Croatia
Trip Start
May 24, 2005
1
14
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Split,
Croatia
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Scene 1...A room in the first floor of a building in the old town. Two bodies can be made out in the dying light of a head-torch. One sits draped in a sheet, hunched over - evidently working at something with his hands. The other lies face-down, head covered with a pillow. Although the room is stifling with humid evening heat, the windows are closed against screams of laughter from the street below. It is 1 a.m. The toga'd man shifts his body around to reveal a penknife and some foam earplugs, which he has been carefully shaving down. The other takes the pillow from her head and attempts to fit the earplugs in. They do not fit, so the shaving resumes...
Scene 2...The walls of Dubrovnik. The late afternoon night is bouncing off the polished white stones, the blue sea sparkles, and the brand new terracotta tiles shine a brilliant orange. Myriad tourists religiously follow the audio-guide (noticeable from the slight tilt of the head towards an over-sized handphone). From our audio guide an American woman exorts the visitor to 'behold the exquisite this and the absolute gem of that' to such an extent that Eoghan considers lobbing the thing into the Adriatic.
Scene 3...A restaurant in a quiet cobbled street. We approach to look at the menu. A waiter springs from his position on a stone plinth. "Most tourists come here and they never know what it is good Croatian food. They just eat rubbish and they go home. You want to eat the Black Risotto. And have you tried our mussels? Most people here they don't know what is good food." Glad that he had at least refrained from spitting at us, we agree to sit down and accept his advice. To put it bluntly it was quite revolting (and in fact a repeat performance of the awful food we had eaten the night before in a rather posh joint) and, as we furtively swapped notes with the couple next to us, we realised this culinary disappointment was not unusual. Ah well. On to Split.
Scene 4...A homestay in the refreshingly un-touristy and very pleasant student-full seaside town of Split. The landlady is garbling what might appear to the untrained ear to be a string of insults, but after a few days in Croatia we take this to be 'earnestness'. Eoghan answers her tirade once in a while with a random word now and again (Helen's favourite was 'Roundabout') which precipitates another onslaught of warbling...In the end, she brings out a very good coffee and sits down with us to continue chatting away!
Scene 5...After listening to a midnight argument-or-was-it-'earnest-debate' between our landlady and her neighbours, we decided it was time to head on. Blowing out the Pltvice Lakes and the islands (which by all accounts are divine) we head for Sarajevo.
