Venice

If Amsterdam is the Venice of the North, Venice, is, well……Venice! It has to be one of the most beautiful cities in the World. It is both ridiculously busy around the main tourist areas and signed tourist thoroughfares and yet eerily quiet just a few feet away. The trick, I think, is to get off the beaten track and to explore the small alleyways at random, just following your instincts and what looks interesting or promising. Often this means arriving at a dead-end, where the small street just terminates at an archway and a blue, ribbon like canal. At other times it means falling from a dark, dim alley into a brightly lit, deserted piazza with an empty outdoor restaurant and a 15^th Century Church with leaning campanile, or into smaller squares of a few houses, each with slatted green shutters at the windows and a bronze doorbell and plaque with the name of the owners outside each house. At other times, you step unexpectedly into a very busy alley, thronging with people, which comes as a complete surprise. The fantastic thing is that you really don’t know what is around the next corner. It is easy to spend hours just wandering around in this haphazard way, often ending up in a completely opposite direction than one might think. Indeed, despite following a map sometimes, the effect is the same – miles from the intended direction, so at least this traipsing approach saves any map reading embarrassment! The most interesting areas (for me, anyway), are those where the locals live, with lines of clothing hanging across the narrow streets, where working boats, used to carry goods around the city, are moored in the smaller canals and where children go to school in 13^th and 14^th Century buildings.

On each night there are violent storms, which leave the streets running with water like rivers, the cobbled streets and bridges dangerously slippery and all the inhabitants soaking wet through, dripping pools of water on the floor of the bus or tram. On one evening the thunder and lightning was directly overhead, the sound of the thunder ripping the sky so loudly that people would instinctively duck, their hands covering their heads for protection at each explosion.

On Sunday morning, quite randomly, I stumble across the Vogalonga, a colourful annual boating event where teams from across the world (I saw boats from France, Canada and Hungary) take part in a non-competitive race in all sorts of rowing boats (kayaks, canoes, gondolas, dragon boats and many other types I don’t recognise). There are people in traditional Italian boating costumes with straw hats and blue stripped shirts, many others are in fancy dress, with brightly coloured wigs and T-shirts. It looks good fun and has a sort of Italian organised chaos feel to it, with people in one boat throwing bottles of water and bananas to the competitors, often missing completely, so there are bananas bobbing in the water, boats bumping in to each other and an announcer who seems to be commentating on events which have already happened, or referring to the names of friends in boats that have already passed, which is unintentionally funny!

It would be wonderful to live here for a period of time and to get to know the history of that part of the city really well: the building, the churches, the art museums, to be intimate with such a fantastic place would be an amazing privilege.

St. Mark's Square

St. Mark's Basilica

It just couldn't be anywhere else, really, could it?

A very stormy night

Off the beaten track

The Vogalonga

Amazing 24 hour clock face

Reflections in tranquillity

Still

I really like it here. I have settled into the steady rhythm of not doing much at all. I wake ridiculously early with the Sun. I have a simple breakfast (bread, ham, cheese and tomatoes). I walk to the campsite café to get coffee. Then I walk the few kilometres to Stoja, a town overlooking the busy port of Pula, with 3 bars, a small supermarket and a bakery. I shop and then get a coffee in the bar next door. Sometimes I buy a beer. The two women behind the bar know me a little by now and the old boys nod hello or say dober dan or dober outro (phonetically, Hello or Good Morning) as I walk in. It is strange being in a country where the language is obviously Eastern European but in a Mediterranean setting and said with the animated expression of the Italians. The best of all possible worlds.

Sometimes I get in the car and drive lazily along the coast, following yellow signs, driving through fields of olives and vines with young leaves and fields ablaze with fresh, blood red poppies, stopping randomly at small, picturesque fishing villages with narrow cobbled streets, often with a church on a hill overlooking the harbour. Or places that were once fishing villages and have now given over to tourism but which this early in the season are only really trying half-heartedly. 

Today I think I will go in search of that Roman town, Nesactium. On the map I have, it’s shown as a bright yellow square with a part picture of an amphitheatre in black, located near a small hamlet called Valtura. In reality, it’s at the end of a single lane road, which leads onto a dusty, bumpy track, that leads to a ruin on a small hill which has been tidied up a bit. There is a single room museum, but it is closed between 12 and 4pm and the old chap who looks after it leaves before time on his noisy, smoking scooter, helpfully locking the gate behind him so I have to climb over it when I leave the site. There is something satisfying in wandering around the ruins. This once important commercial, legal and religious centre, the exporter of wine and olives to Ravenna across the Adriatic and further on, to Rome, a symbol of Roman power and authority, but now a metaphor for vainglory and an empire lost. It puts things into a certain perspective. I wander around in the overcast humidity, passing through doorways, wondering how many people have done so previously, who they were and in what circumstances, crossing the Forum floor, where laws have been passed and judgements made, looking at the piles of rubble at the edge of the site, wondering whose hands made those red clay bricks and carved the tops of the broken columns.

