Week 9: People

Sorry for the break in communications people! We're still travelling, just sooo much to see and soooo little time to document it. Deep breath - here we go!

13 September - 20 September: Croatia

In Split the Diocletian palace ruins are home to many cafés and museums. One such establishment is Luxor Restaurant, whose outdoor seating is a series of cushions set on the ancient stone steps, with wooden trays set here and there upon which you can place cups and saucers and the like. While enjoying a delicious espresso with cream (my current preference), we admired the cups. They’re German made Julius Meinl cups, with the silhouette of the be-bonnetted lady, which we recognised from the dear Kleine Cafe in Vienna. We asked our waiter where we could buy such coffee cups. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where you could buy some. We get them from our coffee supplier,” he told us, apologetically. I asked him whether he would sell us a couple. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that!” I was surprised, and a little bit disappointed, but accepted his inability or reluctance to sell us some of the crockery. But then he bent forward to us and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “But I’ll let you pinch a coffee cup and saucer. But only one! I just … won’t look.” At this, Edwin and I laughed conspiratorally with the watier and paid him our bill with a generous tip. While the watier was “not looking” we pocketed both coffee cups and saucers and ran like the clappers.
* Note, we have since procured two other cups and saucers by not dissimilar means. One at a roadside cafe in Umbria, where we asked the proprietress for two capuccino cups and saucers and she would only part with one. We pinched a coffee cup from the mighty Autogrill roadside cafes in Italy. Bit naughty, but they won't miss it, really. The next capuccino cup we hope to obtain here at the Milan campsite bar. I did some preliminary negotiations with the bartender last night and he came through this morning. So far, 5 coffee cups and we haven't paid a cent!
The drive along the Dalmatian coast from Split to Dubrovnik is a surprise that Edwin and I never expected. A whimsical bonus to the gorgeous coastal drive was meeting even more of Croatia’s cats. We saw three wild teen cats cautiously accepting a gift of pancetta from a fellow passerby. The rest of the time they wrestled each other or chased butterflies. As you do.

In a curious open roofed dome (well, it might have been domed, had there been a roof) amongst Split’s ruins, a male vocal quintet sang a mystical traditional Dalmatian song to us. We bought their CD and have listened to it several times in the camper. It´s a capella. Every so often while we play it, Edwin will say `And the guitars will begin any minute, won´t they schatje?` I don’t think Edwin quite gets a capella, that is, being unaccompanied. It’s wonderful music, which uses extreme dynamics and lots of open fifths. You can’t listen to it for too long, or you start to feel sort of hollow. But it’s nice when you’re reading and don’t need to be able to sing along (especially in my case because for one, I’m not a man, and two, well, I don’t know Croatian).

On our Dubrovnik walking tour we walked past a quirky establishment called Moby Dick’s. Its promise was that if you were not satisfied, you would not have to pay. It was a sea food restaurant and Edwin and I thought we might put this unique selling proposition to the test. We were early for lunch, as it was 11am, but we hadn’t had time for breakfast. There was no one but a Russian tour guide taking a late morning coffee before her next group, and the proprietor was sitting exchanging amusing banter with her in their cropped, international English. We turned up and he used all his charms to convince us to eat an entire sea bass. To be honest, we were easy prey. He, a Croat, had married an Aussie from Perth and their story was quite interesting. When he and she were 20 years old, back in 1975, they had a summer romance. It was wonderful. When she got home, she called him, to tell him she was with child. So, being the 70s, and being a good boy, he went to Australia and married her. He stayed there for 4 years and worked in a brick factory. He saved up $40,000 and came back to Croatia with his wife and family and opened Moby Dick’s restaurant in Dubrovnik. Now they work 8 months a year and holiday for the remaining 4. Every second year they go to Australia, and every other year the in-laws come to Croatia. His 87 year old mother in law finds the flight somewhat a challenge these days, but she still does it, as does his own mother, 86. He was hilarious, enticing passersby in their own languages (where possible) – English, German, Spanish, Italian. “How are you today? Moby Dicks, Dick Moby. You no happy, you no pay!” he would cry. People would smile and sidle away, but some came to join us and the happy chatter. An older couple from Adelaide had a good old chinwag with us and … we never learnt his name, so let’s call him Ismael. I must say, while the dominant language we’ve heard on our travels has definitely been German, the accent I’ve heard most of all in Dubrovnik has been Aussie. It’s comforting in some ways, but a bit irritating too. I mean, I feel like “just another Australian”! However, listening to Ismael’s story, it was nice to hear such a happy ending to his shotgun marriage! He is still very happy with his wife, even though he proudly tol dus she calls him “you bugger”all the time. What a character. We laughed and laughed, and particularly enjoyed our meal. The salad was topped with a truss of baby cherry tomatoes which an old lady delivers to him - 10kg of the homegrown stuff each morning; the olive oil was made by his mother, from olives that he and his staff gather over a fun weekend away. And the potato spinach salad was particularly to die for, with the crispy skinned sea bass pan fried with garlic and sprinkled with fresh parsley, drizzled with this wonderful olive oil.

After having waited for 20 minutes for our bus at the wrong bus stop, we decided to walk through Dubrovnik old town in the evening to get to the right one. We stumbled upon an remembrance room to those men who fell in Dubrovnik back in October 1991. This was located in a side room to a music hall where a bald man played a Yamaha grand piano to a spattering of crowd. I recognised the music but it was … a little different. He was improvising over Debussy. Stopping mid piece in Claire de Lune and beginning somewhere else in one of the jauntier pieces of the Children’s Suite. The audience didn’t seem to mind. He appeared to be playing more for himself, or perhaps even to be practising for another concert while we looked on. This impromptu concert was a strange accompaniment to the tribute to the dead only a few metres away.