northampton, ma

First off, here's a map of where I went and stayed in Italy this summer.

Back at home now, but more tales to tell. My mother admonished me to end this summer's series on a happy note, since my last entry didn't do much but complain about the Eye-talians. I really like complaining, but I can see her point. So instead of further negativity, let's move on to tales of nude beaches, drunken swimming, and sunrises!

My last entry on the 8th was written from the lovely island of Hvar. While I did like Hvar, I think spending 4 nights there was a bit too much as the island is rather small and I found myself repeating my steps quite a bit. I ended up moving onto Dubrovnik for my last four nights, which was the highlight of Croatia (no surprise here to anyone familiar with Croatia) and one of the best periods of my trip. Dubrovnik was absolutely slammed with tourists, yet I loved it anyway. I can't imagine the charm the place must have in the shoulder season. Then again, the water is cool enough in August that I'm not sure I'd want to visit in May or October, swimming would be out of the question then. But enough chronicling, let's get to the raunch!

Such as my first nude beach experience. One day I took a daytrip out to the little island of Lokrum, which sits just off Dubrovnik by about a 30 minute boat ride. I was walking around randomly through the island's trails, when I found one that ran across to the cliff edge and had a view down to the sea. I walked over, looked down, and noticed an extremely beautiful inlet, a V-shaped gash into the island with 40-50 foot high cliff walls and aquamarine water. I immediately thought "must go there" and then "Ok, how?" and proceeded to look to the left and noticed naked people. The only way into this marine bliss was walking and rockhopping all the way down the nude beach until the very end. Unless I wanted to jump the 50 feet off the cliff, but I wasn't feeling particularly Australian and decided to pass. Now I knew Croatia's strict nude beach policy - you enter, you get naked. I weighed the situation mentally. I came to the conclusion that my inhibitions were silly, that I'm on vacation and don't really care, and figured it was worth letting 50 people see my white ass. Plus it'd be an adventure, and my trip had thusfar been short on adventure (long on relaxation).

So I find the trail to the beach entrance, passing by the No Clothes and No Cameras sign, and clamber to the end of the beach. The term "beach" in Croatia does not have anything to do with strips of sand. It really refers to anyplace near the sea where people can lay out or go swimming. All of Croatia's shoreline is rock or some variation thereof. This partiuclar "beach" was really nice by Croatia's standards, with lots of broad flat rocks that stepped up from the water up the hillside. Anyway, I get to my target destination, the End of the Nude Beach. I take a deep breath, bend over, and woosh, off goes my swimsuit. I then peer off into the distance, junk to the wind, inhale and shout "I am Adam reincarnate!" Ok, not really. Instead I rockhopped buck naked to the jumping off point (rockhopping while nude might be one of the least attractive sights on earth, well, if you have my skinny pale body anyway) and threw myself into the choppy azure water. Swimming naked in the sea is a surprisingly nice sensation. You feel like a fish or something, like you belong there.

That wasn't the only nudie experience for me. The following occasion was a lot less dramatic. A group of us were at the beach a couple days later, one girl noticed that the other half of the beach was nude, and wanted to go do it. It was my last day in Croatia, and she was somewhat attractive, so I said what the hell and went with.

Dubrovnik was also a good night out. In four nights there I saw the sun rise twice, partly a product of the buses not running between 1 and 5:30 am and the hostel being a 40 minute walk from the downtown/castle area. The hostel had a great group of people so it was quite fun hitting up the clubs. The best evening ended with us walking past the old town harbor on our way back. I peered into the harbor, saw a boat tied up off by itself, and immediately fashioned myself Jack Sparrow. "Let's pirate the boat!" I yelled as I ran into the harbor and jumped on. No one else in my little group found the idea as cool as me, instead someone offered a suggestion: no, let's go swimming instead! Now, despite Dubrovnik having pure waters all around it, inside the harbor the water might give a Venetian canal a run for its money. The water is still clear, but has random trash floating about it and god knows what invisible liquids tossed off the boats. So the decision was Pirates vs. Swimmers and swimming won. We got down to our undies and hurled ourselves in. The water was gross, I knew it'd be gross, but when you're drunk you don't care. We got out when some old Croatian codger yelled at us that the police were coming and we'd better clear the area. I didn't really believe him, besides it isn't illegal to go swimming, but the girls freaked out and we had to leave.

It was nice having a few solid nights out to end the trip, considering I spent a lot of my trip in places where partying is a glass of Vin Santo after a meal. Out of 82 nights I probably only had 4-5 proper all nighters. Nice to end the trip on an upswing!

