I've just arrived in Croatia after a trip over the Adriatic, unlike Oscar Wilde, I don't know whether to be disappointed by it. The ferry, Croatian, but worryingly flagged in Panama, was in its way a little more elegant than most of the ones I have used before, and the food, an under-spiced goulash, was edible. As we sailed out of Ancona harbour, a group of sexagenarian Croats burst into song with some wonderful tenors amongst them. I was rather enjoying it, but the ship's authorities decided to crank up the muzak to deter them, which seemed a little too authoritarian and Ustashe for my liking. I wandered around the boat to escape the cacophony of Jason & Kylie tracks (even Especially for you made an appearance) and sub-Clayderman drivel that was bedevilling me. This was worse than anything I had seen in the San Marino Torture Museum.
Eventually, I found asylum in the chapel, where God appears to be exempt from having to listen to endless repetitions of Winds of Change by the Scorpions.
I was actually grateful for religion for a change, and whilst I didn't actually convert whilst reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, some Italian Catholics came in and chanted some prayers at an appropriate juncture when i started the chapter on meditiation. At least the boat wasn't sinking, I noticed.
We arrived safely in Split, and were piped off to something even worse by Celine Dion than the theme from Titanic.Dennis Healey once said that David Owen had split the Labour Party, split the SDP, and when he became involved in the Yugoslav Wars, he became Lord Owen of Split. Oh, how we laughed.
I managed to spend a few moments alone there between geriatric coach parties. It's now a baptistry, which shows that holy places can easily go under new management. If the Turks had got this far, it would have become a
suppose
In truth, parts of the Roman Walls are still extant and one of the corner towers now blends magnificently into some more recent housing, although wearing my old hat, it must make the job of Split's rates inspectors a misery.
I also visited, in a ritualistic way, the town museum, which try as I might, I did find rather dull- some interesting maps and details about how Split fared in its dealings with Italian City states across the Adriatic, but there was the usual parade of spears, the odd bit of ceramics here and there, and a sedan chair doing very little. There was one brief reference to the Ustashe regime in a photo of Second World War vintage when Croatia was a Nazi puppet-state, but overall, not a great twenty minutes. On the plus side, it did have a very good toilet.
After all that, I mooched around the market,a nd ambled around some ordinary-looking streets, just the sort of thing I hated doing when I was a kid. The fish market was wonderful with all those piscine doleful looks in their eyes. I wanted desparately to get a photo of a smiling fishmongress with her grinning kalamari, but thought better of it and got a general view instead. Slightly unnerving, but not enough to turn me to vegetarianism.
I'm now having a quiet beer a suitable distance away from the slightly smelly harbour. Palm trees are respendent across the front- it could be Havana, it could be Torquay, but it's Split.
And now, I'm off to Sarajevo. Too bad I forgot to pack my white suit.
Now I am mentally preparing myself for the seven-hour bus journey to Sarajevo. "Oooh," said two
lads I kept bumping into "Lonely Planet says you're likely to get hijacked if you hire a car there." Well, these two asked "where do you get a taxi?" in front of a full taxi rank at Ancona Airport, and managed not to escape from Ancona for two days- admittedly there was a partial rail strike, but I even managed to leave Italy for a day.
Leaving the imminent perils of Bosnia-Herzegovina aside, I've spent a few hours exploring Split, and it's all been rather interesting. The old town of Split grew up in the area occupied by Emperor Diocletian's holiday palace. Yes it's that man again- the one indirectly responsible for the founding of San Marino went on his holidays here.
Bosnia & Herzegovina
being almost bare. A few pieces of coral were placed in exhibit cases for no apparent reason, but I did rather like the stone Roman bath I found in one of the 50 halls.
The peristyle, an open area was a fairly atmospheric