May 07

After we left Barcelona it was on to Venice, Italy.

We spent two days in and around Venice, which probably isn't nearly enough, particularly since only one day was in Venice proper.

We stayed in a small camping village called Camping Jolly. It was nice, despite the cramped bungalow we stayed in. There was an odd odour which was a constanct bother while we were inside.

When we got out of the taxi I noticed a puff of white seeds floating by. How pretty I thought. This nice image would come back to haunt me in a couple of days. But for now, the puffs of floating seeds was like a spring snow.

I managed to convice Frances that we should explore Venice without a map. I have a philosophical thing about maps. You look at a map and it not only shows you where you are but consciously and unconsciously it tells you where to go. Sometimes this is helpful, often it shows you where to go to get a fix of cliched images and tourist hellholes. I took a quick look at her mums map to get a general layout of the city and set off down a side street.

We spent a few hours wandering near empty back alleys crossing the canals that the city is famous for. Like Cordoba, the twisting side roads would suddenly stop and you'd find yourself in a square or in front of a grand cathedral and before you there would be a number of alleys to head down and you'd choose one and it would be back into the shadows and narrows. Speaking of narrow, I think we discovered the narrowest alley in all of Venice, perhaps the Universe. The alley was just wide enough to walk through, mainly because the walls of the buildings on either side were leaning towards each other creating a kind of incomplete arch. We headed in the general direction of the big San Marco plaza, and eventually found ourselves on the main tourist road (and by road I mean path, as there are no roads as such, just canals and footpaths) just outside the square. It was horrendously busy. We shuffled through the crowds past designer clothing stores and perfume shops etc and then without warning found ourselves in the huge expanse of the plaza. The most striking thing was not the towers or the cathedral, but the pigeons. Many many pigeons. To give you an idea of how many pigeons there were, and how used to humans they were, we witnessed a man lay down in the plaza and pour a little birdseed on himself (birdseed was for sale at numerous vendors for .50 cents, we didn't buy any) within a few seconds he was lost underneath a blanket of birds. Without any exaggeration he was covered by a layer from head to toe, in places more than one pigeon deep. A small child was running through the plaza and not seeing the man under the birds tripped over the prone fellow and scattered the birds, revealling the surprised person underneath.

We spent some time wandering a little further and found a nice little restuarant (over 100 years running!) out of the main tourist district and had a lovely lunch before making our way back home.

The next day we took a train into the mountains to the north west of Venice to visit Allano de Peave, which is the birthplace of Franceses Italian grandfather, it was a wonderful trip. We stopped off at a deserted train station and walked about 4kms up a road to the small village where we found one shop open, thankfully it was a restuarant. We had a nice lunch, though my pizza patata was just a pizza with french fries on it! Who would have thought that you could get a chip pizza in rural Italy. It was still nice though, just very suprising. I thought only Dominoes and Pizza Hut were capable of coming up with such odd fusions. It was a good day with a lot of walking in beautiful countryside. Unfortunately the floating seed was thick and it awakened hayfever unlike any hayfever I had known! Terrible! Argh! And it only got worse in Rome, and lead me to have a terrible terrible cold for two days while we travelled from Rome to Bari by train and then by Ferry to Dubrovnik (where I arrived almost completely healthy, thank god, as this was the place I was most excited about, and probably my favourite place so far).

After Venice we took a train to Florence. Frances is writing about Florence as I write, so I'll skip that, as we had pretty similar impressions of the place, except she went inside museums and galleries and I just sat around by myself and read my books. Which suited me just fine.

We didn't see any of Rome, I was falling ill and Frances wasn't that interested, we were only there for one night, so we spent that night in our camping grounds (same type of bungalow as Venice but without the smell) lazing by the pool, having a swim, drinking beer and wine and eating pizza. It was wonderfully relaxing, but again with the clouds of seeds! Any so my night in Rome was spent in agony, unable to breathe, unable to sleep and in the most uncomfortable bed this side of Uranus. That hell was nothing compared to the 6 hour train ride to Bari the next day and the 4 hour wait at the ferry terminal. Fortunately the sickness was overcome on the ferry. The blessings of Croatia!

