If you want a sandy beach in Croatia, come back in 10 million years.
So it's just as well Croats don't like sand.
Travellers – me included – search for white grains like the holy grail. But Croats complain sand is dirty.
Balkan beaches are too young for their rock to be worn into sand by waves and wind.
And so Croatia has pebbles – and that means size is everything.
White and smooth and 2cm wide is lovely underfoot and on the eye, 5cm rounded is OK, but 10cm and rough is awkward – but still popular in a country of rock-loving sand-haters.
And the Adriatic Sea? Transparent, clean and even with coral – a first for me in Europe.
OLD TOWN DELIGHTS
Every town in Istria (northern Croatia) has an old warren of lanes with cobbles worn slippery-smooth and somewhat crumbling houses with big shutters and balconies - looking very like buildings in Venice.
That's because the people wearing the cobbles smooth for 500 years were...Venetians, in charge from 1267 to 1797. 'Venetian Gothic' is the architecture style.
The town of Rovinj inparticular has lanes so narrow neighbours could touch across the street from first-floor windows.
Pleasingly – unlike in other countries' often over-restored old towns – these lanes are lived-in, with old ladies stringing washing from upper windows.
The Italian influence continues today and it's everyone's second language, despite the Austria-Hungarian Habsburg Empire being in charge for a century until 1918.
The Romans were here first. But these days, the world's best-preserved Roman amphitheatre (the original height for an entire 360 degrees; it once sat 25,000), rather than gladiators, now hosts World Cup football screenings and music events.
The volume can't be turned up too loud, for fear the 2,000-year-old walls will collapse.
Leo bobbed along to drum 'n' bass at his first ever music concert.
Shows getting the biggest attention at Pula's famous amphitheatre are those by national heroes, the simply brilliant '2 Cellos,' the world's most famous classical music pop cover performers.
TUSCANY AND TRUFFLES
Away from the beach and old towns, the countryside is in places Tuscany-esque, with tall pine tree-lined roads, yellowing fields and a scattering of kazuns; 200-year-old, dry-stone, 10 metre-wide circular shepherds' huts (a good use of rocks littering fields).
Coastal areas are tangled with pretty bright green trees loaded with pine cones (Leo now even says he prefers them to conkers).
Briyuni Island, a car-free mini Tuscany just offshore, has lagoon-like water and 125 million-year-old, 60cm-long dinosaur footprints, when the land the beasts stood on was amazingly 2,000 miles south where present-day Libya is.
Istria's olive oil has been voted the world's best four years in a row, so that accounts for all the olive groves.
And there are plenty of grapes for wine – although our favourite was the sweet blackberry variety.
The countryside's most sought-after treasures are truffles - and not the Cadbury's Roses chocolate version.
But the pricey fungus tasted like a garlic overdose to me.
Fruit and veg shops are stacked with produce almost entirely from Croatia.
And the garden of the house we stayed in had apricots, mandarins, limes, grapes, pears, apples, strawberries – and the fruit seemingly every garden has; figs.
SLAVIC SUPER-STATE
Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 by Slavic peoples to prevent Italy marching back in after World War I. Slavs had had enough of centuries being controlled by Italy and Austria-Hungary in the north, and Turkey's Ottoman Empire in the south.
Yugoslavia's constituent parts were areas we now call Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Slovenia.
What seemed a decent idea – teaming up to prevent bigger powers taking over - was ruined at the start and the end of the 80-year period by some Slavs' hatred for one another.
Inter-ethnic fighting dominated World War II, before the fighters winning internal wars formed the world's most successful communist state, with a booming economy and free travel.
But leader Tito died after a 34-year rule in 1980, the economy collapsed, ethnic and religious (Catholic v Orthodox v Muslim) tensions grew and, after Communism collapsed, states withdrew from Yugoslavia.
Appalling Serb-driven wars starting in 1991 killed 140,000 – half in Bosnia – with (also Serb-driven) ethnic-cleansing, genocide, war crimes and massacres, including in Sarajevo and Srebrenica (shamefully under the noses of Dutch UN soldiers).
The Slavic countries are not friends now, but some peoples are, to an extent - for example Croats and Serbs.
Life seems normal now in Croatia, the first Yugoslav country in the EU (but not yet the Euro). Bosnia is still struggling.
CROAT CHEERS
Tourists – who loved Croatia in the 80s – are back in hordes. I'd never seen a hotel comparable with the spaceship-like, 500 metre-wide one we walked past in Rovinj.
Everywhere is clean; there's no litter anywhere.
I enjoyed learning some Croat. My favourite new word (it means 'cheers') is zivjeli - pronounced 'djibili' - hard enough to say before the first rakija grappa shot, never mind after several.
And my toast?
Peace in this pretty land.
No comments:
Post a Comment