So my Croatian adventure ended with me sleeping on the deck of the Jadrolinja ferry into Bari, followed by 7 hours of trains the next day into Rome. My last meal in Italy was cacio e pepe followed by a pizza with prosciutto and rucola at Da Francesco, which I think has the best atmosphere of any restaurant in Rome. I followed that up with gelato at Giolitti, where I asked for mora and pistacchio, and was promptly told that they didn't have mora (blackberry) but mirtillo (blueberry) was the same thing. I took the insult to my intelligence lightly, and with a smile admonished the young gelato scooper that they are two entirely different fruits. He probably was surprised to get a rebuttal in Italian from a guy wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt. I got the blueberry anyway, but it wasn't as good. Blackberry is my favorite. Next time, Rome, next time.

In short, Italians do not act very well when on vacation. They are easily the loudest, most boisterous, and most annoying group of foreigners here on Hvar. I'm not sure what demon spirit possesses these people when they float over to the other side of the Adriatic, but I'm not a big fan of it. I've witnessed several occasions of Italians being rude to people at a service counter (be it a grocery store or ferry ticket booth), Italians being piss drunk and shouting at each other at restaurants, Italians shouting out their cars about the World Cup victory, etc. Half of it seems to be a sense of superiority to their Croatian hosts (hence the rudeness, and general unwillingness to speak anything other than Italian), and the other half seems to be this sort of crazed revelry (mixed with alcohol) that makes them the loudest, most annoying bastards on this beautiful and tranquil island. For me I don't mind the latter, it's just the way Italians talk down to Croatians that pisses me off. Since I understand Italian, I catch all their side conversations and quips. At times they aren't pretty.

You'd think that the letters Y and Z aren't really used that much in our language, so if their positions on the keyboard were switched for each others then it wouldn't be that big a deal, right? Actuallz .. er .. actually, it is.

So now that I revealed the Big Secret that I am in Croatia, I suppose I should mention how I got here. By boat. Ok there's more... About a week ago I got off my complacent ass and decided it was time to move about a bit faster. So I went to Milan, Trento, Madonna di Campiglio, Trento, Bologna, and then ferried across from Ancona to Split, Croatia. 6 days of travel in 6 days. Normally that isn't my style, at all, but honestly I rather enjoyed it. Aiding my decision to move on were a couple English girls, Hannah and Beth, that I met in my hostel in Certaldo who happened to be going that way. Fast travel does have its benefits, it keeps you on your toes. And it was just what I needed, getting out of the rolling hills of central Italy and up to the mountains in the north. Italy can surprise you when you get your mental picture of the country pidgeon-holed into villas and cypress trees and rolling golden hills. Up in the Trentino it's huge mountain ridges, deep green valleys, and lederhosen. And yes, I am serious about the latter, you can go see the lovely ladies in M. di Campiglio's tourist office for proof.

We stayed one night in a rifugio (mountain refuge) up on a ridge above Campiglio. This was one of the oddest experiences in my life. First was the thunderstorm that passed directly on top of us (we were at around 7000 feet), with lightning right out our window. The power got turned out, we started talking about The Shining, and it was good proper scary fun. I also think it was the first time in about 7 weeks of my trip that I was actually proper cold. We had dinner and then the sun set and things got dark. I wanted to take a shower, and went to the bathroom and tried to turn on the tap. No luck. So I go downstairs and ask them how the shower works. They tell me I need a token to turn it on. A fucking token to turn on a shower?! Well I go back up, notice a red box that tells you to insert tokens for shower, then ask the girls I was with if we had received tokens, was told no, and went back down to ask reception for tokens. So I ask the lady if I can get some, and she replies, "oh, no sorry, it is too late to take a shower." Huh? It was about 9:30pm, and apparently that is really quite late in mountain refuge time. And if 9:30pm is late, 10pm must be really, really late since they cut off the power and the entire place turns into a black hole. I believe this is the first place in my life where a residence voluntarily cut off its own power. Why they do this, I have no idea. So we shake our heads and go to sleep, only to be woken up the next morning at 7:55am by a beareded Italian man shouting at us that we had 5 minutes to vacate the room. 8am checkout time. What the fuck.

