Staying together in Split

Following an uneventful drive (thank goodness!) we arrived in Split and found the apartment at which we are staying.  I know such things are popular in places like New York, but this was the first time I had used a car elevator.  This particular one barely fit our car and took us down three levels to park at the lowest reaches of the car park.  With the supporting columns, tight space, and relatively large car, it was a bit of a challenge to get it into the space, but I managed it in the end.  Luckily we didn’t need to get the car out again until we left.

Split is a particularly interesting town.  It is Croatia’s 2nd city and the effective capital of the Dalmatian coast.  As such, although there are lots of interesting sites and plenty of tourists around, this is not just a tourist city, Croatians live and work in the same city explored by visitors and as such it has lots of local color, and restaurants are not just aimed at fat walleted outsiders.  The core of Split that is of interest to visitors is the well preserved Old Town, which is made up of two square sections.  To the east is Diocletian’s Palace and to the immediate west is the adjacent medieval town with Venetian squares and the sorts of cobbled streets and lanes one sees in other charming Adriatic towns. 

The pearl in the oyster is Diocletian’s Palace, named after the Roman emperor who was from this area and later had his retirement palace built here – a huge compound housing not just his family and his servants, but a garrison as well.  Sometime after he died in 313 CE the palace was abandoned only to be taken over by Slavic invaders who coopted the space to their needs, with higher ranked citizens taking up residence in the former palace halls above and the plebs (or whatever Slavs called them!) grabbed space in the former cellars below. 

In the 15th Century the Venetians took over this area, developing and fortifying Split with their particular style of architecture and during this time many of the open spaces of the palace were infilled with new buildings so that today the area of Diocletian’s Palace is a smorgasbord of Roman, medieval and other buildings in a sort of 3D matrix.  It is an amazing space, and one that has been used for film and TV sets including the ubiquitous (in Dalmatia)  Game of Thrones.

We used the self guided walking tour in our book, which took us to the main sites of interest, all of which were only about 5 minutes walk from our apartment, just outside the Old City.

The walk began with the cellars many of which had become infilled with trash dropped down from above during Slavic time by holes bored in the floors of the palace.  These were mostly excavated to reveal the area visitable today, although in places one can see areas that are yet to be excavated.  Since the area above is built up, the cellars now give the best impression of how the Roman palace was laid out and it must have been extraordinary in its time.

Walking upstairs and above ground, one comes out into the Peristyle, the heart of the former palace, and the heart of Old Town Split today.  Along one side is the Cathedral of St. Dominus which is also the former mausoleum and crypt of Diocletian.  The upper columns of the Cathedral were a part of Diocletian’s own sarcophagus. Kind of ironic that there is no trace of remains of this Roman Emperor who killed Christians, but that his mausoleum is now one of the world’s smallest Cathedrals.

Nearby the former Temple of Jupiter was converted into St. John’s Baptistry.  The half-barrel ceiling is considered one of the best preserved of its kind anywhere, with individual gargoyle like heads studded in the patchwork.

In a cupola, close to the peristyle we got to hear Klappa singers, something we had been looking forward to seeking out, but in the end came upon surreptitiously.  Klappa is an a Capella form of singing that is taken very seriously in Dalmatia.  This space happens to have amazing acoustics, so  we enjoyed a brief, very atmospheric concert, during which I was able record one of the songs.

Sorry that the video is a bit jumpy, but it’s hard to avoid the tourists.  You have to love the Japanese couple who make a cameo appearance during the performance and the singers didn’t even miss a beat!

[For some reason my blog editor won’t let me embed the video, so follow this link for a 1 minute treat of an a Capella Klappa performance]: https://youtu.be/W7l2tszMLV0

The above ground old city is a complete warren of tiny lanes and there is no map of the town – the best bet is to just wander - you can’t get too far lost and major sites are signposted anyway.  We had heard that the Synagogue closed at 2, but late in the day we saw the gate was open and knocked on the door and were able to come in and visit.  Jews have been in Split since the Romans brought them to their colonies following the destruction of the Temple.  This particular synagogue is one of the oldest in continuous use in Europe and seems to have some similar features to Venetian synagogues we’ve visited. 

