xkristianx

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The above is the old town part of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Dubrovnik is probably my equal first favourite place that we've visited, along with Cordoba and/or Granada.

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The wonderful roof tiling that adorns every building within, and around, the old town of Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is a good case-in-point of Europe as a hole. A beautiful commericial old town, surrounded by a ring of similarly nice things, surrounded by a growing sprawl of bland suburbs and apartment blocks. With Dubrovnik though you need never see these!

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The view over the old town from the seaside city walls. You can see the walls that surround the old town.

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The place where we swam in the sea! This is a small island a few hundred metres off Dubrovnik, the water is wonderfully clear, like in Western Australia. There are no beaches as such, just rocks that you have to wade in from, which is quite frightening, especially if you're like us and didn't bring your wading shoes!

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The coast of Croatia, heading north from Dubrovnik towards the island of Hvar. The entire coast is breathtakingly beautiful.

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More coast! A little island with a little lighthouse.

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The small town of Hvar. You can see the entire town in half a day, but you inevitably want to stay for a week or two. This is the view from the fortress which sits atop the hill.

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A typical street in Hvar. You can see the fortress in the background. While cars don't drive on these streets, the occasional scooter will attempt to run you down.

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View of Croatian forests and such from our train! The forests of Croatia are so beautiful that I might be tempted to say they are more beautiful than the forests of California!

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Zagreb railway station. Zagreb is the capital of Croatia. We saw about 4 city blocks of it.

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And a bit more of Zagreb. It has trams.

What greeted us in Prague... it's taking time to settle into the life of a man o' pleasures and time...

This is only quick! As often, we haven't much time.

A few days ago we left Hvar and set sail (via ferry!) to Split, which is another Croatian Port town. We only stayed overnight, so haven't much to report on the place. Next morning we took a train to Ljubljana via Zagreb.

Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, Zagreb the capital of Croatia.

The train trip took some 7 hours in total, which was mostly due to the slow train we were on, our three car train dragged itself from the flat and stony southern Croatian coast through to the green mountains and forests of the north. It was all very wonderful and the slow speed of the train was welcomed as it gave us extra time to take in the landscape.

We spent about an hour in Zagreb, waiting for a connecting train. Frances and I went for a short walk and saw a few blocks of the city, and a grand cathedral, but little else, and nothing that has been recommended to us, so there is plenty to go back and check out there.

The train from Zagreb to Ljubljana had us in a little compartment to ourselves (apart from the slovenian man), and the trip was again wonderful, for the most part the train followed a river which twisted around through some beautiful green mountains with the occasional grey and black outcrop of stone. There was barely enough room in the valley to accomodate the train, river and narrow road, but somehow the Slovenians had managed to squeeze in small towns and farms along the edges. It was a really enjoyable trip!

On arrival to Ljubljana we trekked to our hostel and arrived sometime around 10pm. The next day Frances and I wandered around Ljubljana without aim. We sat in a bar on the edge of the river which the city sits around and had some drinks and lunch. It was too hot to take the walk up to the castle, but on the report from Franceses mum, it didn't seem like we missed an awful lot.

Ljubljana is an odd little capital. I had expected a small tightly packed old city, with a slow pace and nothing approximating an office block. What I found instead was a small city, but with a wonderful mix of the old and new. The old town was quite small, hugging a bend in the river, outside of this however was a mix of all kinds of things which gave the city a very modern and exciting feel. The university attracted a lot of young people, so it all had a very youthful vibrant feel. Certainly a place I could stay in for some time.

Unfortunately after we ate dinner, which consisted of too much beer and so much food we couldn't finish, it was into bed to get ready for another day on the train.

Our next train trip took us across Austria from south to north, and into the Czech Republic. It was another great train trip, this time our compartment was all to ourselves and the 8 and a half hours passed relatively quickly. The landscape was a mix of rugged Austrian mountains to wave after wave of rolling hills and small, colourful villages.

We arrived at Ceske Budejovice and encountered a little bit of panic - we could not find a bus station, and then having found this bus station (on the top level of a shopping mall no less) we found that there were no means to buy a ticket. In the end it was discovered that you just buy tickets on the bus, but there was some nervousness until we figured that out. Frances and I generally work well together in a crisis, or mini-crisis, because each of us seems to step up for the other as the circumstances require. It's good like that.

So we took an evening bus from Budejovice to Cesky Krumlov which was a nice ride through Bohemian countryside at dusk.

Krumlov is a wonderful little town. It is beyond cute. I can't describe it because I'm too rushed! A small bundle of a town, with a castle sitting on a hill overlooking the town, which is standard fare really, a small river does a tigh S curve through the centre of town, restuarants and cafes sit on its shore, people in rafts float by. And a trio of bears guard the entrance to the castle. Grrrr. Real bears, eating oranges.

