Nicole schreibt...

Croatia 2023

Sometimes life gives you a special person when and where you least expect it. In this case an entirely fictional Verse in outer space, a Chinese author of danmei literature, a K-Pop band and an American guitar boy all conspired to put me on a plane to Dubrovnik in Croatia, a place and country I had often thought of revisiting after a trip a long time ago, of which I remember only very little and rather negative bits such as the awful weather. It sure helped that this new special person I had met was not only a professional tour guide in Dubrovnik, but the very person who first invented the Game of Thrones location tours that have since drawn countless nerds to "King’s Landing" on the Adriatic Coast.
So with a suitcase full of carrots I had hunted on my sidequests in Sydney and Singapore earlier in the year I was on my way at last – ironically on Air Serbia via Belgrade, a town I never thought I’d see again (and it did make me smile to see Red Star’s football stadium from the air, remembering the crazy evening once spent there). It was only the second flight ever on that newly introduced route to Cologne and with online check-in not yet possible, the queues were long and I only just made it to the Gate in time for Boarding. Connecting through Belgrade was hassle-free despite Serbia not being part of the EU and like a proper showbiz baby I made a dramatic entrance into Dubrovnik with thunder and lightning in the mid afternoon.

My friend picked me up from the airport shuttle at the central bus station in Gruž and took me home to her place, where I got a chance to play unseasonal Santa with all my carrots, before we went to dinner at her favourite Japanese place near Sunset Beach in Babin Kuk, Dubrovnik’s holiday area – where we had stayed way back around the turn of the millennium as well. I can’t remember the year even, just that the Croatian war had not been over very long (with Dubrovnik’s Old Town still riddled with bullet holes) and that the architecture of our hotel was still the gloriously drab depressing socialist architecture of Yugoslavia. Now however Sunset Beach was up there with the best of them and Dubrovnik itself has become (in-)famous for being one of the cities suffering most from overtourism along the Mediterranean, mostly thanks to the blight of cruise sheeple with often two or three of the modern monsters all spewing their thousands of tourists into the small historical Old Town within one day.

After a good night’s sleep I got my own tour of King’s Landing, starting with Fort Lovrijenac, which stood in for the Red Keep, and the tiny harbour just beside it, which separates the mighty fort from the Old Town, which is entirely encircled by its medieval town wall. So for starter's here's a good visual of what modern CGI gimmickry can do, transforming a tranquil bay with touristy boats into a medieval harbour and a simple town wall into a mighty fortress. Below on the right is the actual Fort Lovrijenac (St. Lawrence's Fortress) which the then independent Republic of Ragusa built in 11th century to loom over the city and keep the enemy (Venice) at bay - at least for a while. Even further below is the inner court of the fort (and the Red Keep) as well as a look towards Gradac Park, where the second-most infamous wedding of Game of Thrones was filmed in Season 4 and dispatched Joffrey to his deserved fate.

From Lovrijenac we finally headed into the Old Town proper, which consists of one main street, the lovely Stradun, and a warren of smaller alleys and staircases. All the main sighs are clustered along the Stradun like the two main churches (the cathedral and the church of Dubrovnik's patron saint St. Blaise) and the Rector's Palace (left) where Dubrovnik's rulers lived and ruled. Sadly the Sponza Palace (at the far end) was hiding itself behind tarpaulins - while it didn't appear in GoT it only recently pretended to be Constantinople in the latest season of Vikings - Valhalla. We moved on to more GoT locations, such as the alley where Everyone's Darling Pedro Pascal made his entrance into King's Landing as Oberyn and the infamous staircase on which Cersei started out her Walk of Shame (which the savy bar next door still uses to flog Shamejitos and Shame on the Beach).

Following a break in a very pricey but very rewarding cafe where the excellent almond cake comes with a great opportunity to watch and quietly judge the tourists pushing along the Stradun, we moved on to Dubrovnik's medieval harbour, where the boats to Lokrum depart, a small island and natural reserve just off the mainland. While I had been drawn there to see more GoT locations initially, I was stunned by the idyllic tranquil nature itself, ignored by all the sheeple in the Old Town just next door. In the show it mostly stood in for Qarth where Danaerys and her Dothraki finally find refuge after stumbling through the deserts - the little monastery garden down left is where the reception in her honor was held. There's also a little museum installed in one wing of the old monastery, so I finally got the chance to claim the Iron Throne for myself.