At its prewar peak, there were probably about 350 Jews in Split, but the current population is only about 100 and they take a pragmatic approach to their religion today as many of the congregants are intermarried.  Interestingly, when the Italians occupied this area they warned the local Jews that the Germans/Ustashe were coming to take over and that they should come to Italy with their retreating forces.  Those that did ended up in Italian internment camps, but survived the war.  Those that stayed, thinking “we lived under the Italians, we can live under the Germans” perished, and there is a memorial plaque on the wall remembering these people.

As it turns out, our apartment is literally next door to Trip Advisor’s best rated restaurant in Split, Perivoy.  We had a lovely meal in a beautiful outdoor cafe and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

On an after dinner stroll we found a stall still open in the green market  and bought some delicious strawberries to have with breakfast.  The walk back took us past the Golden Gate (there are Gates on each side of the palace called Golden, Silver, Brass, and Iron) and although today this is the main gate into the area since it faces the mainland, in Diocletian’s times, it was the opposite, Brass Gate, which faced the ocean that would have been the principal entrance.  The Golden Gate is next to the quarters where the soldiers and servants stayed.

The next day was a slow day as Kelly was not feeling great. We ended up walking along the old city, just west of Diocletian’s Palace, stopping to have drinks in Republic Square, which is little like St. Mark’s in Venice.  In other words, the Venetians really left their architectural stamp on this city.

We also strolled The Riva, the coastal promenade in front of the Old City and the place to see and be seen.  Back in the Palace, a visit to the Ethnographic Museum allowed us to see local folk instruments (who knew the Dalmatians used a form of bagpipe like the Irish uileann pipes?) as well as traditional costumes, toys and the like.   There is also a terrace that is on the top of the museum with a great view of the town and the coast and this space turns out to be the whole in the roof of the cupola in which the Klappa singers performed below.  We caught a few bars of their singing as we got to the terrace, but then they must have gone on a lengthy break as we did not get to hear them again.

Having a washing machine and nice weather, we were able to leave Split with clean clothes, ready to for the remainder of our journey.

Plitvice National Park

Leaving Bosnia, we drove north, back towards Istria to get to Plitvice National Park.  Actually, that is not quite true.  Opening the listing for our accommodation in Google Maps, we followed its directions until we arrived at a place we realized could not be correct.  This time instead of being just a block or two away, it had taken us to a totally different city (Sinj) about 1.5 hours from our destination.   In retrospect, I think what happened is that the booking.com app passed the name of the place to Google Maps, which associated it with another, identically named place in the other town.  Which is really stupid – the app should pass the street address to Google Maps.  Regardless, I suppose this is my own fault for not zooming out to see a map overview before we began.  Still, it made for a very long day of driving.

When we finally got to our apartment it was getting late and we were famished.  Luckily there was a good restaurant only 2Km away, since we are in the boonies.  We had a lovely meal of fresh local trout with almonds that at least brought a nice end to an otherwise frustrating day.

The next morning, we pulled on our hiking boots and headed off early for the Plitvice National Park entrance.  After parking the car and buying our tickets, we walked for a while and then took a bus to the upper lakes where we hiked for a few hours amongst lakes and cascades.  This is probably the nicest park we’ve never heard of before we started planning this trip.   Located in an area of limestone geology, the area is essentially a series of terraces over a vertical distance of a few hundred meters, and the water flows down level by level.  Sometimes in small cascades, and other times in steeper waterfalls.

Much of the hike is done on boardwalks (with no handrails), which is very evocative.  The downside is that this was a very popular place so at times we found ourselves dodging lots of other people to try to keep moving.  In fairness, it was a Sunday, which if we had thought of it, we probably should have planned to come here on a weekday and avoid the day trippers from Zagreb.  Also unfortunate was there was a major marathon being run in the park.  Although we were not hampered by runners, there were clearly many visitors who were friends or family members of the runners, as evidenced by their T-Shirts.

To get from the upper lakes area to the lower lakes, you take a boat.  Both the boat and buses are included in the park ticket, so that is nice.  At the lower lakes is the large waterfall, the tallest in Croatia, and quite impressive.

The park is also home to a wide variety of flowers, insects, fish and birds.  I have never seen so many fish (trout and carp) in one place, except at a commercial fish farm.  You could have easily reached in and picked one out (if that was allowed).  The water is remarkably clear and blue-green in color – the tone is very striking.

