“Fish soup and Coke?” the Croatian woman at the restuarant by the bus station said incrediously in broken English when I ordered sides for my omelet. Heading across the border into Bosnia -best to load up with some toxic energy to peel the layer of cheap Croatian beer off my eyeballs. Staring at the scene on the street one would think they were in an alpine climate for all the plumes of white exhaling with each breath of the locals. Smoking is a defense mechanism here, and a yellow shingled smile often greets the request for an Ozujsko, the favored beer of old men playing cards by a half painted fishing boat. While the air is thick with cigarette and pipe smoke and fumes from Yugos, the water is the clearest in the Mediterranean. If you snorkle off any rocky outcropping, you can see 50 feet down like it’s glass, through schools of fish.
On the island of Vis, a local takes us up into the hills, to an abandoned airstrip used by British bombers making runs to turn German cities into fireballs. The runway is all vineyards now, only the red and white striped pylons remain. Dinner on a farm nearby with a Croatian family and some of their homemade wine brings stories of the British airmen who, hobbled by anti-aircraft guns and their gunner dead, ditched at sea and were rescued by local fishermen. One of the downed airmen, an 87 year old, returned recently, rented a plane, and buzzed the old vineyard covered landing strip one last time, waving at the leathery farmers below.
There is no love for the Italians. Besides most recently invading and making a drunken nuicance in the summer season, in too recent memory they joined with Germany and invaded local islands and coastal towns with flamethrowers and burned houses to the ground. Hike in the forest along the coast 50 km south of Dubrovnik and you’ll find trenches connecting crude cement bunkers with small windows for machine gun nests on three sides, something I’d only witnessed in a video game until now.
Speaking of video games, in the window – a croatian magazine with John Marston on the cover and a big Red Dead Redemption logo and cryptic Croatian titles – it lured me into a little shop in a sleepy port town. They have more copies coming soon he said. To celebrate, I pick up a few liters of Croatian beer(they sell in 1 and 2 liter bottles, like gasoline) and stumble down the rocky wharf road by old fishing boats, hoping I can get some fish soup and a coke come morning.
June 2, 2010
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