Tomorrow we get another bus to our "final" destination of Prague. But we'll come back to Cesky Krumlov, because it's super!

Oh and to make things better, we're both pretty much over the colds/sickness that has been bugging us for the last week. YAY FOR THAT.

To the oldies reading this, Mad Propz means good. Negative Propz is bad.

Mad Propz to Croatia for beautiful lands, stunning girls, wonderful coffee, free water, Choco Smiles, Croatian Sausages*
Mad Propz to Italy for wonderful pizza and pasta.
Mad Propz to Spain for Cordoba and Granada and cheap groceries, cheap and awesome metro system, energy and excitement.
Mad Propz to France for cheese.
Negative Propz to Italy for awful coffee, pay to use toilets, pollen, vanity.
Negative Propz to Spain for bad meals, vanity.
Negative Propz to France for not being able to get a glass of water at a cafe if you ask for water, general Frenchness.
Negative Propz to Australia for having so many obnoxious tourists. Why is it only bogans who travel?

* This means that yes I ate some meats. Our host in Dubrovnik organised a big BBQ for everyone at the guest house, who am I to refuse the graciousness of our host? I had one sausage and one small piece of skewered chicken. Delicious! But my only transgression thus far!

We are now in Hvar, which is a small seaside town on one of the many Croatian islands, all of which are remarkably beautiful. Two days ago we caught a day ferry from Dubrovnik up the coast, weaving through islands and mountains.

Hvar is a strange little town, it is small by any standard, it feels as though it is swamped by tourists, yet it does not have the horrible atmosphere of a tourist town. There are wholly and without doubt too many Australians here. In Dubrovnik the chap at the ice cream shop returned my Hi with a Gday Mate! And we proceeded to banter like old friends teasing one another, he reminding me of my manners as I place my order before Frances.

Croatia is a strange place. It is not actually strange, but I get a feeling of being in two places at once.

I feel more comfortable here than anywhere else in Europe, than in the USA, and even in some parts of Australia (I am thinking here of the rural western plains of NSW, towns like Tumut etc, which are decidedly alien). The people here, and I mean the Croatians, are relaxed, welcoming and do not seem to regard us gringos with suspicion, contempt or whatever. This is in contrast to other parts of Europe, where people were also generally nice, but I always felt observed as a foreigner with a little bit of resentment, or some such. I dont know if this is real or imagined, but it exists as a reaction within me, and on discussion, within Frances also.

Of course being relaxed isnt itself a strange thing, unless your are the kind of person who is predisposed to anxiety, but I am not. The strangeness comes about when you are reminded that this country has suffered war within the lifetime of most of the citizens, and well within your own memory, memory of politicians discussion agreements and peace deals. CNN situation maps, blurred histories of the region. The strangeness is that I can never actually comprehend this experience, but I see and feel that it is still here. It isnt like the wars of the ANZACs, distant wars in times long gone, stories from grandfathers or recollections. Something to be remembered because it has become part of the past. But the war here is still present, it seems. I am an outsider, what can I really know?

In Dubrovnik the war wasnt hidden. Quite the opposite, the memory of the seige was presented to tourists, but not as a tacky tourist feature, though it was always among those classic touristy things. Posters on the walls illustrate the damage to this building or that. A mortar shell sits at the top of the stairs at our guesthouse, a little thing of death sitting casually like a pot plant (how did I not notice this immediately?), our hosts reluctance, difficulty, refusal to recommend to a fellow guest the people of neighbouring Montenegro (My mind is momentarily calculating whether they were the good guys or the bad guys, memory delivers them as the bad guys), the war history walking tour (Franceses mother does the Intro to Dubrovnik tour, where you have to hold onto questions of the war for another tour), a map not showing tourist sites, but the locations of where bombs hit, fires burnt, buildings destroyed. There is a war memorial, but it isnt like our war memorials, it is fresh with photographs of men my age, it is telling not only a story of gratitude and respect to the fallen defenders of the city, but also the memories of the people who have just made your room up, delivered you with the best coffee in Europe, said Gday to you at the ice cream store. That is the strangeness. I cant say for sure what it is, and I have only been here a week, so perhaps I am utterly wrong. There doesnt appear to be the kind of nationalist patriotism which exists in the US, or to a lesser extent Australia, but there does seem to be genuine pride in ones country, city, history. I like that, even though I feel tourists guilt at playing a role in this semi spectacle. Those are the two worlds I feel I am passing through. The first world is the familiar, the kindness of hosts, the second is incomprehensible to me.

Tomorrow we catch a ferry back to the mainland city of Split, and from Split we take a train to the capital, and then another train to Slovenia. We shall get a chance to see non coastal Croatia. Already I am planning what to do when I come back. First stop will be the Car Rental agency!