Surprisingly, we did not see any birds that would eat fish, such as herons, egrets or fish eagles.  If they found this place, they would be in heaven!

As elsewhere in this region, even Plitvice has a dark side – this is where the first shots were fired in the 90s war in Croatia.  Even today, you are told not to wander off the trails into remote areas as there many be unexploded ordinance.  Just another indications that everywhere we have been in this beautiful region, there is a dark side lurking just around the corner.

Magical Mostar

The country of Bosnia-Herzegovia is stunningly beautiful.  The deep river valleys, tall Dinaric Alps, and high meadows with wandering cattle reminded us of Switzerland.  Unfortunately, politically, the country is probably about as far from the Swiss neutrality as one can get.   Before the 90’s war, Bosnia was the former Yugoslavia’s most diverse state with an approximately equal balance of Croats (Catholics), Serbs (Orthodox), and Bosniaks (Muslims).

Considered a traditional point where East meets West, the Old Town of Mostar is very evocative with tons of minarets and the world famous Old Bridge spanning the Neretva River. The Ottoman era Coppersmith Street with its cobbled stones probably hasn’t changed much in centuries, except for the addition of electricity and a change in what gets hawked from the shops. Although many places still sell traditional crafts such as metalwork, and you can often see workmen clinking away making their goods.The bridge and its surroundings are exceptionally beautiful and we ended up dining at sunset in a restaurant with a terrace overlooking it.  Commissioned in 1557 by Sultan Suleyman himself, the bridge was completed 9 years later – and then destroyed by Croat forces in November 1993 from the location where a huge cross now sits high on the hill. 

The bridge was rebuilt under UNESCO oversight at a cost of US$13,000,000 using traditional materials and methods and again offers a stunning vista of the surrounding valley and a photogenic icon for visitors to photograph.

Mostar is perhaps as good as any example of why the war seemed so confusing to those living elsewhere.  Initially the Croats and Bosniaks together defended the city, repulsing the Serbs, but then later the Croats turned on the Bosniaks and are responsible for most of the destruction we see today.  Overall, this was a war with no clear “good side” and “bad side”. And although there were plenty of bad people, some of whom were prosecuted in the Hague, others have avoided being brought to justice. 

Since the war, two major tall symbols have been added to the town skyline, the aforementioned giant white cross on the hillside, which seems out of place, and an enormous (100 ft tall) Venetian style bell tower at the Franciscan church, which at least seems somewhat less incongruous.

It is not very hard to see evidence of the conflict.  Bombed out buildings are all over the place and from what I understand, the main bank in the town went out of business, making the ownership rights of many of these properties unclear, hindering further rebuilding.  Walking down a street the next day we came across a graveyard where just about all of the tombstones had the same year of death – 1993.  Very poignant.

There are a few other minor sights in town.  A new Hammam (Turkish Baths) museum was recently opened so we went to visit that and saw what such a place might have looked like in its heyday. There were displays of the various artifacts used and an explanation of the role of the Hammam, not just in hygiene, but also in social culture.  There was a professionally made video showing very beautiful models (male and female) in the separate areas of the bath and what their activities might be like.  Kelly and I thought that it looked like the introduction to a soft porno video!

Heading out of town, we made a stop at the nearby village of Blagaj, which is at the source of a spring at the base of a cliff and has a Dervish (a Muslim spiritual sect) house right alongside it. Kelly was helped to put on traditional dress that ended up making her look like she might have in a shtetl 150 years ago.  Still, it was a pretty locale and the water was teaming with fish.

Time to say goodbye to Bosnia and return to Croatia.

Sarajevo-Part 2. A walking tour with Amir.

We’ve been traveling with some guidebooks, including Rick Steves’.  One thing he highly recommended for Sarajevo is to hire a local guide and he lists Amir Telibechirowich as a key resource.  We contacted Amir and were lucky that he was available as he had just returned from leading a Rick Steves’ tour throughout the Balkans.  Amir is actually a journalist rather than a guide, and he brought a journalist’s depth of detail to our experience, but even more so, his personal experience living through the nightmare of the siege of Sarajevo, including the death of several close family members.

We started at a pair of graveyards right across from our hotel.  One was an old Ottoman era graveyard, with many tombstones topped with turban shaped decorations.  The graveyard is located in an inhabited area, not because the housing expanded to this neighborhood, but rather because the local tradition has been to bury the dead in open spaces in amongst houses.  This was done to avoid thinking of the dead as spooks, zombies, or any of the other scary things western culture often associates with the dead.

