Volim ovaj kraj

A return to Croatia and Herzegovina, Spring 2026
by Silvana Dugandžić Penavić

I. Arrival — Maksimir, April 2

I landed in Zagreb on April 2nd, after a long flight from Tampa through Amsterdam. I had rerouted to avoid the chaos at Atlanta — the TSA shutdown had made the domestic hub impossible — and flew direct to Amsterdam instead. By the time I reached Zagreb, my body knew only one thing: it needed ground.

I did not go straight to bed. I went to Maksimir.

The park was still almost bare. The tall beeches and hornbeams were holding themselves in that threshold moment when spring has not yet arrived but is no longer only a possibility — it has become a commitment. The water of the ponds was glassy and cool. A few first green hazes hovered in the canopies.

I walked slowly along the path by the first lake and stopped at the water’s edge. There, beside an old cut stump, someone had planted a young sapling, held upright by three wooden supports. The old tree and the new one shared the same frame — the ending and the beginning, in one quiet picture.

My mother passed in July 2025. My father in 2018. I arrived in Zagreb as the one who now holds the line forward. The sapling at the pond’s edge did not need to speak. It was enough that I saw it.

II. Borongaj — Mama’s Garden Walk

My home is in Borongaj, on the eastern edge of Zagreb. I grew up in this part of the city. I walked these blocks as a girl, and I come back to them now as a woman who has lived a whole life since.

Near home there is a community garden — a neighborhood of small plots, each one tended by a different family, divided by little paths and low borders, fruit trees here and there, sheds at the back. My mother loved to walk here. Not our garden — the garden, the shared one, the one that belongs to the whole kvart and to no one in particular. She would walk the paths between the plots and look at what everyone was growing, season by season.

In April it was in full bloom. Fruit trees whitewashed at the trunk, heavy with blossom. Yellow tulips and a single red one. Purple aubrieta spilling over the bed borders. New leaves above, that impossibly blue Zagreb April sky behind them.

I walked where she walked. That is its own kind of prayer.

III. The Small Ritual — Čaj kod Vinceka

Somewhere in the Zagreb days — between the paperwork, the property matters, the work that does not stop just because I am across an ocean — I gave myself an afternoon at Vincek, slastičarnica since 1977.

A street terrace in the spring sun. A small white pot of tea. A cup with a wedge of lemon, a little jar of cvjetni med — flower honey. A slice of cake with its cream layers and chocolate crown. A napkin that said Dobar tek!

This is how a Zagrepčanka lives in her city, even one who has been away. Tea. Something sweet. A pause in the sun. These small rituals are not luxuries. They are how the body remembers it is home.

IV. The Drive South — Babac Maturalac

On Friday morning I left Zagreb and drove south, down the highway toward Dalmatia.

This was the Babac Maturalac. We are women of different ages who have known each other since childhood — well over fifty years now — who have lived through every kind of change side by side and stayed close through all of it, and who had never once taken an overnight trip together until this one. So the name is a metaphor, not an anniversary. Maturalac is the graduation trip Croatian students take when school is finished; baba is the grandmother, the elder, the wise woman a woman becomes. This was our Babac Maturalac — not graduating from school but into the baba, marking the real milestone: a friendship that outlived so many life changes, and friends who finally found the courage to go off together, to live and to laugh. I drove the whole way myself — by choice, and with joy. For years my Zagreb friends have driven me everywhere. This time the wheel was mine, and I love to drive.

On the way down, the first stop — and one of the most spectacular views of the whole road — comes where the highway opens above the Krka, the river winding deep-blue and green between the karst hills, a small marina tucked into a cove far below, the islands and inland sea opening out toward Šibenik in the distance. You come down out of the continental interior and suddenly the whole Mediterranean world is laid out beneath you. I stood at the overlook and let the south announce itself.

Then we settled in. Our base for the south was Kuća za odmor “Markov san” in Zagvozd — a family holiday house, kept in the family and rented to guests, that sits perfectly between coast and mountain and Herzegovina. Every day’s drive went out from it and came back to it. The hub of the wheel.

V. Saturday — Brela, Biokovo, Makarska, Zadvarje

No major ascension begins without proper coffee. So Saturday started by the sea at Brela — kavica sa sladoledom first, little coffee with ice cream, the Adriatic going from clear turquoise at the shore to deep blue toward the islands, the water my mother’s people lived beside, the water that has always known me. The southern version of the small ritual: coffee by the sea instead of at a Zagreb street café. The same pause, a different sea.

Then I drove up Biokovo. For anyone who has not done it: the road from the coast up to the Sky Walk is twenty-three kilometers of one-lane mountain road carved into the karst, lay-bys every few hundred meters so cars can pass, hairpin after hairpin, the sea shrinking below you with every turn. Locals speak of this road with respect. Many turn back.

I drove it myself. At sixty. After a long flight from Florida. My own two hands on the wheel. First gear. Breathe. Lay-by. I can do this.

At the top — 1,228 meters above the sea, the Nebeska šetnica, the heavenly promenade. The whole Adriatic opened below: the coastline curving south, the soft blue silhouettes of the islands rising from the water and fading into haze. There was only a very light breeze — anyone who knows Biokovo knows how fierce its wind can be. That day, the mountain met me softly.