It might be because we spent most of the time in cities, but I was somewhat disappointed by Italy. I know I would love it if I had a car and could get out into the rural areas, mountains and coast more readily, but the cities just didn't really do it for me. I could be overly disgruntled about having to fork out a euro or so when I needed to go to a public toilet. I could be disappointed with the generally poor quality of coffee, of all things, who could expect that the coffee in Italy was poor! Maybe it was the hayfever and cold. Italy just didn't do it for me. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't AWFUL, and I would like to go back to see the non-urban Italy, Venice was nice and my experience of it complicated by ruminations about the vice that is tourism (as a tourist myself), Florence was just generally a brown city. Rome was unvisited but the camping ground nice, but marred by so many spring time pollens!

Yet a few hours in Croatia and we both feel enchated by it. Maybe it is our host, Milo, at the guesthouse, who is unbelievably kind and friendly ("So many bloody Aussies in Croatia!" - with a smile), or the guests who are equally as friendly, or the old lady who sold us oranges at the market and didn't seem put out to speak English to us ignorant tourists. Maybe it is because the land is so beautiful. I don't know, I'll find out and I can't wait.

We're in Croatia now, and it's pure joy, but first I have to talk about Italy, since we haven't really had a chance to use the internet since we arrived there, except for bursts in Florence when we had American teenagers breathing down our necks.

We arrived in Venice last Saturday and took a taxi to our camping ground, where we had probably the most satisfying meal of our trip thus far (a margarita pizza probably almost as good if not as good as the pizza at our favourite pizza place in Sydney (La Disfida in Haberfield) and twice as big and half the price. So perfect. Our camping place was called Camping Jolly and pretty much lived up to the name.

We spent one full day in Venice proper (Sunday, which meant we were never tempted to enter churches which is a great relief to me). I loved it there, although it seems fairly unliveable. The thing I loved about it most was its quiet sounds, and the care and lovingness that goes into the presentation of everything from notebooks to gloves in the windows of the shops. It just seems like such a lovingly maintained little city. We explored pretty much the entire city. My favourite thing about that day was sitting down beside the canal eating blood oranges. I think they were the best oranges I've ever had, and the oranges we had in Spain were also spectacular.

On Monday we took a train to Alano di Piave which is the village my paternal grandfather was born in. It is north of Venice about an hour past Padua. The trip was for the most part not spectacularly beautiful, lots of green fields and the occasional grape vine garden. There is something pretty familiar about most of the Italian landscape. I can see why the Italians had such a big influence on the development of more recent Australian agriculture, or maybe I have that topsy turvy! Anyway, just before we got to our train station the landscape changed, we had reached the foothills of the Dolomites, and they are very beautiful, covered in a soft haze with towns nestled between them. Alano di Piave is one of those towns, and the most beautiful of the three that we passed and saw, with a tall terracotta coloured clock tower and other beautiful buildings. It took us about an hour to walk there and is mostly uphill. I actually stacked in on the street as we walked out of the town (Fener) that the train station is inside, and somehow landed on the right side of my face and my left knee. But I walked three more kilometres after that and was fine.

When we got to Alano we were tired and hungry so we stopped at a pizza place where we ordered lunch. There was only one other customer in the restaurant, and he turned and openly stared at us (although not unfriendlylike) when we asked if the waitress spoke English. Everbody who encountered us was puzzled by us being there. They don't have a tourist industry, clearly. But it was really great to see it, it was a thriving town with an immigration program and an industrial area a very respectable distance from the town itself, and I thought to myself many times that my Italian family might have been a lot better off had they in fact stayed in Italy through the depression rather than moving to Australia, where my grandfather in particular was far from happy. Although that might have just been his nature.

The next day we took the train to Florence. I don't know about Florence, I felt while I was there that this kind of travel does not suit me, this kind of moving quickly and seeing sights that guide books dictate to me because you don't have time to just find things. I am frustrated by the fact that I have been in Italy for a week and am still reading the books I purchased to help me better understand (wonderful, wonderful) Andalusia, Spain. I prefer to have time to understand and absorb things, preferably for a long time, and my last overseas trip (where I spent two and a half weeks in one city) was much less strained. But then, now I am in Dubrovnik I feel very much settled again. Perhaps that is because I have an interest in this part of the world and its history anyway, and I felt very much detached in much of Italy, an observer, holding the cities at arms length. Which is I think is in some ways necessary when you're travelling quickly, because it takes you several days to even become comfortable in most places (especially big cities) let alone to understand them.

