Bonus Year #8: Orebic, Croatia

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Orebic has a population of 1489 and must be one of the most chilled out places on Earth. Especially during the off-season, which is when we had the pleasure of arriving. We took the ferry from Dubrovnik to Korcula, one of the main islands which you see in any tourist account of "what to see in Croatia." Claire decided that her best bet was to stay there. Lada and I decided to head across the mainland to Orebic for a few less tourists and purportedly sandy beaches. We never managed to find a sandy beach (though the gravel was smaller there...), but had a lovely time anyway. Incidentally, this does not mean that Korcula is not worth visiting. It is quite pretty, much like a miniature Dubrovnik (and Claire gave us good reviews), but we just wanted something a little different.

Orebic is a little village at the end of the Peljesac Peninsula, which looks for all intents and purposes is an island. The entire populated area sits along a tiny strip of land right off the water. Behind the main strip lies several farms and vineyards.

A lot of Croatia's wine is produced in Orebic, and every other house has a sign offering wine for sale. It's extremely cheap, though we were a bit disappointed when we tried it once and the wine tasted a bit like iron.

Completely dwarfing Orebic is Mt. Ilija, a 961 meter, mostly bare rock mountain. It harpoons the sky above the village and absolutely dominates the view. Orebic looks rather comical by comparison. The entire scene, of course, is framed by the sparkling, nearly transparent Adriatic Sea. The sun always seems to shine, and it reflects upon the crystalline waters in an absolutely sublime manner, which never failed to amaze me throughout our trip to Croatia.

We got to Orebic from Korcula in a small ferry. When we got off we were surprised to find, for the very first time in Croatia, that no one was waiting at the dock to offer us a room. Naturally, the tourist office was only open from 6-8pm, which left us a bit miffed. We walked along the shoreline for a while expecting to see "Zimmer frei" signs (most of Croatia's tourism is German). When we had walked for about a kilometer with no success we decided to pop into a bar and ask if they had any suggestions. Pretty soon the bartender was on the phone with a friend, and a few minutes later a scary looking bloke showed up on his scooter to offer us a room. He offered us a tremendous rate (15 Kuna...roughly $2) for the night. We were ecstatic. A couple days later we were a bit miffed when we gave him 100 Kn. and he didn't give us any change. Apparently he had decided that he meant 15 Deutschmark. This was approximately the most absurd thing I'd ever heard, but at the time we were running late for a ferry, and just didn't have the time to argue over $5.

Our first afternoon in Orebic was spent, as most afternoons in Orebic should be spent, on the beach. There was a fair tourist population (a lot of people come over during the day from Korcula for the beaches), but it was not very difficult to find a tiny little cove with just enough room for two where we could lie in the sun, read a book, and occasionally swim in the pristine waters. Swimming was actually a really amusing experience. The water is so clear that one frequently tries to stand up only to realize that the water is at least 15 feet deep!

We lay around until the sun finally set and then grabbed some of the aforementioned local wine (with the aforementioned iron taste) and watched the sun set over the dock. Then we grabbed some dinner and suddenly realized that after dinner there wasn't a thing to do in Orebic! It was, quite frankly, a lovely feeling (for a few days at least!). We went to a bar and drank a couple of espressos while watching football (soccer) with some rather passionate locals. Then we wandered back to the same cove we'd been at in the afternoon and stared at the stars for about an hour. If there is anything in Orebic clearer than the waters, it's the sky. Lada and I are both city-dwellers so wide-open, star filled skies are a novelty not to be missed. Eventually we grew a bit chilly and headed back to call it an evening.

The next day, Lada and I split up. She was headed back to the beach (absolutely convinced that a suntan has some use in England), while I set myself to the task of climbing Mt. Ilija. It was a much harder climb than I expected: two hours of gruelling, steep ascent up a bare rocky face with the sun beating down on me. I was carrying a daypack, but about halfway up decided that both it and my shirt would be best dealt with by hiding them in a bush. I left a little stone marker to myself and ditched them there. Along the way I ran into a young Kiwi couple (whose names are lost in the mists of my memory) and finished the ascent with them.

