27 September

Just outside Pula, Croatia, in a tourist trap  called Bi-Village. (Not nearly so liberal minded as its name implies, alas.)



Welcome to Bi-Village (Bee, not Bye). Just a little west (7 km) of the city of Pula, this is a heaven for tourists and holiday seekers of all types. We have hundreds of rooms of all sizes, from small two person apartments to townhouses for ten, mobile homes, camping, and a beachfront hotel with deluxe suites. There are two restaurants, a supermarket, and a bar as well as a variety of boutiques and shops for your spending pleasure. On the tip of the Istrian peninsula, the waters of the Mediterranean here are calm and warm and crystal clear. If you are feeling active, you can participate in a variety of sports and activities as we have all forms of recreation available; fields for football and basketball, volleyball and tennis, and equipment rental from jet ski and canoeing to bicycling and motorcycle riding. You can take windsurfing lessons and once you are skilled, rent a board and rig and practice your new talent. We are here to serve you and make your coastal holiday one to remember!



Yes, welcome to tourist paradise, unless of course you come after 10 September, in which case you will find that nothing is open, and the things that are, are only open from 1700 – 2000 (5pm – 8pm), This includes the communications center (3 phones and a laptop plugged into the wall for internet), two souvenir stores, and one day out of two so far, the hair salon. The supermarket has more hours, but still only 8am – 3pm, so think about what you want to do for dinner well ahead of time. Care to rent a bike, canoe, or scooter? Sorry, it’s closed. Want to pick up swimsuit for the water? Closed. Want a beach towel? Well, there is one place open who will sell you one, but they only have about 10 left, and they range in price from 90 kn to 130 kn. At 5.75 kn to the dollar, that beach towel converts to $22 and change. What about a chair for the beach? Yes, there is a store open (if you can call three hours a day, open) that sells chairs, umbrellas, and some boating supplies. A simple lawn chair of the fold up variety will run you 300 kn (marked down from 399) and the nicer style that folds up vertically as is fashionable in the US runs a bit over 400. In case you’re curious, that is $52 and $79 respectively. Yes. For a folding lawn chair. I’m sincerely thinking of going into business buying them for $8 at Target, flying them to Croatia and opening up a store here. At that point they will be imported, so I can probably charge a premium. On top of all that, the people are rude! Not the people who work here, so much… they’ve been pretty good, but the other guests here in general are the least friendly people I’ve run into since Russia. Seriously… walking down the beach, with one no around, and you see someone coming towards you… in the States you say hello, and they say hello, as you pass at the very least. It’s like being on a trail… you always say hello on the trail, right??  Not here… here even if you speak they pretend you don’t exist. After so many weeks of friendly people in foreign lands, it’s startling.

So, yes, here I am… I knew (mostly) what I was getting into when I booked, but its even more so than I expected. I went to the bar to buy a bottle of water last night (since the market was closed) and all they had were small  glass bottles for $3. So I bought a sprite instead, and paid $2.50 for it. I did a load of laundry (my clothes were getting a bit stiff with the dirt) which cost me $8 (one load, though I did get detergent for that price) but they needed washing so desperately I didn’t complain (besides, having them washed in a hotel would probably cost just as much). Mind you that was just the wash… no dryers… but they do give you a line to hang them on. Dinner in the restaurant the last two nights has cost me between $20 and $30 each night, which I wouldn’t mind too much, except that the food has been only mediocre. My last night in Zagreb I paid $30 for a meal that made me joyous for a good three hours afterwards (Hotels there were expensive, but the food was cheap!).