Across the road is a much larger, newer graveyard.  Although to a cursory look, the tombstones seem almost identical, in fact there are people of different faiths buried here.  Once the dust cleared from the early 90s conflict, some 10,000 Sarajevans were dead (including 1,600 children) and 50,000-70,000 were wounded.  The currently population of approx. 310,000 remains about 200,000 below the prewar peak.  This graveyard is just one of many from this period when even burying people during the war was dangerous – people were shot by snipers while conducting funerals.

We also learned about the mysterious Bogomils, who were a mystic Christian sect living in the area that associated with neither Orthodox or Catholic churches and ultimately became Muslims under the Ottomans, whose philosophy was closer to that of the Bogomils rather than the more traditional Christian denominations. 

From there we climbed to a lookout with a great view of valley.  Sarajevo has to have one of the most impressive locations of any European capital nestled in the heart of a deep valley that would seem to be a great defensive position if you controlled the nearby peaks.  However, sometime well before the conflict, citizens saw construction equipment building fortifications around the peaks.  When they asked questions they were told that these were for the protection of the population, but in reality the guns placed there were not pointed away from the city, but towards it, making the city indefensible once the shooting began.  Nearby we could see an old prison station.  This was where Princip got taken after assassinating the ArchDuke (and getting beat up by the crowd).

Walking back into down we saw the Moorish style, Austro-Hungarian built City Hall.  Due to a building mix up (or a deliberate act on the part of the slighted architect), the balcony, from which the Mayor would make his proclamations was not placed on the side facing an open space as would make sense, but instead toward the narrow quay with a river in front, with very little space for any crowds and the sound of water to compete with.

In the Ottoman core of the city we visited the exterior of one of the main Mosques, then headed across the street to the old Madrassa (school) which is now a museum as the Madrasssa is in newer quarters next door.  The old town town includes many Mosques, and bazaars selling food, jewelry and all sorts of knick knacks.

We then walked through the Austro-Hungarian middle part of the city, passing the Jewish Museum, Catholic Cathedral, Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, plazas and so forth.  In a number of places throughout the city serious damage from the war can still be seen and Amir took us into several alleys to see this.  Much of the damage was done by mortars that could lob a shell over the buildings and into the spaces in between where the shrapnel would wreak havoc.  As we walked along the streets in a number of places small pock marked areas on the street  could be seen, many of them filled with red paint.  These are so called “Sarajevo Roses” and denote the site of a massacre, defined as the death of 3 or more people from a single mortar bursts.  The non painted ones mean that either no one was killed or “only” one or two people.

As we passed into one of the newer areas of Sarajevo, we were now in the heart of “Snipers Alley” where people had to dart between buildings in order to avoid the Serbian snipers who seemed to shoot anything that was moving in their sights.  Amir related how the streets were empty and one day someone offered him a lift back to his home, near the airport.  He drove at around 200 KM/Hr (about 125 MPH) through the streets, in part to avoid the snipers, but also because he wanted to and he could.  Amir wasn’t sure which he was more frightened off – the snipers or the driver!

We had come here at my request to visit the National Museum in order to see the Sarajevo Haggadah.  Unfortunately the room is currently kept locked so we could only glimpse the book through a glass door and under a glass case.  This was very disappointing, but we got to see other parts of the museum including Roman and other artifacts, an Ethnographic wing with dioramas of Ottoman life, a Natural History wing, and Bogomil tombstones outside.

Amir took us to a fun Cafe called Tito that is decorated with lots of memorabilia of the former head of state.  Outside are some military vehicles including one of the 5 tanks that the locals used to defend the city.  Imagine – going to a museum to get a world war II era tank to try to protect your home. 

Amir and I drank Cockta, a drink I’ve seen on every menu in the former Yugoslav states.  He explained to me that Tito did not ban foreign products, so for instance, Coca Cola was available, but he also encouraged the creation of local equivalent products, and so this is the Yugoslav version of Coke - somewhat different in taste, but not bad.