It was, as I said, gruelling, but the view from the top made it worth doing the climb four times. It all hits you at once. While you are climbing, you see little but the mountain around you. Then, all of a sudden, you reach the peak and Croatia seems to explode all around you. You could see for hundreds of miles along the coast in each direction. Most of the major islands along the length of the coast were visible on this crystal clear day. The always-wondrous Adriatic Sea glistened in all directions, its solitude broken only by the frequent, and inevitably lovely, islands that litter it. I gazed at it for half an hour while I slowly devoured the two packs of pretzels I had brought with me. The wonder of it wasn't even broken by the parade of fat, old, half-naked Polish hikers who decided to reach the peak only a few minutes after I did. I sat on top of this mountain and wondered how much more breathtaking beauty I could stand from one trip or one country. Sublime.

On the way down: the predictable happened. I couldn't find my daypack. I quickly got paranoid that my little rock marker would have been destroyed and was soon searching every cluster of bushes I came upon. Naturally, I got worried far before I reached the place where my bag actually was, so I ended up acting quite manic for about half an hour as I clambered all over the mountain face searching for my bag. Luckily, I did in the end find it much to my relief and (eventual) amusement. I finished the walk down and joined Lada on the beach after partaking in a well-earned shower and hamburger.

The next morning we headed for Split. After wrangling with our landlord unsuccessfully over the price he quoted us, we dashed to the ferry and headed back to Korcula, where we blew about five hours in an internet café and downing espressos at just about every bar in town. Inevitably, there was a good deal of confusion as to what ferry we should take and when and how and we narrowly avoided accidentally jaunting merrily onto the boat back to Dubrovnik - though I can imagine worse fates. As luck would have it, Claire (our South African friend from Dubrovnik) happened to be walking by the pier just as we were disembarking from our ill-conceived attempt to board the boat to Dubrovnik. Since the proper ferry didn't leave for another hour, this gave us a wonderful chance to sit around and say a proper goodbye to Claire, and, of course, to have a few espressos.

Eventually our boat did come and after quite a long ferry ride (on which we saw numerous travelers that we had previously encountered: Croatia is a small country) we found ourselves in Split. This being mainstream Croatia we were back to being harassed right off the boat for a place to stay. In fact, we very nearly triggered a fight between two men trying to outbid each other for our business. Eventually we were claimed as a prize by a rather intimidating looking bloke. Intimidating, that is, until we got back to his place and watched him cower before his wife, who, as far as we could tell, did not budge from her chair in the kitchen (mind you, budging would have involved a great deal of effort for this bird) during our entire stay. Mostly she barked orders which he meekly obeyed. It was lovely. We should have foreseen it when we asked him on the way to his place if we could store our luggage there the next day while we poked around Split and he answered, "We ask my wife!"

Split is probably totally unique in the world for its charming mode of historical preservation. It is known primarily for its massive Roman ruins: the former retirement palace of the Emperor Diocletian. The massive palace complex is still largely intact, and here's the kicker: the entire downtown has simply been built around the ruins. We took our lunch in a pizza place with three modern walls and in the rear, the ancient crumbling walls of the palace!

Café's are naturally everywhere, so you can sit quietly in alleys which are former passageways in the palace sipping an espresso and thinking how wonderful it is that western historians haven't gotten their claws on the place yet. It is a truly remarkable experience. Perhaps it means that things won't last as long (though they've done well so far!), but the benefits of being able to LIVE in a place so vibrant with history seems to outweigh the concerns over wear and tear. It is therefore the case, that Split contributes fabulously to any argument in favor of visiting Croatia.

Not that Zagreb is doing the country any favors. A night train took us from Split to Zagreb that night. We only had the day in Zagreb and then we had another overnight train onbound to Munich that evening. We arrived in Zagreb on a Sunday morning at about 6am. Six o'clock on a Sunday morning is, of course, the ideal time to visit a city. As if this wasn't irritating enough (and I was definitely tired enough to be very, very irritated) it rained. All day. Without exception. It was a nasty, cold, constant drizzle that London would have been proud of. We tried hard to be enthusiastic and to see as many sights as we could. In the end though, we just couldn't be asked. We visited a couple of churches and one very nice, very small, very eccentric art museum. But in the end, most of the day was spent in cafes - whiling away the hours with the ubiquitous espressos. In short, I have nothing good to say about Zagreb except that I was there for less than 24 hours.

The one highlight? A tabloid whose main headline screamed, "Bin Laden Pedofil". Obviously, it now decorates my walls at Cambridge.

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