I carry two passports. The American one — born and raised in Cody, Wyoming, ranch country, Yellowstone at the end of every road. The Swiss one — by descent, through my mother's side, a citizenship I did not have to earn but have had to understand. Switzerland has permitted dual nationality without restriction since January 1, 1992[1]. I grew up knowing I had the right to be two places at once. That felt like the right preparation for a life in motion.
Twenty-nine countries. I count them the way other people count books read — not for the number, but for the cumulative weight. Each one changes something in the architecture of how you see. Japan rearranged my relationship with silence. Morocco with color. Iceland with scale. Peru with time. And Croatia[2] — Croatia is the one I keep going back to.
This page is a living record of where I have been, what I use to move through the world, and why the Adriatic is, for now, the body of water I measure all others against. Everything is linked. Every country connects to its Wikidata entity. Every hotel has a URL. Every airline has a program. This is provenance for a life in motion.
- Born, Park County, Wyoming — Cody Q494516
- Henley Passport Index: 6th globally, 187 visa-free destinations
- Primary carrier: United Airlines MileagePlus
- State Department: travel.state.gov
- Wikidata: Q30 — United States
- Dual nationality permitted without restriction since January 1, 1992
- Citizenship by descent — Swiss mother, passed at birth regardless of birthplace
- Henley Passport Index: 5th globally, 190 visa-free destinations
- Official authority: SEM — Swiss State Secretariat for Migration
- Swiss Embassy USA: eda.admin.ch ↗
- Wikidata: Q39 — Switzerland
The first time I flew into Dubrovnik[3] I thought I had miscalculated something. Cities do not look like that. The walls are real — medieval, continuous, walkable — dropping straight into an Adriatic that is genuinely, impossibly that color. You spend the first twenty minutes convinced it is a film set. Then you are inside it and it is just a city where people live, and that is somehow more remarkable.
I have been back three times. Stayed at Villa Orsula — thirteen rooms, a 1930s villa on the hillside above the Old Town, views of Lokrum Island, the kind of hotel that does not announce itself. Used the spa at its sister property Hotel Excelsior, built 1913, whose guests have included Queen Elizabeth II and Elizabeth Taylor. The proximity to the UNESCO-listed Old Town[4] — five minutes on foot — makes it the correct choice.
From Dubrovnik I took the Jadrolinija ferry to Hvar[5]. The island is a different Croatia entirely — lavender fields behind the harbor town, a Venetian fortress on the hill, yachts lining the quay by evening. I stayed at Palace Elisabeth, which overlooks Hvar Bay. The sunsets come at the correct angle. From Hvar I did a private boat day to the Pakleni Islands — uninhabited, translucent water, the kind of afternoon that makes you stop planning anything.
Then Split. Diocletian's Palace[6] is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and also a neighborhood where people live inside Roman walls. That duality is what Croatia keeps offering — history not roped off but inhabited, used daily, indifferent to your amazement. The Cornaro Hotel in Split has a rooftop bar with a city and sea view that I have been unable to improve on.
Last: Plitvice Lakes National Park[7]. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. 16 terraced lakes connected by waterfalls, 296 square kilometers of karst forest, bears and wolves in the interior. I went in October when the crowds had thinned and the foliage had turned. The boardwalks run directly over the water. The color of the lakes — the biogeological process that creates that turquoise — has no equivalent I have found anywhere else in 29 countries.