I recently had the enormous pleasure of visiting Croatia’s most well-known city – Dubrovnik. Words cannot describe the place. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys visiting stunning historical sites, fantastically beautiful natural scenery, botanical and semi-wild heaven-like gardens. The history of the place is richer than my limited memory resources can support, so I won’t go into any details here.

So yes, to me (and it seems, millions of other visitors) Dubrovnik is like heaven on earth, like George Bernard Shaw had once exclaimed.

One thing about Dubrovnik, which struck me as very surprising, given the place is a hugely popular tourist destination – the lack of “tack” and in particular, the lack of Game-of-Thrones-related merchandise for fans of the extremely popular series. To those of you who are not familiar with the connection between GoT and the city, most of the second and parts of the other seasons of the series were filmed in Dubrovnik and its surroundings (inc. islands e.g. Lokrum), from what I understand. So naturally, given the multi-million fanatical fan base of GoT, one would expect to find Dubrovnik’s tourist shops full to the brim with GoT-themed souvenirs, such as ceramic plates, gypsum statues, glassware, T-shirts and postcards, not to mention dedicated guided tours and other adventures. And yet, there was nothing. I visited a multitude of places and shops during my 3-day holiday there and saw absolutely nothing like what I described above.

Despite being a big fan of GoT myself, I was delighted. The city has so much more to offer to its visitors that it would be somewhat out-of-place for it to advertise itself within the narrow and strictly contemporary context of a Western popular culture product. I cannot wait to go back and further explore Dubrovnik and the area.