Crowded in Vodice
With the arrival of summer season, millions of Northern Europeans rush to the sun and fun of the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas. Unlimited-speed autobahns quickly become jammed creating miles of grid-locked “parking lots.” In addition to the millions of cars, truck, and campers, the limited number of Alpine passes and tunnels—Tauern in the east, Brenner in the middle, and Gotthardt in the west—exacerbate the traffic problem. Everything is done to alleviate snarls including staggered school vacations agreed to by the northern countries and States within Germany.
We drove to Croatia—through the Tauern Pass—for a week of boat work and a day of boating on the Dalmatian coast to experience this annual madness first hand. I was also imagining Hannibal in the 3rd century B.C. sailing troops and elephants from modern Tunisia across the Mediterranean to Iberia, marching eastward to the north slopes of the Alps, and then surprising the Romans by attacking them from the north through the Brenner Pass―with elephants!
The small Croatian fishing village of Vodice has become a thriving tourist marina and resort with boardwalk restaurants, sidewalk cafés, open-air produce market, gift shops, and a growing charter-boat flotilla. The village has a ‘round-the-clock, party-time atmosphere. The surrounding landscape is almost desert dry and dusty but the Adriatic Sea is the lure, with crystal clear waters dotted with picturesque islands. The road leading to the coast is a vivid reminder of ethnic cleansing wars. Many homes are empty and bullet riddled or bombed out. Driving the several hundred kilometers between Zagreb and the tourist coast is a startling contrast between war and tourism.
Watching scantily clad, white-skinned northerners frying themselves in the scorching sun was great fun. I especially liked the spike-heeled women decorating several charter yachts in the marina. Late in the afternoon we enjoyed sitting on deck in folding chairs, sipping Croatian beer, and watching charter boats make their way back to the pier. It was a daily show unlike anything you see in American marinas.
Tricky Med-mooring, brisk winds, and cramped harbor were only part of the fun. The biggest show came from figuring out what language boaters and dock boys were yelling at each other while madly waving arms to fend off disasters. Often boat flags were of one nationality but the charterers of another. Italian, Croatian, German, Slovenian, Swedish, and Czech were the most popular languages. It was a modern day Tower of Babel.
The charterers managed to jam boats along each pier, separated by only the width of a fender. Then the eight to ten people per boat began to party. The discos along the boardwalk blared boom-boom music until 4 a.m. and by 5:30 a.m. local fishermen noisily putt-putted out of the harbor. There was precious little quiet time for sleeping.
On the way back to Germany, we took a brief detour to visit Bihac, Bosnia-Herzegovina, another place made infamous by recent Balkan conflicts. Minarets vs. crosses marked the border between Christian Croatia and Muslim Bosnia. A small roadside café served Turkish coffee while I tried to comprehend the vast differences between a struggling local population and happy-go-lucky tourists.
The world is OK, if a little crowded at times with people and conflicts.