We delayed our departure from Sarajevo the next morning in order to visit the Memorial Gallery 11/7/95 which is a gallery that includes photos of the aftermath of the Srebrenica Massacre as well as various films and presentations attempting to explain what happened there and how it affected the families of the dead,  It also includes an exhibition of graphic protest posters from the time.  The Srebrenica Massacre took place in the northeast of the country in a Muslim town close to the Serbian border.  It was officially a safe area protected by the UN, but unfortunately they ended up being woefully unable to do their job and 8,000 men and boys were deliberately exterminated in a horrific coordinated act of ethnic cleansing.  Somewhat telling is that the Court in the Hague ultimately found that the Dutch UN peacekeepers were directly liable for the death of 300 of these people.

A sobering end to our visit to such a beautiful town.  No one who lived through the conflict will forget this episode of madness, but from the friendliness and positivity of the all the people we met, it seems they are doing their best to write the next chapter in this city’s long and illustrious history.

Sarajevo–Part 1

When you hear the name “Sarajevo”, what comes to mind?  My guess is for most people, it is often something negative, such as the assassination of ArchDuke Ferdinand at the hand of the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip that started World War I, or the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.  On a more positive note, some of you may recall the 1984 winter Olympics.

What is generally less well known is that Sarajevo was for centuries a model of tolerance and inter-cultural living.  Jews, Muslims, and Christians of eastern and western churches all lived side by side. Unlike most cities that allowed Jews in the late medieval and renaissance period, the Jews of Sarajevo did not live in ghettos, but amongst their neighbors.  Today the old Sephardic synagogue (from the majority of the Jewish population who came here from Spain after 1492) is now a Jewish museum, but the Ashkenazi synagogue (founded by the Austo-Hungarian Jews who came here in the 19th Century) is still in operation.  Of special Jewish interest is the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving illuminated Jewish manuscripts, most likely made in Spain around the 13th Century and carried to Sarajevo sometime after the expulsion in 1492.  Apart from the magnificence of the manuscript itself, its history is fascinating – including numerous brushes with destruction at the hands of the inquisitors, the fascist Ustaše in WWII and the siege in the early 90s.  In the latter two instances it was due to the heroic actions of muslim curators that we still have this priceless treasure.

If you have about 7 minutes, the following video is well worth watching.  I am pleased to report the National Museum re-opened in late 2015.  However, whether due to low levels of staffing or security concerns, the Haggadah can only be seen from afar and it was quite a disappointment not to be able to view it close up.

We got in to Sarajevo early enough to visit the Franz Ferdinand Assassination Site & Museum at the corner where Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Bosnian serb shot and killed both the heir to the Austo-Hungarian Empire, Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife, Sophie.  I learned a number of things of which I was not aware.  First, this was part of a wider conspiracy to kill first the governor of Bosnia, but instead the target changed to the Archduke.  Serbian conspirators in Belgrade supplied and trained a gang of young men, most of whom were members of a secret society called the Black Hand.  On the day of the assassination, one of them threw a bomb at the open topped car, but it bounced off and blew up under the following vehicle.  The Archduke and his wife sped on to their destination, too fast for Princip to shoot at,  but remarkably, after making a presentation, continued with their visit.  Just imagine what would happen if there was a modern attempt on a head of state or senior diplomat’s life – they would rush them out of the city as fast as possible.  The governor, who was travelling with the Archduke didn’t want to deploy a large contingent of troops in the city to further protect the royal party as they were just back from maneuvers and not kitted in the appropriate dress uniforms. 

A decision had been made for the royals to visit the injured from the earlier explosion and therefore the return route was altered, but somehow the instructions did not get passed on to the driver of Ferdinand and Sophie’s car, and so he continued straight along the quays rather than taking the needed right turn.  The governor stopped the driver and told him to back up – exactly where Princip was standing, so the car was essentially stopped and he was able to fire from a very close distance at stationery targets, first hitting the Archduke and then his wife.  Princip later claimed that he was aiming for the governor and not Sophie and whether his hands were shaking or he missed because he was grabbed, or he was indeed aiming for Sophie will never be known for sure.  Sophie was from a Czech noble family and almost persona non grata with the Austo-Hungarian Archduke’s family, and so there are all sorts of conspiracy theories, including that the Archduke’s own family might have been behind the killing.

Princip was only 19 and so too young to be executed, so he received a 20 year jail sentence instead.  However some of the Serbian officers who planned and equipped the attacks were executed.