We were in Rome for a day, but it was only to break our journey to Bari and the ferry. Kristian was sick either with a cold or very bad hayfever or an infection caused by same. There were drifts of pollen coming down in Venice and Rome, sometimes in piles on the ground. Poor thing. Mum went to Rome and saw some things in the morning, as she likes to see as much as possible of the sites. Which is fair enough, but as Marlaina says, old things have been around a long time and will be around for a long time more. So K and I spent our time in Rome in the Camping Village swimming pool and trying to relax and recover from Florence.

Then there was a train trip to Bari (5 and a half hours) and an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. There was some kind of kerfuffle/delay in the customs queue before we could board the boat, and there was almost a fight between a group of Italians and a group of (I think) Albanians. Kristian meantime had a raging fever and was lying on the ground on the side of the queue for most of the two hours we were waiting there. Not much fun. We finally got on the boat and went straight to sleep. I had strange dreams about the boat having arrived over and over again. It's only natural.

As soon as we got to Dubrovnik I felt somehow like our holiday, our trip, had finally begun. A lot of Italy we visited a) because mum wanted to see it and b) because I wanted to see Alano di Piave, not because I have a deep and enduring interest in the country. The same was (but is no longer) true of Spain. As soon as I arrived in Dubrovnik we met our hostel owner, Milo, by chance at the ferry station. He was waiting for someone else who didn't turn up but drove us up to Villa Klaic instead. Our rooms weren't ready so we sat on the patio enjoying the amazing view of the Adriatic.

Oh, wow.

You know that feeling when your entire body breathes a sigh of happiness and relief, when you know everything's going to be alright somehow = that was what it was like. Even though I was crusty fromt he boat trip in an air conditioned and poky cabin, I dipped my aching feet in the little tiled swimming pool and felt perfect. Milo made us Turkish coffee and Mum and I went for a walk (actually two) down the steps towards Dubrovnik/the old town. Dubrovnik is a town full of little girls whispering and playing on the steps of little churches, and cats who rub against your legs, and big coloured lizards that run between the cracks in the rocks, and little spiders, and gardens full of every kind of fruit and vegetables, and more little girls whispering and playing, and a maze of steps and streets that have no cars. I love it here, I do.

Hi, Jana, if you're reading, your country is even more beautiful than I could have expected despite all your assurances. You must miss it painfully.

Also this country has the best coffee we've had anywhere, including (by far and away) Italy.

Last night the villa owner Milo put on a barbeque for everyone staying there and we talked all night with everyone and met new people. Milo is just one of those wonderfully generous people, and I would recommend Villa Klaic (which is also extremely affordable and comfortable) to anyone.

Dear Friends,

We are now in Dubrovnic, Croatia, as the title of this post would indicate. It's a lovely place and F and I are both already semi-in-love with Croatia, from what we've seen, which is so far only Dubrovnic.

But... I ought to go back to where I last left off, which was in Spain, if I recall correctly.

After the intimacy of Cordoba and Granada I found Barcelona a bit... unfavoured. It's a party city, I'm sure, but I'm not a party dude, so maybe that's what went wrong. I can't quite place it, but it didn't seem like a special place, despite all I've read and been told. I can probably also blame a lot of it on Gaudi. Gaudi is some fabled modernist architect. Everyone must see the apartments Gaudi designed, the park he designed, the Sagrada Familia. Or atleast that is what I was told. It isn't true. I found everything Gaudi has designed to be not only ugly and inorganic, but not even intentionally ugly or ironic. None of these structures are complete, even after many many years of being constructed. Where they are complete they seem to be in a state of constant repair.

The insides of the famous apartment block are just like the insides of any rich persons apartment block. The outside features many curving walls and shapes which while different to the usual geometry of buildings, aren't actually attractive in any way. And by the way, please make sure you pay a visit to the gift shop, which you'll find to be prominent in apartment, park and cathedral. In short, Gaudi was a joke or just joking and somewhere along the line some jerk in City Hall thought he was a genius. Now tourists line up to swamp these places. How many are disappointed? Probably not many, but they would be stupid. I was though, terribly so - disappointed that is, not stupid.

The other thing which was awful about Barcelona was the overpriced and generally repulsive food we had at a place on the Ramblas. We paid 21 Euros for what tasted like, and probably was, a microwave heated dish of vegetable paella from a supermarket packet.