So why am I here then, given my distaste for all things tourist? Because this is the only place I could find offering windsurfing lessons that I could verify was open. Sort of. Lovro – the guy who is teaching me, cancelled the first day at the last minute (I found out when I walked to the rental shop and found it closed, then went to the reception area of the village – the info desk was closed – and annoyed them until they let me use their computer to check my email, and got the message from Lovro. Today though we started, and he’s a pretty interesting character, if not a fantastic teacher. We did an hour of theory (a history as an aerospace engineer let him skim through some of that) and then I spent 15 minutes getting used to standing on the board without the sail, then we added the sail and went for a cruise. There was very little wind, so most of the time we were barely moving at all, but standing up and keeping balance was much, much easier with the sail, and I did pretty well controlling it even, but had no idea where I should have been headed versus the wind (and sometimes which way the wind was truly blowing) and so spent the entire time with him micromanaging me from alongside. Move the sail forward! close it! further forward! no closer to you! lean back! relax! I really hate it when you’re trying to learn something new and they tell you to relax. If I knew what I was doing, I could relax… once I get the hang of doing twenty two things at once and simultaneously looking at the shore to sort out where I’m going and where I want to be, then I’ll be able to relax!. Right now you just have to accept that I’m trying to learn and not going to relax! I was getting a bit annoyed, but I guess that is what lessons are all about, and given that I only spent an hour or so on the water today, I’m sure it will get better faster. It would be nice though, tomorrow, if there were enough wind to give me a real sense of motion, even if I have to fight it and work harder than I was today.

So… I’m making things out to be worse than they really are, of course. After all, I have a small apartment only 200 meters from the ocean, water that is almost perfect for swimming, and now I have some new skills. The apartment is on the cheap side ($50 or so per night) and I’m suitably worn out after swimming all morning and windsurfing in the afternoon, so I really don’t need a television or a phone (which is good since my room has neither). The only real complaint that I can make is that what other guests are here, on top of being rude, are pretty much all over the age of 60. I’m sure it’s a hopping place in the summer, filled with young and nubile coeds, but this week it’s all retirees. In the 32 hours plus I’ve been here, I’ve not met anyone close to my age who speaks English and doesn’t work for the village. I have no idea if the age thing is related to the rudeness and the fact that no one will even say hello, but I don’t think so… Lovro told me that its very rare for them to get Americans here… most of their clientele is German and Austrian. I wonder if that’s it? I haven’t been to Germany yet… are they just incredibly rude there? Helga? Help me out here… (for those of you who don’t know, Helga is a friend who works at Half Price Books, and is from Gemany, and is not especially rude, for a German.)

One other comment I have about the age range of the guests here… on the whole, I usually feel like European sunbathing is approximately equal in enjoyment to American sunbathing. The fact that many of the women go topless is pretty much evened out by the fact that all the men wear speedo thongs. That does not apply here. Here both of those tend to be major… let me emphasize major.. negatives.

Okay… one thing about life is good. I just discovered that if I plug my ipod into the computer, I can play the music on it through the speakers. That may sound obvious to those of you with ipods and computers, but the thing is, my laptop didn’t have enough space on the hard drive for me to bring my music on it… so I’ve been doing the trip with my music just on the ipod. If I wanted to listen to music while writing then I thought I either had to use the headphones or choose from about four songs which are on the laptop. Last week I downloaded a program that would let me pull songs from my ipod and put them back on the computer, so that I could burn some cds for friends, and now while messing with that I’ve found that I can have access to my whole song library! I have no idea why I didn’t figure this out sooner… I guess I assumed that since you couldn’t copy songs from the ipod to the computer then you couldn’t play them either.

While I’m on the subject… does anyone else find it weird that the ipod doesn’t charge if your computer does to sleep??? Several times I’ve plugged it in overnight to charge it, closed the computer (putting it to sleep, of course) and then opened it the next day to find that the ipod didn’t charge up at all. If it were a PC, then I’m sure quirks like that wouldn’t bother me, but Apple is usually so good about that stuff, it’s quite jarring when they miss a detail that seems so fundamental to how people are going to use their products. Duh! Of course I’m going to charge the ipod overnight, and the computer is going to be asleep at the same time! I should send this to Apple, probably. Except now I’ve gotten used to working around it.

Skipping subjects again, I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray this afternoon. It’s set me thinking about how I expected this trip to change me, and how unrealistic it was, but at the same time, wondering what causes people to change. Certainly I’m a different person now than when I left NYC two months ago… at the very least I’ve learned a whole host of new skills for coping with the world around me, from catching trains in foreign languages to deciphering menus to which side of the plate the fork goes, and which cultures think the salad should go first, and which ones think it should go last (not all, mind you, but I know some of them). But does knowing new things make you a different person?? I’ve always felt like there was a disconnect between the things I knew and the way I felt and acted. Not always, of course, and its not always a good or bad thing, though I think if I were the person I want to be, knowledge would affect me more than it does now.