In the evenings, with some yearning, I return to my place on the rocks at the campsite and watch the seagulls and cormorants skimming the waves and the rippled outline of shoals of fish and scan the water for dolphins. I have no thoughts about life, the universe and everything. It is easy not to think at all. It is good just to be.

Rovinj

Fanzana

Blood curdling Pirates. Ahhhh Haaaaa, Ye Landlubbers!

Nesactium

Osymandias: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Lim Fjord

Porec: Doors Unlocked and Open

Please say 'Hello' to my fishy friends

'Hello'

Beautiful Croatia

I am in a state of two minds; Zagreb in Croatia or Ljubljana in Slovenia? I am still undecided when I get into the car, but decide to follow route 7 as I travelled it yesterday and well, it seemed a nice road! After about 30 minutes I realise I’m heading towards Zagreb. That’s decided then (perhaps I sub-conscioulsy knew all along?). At the border, I pick up two Polish hitch-hikers who are heading towards an island called Kyk, off the Croatian coast at Rijeka, so that seems as good a place to go as any. I drop them at Rijeka and head around the coast, just looking for campsite signs. I pass through Pula, where the road travels alongside the imposing Coliseum and follow signs to a campsite at Stoja, a very small peninsular, about 3 or 4km from Pula itself.

The campsite is very large, occupying the whole of the peninsular, with about 1000 pitches, but at this time of the year it is very quiet. There are a few camper vans and, as is usual, I’m the only tent. I have my own toilet block and the cleaner teaches me a few words of Croatian when we meet (she is very helpful, allowing me to charge my laptop in a locked cupboard on request, which saves me dubiously hanging around the toilet block while I recharge using the shaving sockets). The wildlife is abundant, with lots of birds: blackbirds, the blue and brown flash of Jays, the bright red, industrial hammering of Woodpeckers, the regular, single, fluty note of the amazing Hoopoe bird which is about the size of a Thrush with a pinkish-brown body, black and white flashes on its wings and a striking crest of feathers, like a Mohican, which eludes any attempt to take a photograph. At night, I hear the noisy sniffing and scratching of hedgehogs searching the space between the inner and outer tent or catch them running daintily across the grass. It is a lovely spot, the people are very friendly and as long as it remains quiet, I resolve to stay a while.

It is the day of the Liverpool Villa Real game and I ask around locally at a couple of bars for the football on TV. There is nothing close by, but one lady gives me confident directions using sign-language and a bit of English, so I follow them, walking along a busy main road for about 45 minutes. It doesn’t seem promising. I stop and ask again at a line of shops. The young lady I speak to points across the road. I can see a pitch, a set of goal posts, a small tiered stand. I laugh and so does the lady, although I’m not sure she understands. This is where Pula play football! Ahh, well, it is football, of a sorts, not quite what I had in mind! Time to head into the centre of town. I find the Old Town and a place called The Old City Bar. Sounds promising! I ask the guy behind the bar. ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Football on TV?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Tonight?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Liverpool?’ ‘Yes, 9pm’. Perfect! It turns out he is a member of the Croatian Liverpool Supporters Club. Liverpool win 3-0 and at each goal he comes over, winks and shakes my hand, saying ‘Good goal, mate!’ which sounds welcome but strange. Indeed they were!

Most evenings I watch the ocean and the fantastic sunsets for hours. I sit on a small promontory on the rocks. There is no-one else around, apart from, occasionally, a naturist who swims and sunbathes far to my left and a few old boys fishing. I watch the yachts, the small fishing boats laying nets about 10 metres long at right angles to the coast, the seabirds skimming the often flat surface, the shoals of fish, listening to the sound of the sea lapping the rocks or periodically thudding into the undercut that I’m sitting above. I try to think of the words to describe the subtleties of blues and greens as the colours change with the play of the light, but my vocabulary is inadequate. Broadly, there are three banks of colour. Close to the rocks, where the water is shallower and the seabed has been scoured clean by the surf, the water is bright, clear, aquamarine blue. A little further out, above the rocks covered with vegetation, it is a subtle greeny turquoise colour and beyond that, in the much deeper water, a very dark navy or midnight blue, almost black. There are many shifting colours in between.

