Cro(w)atia, pt. 2
For the two people millions of adoring fans waiting for part 2, I enclose the second day of my trip to Croatia.
(Part 1 is here: www.b3ta.com/questions/offtopic/post415336)
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 5 May 2009, 23:24, 6 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Cro(w)atia, pt. 2
Tuesday
In Croatia, the clocks are an hour ahead of those back in Dear Old Blighty. I've been to Europe several times before, and I know full well that a shift of one hour is not enough to induce anything remotely resembling jet lag. Certainly, it's not enough to account for why I have slept poorly, woken intermittently and cursed my body clock for waking me at 6am Croatian time - or 5am BST. I'm inclined to blame my brain.

Breakfast is served between 7 and 10am. (I do wonder if my brain was afeared lest I should oversleep and miss breakfast. That at least I could sympathise with.) I wander down to breakfast with the little card that says I'm paying for bed and breakfast, and try my normal trick of standing in the middle of the room looking like a confused foreigner. Eventually, one of the staff wanders over and looks at my card. I greet him with a friendly
"Dobro jutro,"
and he points out the buffet of food right in front of me as if I'm some sort of retard that can see the food but can't work out that I just have to walk over to it and bung it on a plate.

So, self-service breakfast. I hungrily raid the charcuterie table before I then spot the cooked breakfast further down the buffet. I add a modest amount of scrambled egg and small frankfurters to balance the centre of gravity of my plate, get a dodgy-looking cup of coffee from a machine and find an empty table.

As I'm munching happily on various forms of meat, an old couple wander over to where I'm sitting and ask me something in a language I don't understand. I therefore presume it's Croatian. They're pointing at the seats next to me, so I just day "Da, da" and beckon them to sit down.

Then we reach a stalemate. I speak virtually no Croatian. They speak virtually no English. We sit and look in slightly different directions as we eat our repsective breakfasts. And then the difficult bit happens...I start to feel self-conscious.

I am afflicted with two problems when it comes to eating in public. I have, firstly, a phenomenal appetite. I'm one of those lucky bastards who manages to remain a healthy weight for his height, and yet, should the mood take him, could probably ingest an entire sheep and only suffer mild indigestion.

Secondly, I have a jaw which I suspect has partly dislocated itself. It therefore clicks loudly when I bite down on something like crusty bread (abundant in this restaurant) and it appears to have transformed my bucchal cavity into a deafeningly loud acoustic resonator. I swear some people have heard me chewing from the opposite end of the room.

Both of these seem to be working against me now: I'm sat next to this Croatian couple who I'm avoiding talking to, but I don't want to keep going back to the buffet and gorging myself loudly on whatever the hotel has to offer, lest I develop a reputation as "The Seven-Plate Englishman," or something like that. Ashamed, I limit myself to just two plates full, attempt to chew quietly and sheepishly wander back upstairs after muttering what I think is Croatian for "Good day."

I go back to my room to get what I need for my first day out in Dubrovnik. Alas, I get up there to find that the bathroom light has failed. And I can assure you, dear b3tans, that having a crap, in the dark, in a toilet that is not your own, is an interesting and slightly unnerving experience. As I relax my sphincter I make a mental note to bring a torch with me for future excursions.

I catch a bus from the hotel the historic old town (or Stari Grad). I'd been hoping for some nice weather for this week, and I find it's pissing it down. I see the walls of the Old Town and run in to seek shelter from the rain. The first entrance I see is a tourist information-type shop, so I shelter in there. If it's going to rain for the time being, I decide this is the time to start writing postcards.

Obviously, having only been in Croatia for a few hours, I have very little to put on these postcards. As the rain eases off a little, I therefore decide to explore the town. The rain waxes and wanes, periodically driving me into whatever crevices I can find for shelter. I do, at one point, find myself under a little archway leading to a courtyard which contains, amongst other decorations, a guillotine. Charmed, I'm sure.

Eventually, after ducking between archways and scaffolds to keep myself dry, I come across a sign for "Akvarij."

It's the aquarium. Kaol has already recommended this in a previous off-topic thread (you see, I still think of you all, even when I'm 2,000 miles away from my computer...) so I decide that, if I've got to be somewhere that's full of water, at least the water in the aquarium will be contained in big glass boxes, as opposed to falling on my head.

The Akvarij is very good. I see groupers, eels and a lone sea turtle who looks a little melancholy. I also note that they do seem to have a phenomenal surfeit of bream. I note that the Violet Sea Urchin, "...is found on sandy or rocky bottoms...the gonads are edible."

They also have one display tank called "Polluted Sea." It is a tank full of sea water and litter. Helpfully, they have labelled all the different types of litter on the information board above this tank. I just can't help think this tank might be of more use in alleviating the severe overcrowding of bream from which they seem to be suffering.