In the photograph I look like a woman who earned her altitude.
Because I did.

I drove back down into Makarska harbor, where the town sits at the foot of Biokovo’s sheer grey wall — one of the most dramatic contrasts on the Mediterranean. Terracotta roofs stepping up toward the stone, the bell tower rising above the old center, palm trees along the riva, water so clear you can see the pebbles and the boats’ reflections at once.

The day closed near Zadvarje, above Kanjon Cetine — the river a silver-green ribbon at the bottom of the gorge, terraced hillsides climbing on either side where generations of Dalmatian hands stacked stone to make ground out of rock. That is my ancestors’ work, written into the land itself. Then back to Markov san for the night.

VI. Sunday — Hercegovina

On Sunday we crossed into Herzegovina. We began on foot in Mostar, walking the old town to the Stari most — the great arched bridge over the green Neretva, the heart of the city. Some moments I keep without a photograph; this was one. I wanted the eye to rest on the other images, and to carry Mostar in memory instead.

Then south toward Čitluk, and lunch at Udovice — janjetina ispod peke, lamb roasted under the iron bell with embers on top, the way it has been done here for a thousand years. The lamb from these stony hills, grazed on wild sage and thyme. Bread. For the babe, Žilavka and rakija — the proper tributes to this land, raised in celebration of where we were. I was driving, so my toast was water and the company. The land was the host. Everyone won.

VII. Passing Vionica

From Čitluk we drove on toward Kravice, and somewhere along that road we passed Vionica.

My father was born in Vionica. He died in 2018. This is his soil. His people. His light.

We did not stop. We drove past on the main road, on our way to the falls.

Passing by is not passive.

It is recollection — the eye catching the familiar curve of the road, the noticing of what has changed and what has held. And much has changed along this corridor: the road that runs past my father’s village now carries the world. The Međugorje pilgrim economy has reshaped it — new buildings, hotels, houses, businesses rising along a route that brings millions of pilgrims a year through this once-quiet stone country. The landscape keeps its own record of the years, and that record is being rewritten in front of me.

It is paying respect in a way that honors the memory of the family — my father, and all those before him who shaped this land and were shaped by it.

It is gratitude for a life lived.

And it is a promise. To come back. With new memories to make. With new ideas for the life ahead.

VIII. Slapovi Kravice

And then Slapovi Kravice — the most beautiful waterfalls in Herzegovina, where the river pours off a wide travertine lip in a green horseshoe into a turquoise pool below. The sky was soft and overcast; the falls came down in long white veils over the mossed limestone, the pool below glass-still and jade-green.

I stood at the rail and let the water do what water does to a tired body. My ancestors drank from this water system for generations.

IX. The Promise

Volim ovaj kraj. I love this land.

I love the Borongaj community garden in bloom and the paths where my mother walked. I love Maksimir in its quiet April undressing, and the sapling held by three wooden supports. I love the first spectacular view of the Krka coming down from Zagreb. I love the kavica sa sladoledom at Brela before the climb, and Biokovo’s one-lane road and its merciful light breeze at 1,228 meters. I love Makarska beneath its grey wall, and Zadvarje above the Cetina at the close of the day. I love the Stari most at Mostar held in memory, and the lamb near Čitluk, and the babe raising Žilavka while I raised water and we all raised the same joy. I love the travertine falls of Kravice.

And I love the road past Vionica that I did not stop on, but did not forget.

My hands on the wheel the whole time. Out from Markov san and back to it, day after day. Every kilometer my own.

This was not a pilgrimage disguised as a vacation. It was five babe on the first overnight trip of a friendship more than fifty years old — and it was a daughter driving herself through the landscapes of her inheritance, the continental home in Borongaj, the Dalmatian coast of her mother’s people, and the Herzegovinian stone country where her father was born — and finding that all three still hold her, still know her, still wait for her to return.

The promise to come back is already in motion.

SVE MIR.

Silvana Dugandžić Penavić is the founder and CEO of Raul Equine Inc., parent of Raul E® New York, SDP Media, and The Silvana Magazine. She divides her time between Tarpon Springs, Florida, and Zagreb, Croatia. This essay is part of the ongoing Volim ovaj kraj series for The Reading Room at SDP Media.

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Rječnik · A small glossary

Volim ovaj kraj — I love this land — this region, this corner of the world.
kraj — one’s home region, one’s own place.
kvart — a city neighborhood or district.
slastičarnica — a pastry shop and café, for cakes, coffee, and tea.
čaj — tea.
cvjetni med — flower honey.
Dobar tek! — “Enjoy your meal!” — the Croatian bon appétit.
Zagrepčanka — a woman of Zagreb.
Babac Maturalac — literally a “grandmothers’ graduation trip” — here, the friends’ long-delayed journey together.
baba (pl. babe) — grandmother; the elder, the wise woman — said with affection.
maturalac — the graduation trip students take when school is finished.
kavica sa sladoledom — little coffee with ice cream — a seaside afternoon ritual.
Nebeska šetnica — “the heavenly promenade” — the Biokovo Sky Walk.
janjetina ispod peke — lamb roasted under an iron bell covered with embers.
Žilavka — a white wine of Herzegovina.
rakija — fruit brandy.
Sve mir — all peace — a quiet blessing of stillness.