One location we could only look at from afar from the boat back to the city: The Hotel Belvedere was opened in 1985 by the then socialist regime of Yugoslavia as one of the most modern resorts in the entire country. It was abandoned when Yugoslavia fell apart in 1991 and has since become a "lost place", standing empty and crumbling. Here is a pretty eerie photo gallery of what it looks like now. At least Game of Thrones put its amphitheatre to good use for another unforgettable scene, the fight between the Mountain and cocky Oberyn, whose end made TV audiences the world over collectively chuck up their dinners. Tired yet of GoT? Fear not, we're almost done, with the one big tourist thing of Dubrovnik left to do, a walk along the Old Town's walls (which costs a whopping 35 Euro these days). So here we were for a few more location shots around the walls and even at Ploče Gate, where fearsome medieval guards have now been replaced by the usual set of tourists and my friend made a good stand-in for the Mother of Dragons herself.

Finally, here's the money shot from Pile Gate all the way up the Stradun to St. Blaise's church in the distance, where I gave up on completing the full circuit and instead decided to call it a day as the bus stop to home was close. Ćevapčići had become a bit of an in-joke between my friend and me, as it was the only Croatian word I knew, thanks to the Yugo guest workers who had come to Germany in the 60s and 70s and made it the best-known Yugo food in all their Balkan Grill fast food places. So we had them for dinner (stuck into a big sandwich, not unlike our döner) before she had to leave me alone for the rest of the evening to attend a rather hastily arranged wedding (catholicism is still big in Croatia...), while I scraped myself back together from the exhausting but wonderful day.

Next morning it was already time to say goodbye as I had not wanted to overstay my welcome on first meeting and we went for another walk through the Old Town to enjoy the view from Buža on the cliffs outside the wall with a cold drink, then to the Red History Museum for a trip into my friend’s Yugoslavian childhood (with lots of goodies imported from West Germany bringing back just as many memories for me). Finally we said goodbye (not for the last time I’m sure) and I checked into Prijeko Palace, a lovely little hotel in the Old Town, then went to hop into the sea for a bit before returning to the hotel and awaiting the mother’s arrival who had flown in via Warsaw. The flight was late, so there was only time for a little walk through the Old Town and dinner at the hotel's own famous Michelin-starred restaurant, before heading for bed.

Back then we had taken a rental car to drive up the coast, but those proved prohibitively expensive now, so instead we took a public coach up to Split the next morning. Probably the better choice, but the trip proved endless and awful along the slow winding coastal road, so by the time we got to Split, not surprisingly, I was down with migraine and just crashed into bed in our lovely hotel on Žnjan beach, southeast of the city centre. All I remembered of Split was how lousy cold, rainy and awful it had been back then, so next day it was great to finally return there in glorious Mediterranean sunshine for a proper visit of Diocletian’s Palace, their very own UNESCO world heritage site. Diocletian had been a fairly low status Roman born in the province of Dalmatia, who rose through the military ranks and eventually became Roman Emperor in 284 (and went on record as the last emperor trying to squash those pesky Christians). Fed up with it all, he retired in 305 and built himself a nice palace by the seaside near Salona in his home province (as one does). Back then I hadn’t really grasped either that the vast Roman emperor’s palace was not a separate entity but a large area into which people had later built entire streets of housing, so now it’s a really curious unique mix of ancient Roman ruins and medieval little streets (and of course the Christians plonked their cathedral in the middle of the old palace and ancient Roman temple):

The chap with the almighty index finger up on the right side is Gregory of Nin, who pissed off the church in 10th century by ditching Latin in favour of the local Croatian language. Rubbing his big toe apparently brings you good luck, so who am I to say no? He used to stand in front of the cathedral in the Roman peristyl until they parked him in the, well, park outside Diocletian's Palace. After greeting him, we went out to the Riva, Split's rightly famous and gorgeous promenade by the seaside, where we could also enjoy a great meal before returning to the hotel in Žnjan. I had considered a day trip by ferry to one of the popular islands Hvar or Brač just off the coast, but as it happened it was Croatia's national holiday the next day with reduced public transport, which was a welcome excuse to just spend the day chilling by the hotel pool. There WAS another outing yet to come - this one to Trogir, a charming little place that has doubled as Venice more than once for historical movies and TV shows and is just a bus ride away from Split as well. So here's a picture of its main square with the Venetian town hall and the Venetian Fort Camerlengo at the tip of the island that makes up Trogir's old town:

There wasn't all that much to see, so after a walk around the little medieval streets we took the public bus back to Split for one last big late lunch on the Riva, before returning to the hotel to do nothing much at all again at the poolside until it was time to pack and sleep. It was a strange trip of two halves, first geeking out with a local friend in Dubrovnik and then doing typical touristy stuff with my Mom, but it worked fine as it was and left me to go home with many wonderful memories to treasure. And since I didn't get a chance to visit Trsteno outside of Dubrovnik this time, I'll have a perfect excuse for another visit when I got another suitcase full of carrots to lug to Croatia...