Now maybe these are customary regulations and practices for a refuge (one of the girls called it "Nazi Camp," and while normally I don't appreciate Nazi hyperbole, this situation warranted it), and some of you reading are thinking "duh, this is how these places work" and thinking that I'm just being whiney, which I probably am. But this wasn't some remote rustic refuge in the middle of nowhere. You take a cable car to it. It has a bar and a restaurant. It has a terrace with deck chairs. It was basically a your average hotel, but run by prison guards. Aiding the surprise element was the fact that none of these regulations were told to us upon checking in. Maybe the lady was blind, but we hardly looked like your average salty German hiking guru who didn't need to be informed of how the Gonzo World of mountain refuges worked. We were a few kids in t shirts and sneakers, looking entirely out of place amongst the other guests.

So anyway, we escaped our internment camp the next morning, hoping to take a good hike down the mountain and back to town. Well that plan didn't pan out, as it refused to stop raining. So we hiked down to the cable car and ducked into the restaurant-bar there to get something to drink and warm up. I had the great idea of sipping on some sort of alcoholic warming agent like brandy or jagermeister. So we got a round and sat down at the table and toasted ourselves up. Well about 10 minutes later here comes the waitress with another round of shots. Apparently the boss liked our style, drinking at 9:30am, and wanted to show his appreciation. We look at these new shots in a mix of horror and appreciation, wondering how we would stomach it. Beth couldn't, and discreetly ducked her shot into an empty water bottle. Me and Hannah soldiered on into the second shot, although at times grimacing in pain. 15 minutes passed, and the boss came over to sit with us, bringing another round of shots with him. I thought, oh god, I am going to be fucked. At this point the situation was so surreal, starting last night with refuge and continuing to the free shots, that we could do nothing but laugh and shake our heads in wonder. Basically we went from Nazi Camp to Free Alcohol Camp. It was an interesting transition. So he sat down with us and chatted us up. He was from Pozzuoli (hometown of Sophia Loren) and looked like a sushi chef. Another quarter hour passed, now about 45 minutes or so into our stay at Booze Camp. A lightbulb then went off in the bosses head, and he shouted for grappa. I reacted in horror: "No! We really can't drink anymore, and especially not grappa!" It was barely past 10 am and we had already gone through 3 shots apiece. The guy laughed at me and got the bottle anyway and poured us shots. He told us we must drink, so we all gulped nervously, very nervously, and took tiny sips. I expected firewater, but instead got a delicious liqueur. Of all things, it was prune infused grappa. We all loved it. Apparently a specialty of the region.

So time came to leave, and I went up and paid the bill: 9 euro. We had 12 shots and paid 9 euro. This is the hospitality and warmth that Italy is famous for, absolutely absent from the place we had stayed the night before. The difference between the people at these two places couldn't have been any different. Like yin to yang.

So anyway, I suppose I still haven't answered the question of why I am in Croatia. The simple answer is that it's one of those places I have always wanted to go, but for some reason or another I put it off or found reasons to go somewhere else instead. This summer I have met so many people who were going to or coming from Croatia, and so that idea implanted itself into my subconcious. After so many weeks in Italy and dealing with the heat, I decided it was simply time to hit the water. The last time I had sat on a beach was late June, so about 5 weeks ago. Ideas floated around my head of beach towns in Italy to hit up, but really I wanted something more exotic and different. So finally I pulled the trigger and popped onto a ferry and ended up here in Split. Italy is so comfortable for me knowing the language and food and rhythms, so Croatia provides its own challenges. I definitely haven't eaten as well these last two days, but damn the water here makes up for it.

My first day had its quirks: a Croatian asshole nearly knocked me down the staircase on the ferry, then I get into Split and wait for my hostel to open admist a tropical storm-like downpour of rain the like I have never seen before, then I get a coffee with a couple guys from the hostel and a pigeon shits on my Cubs hat, and then later that night some shady guy warns me not to take a left because he "lost a lot of money down there," whatever the hell that means. Split is quite beautiful however, surprisingly so since it doesn't get much publicity on the tourist track.

My second day, today, has had its quirks as well: I think people in general like Californians. Or they like the idea of California, so that goodwill gets imparted onto you, the tourist from California. Being from Cali is like its own currency. It usually brings a smile to people's faces. It's good. But people definitely have varied ideas of Cali. Usually it's beach and Hollywood, but other times, like today, you get surprised. Today I hitchhiked back from the beach, and when I told the driver that I'm from California he had a very interesting reply: "My friend he is a navigator. He goes to California and he says there that man gets with man, and woman gets with woman. San Francisco. It's just not right to do. George Michael, he got women so easily that now he goes after men. George Michael is crazy. Man shouldn't be with man." So, like I said, the conversation can vary! I can't remember the last time I had heard the name George Michael mentioned. I laughed my ass off with the sheer randomness of his name getting dropped in a car in Croatia. George Michael. Good times.