May 25
Trogir and Medena
During moments like these, I feel like sleeping is a waste of time. When Croatia reveals all it has to offer, full of cypress, fruit and olive trees, friendly people, delicious seafood, history, culture and stunning architecture, I could just stay up all night enjoying the sound of the Adriatic sea caressing the shore, the guiding lights twinkling in the distance of its immensity. Too bad my eyes put themselves to sleep, drained from a day spent in the sun.
While in Trogir, a charming medieval town a bit north of Split (one of the big port cities of Croatia), Joey and I rented bikes to head to Kava beach at the end of the island. Most of Croatia’s beaches are rocky, but this one was made of white pebbles that made the sea even bluer. It’s a moody sea, with everchanging shades of turquoise, navy and light blue. The water is crystal clean. Even in the port, it looks undisturbed by human activity. It’s unfortunate that people don’t always care to dispose of their trash, leaving it on some of the beaches.
After a sun-soaked afternoon, the sky covered itself in clouds and rumbled with thunder. The sea darkened and streaks of rain appeared in the distance. We raced against the storm, pedaling as fast as we could so it wouldn’t catch us. After this exercise, our bellies were rumbling and ready for a nice platter of seafood. Everything tastes so fresh here. The tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes- free of pesticides and of the tastelessness of genetically modified foods. One meal big meal a day is plenty. All the flavors make up for the bigger quantities I have to eat at home to feel satisfied.
We rented the bikes from hotel Medena, a huge vacation resort built during the Tito era, more than 30 years ago. It was an instant coup de foudre for me and I decided we had to come back here for at least two nights.
The resort is everything I imagined the former Yugoslavia to be. After all, communism here was not soviet communism, full of misery and lack of everything. Yugoslavs had great social services. Workers were respected, had a one month paid vacation yearly and could take a one-year maternity leave if necessary. At least that’s what I’ve read and been told. The seventies and eighties were a great time to invest into tourism. The country was open to international visitors and many people took advantage of that.
Hotel Medena represents this epoch, with everything one needs to relax and enjoy the coast. A supermarket, tennis courts, apartments, bars, aquatic equipment, discothèques, restaurants… All 70s style. The hotel lobby is decorated with huge comet-like candelabras that seem to have fallen from the sky and nested themselves into the ceiling. Red couches, light green and metal ceilings, fake wood wall panels take us back in time.
Hotel Medena is like an old beautiful lady that needs to go to the beauty salon to look pretty again. That’s how one receptionist put it. It’s true- the décor is so out of style, so seventies. But that’s what makes the place’s charm to me. It’s a piece of history. The hotel was built by the government, that is, under Tito’s rule. He is the symbol of the former Yugoslavia, which Croatia used to be part of until it declared its independence in 1991, and he ruled over the country with an iron fist for more than 30 years. Today’s Croatian government still owns 60% of the hotel’s shares, which is very rare in the country.
During the war in the early nineties, tourism dropped drastically and Medena took Croatian refugees under her roof for six years. Now, although it looks outdated, it still is becoming increasingly popular not only to Europeans, but to Japanese as well.
Joey is kind of disturbed by Medena’s setting, by the strangeness of the almost emptiness of the resort. It’s not high season yet. The place is mostly filled with teens and old Germans at the moment. This quasi-emptiness reminds Joey of the movie The Shining, where Jack Nicholson goes crazy while staying at a big, old resort. But low season means cheaper prices. We’re paying 34 euros a night for an apartment with kitchen and living room, all ten meters from the shore.
I, on the other hand, am absolutely charmed. It’s hard to explain why because it’s a strong, visceral, emotional attachment. It reminds me of childhood summers spent at the sea at a similar resort in Poland. I’m definitely planning to look into the history of the place.
Finally. Some quietness. The day of the bike ride was first time my mind calmed down after the end of university session. Preparing for my three-month stay in the Balkans was constant running around, making phone calls, writing emails. But it was fruitful, and I established the contacts I need to work on my journalism project of exploring the work of the international community in the Balkans.
My friend Laura even put me in touch with a fellow Montrealer who’s working on a documentary about the international community in the Balkans this summer and hopefully we’ll be able to collaborate.
More gushing. I really feel at home here. I can get by with my really rocky Croatian. Some locals are sometimes fooled into thinking I’m Croatian from another part of the country. Good sign…
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