For instance… the internet place I was using in Zagreb was pretty funny in a lot of ways, but one thing I really kind of liked about it was that it was militantly Vegan. Everywhere you looked in this place there were posters and signs talking about the evils of eating meat. And they weren’t afraid to tell it like it was… one sign as you were leaving said something like “Think you can be an environmentalist and still eat meat? Think again!” I liked the no bullshit attitude… you’d never see that sign in the States. And of course I know it’s true… intellectually I would prefer to be a vegetarian… I respect the choice and the sacrifice, and given the industrial food chain in the US, there’s no doubt that it would be better for the environment and probably my health as well. At the same time though, I grew up in Appalachia, and eating meat is a way of life there. Humans are carnivores. Omnivores, actually, but those canine teeth are for eating meat, and even if my brain says it’s bad, and it is theoretically possible for me not to do it and still be healthy, sometimes I just have to have some. I don’t eat a lot of it… when I have access, I’m a big fan of the various soy veggie substitutes and other options, and I probably only really eat meat in Austin about 3 – 4 times a week, but giving up that last bit has proven almost impossible to me, and I have to say that on this trip I have come to appreciate well prepared meat more than I have in the last ten years or so (I have not been traveling in vegetable friendly countries, in case you haven’t noticed).

So… I know in my head that giving up meat, giving up my car, never turning on lamps or using hot water would be good, but at the same time, I can’t bring myself to do them, whether because I’ve learned to appreciate pork kebabs prepared on the grill, or because I enjoy my work, which means driving a truck to get materials from A to B and burning very inefficient lamps to light stages, or because I like hot showers. That is the disconnect. Or one of them at least, and I can try to make it as small as I can, but it’s never going to go away. I don’t think…

You may be wondering what this has to do with Dorian Gray… I can’t say for sure… but I think it’s me wondering about the major change that affects him in the beginning of the book. Meeting Lord Henry spurs him towards the sensual pleasures, but it’s seeing his portrait change the first time that really alters his character. So… I guess I’m wondering what my equivalent of the portrait is. Not that I want to become an amoral madman who delights in using and abusing people (though being as good looking as Dorian Gray for a spell wouldn’t be a bad experiment), but finding that thing that has an effect and spurs a growth as a person would be welcome. Just a bit of wind in my sail, so that I don’t feel like I am working really hard and micromanaging, but going nowhere.

29 September

High Comedy makes a comeback!

So I’m hanging out on my balcony tonight, having ridden my new rented bike down to Fazana and eaten at a really great restaurant right on the harbor. The restaurant was a recommendation from two women I met today, having stolen their bicycle (more on that later) and it really was good. Even better, I was there just as the sun was setting, and it was one of those moments you think can’t possibly be true, but then it happens and you realize that there is a basis for all those perfect romantic moments in the movies and Bob Ross paintings.

So, picture this, if you can… and then afterwards, I’ll see if I can show you a real picture. This entire area is very old… we’re talking cities founded 1000 bc old, and Pula, which is where I rented the bike, still has a roman coliseum with 4 story walls mostly intact.



So… I’m in this little town that has super narrow streets, and a little church right in the center, facing the harbor. The restaurant is just to the side of the church, and I lock my bike on a railing by the water and I sit down at one of the tables right next to it. Not more than ten feet from the edge of the concrete and the lapping waves. There are a couple dozen small boats floating there, exactly like the ones you see in 1000 piece puzzles that have photos taken from just offshore, with the brightly colored little boats and the houses in the background that all look the same so as to makethe puzzle harder. I order a salad, fried calamari (again on recommendation of the local babes, even though its not usually a favorite. I prefer my fish to not have the consistency of rubber) and some scampi barzuni, which are basically big shrimp – more like crawfish than anything, as well as some bread and fries. And so I’m there eating, watching the fishing boats bob up and down and a couple of excursion boats come in, munching on good seafood (Yes, the calamari was fantastic) and as background music I have the 6pm Friday night mass at the little church, with frequent hymns, and multiple bell ringings.