It is amazing that the human eye, in a vast disc of movement, can spot something different, something darker, some regularity amidst the irregular patterns of waves and water. I hear myself exclaim under my breath, ‘Fucking Hell!’ (I still get excited about this stuff). Dolphins! There is a school of them, 3, 4, no, maybe 5, swimming in unison in the middle distance, the sun catching the dark backs and fins. I try to photograph them, but haven’t got my glasses, so I have to guess at their position in relation to the camera. I fail to capture them, but I see some most evenings, travelling North and South along the coast, photographing only one or two, or, being too far out, I see them momentarily, captured for a few seconds in the circle of the binoculars and then suddenly disappear. I try to find them again, following their path, scanning the sea, but no, they were there for a fleeting moment and now they are gone, an enigmatic metaphor.

Entrance to Pula Old Town

Roman Temple

Pula Coliseum

Marina

Stumbled across the ruins of this old Roman Theatre (at least I think it is). No signs, no official entrance, just an open metal gate. Simply there, complete with teenagers drinking beer and smoking weed! Things are definitely becoming a bit Italian in the seemingly casual disregard for sites of antiquity!

Campsite Peninsular

View from the tent. Lovely.

The other side of the peninsular

My favourite spot

Home Sweet Home, looking functionally futuristic, if I may say so!

Caves a few headlands over

Going....

Going....

Going....

Gone.

And of course, those cheeky little blighters!

Budapest

Budapest is a fantastic place! It has the feel of a major Imperial European city, alongside somewhere like London or Paris. It has wide, tree lined boulevards, tall, imposing, delicately patterned 6 storey buildings and, in the Pest side where I am staying, close to the Opera, lots of bars and restaurants. It is cosmopolitan and diverse, but with a strong architectural, confident, sense of itself. I walk the few kilometres to the Buda side, crossing one of the many bridges, climbing the steep hill overlooking the Danube, to admire this vast city of some 2 million people. I spend around 5 hours walking around the Hungarian National Gallery which has a Picasso exhibition that I somehow manage to find my way into without paying extra, but I’m actually taken by the work of a Hungarian painter called Mihaly Murkacsy, who was painting in the last half of the 19^th Century. His works span multiple styles and genres, from early ‘Realist’ scenes of intimate, domestic interiors (‘Woman Churning Butter’, ‘Lads at the Bar’), which have the subtle stillness and composure of Dutch interior paintings of 200 years before, through to large, almost impressionistic landscapes, echoing Turner (‘The Dusty Road’), through to more classical religious paintings. The range and variety of his styles are amazing and so is the sense of honesty, a sort of striving to represent the world as it is, or as it seems to be, which I just don’t get from the more intellectually (and physically) driven works by Picasso. The following day I just wander, bumping into touristy things such as the Houses of Parliament and the fantastic Saint Steven’s Basilica, with its two domes, ornately gilded glory and intricate Corinthian columns. Each evening I visit the same bar, getting to know the bar staff, watching the football and chatting to a local guy and a bloke from Wolverhampton, Dom, who is living in the city with his girlfriend, (although they have just split up and they are both considering their options. None of which involve a return to Wolverhampton).

Fortunately, leaving the city, I take a wrong turn and find myself heading North instead of West, so I work my way around gradually to roughly where I was originally intending, travelling along the River Duna and the Hungarian/Slovak border, through some beautiful, small, riverside villages, stopping now and again to get a coffee and something to eat at Veroce and Nagymaros, with its castle high on a hill, overlooking the river. Old Boys sit and drink coffee and beer at each stop and smile acknowledgement as I sit at plastic tables in the sunshine overlooking the river. The countryside reminds me of Britain in mid-Summer perhaps 30 or 40 years ago, with no traffic on the roads and that languorous, hazy greenness, the smell of summer flowers and the sound of wasps and bees. Brought up during the time of the Cold War, somehow with an image of darkness when picturing in my mind the lands on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, I had no idea that Eastern Europe was as beautiful, verdant and unspoilt as this.

Good Bye Mountains

Lots of storks along the way!

A very wet Buda from the Pest side of the city

Pest

What a great idea! A mobile bar!

A day at the Opera

St Istvan's (Stephen's) Basilica

Houses of Parliament

St Istvan's gilded glory

You put your right foot in, your right foot out..

River Duna, Nagymaros

Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Europe. Yes, think I'll stay here for a while!