shows highlights:

Ljubljana & Zagreb

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We just visited Ljubljana and Zagreb for the first time, so first things first:

Ljubljana is pronounced Loo-blee-aa-nuh. It’s the capital of Slovenia (not Slovakia; that’s Bratislava) and has fewer than 300,000 people. 

Zagreb is the capital and biggest city in Croatia, with about 700,000 people. Yet many American travelers to Croatia never go there. They typically visit Dubrovnik or someplace else along Croatia’s coast.

Both Slovenia and Croatia were part of Yugoslavia, along with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, which is now called North Macedonia.

If you already knew all of this, I apologize for the review. I didn’t. I knew Slovenia was the home of First Lady Melania Trump and basketball star Luka Dončić. I recognized Dubrovnik as the location for Kings Landing in Game of Thrones. I knew the name of Yugoslavia’s former leader, which was the same as one of the Jackson 5: Tito. 

Pathetic, I know, but I’ve embarked on a trip to remedy my ignorance. During the next several weeks, Champa and I will be exploring the Balkans and then traveling to Italy.

We started in Slovenia, a small gem nestled between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia. Ljubljana is green and charming, with cobbled streets, historic buildings and a castle. The city center is car-free. Boats glide along the Ljubljanica River. Bicycles ply the streets.

We watched a free outdoor showing of Jaws and then walked back late to our hotel, feeling completely safe.

We also traveled to Lake Bled, a gorgeous spot framed by mountain peaks and a hilltop castle. We walked around the lake (about 6 km) and took a boat to a small island with a historic church. We were joined there by 200 guests about to witness the marriage of two Americans, one of whose family is Slovenian. I doubt I’ll ever see a more fantastic destination wedding. 

We loved Ljubljana and Slovenia, although we weren’t there for long. We traveled next to Zagreb, a two-hour ride on FlixBus.

Zagreb is bigger, reminding us of Moldova in places with its brutalist apartments. Much more striking are its Gothic-Baroque Old Town and the grand buildings of its Lower Town, which are more Austrian and Hungarian. 

We saw the large statue of national hero Ban Josip Jelačić in the central square, with dancers beside it (top photo). We watched a canon explode at noon at Lotrščak tower and then walked inside a giant tunnel built for protection against wartime bombs.

We visited the Museum of Broken Relationships and pondered the many forms of heartbreak. 

Some sights were unexpected, such as a statue honoring the prostitutes of the city’s former red light district, which Champa is admiring in the photo, or a shop featuring Croatia as the birthplace of the men’s necktie (a dubious honor, in my opinion).

We also came across a shop selling spices and other products to the city’s growing Nepalese community, some of whom we chatted with. 

As we embark on our Balkan adventure, our initial stops in Ljubljana and Zagreb confirm something I’ve discussed previously, which is that Americans who stick to familiar destinations are missing out on some amazing places. Both cities were beautiful, fascinating and relatively inexpensive.

As Tito himself might have said, visiting them is as easy as one, two, three, and as simple as Do, Re, Mi.

Goodbye to Paper

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I can’t paper this over any longer: We’ve had reams of fun together, Paper, but now it’s over.

I used to mail about a dozen paper checks every month to pay our bills. Now several months may pass before I write even one.

My mailbox is bare except for occasional junk mail or letters. It’s no longer filled with bills, advertisements, magazines and correspondence.

My bookshelves, which once held many hundreds of books, are emptier, too. They now hold fewer than one hundred books, many of which I helped produce, received from author friends or feel an emotional attachment to. I still read extensively, as you can see in my annual “top ten” lists (such as last year’s), but I generally download books or borrow hardcovers from the library, so our shelves remain uncluttered.

Photos? Yup, those are now digital, too. I had so many photo albums that they almost reached to the ceiling if I stacked them. Then I culled and digitized them — a huge task —and moved them onto storage discs and the cloud. They’re organized in folders that enable me to find and download a desired image quickly, including from my phone. A single plastic bin, below, holds our few remaining paper photos and family mementos.

I handle my finances electronically, too, and often pay friends with Venmo and Zelle. I have paper dollars in my wallet but rarely touch them, although I often use cash abroad. My medical records are online, as are almost all of our personal records. 

Younger readers might hear all of this and respond: “Big deal, Oldster. This is how people live these days.” But it’s a huge change for people of my generation, who grew up and established habits before personal computers and the internet existed. Many of my peers still prefer paper to pixels.