It really doesn’t get any better than that… which is probably why I took what happened next so well. So I finish dinner, and unlock my bike, and I’m wrapping the small lock around the seat post, trying to lock it again for the ride home. It’s a very short, stiff wire rope type lock, and so as I twist it around the post twice and try to lock it, it doesn’t catch and spins back around the post – this is the good part – throwing the key out of the lock and behind me, where I hear not “Clink!” but “Plunk!” Now the beauty of this is that just two hours before I’d considered myself a very bright boy when I put my room key and bike lock key on the same key ring, making them less bulky and easier to carry. So, when the little lock unwound and catapulted my key into the harbor, it wasn’t just the bike lock key, but the key to my apartment as well. Nice…

A nearby couple saw the whole thing, and once they saw me laugh, they were smiling as well. I shrugged my shoulders and said something to them… I don’t remember what, and it was pretty much a throwaway line, as I didn’t figure they spoke English anyway. The man then put his hands together and made a little motion like diving into the water. I laughed and said “No, no swimming tonight!” and they laughed some more. I continued my monologue as I figured out what to do with the now unlockable lock and then finished up with “That’s all for this evenings entertainment… tell your friends, ‘cause I’m only here three more nights!” and then rode back towards my hotel, wondering if they had spare keys and how much one was going to cost me. (150 kn, for those of you who are curious – enough that I might swing by tomorrow and see how deep the water is there, and how clear… if its like the rest of the sea here, I may very well see the keys.) There was a questionable moment as the cute woman with the super stylin glasses who had helped me out earlier in the week said that she didn’t have access to any keys, but she made a phone call and told me to wait there (I told her I had nowhere else to go) and then came back with a key to the room that had spare keys. She gave me the new one, and told me I’d have to pay for it when I checked out. She was laughing a bit about it too, but then clammed up when I asked her name (a pause, then “Why?” – so I can report who keeps being my savior – don’t worry, nothing more). I hate it when women think I am a potential stalker, just because I ask their name or say hello.

So now I have a bike without a lock… not nearly as big a deal here as it would be anywhere in the States, and owe an extra $30 when I check out, unless I feel lucky and go swimming tomorrow morning. We’ll see.


(a two thousand year old archway in Pula)

So to backtrack a bit, I went into Pula yesterday and found a place that rents bicycles. It turns out they have the best bikes in town, and I know this because as I was riding along the coastline from Bi-Village today, there were two women swimming, and I thought they said something to me, but wasn’t sure, and I kept going. Well, the trail ended just after that, so as I was riding back, seeing that one of them was walking out of the water, towards the beach, I asked if the swimming was good there, and the water deep. She said No, the water was not so deep, and as we talked, I found out that the two of them had called the bike shop today to try to rent a good bike, and the woman told them that they were all gone… a guy came in yesterday and rented one for three days. Well, apparently that is unusual, at least for this time of year. I guess the two of them do this somewhat often, because they recognized the bike as I rode by, and that is what they were saying… “That guy took our bike!” I’m a little puzzled, as either this shop either has very few bikes, or they all look exactly the same… In any case, it was true, I was the one, and I apologized to them and talked to them for a while.

Their names were Sonya and something beginning with L. (I didn’t think to write down the brunette’s name, which I really should have as it wasn’t a name that was familiar to me… Lbratuli is the name in her email, but that doesn’t look like the name she said sounded. Damn.. Sorry!), and the two of them had done a bit of traveling as well, and now worked selling Herbalife and enjoying the flexible schedles and lifestyle that offered. L. had twisted her ankle badly as they were running earlier that day and had a pretty nasty bruise showing up on it as she walked out of the water. I told them a bit about Austin, and about our music scene and they seemed pretty interested in SXSW, so who knows… I may have just added two more visitors to Austin next March. On the bright side though, they are both very attractive and have sexy accents. Quite a switch from the typical foreign SXSW visitor who is usually a tall, pale twentysomething guy from Finland who is into death metal.