It was a disappointing end to the Spainish leg of our trip, which had given us so much pleasure in Cordoba and Granada.

Young people generally have too much to say and nothing worthwhile hearing. Which is why I´m up at 12:39am writing this, the young people at this hostel are all up and being loud, obnoxious and generally self-important. There´s few things more difficult to fall asleep to than the sound of a horde of American and Eastern European males trying to impress a few girls, and each other. This hostel makes it worse because it´s one giant echo-chamber with zero sound proofing. So I can heard every door unlocking and creaking open on every level.

But enough about that. Here´s some photos from Granada.

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This is the view Frances and I had from the top of our hostel in Granada. Every night the skies would fill with circling and diving and spiralling flocks of sparrows. or were they swallows. one of the two. On the night this photo was taken I sat up on the rooftop for a few hours listening to musics by myself. Another night Frances and I took up a bottle of wine and ate chocolate and listened to music on our little speakers.

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This is a view of the old town part of Granada, though you can see some of the urban sprawl in the distance. The photo is taken from the top of The Alhambra, which as I mentioned in a previous post, is an ancient Islamic fortress, town and mosque set atop a hill overlooking the city proper. It is indeed very impressive, very beautiful.

The next couple of photos are from the Generalife, which is part of the Alhambra complex, though not within the moated, walled section. It´s a palace and garden of fountains, hedges, ponds and beautiful trees.

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Looking from the Generalife towards the city of Granada below, with part of the Alhambra proper on the left.

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Looking from the Generalife across the lower hedge gardens towards the Alhambra palace (well, one of the palaces).

I am made uneasy by Gaudi and it´s mostly not an aesthetic uneasiness, although the times when I am aesthetically impressed by Gaudi are also kind of few, with the exception of La Sagrada Familia. People always tell me how great Gaudi is, but how great can he be, as an ARCHITECT, if none of his creations (that I have seen) are actually in use, or even POTENTIALLY USEFUL for the people of Barcelona. People seem to like him, and other people seem to think his buildings, although not quite beautiful, are artistic, maybe, or important, perhaps, because part of the modernist movement-style. To me they mostly just seem badly designed and impractical, and why should I care about a guy who made buildings for rich people and organised religion? Park Guell, which we visited today, was okay aesthetically, in a sort of adventure playground kind of way, but Gaudi had designed all of these spectacular pathways that didn´t at all follow people´s desirelines, and hence nobody was actually using AS PATHWAYS. Tourists obviously find a use for Park Guell, but it´s not the kind of park (like the ones all over Paris for instance) that people actually go to sit and be. There are too many tourists to start with, but also it is not located anywhere most people (I would reckon) would want to go, and all the places to potentially sit and be are a good walk from the entrance. e.g. we ate our lunch soon after arriving and had it sitting on v. uncomfortable ¨mosaiced rocks¨. Some picnic. Overall, the place was kitsch.

Which brings me to La Sagrada Familia, which, well beyond kitsch, is like a farcical joke played on Spain by modernism via the old church. It's beautiful in its execution, but the whole concept of building a cathedral of this scale, a physical monument to religious worship, NOW, I find quite repellent. I can go to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and appreciate it physically with an awareness of feudalism and societies that were structured in ways that allowed buildings like these to be created in spite of widespread poverty, possibly over centuries. But then I am supposed to go and see a building being made now, and I am supposed to admire the ambitiousness of the project and its religious symbolism and its inspiration by natural forms, and I can take some nice photos and go away and not think about where it is coming from.

But I want to know, what were his politics, what are the politics? Has Gaudi become a symbol of nationalist pride or just a historical symbol of international art nouveau style? WAS HE SERIOUS? Will La Sagrada Familia ever be used as a cathedral? Should it be? All things the tri lingual museums don´t bother to explain. Art/architecture is never without politics here (if not everywhere) and I feel it should be discussed. In the civil war La Sagrada Familia was vandalised - by who and why?

I may be being unfair, I do recognise Gaudi´s approach to architecture is more artistic, more creative, and less functional than most architects, but I still think even if architecture is beautiful it should also be functional, and by that I do mean as more than just a tourist attraction. And I do think there are other architects, such as Hundertwasser, who achieve this with greater success than Gaudi.

Some pretty photographs, augmented by construction dust, are soon to follow.