A Trivial Pursuit #21 (History 4/4): Expedition

Question

_{This is part 21 of A Trivial Pursuit, a 25-part puzzle hunt. Each part is solvable on its own, with the exception of the meta-puzzle at the end.}

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Excerpts from recent round-the-world itinerary:

• Flew to a city on the Mediterranean, the birthplace of Raging Bull’s Thelma Schoonmaker, a creative in the movie industry (4,6)
• On the hunt for an authentic Sachertorte in its city of origin, I frequented a traditional pastry shop (10)
• Came out to the Balkans to see this incredible illuminated manuscript, listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register (8,8)
• Up at dawn to visit an exhibition in Falkenhagener Feld and learn the literal meaning of ‘Bandenbekämpfung’ (6-8)
• Saw a beautiful sculpture of the local goddess of love (9)
• On a tour of the city’s hundreds of islands and canals, I admired their glassware, in which white threads are embedded in transparent glass to give a lace-like effect (5-2-5)
• Now in the Antipodes, I attended meetings with various politicians, including a recent Leader of the National Party (6,7)
• Larked about with Henrik, a striker who was top scorer in the 2020 1. divisjon season (5)
• Yet to visit the country’s two most renowned holy cities, but have frequented many local mosques, where I was exposed to the sayings and customs of the Prophet Muhammad (6)
• Largely talked sport with the cricket-mad locals, particularly the international tournament, most recently held in 2018 and won by Bangladesh (7,6)
• I wandered around the oldest University in the English-speaking world and the 2012 host city of the first IQA World Cup in a sport now commonly known as quadball (9)

…ending with a tour of several of the United States:

• Nearly missed the beginning of the annual long-distance sled race run in early March (8)
• Encouraged by the Sam Mendes movie, fruitlessly searched the third most populous city in the US for the road to this damned state (9)
• Explored the hometown of Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (3,9)
• Nipped over to a port city on the Pacific, the setting of a Keanu Reeves film (2,3,7,5)
• Dropped in on the home of the Cowboys and reminisced about the player who caught the final touchdown in the coldest Super Bowl ever played (5)
• Stopped in at Calvary Cemetery to pay my respects to a meat-packing industrialist who gave his name to two cities in different states (6)

The final answer is a 6-letter word with a connection to the Middle Ages.

Answer 1

Continuing from msh210's answer, which explains all the solution words and the principal gimmick, that is everything except the final answer:

Each word has either a dit or a dah, leading to morse code, but msh210 couldn't find a suitable interpretation for the resulting code.

The missing step:

It turns out that we have to sort the entries. My first instinct was to sort the trips by their destination country or state, but that was worthless: The trips were already sorted by country. (I'm not so sure about the states.)

But there's another piece of information that can be used as sorting criterion: the answers themselves. Let's do that:

• Aphrodite
• Bandit-fighting
━ Cudahy
• Ditka
  (E)
• Film editor
  (G)
• Hadith
• Iditarod
• Judith Collins
• Konditorei
  (L)
━ My Own Private Idaho
━ Nidahas Trophy
  (O)
• Perdition
• Quidditch
  (R)
━ Sarajevo Haggedah
• The Tradition
━ Udahl
• Vitro-di-trina
  (WXYZ)

Unused letters indicate breaks between letters.

This yields:

• • ━ •   •   • • • •   ━ ━   • •   ━ • ━ •

It decodes to Fehmic, which you might remember as a variant of "Vehmic", which means related to the Vehm, a tribunal system that had its heyday from the 13th to the 15th century in in Westphalia.

And the locations?

If I haven't missed anything, they are this puzzle's red herring.

(Or not. Stiv, the puzzle's creator, states in a comment that if something is ordered that's probably a hint that it must be re-ordered. So the locations serve as initial ordering criterion and are a hint to look for another crierion. Too subtle for me, I'm afraid.)

Answer 2

Partial answer.

Well, I've got the pieces, I think, but don't know how to put them together.

• Flew to a city on the Mediterranean, the birthplace of Raging Bull’s Thelma Schoonmaker a creative in the movie industry (4,6)

film editor

• On the hunt for an authentic Sachertorte in its city of origin, I frequented a traditional pastry shop (10)

Konditorei

• Came out to the Balkans to see this incredible illuminated manuscript, listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register (8,8)

Sarajevo Haggadah

• Up at dawn to visit an exhibition in Falkenhagener Feld and learn the literal meaning of ‘Bandenbekämpfung’ (6-8)

bandit-fighting

• Saw a beautiful sculpture of the local goddess of love (9)

Aphrodite

• On a tour of the city’s hundreds of islands and canals, I admired their glassware, in which white threads are embedded in transparent glass to give a lace-like effect (5-2-5)

vitro-di-trina

• Now in the Antipodes, I attended meetings with various politicians, including a recent Leader of the National Party (6,7)

Judith Collins

• Larked about with Henrik, a striker who was top scorer in the 2020 1. divisjon season (5)

Udahl

• Yet to visit the country’s two most renowned holy cities, but have frequented many local mosques, where I was exposed to the sayings and customs of the Prophet Muhammad (6)

Hadith

• Largely talked sport with the cricket-mad locals, particularly the international tournament, most recently held in 2018 and won by Bangladesh (7,6)

Nidahas Trophy

• I wandered around the oldest University in the English-speaking world and the 2012 host city of the first IQA World Cup in a sport now commonly known as quadball (9)

Quidditch

• Nearly missed the beginning of the annual long-distance sled race run in early March (8)

Iditarod

• Encouraged by the Sam Mendes movie, fruitlessly searched the third most populous city in the US for the road to this damned state (9)

Perdition

• Explored the hometown of Jericho Brown winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (3,9)

The Tradition

• Nipped over to a port city on the Pacific, the setting of a Keanu Reeves film (2,3,7,5)

My Own Private Idaho

• Dropped in on the home of the Cowboys and reminisced about the player who caught the final touchdown in the coldest Super Bowl ever played (5)

Ditka

• Stopped in at Calvary Cemetery to pay my respects to a meat-packing industrialist who gave his name to two cities in different states (6)

Cudahy

That yields

••–••••–•–• •••–•–

or possibly

• • ••–••••–•–• •••–•– (if we include the puzzle title and intro)

neither of which can I seem to interpret.