30 September

Well, if any of you were curious, it turns out that I am not nearly as fond of windsurfing as I thought I was going to be. I took another couple lessons with Lovro, and the second day was exactly what I was asking for…  still great weather and a bit more wind to keep things moving. The wind made things earlier once I got going, but much harder to start off, and I was getting incredibly frustrated with Lovro who had a knack for yelling out his micromanaging instructions at the exact moments I was on the verge of falling, or making some maneuver that required my concentration. Finally I told him that the time to give me instructions was not when I was in the process of falling off the board, but either before or afterward. He wasn’t thrilled with my critiquing of his teaching technique, of course, but what can I say? I cancelled our evening lesson for today, and I’m going to go into Pula, to get away from the village and the german tourists for a while. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow, but the thing is, I’ve been watching the windsurfers on this island… people who have their own equipment and obviously know what they are doing, and the fact is that even they don’t make it look very interesting to me. Pretty much they are all fighting the same fights I’ve been experiencing the past two days, handling them a little better of course, but not really getting much speed or apparent enjoymentt out of the effort. On the other hand, I watch the guy who has his own catamaran – a small one, similar to a Hobie 18’, but its not a Hobie, and he looks like he’s having a blast. I’ve been eyeing catamarans for a few years and almost bought one back when Laura and I lived in the house together (used ones can be had pretty cheaply out of season) but now that I don’t have a place to keep it, and not having easy access to the ocean or good lakes on which to sail it, I haven’t done it. I was hoping that windsurfing would be similar to that I guess, without the need for the whole boat, but it’s really not. Anyway, as I said…. I’ll give it another day and see…

1 October

Well, the wind this morning was non-existent, so we cancelled the lesson. This afternoon we tried again, but Lovro wanted me to get back on the board without the sail and work more on my balance. I told him that I felt like I needed to be doing the real thing. After a bit of discussion, I decided to forgo any more lessons and move on. It’s really amazing how much better I felt after doing that. I don’t know… I might feel differently if I were to try this with another teacher, but I don’t think so… I think its actually just not that interesting to me. Since I have plenty of things that are hard that I do like doing (kayaking, climbing, etc) I don’t feel the need to spend a lot of time on a new sport that doesn’t interest me. Bleh.

Besides… I’m leaving here in two days, and I’d just as soon spend my time riding this bike and swimming and catching some sun. Interestingly, the village grocery store changed their sign this morning, and now they are only open from 8 – 1pm. I’m wondering if the rest of the village is going to close down even more as well. Or if it is even possible.

2 October.

Monday night and yes, the village is closed. The call and internet shop put up a sign saying “closed for the season” which is more than most other shops bothered to do. Most of them just stopped opening their doors at the times shown. The restaurant is still open pretty much all day, but nothing else has opened up the past two days. It looks like I’m leaving just in time. It’s really too bad, because I’ve grown to like Fazana a great deal, and Pula is a nice city… but I’ve been here more than long enough. I’m headed back to Zagreb for a day or two tomorrow, and then from there, to Split.

The reason I’m going back to Zagreb instead of Split directly is for one, the Pula to Split bus takes ten hours, which I don’t really want to do all at once, despite the luxury buses. On top of that, there is a camera store there that may be able to solve my continuing desire for a real camera instead of the one I’ve got. At the very least, I liked the city a lot, and spending a day or two there before moving on will get the Geman tourist taste out of my mouth.




5 October. Back in Zareb.

Okay, so I am obsessing about this camera thing now. A few people who know me really well know just how bad I am when I get an idea stuck in my head. I have to pursue it until I either work it out or just work myself to a point where I realize that all the energy I’m investing in it just isn’t worth it… and I can just give it up. Now, I’m here to tell you that it takes a lot – really a lot – for me to give up on it. Way more than most people are prepared to put into an idea, or an obsession for that matter.

So this aspect of my personality has some positives… it makes me a good designer most of the time, even if it makes it a bit hard to give up on ideas that I really like, and it makes me a really, really great shopper and researcher. If I decide I am going to buy something, you can pretty much bet anything you want to bet that I’m going to end up with a really good Thing for the amount of money I’ve spent. Usually that thing will be towards the upper end of the spectrum in quality, just below that place where you start paying really extreme amounts of money for little differences that don’t mean a lot. I mean its really pretty remarkable… I can look at any large purchase I’ve made in the last several years and it will fit into this description like a key. My truck, my bike, musical equipment, lighting gear… whatever.

