Croatian Blues ..

I was 12 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic disintegrated and as far as I can remember back then on the limited news channels in India there was not much about it.  Three years later cable television came in India in a big way and suddenly the world and the events happening in it were louder.  In 1993 the loudest were the explosions heard in then, Yugoslavia. Words like Bosnia, Kosovo; Siberia, Croatia etc were spoken a lot on the news.

Some 10 years later ‘Lagaan’ an Indian film was nominated for the Oscar’s. Back home in India we all were vouching for it to win. But ‘No mans land’ a film made by a Bosnian director won the coveted best foreign language film award in 2002. 

Eight years later in 2010, I first came to Slovenia, and realized it had a past and was first to branch out of Ex Yugoslavia in a 10 day war with not much casualties.. The other country to do so was Croatia but for them however it was not that easy. It took 5 years and the lives of some twenty five thousand Croats before the war ended, and the borders of Croatia were recognized by the world.  My interest in this region I realized had grown enough to explore it.

The war is over and the tourism is booming. Places like Dubrovnik in Croatia attract close to 2 million visitors every year. But in my search of the real Croatia and the way it was before the war, I decided to move around this little Peninsula of Istria. The clear blue waters, lazy little towns with cafes on the sea front and a typical old town feel is what I had imagined every town of this Peninsula to be more or less. But, tourism, which supports the economy, also destroys the peace of a place. On my first evening I was very disappointed with Rabac which claimed to be smaller of the lot, but it left me wondering ‘if this is small, then !!’ It took me the next morning and a visit to a tiny family estate, which specializes in making a typical ham from this area to feel close to the real Croatia.

Fazana from the sea !

It was in these villages, where the impact of the war was only economic in nature. So the charm continues to live. The people smile but not like the front office manager in a 5 star hotel who when she smiles and says ‘its so nice to see you, have a nice day’ actually means ‘hey listen, fuck off I hate this job’. When I enter a restaurant and the menu doesn’t come to the table, not because the place is busy, but is at its own pace I know the food has more chances of being good. Just like the town itself, which lives at a similar pace.

This is where you should eat !

That’s what is going wrong in tourism. Places like Dubrovnik or any tourist town in Europe, which receives crazy amounts of tourists per day, have café’s, souvenir shops etc where the pace is like Mumbai, while the town has a pace 10 times slower. The result if you think deep and u should be lucky for it to occur to you, that you are only physically present in the place. Mentally it feels like the fast moving Tokyo.

I went today to a bookshop in Zagreb and asked for some movies by Croatian and Serbian directors. All of them had war scenes on their cover. I asked the salesman ‘all war movies?’. He said ‘offcourse’ .. it was more a statement about the war than the movies.  1995 is seventeen years old but no 17-year-old works in a book store. When you live through a war you don’t forget it.

Somehow it makes me think the war did change the people here for the good. I don’t know how and I can’t explain it. Maybe they were this friendly from the beginning.. Who knows!!

All I know is right now Croatia has just opened its window to me. The door I will knock in the time to come

The Soul of Slovenia

“The Euro Zone Crisis are for real. Greece was being talked about, now it’s the turn of Spain and soon it will be Italy, Slovenia and so on.  The Capitalists are taking on and till they completely turn Europe into Argentina of the 80’s .. enjoy a piece of it”.  My Slovenian friend told me this.

I don’t know what the future holds and I am a little worried but right now when I am at the most beautiful lake I’ve ever been to in Europe, the sound of the river coming out of it in the distance makes the  ‘sound of the crisis’ go away.

Slovenia, and I have written about it before so I will be stuck for words, especially after deleting an entire page written on Krakow.  But its true that Prague, Krakow and Budapest fall in one league of East European nations. Slovenia, Croatia are republics of  Ex Yugoslavia and feel different in everyway.  The more I travel to Slovenia the more I want to travel to its Interiors and I love that feeling. Turkey first gave me that feeling followed by Argentina and now its Slovenia. The reason, I don’t know. It just feels very personal. Like wanting to know a person more after you’ve meet him.. I am not saying Poland, Norway etc don’t give me the same. But there I don’t feel the hurry to know, here I feel it !

Usually I stay with my groups in the Lake Bled area. The high season and the tourists coaches flood the lunch hours and it feels a little lost, even the sheer beauty of the lake doesn’t sometime save the day. 18 kms inward and some beautiful Slovenian countryside scenery later is the lake of Bohinj. What can I say about it !! It takes a cable car to take you 1600 mtrs above to actually catch a complete glimpse of this beautiful stretch of water.  Its vast expanse is not merely in its length but the Triglav mountain range of the Julian Alps cast a spell on the blue waters and in its background lies the real glory of the lake.

They say the people in the town are rude. They don’t let any new hotels or restaurants come up and are anti tourists in their policy. I smile at them and ask them what could be more pro tourist than to not allow more resorts and plastic hotels spoil the place. I stuck onto just Bled for 18 months. I still love to sit at a traditional open air bar and have my beer in Bled. Eat good trout and a piece of the Bled cake. However when time is right to leave.. I would rather go home to Bohinj.

Beauty in its appearance is just for the initial pull .. the soul appeals to different people in different ways. I find the beauty of Slovenia in places like Bled, its soul I find in Bohinj.

This is a tour, and that means just 3 days is what I get to stay here for. Someday I will come here and stay longer and even then, I am sure it would still feel like just 3 days.

Slovenia !