Not me. I have little use for paper or snail mail. I’ve embraced the digital world — not only because it’s displacing paper options so rapidly, but because I prefer it. When I hear someone say, “I like curling up with a real book and turning the pages,” I respect their preference but still choose my Kindle, which is lighter, brighter and more comfortable. It also tracks my place in each book. I do prefer hardcovers for how they display photos and maps. As an author, I also recognize the threat this shift poses to writers and the publishing industry.

I’ve always welcomed new technology but it was my service in the Peace Corps in 2016-18 that forced me to shift completely online. When Champa and I were in Moldova, we did everything electronically, whether conducting business with our American bank, booking travel or chatting online with our family back home. We got some handouts from the Peace Corps and at our posts, but many of those were electronic, too.

After two years of living without paper, it felt normal. Ever since we returned home, it still does, and greener, too. I’m grateful to the Peace Corps for many reasons but didn’t anticipate this one.

Champa and I downsized substantially before we left for the Peace Corps, getting rid of everything except what we could fit into one upstairs storage room and the attic of our house, which we rented. We know we’ll need to downsize again whenever we finally sell our house and move to someplace smaller. Next time, though, we won’t need to get rid of so much paper. It’s already gone. 

Foreign Films, Finally

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I love both international travel and movies, so therefore I should love foreign-language films, right?

Wrong, until a few weeks ago. 

I’ve been a movie fan for as long as I can remember. One of the first articles I published, as a teenager. was an opinion piece for Newsday describing how I preferred films like The Graduate and Easy Rider that spoke to my generation.

When I got to college, I watched more movies — Deliverance, Jaws, Chinatown and others. That’s also where I began sampling foreign directors such as François Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa. As a budding cinephile, I knew I was supposed to admire their films but most of them bored me. I preferred watching Gene Hackman chase bad guys in The French Connection to a chess match with Death in a black-and-white Ingmar Bergman film I could barely understand, even with subtitles. 

I’ve watched hundreds of movies since then, almost all of them in English, with a few exceptions such as Das Boot from Germany, Life is Beautiful from Italy and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from China. I’m not proud of this ethnocentrism, especially after studying several languages, traveling widely and serving twice in the Peace Corps, but foreign films with subtitles have felt like too much work.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed dozens of films set in other countries, just so long as they’re in English. I’ve traveled to Italy with The Talented Mister Ripley, to India with The Namesake, to New Zealand with The Piano and to Japan with Lost in Translation. I’ll gladly watch Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, just not most of her Spanish-language collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar.

Champa shares my preference. We both like dramas, comedies, musicals and other genres. Well, she dislikes action movies and we both avoid horror films. But at the end of every year, we watch as many Oscar nominees as possible, either online or at bargain matinees filled with fellow retirees who share our interest and free time. 

Recently, though, I’ve eased my aversion to foreign-language films, for two reasons.

First, I’ve gotten in the habit of using closed captioning when we watch television. I had my hearing checked and don’t need hearing aids, but I find the captions helpful. In fact, they now feel normal, whether I’m watching the news, a basketball game or, God forbid, something in another language.

Second, The New York Times recently published its ranking of the 100 best movies of the 21st century. I reviewed the list eagerly and ticked off more than 80 I’d already seen. Almost all of the remaining ones were — you guessed it — foreign films.

I’d seen their top pick, Parasite, which is in Korean, and a few other foreign films on the list, such as A Separation (in Persian), The Zone of Interest (in German) and Roma (in Spanish). The others intrigued me, though, so I resolved to change my ways and watch as many as I could. A few were online and even more were available as DVDs from my local library in Durham.

Since then, I’ve been working my way through the list and haven’t been disappointed.

The French prison film A Prophet reminded me of The Godfather, which is high praise. Sweden’s Let the Right One In was a vampire film I actually enjoyed. The Handmaiden, from South Korea, Portrait of a Lady on Fire from France and Y Tu Mamá También, from Mexico were all sexy and compelling. The Worst Person in the World, from Norway, portrayed both a single young woman and an entire generation.

I wonder whether movies will remain so popular during the next 25 years. They’re losing eyeballs to YouTube, TikTok and video games, just as newspapers gave way to smartphones and printed books are being replaced by Kindles and tablets. But that’s not my problem. Foreign films are currently thriving and I plan to keep enjoying them now that I’ve overcome my aversion to captions. 

In fact, this past weekend I went to see the new Superman film, which included scenes of his parents speaking in the language of the planet Krypton. My open-mindedness now spans the galaxies.