At about 11am, the rain stops and I venture, blinking (and still seeing phantom bream) back into the daylight. I enjoy the beautiful coastline visible from the harbour, and I pop into the memorial room. The latter is actually quite a strange experience: I'd noticed a lot of builders repairing parts of the Old Town, but it's only on looking round the memorial room that I fully realise they're repairing the bomb damage caused during the Yugoslav war. It's the closest I've been to a recent war zone, and it's very odd to think that the damage was caused during my own lifetime.

I stop for some lunch and then go for a walk. I've seen a fort atop part of the headland and decide to investigate. Unfortunately, it takes me a long time to get there as I can't work out which street I need to go down in order to get there - half of them lead up to the next headland, and the others seem to lead back to the Old Town. Eventually I find the right street and wander up the hill to the fort, where the chap manning the entrance politely explains that if I want to have a look round then I need to have purchased the ticket for the city walls back at the Old Town. Arse.

I decide to wander back to the Old Town and, a little before 3, it starts to rain again. I seek refuge under a mysterious bush I can't identify. All I know is its flowers smell nice.

Ten minutes later, the shelter of the bush proves inadequate and I leg it back into the walls of the Old Town, and back into the same tourist office. I resume my postcard writing and look scornfully at the couple in the far corner who have taken this opportunity to unashamedly canoodle. I'm unsure of their nationality until I see the gentleman's combination of hairstyle and facial hair arrangement and conclude he can only be German.

During a break in the rain, I venture out and decide to take in a bit of culture by exploring the cathedral and the church. They're both very nice, although the church's namesake - "St Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus," does sound a little like the weird Evangelical kid in your hall of residence who tried to found his own student society which promptly floundered because everyone found him a little disconcerting, before he hit the bottle and was last seen with his tongue down the throat of the guy who lived two doors along from you who owned an alarming number of short dresses and saucy stockings as he was still coming to terms with the deeper reaches of his inner sexuality...okay, I'm probably extrapolating a little too far now.

No sooner have I emerged from the cathedral when the rain begins again. I therefore decide to take the British course of action and drink. I seek out a suitable venue for such activity and come across "Caffe Blues." This bar I find notable for its lack of clientele, its less-than-welcoming atmosphere and, in spite of the appropriate instruments display on the walls, a distinct lack of blues. I'm glad that I found somewhere out of the rain where I can read my book and enjoy a mediocre Croatian lager, but I am disappointed by this lack of blues. I feel I am entitled to such disappointment given the name of the place.

The only course of action is to find somewhere else to drink. The next bar I choose is Caffe Talir, and this is the bar I 'adopt' for the remainder of my holiday. It's much more welcoming, grealty more populated and at least I can get a reasonably priced draught beer (by the half-litre-which-is-almost-a-pint, most importantly). Whilst the music is dubious, after stomaching Lionel Ritchie and Tina Turner, they do at least play The Animals, which is a lot closer to some blues than Caffe Blues managed.

After a few of these velik toceno pivo (large draught beers) I am hungry and therefore it's time for dinner. I obviously pick a restaurant which meets my needs, as no sooner have I been seated with a menu than I'm given a welcoming glass of Procek on the house.

I attempt to order in Croatian. I conclude that I can say the words and make myself understood, but I have no idea what they're saying to me in response. At one point I ask the waiter where the toilets are, and after establishing that I'm British, he seems quite flattered that I've attempted to learn any Croatian at all. (He also complements my attempted Croatian accent, which reinforces my theory that I'm better with foreign languages once I have a few drinks inside me.)

The meal is excellent, but I'm confused by the butter. It arrives on a separate dish to the bread, sat neatly on top of a piece of lettuce. Over the course of the meal, I of course use up all the butter in the eating of the bread, and then am left with the dilemma of whether I'm supposed to eat the lettuce as well. After another sip of the rather interesting red wine I decide that said salad will probably be good for me, garnish or not. (Heaven forfend what they must have said about me back in the kitchen!)

I'm a little wobbly after today's activities, and as I get the bus stop it occurs to me that I can't remember the number of the bus I'd originally caught into town. Fortunately I can remember the destination written on the front of the one I caught in the morning, and look out for one of the same that is pointing in the opposite direction. I conclude from this that it's the number 4, and am quite relieved to see my hotel out of the window ten minutes later. So relieved, that I almost forget I'm supposed to get off the bus at this point.
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 5 May 2009, 23:34, Reply)

Woohoo
Nicely done there, chap. Whenever I go on holiday I can barely remember any of it by the time I get back.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 8:01, Reply)

This is excellent
You could definatly be a travel writer. Looking forward to part 3
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Wed 6 May 2009, 8:30, Reply)

I have so far concluded two things
1) More foreigners need to learn English. It's the only way
2) German people are indeed the conspicuous types I've always feared I was a xenophobe for believing
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:42, Reply)

Yay, you went to the aquarium!
I forgot to tell you my one other piece of advice...
Zlatrog Pivo is an awesome beer.
( Cawl, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:49, Reply)

Bream, lots of bream
lots of bream, lots of bream?
(Concrete Cow, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:38, Reply)