Anyway, all of this means that as I should be wondering around, thinking about seeing museums and meeting new friends and all the stuff that goes along with traveling, instead, every time I turn around I am seeing something that makes me think about cameras, or seeing great photos, and thinking, gee, if I only had a camera that I could turn on in less than 20 seconds (fast start up is not an attribute of the camera I have) that would be a great shot. It was slightly on my mind in Pula, but since being back in Zagreb, where there are some real photo shops, it’s hitting me in a big way. But now, I think I’ve finally come to a decision. It’s not worth the expense and trouble to have the camera I really want (the new Nikon D80 with a Nikkor 18 – 200 lens) shipped from the US. For one thing, none of the stores will actually ship it… so I’d have to buy it, have it sent to my parents, then have one of them send it to me. When you research it and learn that even FedEx won’t guarantee anything to reach Croatia from the US in much less than a week, and that at an expense of anywhere from $200 - $400, I think you can see my point. So… the local Nikon dealer says that they will be getting the D80s in stock either tomorrow or Monday… I don’t necessarily believe them, but I may wait around a day and see, rather than running to Split right away as I planned. I like Zagreb a lot anyway, and there is plenty here to do. If that doesn’t pan out, then I will either just give up on it and deal with the one I’ve got for another month, or I’ll pick up something cheaper (and not as good) as the D80, but significantly better than the one I’ve got and accept it as the best I can do in the situation.

The thing is, I really find it amazing that there is such a difference in Europe and America when it comes to things like this. Zagreb is a thoroughly modern and cosmopolitan city… in many ways more cosmopolitan than most cities in the US. That I’m having such a hard time getting a camera that has been available in Austin for the past month or more even at a price of a couple hundred dollars more than I would l pay walking into the local camera shop there is a little troubling. Even the Croatian online stores aren’t stocking it yet (Lovro helped me look, as he was coincidentally camera shopping as well). I never realized how spoiled I was in the US… and we won’t even talk about the fact that all the good online deals will only ship to the US as well. I feel kind of sorry for everyone over here. If everything else works the same way, I can’t imagine doing scenic design here… I’m not sure I’ve ever worked on anything where we didn’t need some hard to find piece or materials at the last minute. I probably have, but I can’t think of what… Sheesh…

Yes, that’s right. I’m an American consumer. Bleh.

7 October, On the Bus from Zagreb to Split.

I know you’re all holding your breath. Well, yes, the cameras came in yesterday, and yes, I bought one, with the lens I wanted and everything. Don’t ask me how much it cost. Pretty much the same as it would have cost to ship it here, I guess, but its hard to ignore the $400 or so I would have saved buying it in the US. Oh well… I could either save that money or have it for the rest of the trip. I chose to have it where I can use it. It’s just money, right? The good news is that it’s a way better camera even than I thought it was going to be… well worth the money, even at the inflated cost. Plus, since I got the European version, I don’t even need an adapter to plug it in and charge the battery. I’ll have to dig up a new cable when I get back to the states, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

In other news, the bus from Zagreb to Split is six hours, which is the longest trip I’ve made in quite a while… I guess since I took the train to Kiev from Ternopil, which seems like months ago at this point. Actually, I guess it was almost exactly a month ago. I’m not sure how that happened…. This entire month has been spent in Slovenia and Croatia, and I still have a couple places in Croatia that I want to see. That definitely wasn’t part of the original plan. I’m definitely not going to make it down to any of the lower part of Africa now, but I’m planning on flying from Athens to Cairo, and then spending a week or two there before heading home.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it earlier in my writing, but I started finding a while back that getting from Cairo down to the middle and Southern parts of Africa in any kind of timely way is very expensive. With the various detours I’ve taken and that fact, I’d pretty much given up on the idea of a safari ending in Capetown a while ago. Not in theory, but realizing that practically, it wasn’t going to be very realistic. I’ve now accepted it in theory as well, and will just have to find a way to get back to Africa in the next year or so. Its just as well, since Africa deserves its own trip anyway. Kind of a bummer not to be able to claim the St Petersburg to Capetown route, but four months (or less) just isn’t enough to see that much territory in any meaningful way. So now its Petersburg to Cairo. That’s still not a bad plan, right?

More from Split, once I get there.

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