Croatia

Dr. George Vadiakas, Dr. Bill Vann, Dr. Jessica Y. Lee

My cousin Bill Vann is a professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry. Dr. Vadiakas is a professor of pediatric dentistry at the University of Athens in Greece, and was one of Dr. Vann's students at UNC. Dr. Lee is an associate professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry’s Department of Pediatric Dentistry. The three of them attended a conference a couple of years ago in lovely Croatia. Click here for a map of Croatia. Also, you can scroll down to my last post on Italy and click that map. Both these maps will give you a clear indication of where Croatia is in Southern Europe.

The photo above is of Dubrovnik, a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast. Here's a fabulous collection of photos (several pages worth) of this marvelous city. Incidentally, in Bangkok, Kade and I bumped into a couple of women from Croatia outside Bangkok's swanky Shangri La Hotel. We talked with them briefly and they glowingly talked about how beautiful their home country was.

The Republic of Croatia is located in South-Central Europe. This settlement extends back 1200 plus years. After WWII, Croatia was a part of Yugoslavia. Religious and ethnic wars split Yugoslavia apart in the 90s. Croatia is now an independent state once more.

That's Bill doing his best Rocky pose atop the medieval fortress wall surrounding the village of Ston. Ston is about 60 miles south of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic (the “Damnation Coast” as it’s known to the Croats and their neighbors).