Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the First: The Alighieri Express: routing via the nether regions

The funny thing about travelling KLM is that there are a significant number of Dutch people on board. Lowlanders, I suppose we are supposed to call them. Now, I have nothing against the Lowlanders and am, in fact, about 1/8 Lowlandish on my father's side. I quite like my people. Especially when I travel KLM and notice that they are as barbaric as I when it comes to eating airline food. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij is what KLM stands for and we Lowlanders eat the way we pronounce our words -- with lots of maceration and spittle.

Luckily Marie was sitting behind me. We were stuck in two middle seats. I had the advantage of having an occasional hand massage my scalp. She had the advantage of me slamming my seat back into her face. I felt for her.

But the Lowlandish. I had one beside me. Perhaps two. I couldn't tell. The woman on the aisle was certainly irritating enough, but her language as she shouted across the aisle to her friends didn't have enough phlegmy gutterality to it to make me sure she was Dutch. I'm going to pretend she was Flemish with a Wallonian accent, because her eating style mirrored those of the rest of us so she could have been a Belgian. More likely she was Eastern European.

Yes, lucky Marie. I can now assert, with little proof, that I eat like a Dutchman. First thing my people do on the airplane is ensure that we have sufficient booze to line the stomach. Alcohol is a biological necessity--it prevents our bodies absorbing nutrients too quickly. That saves us from becoming weak southerners. The woman to my left clutched her bottle of red like it was the last pepperoni stick at a remote truckstop. The man to my right slurped on his Heineken like it would heal his crippled legs. Me, I classed the joint up with a whiskey soda.

The food, I can't really remember. Airline food is a necessity, not a pleasure. Lots of bread, I remember that. I've been on a low bread intake for a while. Europe is thickening my body in line with my lowland heritage. I believe I had some meaty substance in a tomato sauce on rice, potato salad, a hot roll, crackers and cheese. Something sweet. My seatmates and I ate so quickly that food was flying from our mouths. I think we were ingesting each others' sprayed remnants. Disgusting.

I believe in the truth. I'm sure of that if of nothing else. Otherwise I wouldn't be so repulsive in my descriptions. The bland food odour, the hot sock and dirty shoe smell, the waves of alcohol fumes binding to all these and distributing them in an olfactory residue that coats that sinuses, littering the tastebuds like tsunami debris washing up on the Pacific shores of North America.

But travel is what it is. A violent assault on the system. Unless you are profligate enough to travel first class with an army of serfs, travel is a misery. It is being squeezed like third rate souvenirs into a bursting suitcase, itself being compressed into an overhead hutch the size of a breadbox. I don't like people. I like persons. In limited quantity and of dubious quality. People, on the other hand, are repugnant. Travel involves lots of contact with people.

Still, I was with my lowlandish people and that's where it started. En route to Schipol airport with a quick connection to Venice.

I will say that I enjoyed the chocolates and cakes that KLM provided in honour of their departing queen/incoming king. All very pretty and welcome. Travel being such an alienating and cantankerating experience, those little things stand out and we travelers, starved for affection, clean air, water and happiness lap at the fingers of the airline attendants like beaten pug dogs.

Next installment: Life on the Venetian lagoon, a deathmarch through hysteria, the taste of the good life which seems to involve unidentifiable fish in my soup, keeping the rot at bay, why sex in a gondola should not involve the gondolier

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Second: Venice -- Lather, rinse, repeat if required

Venice hit our jetlagged systems like a splash of untreated canal water. Although our connections all went well my body was secreting exhaustion in a sickly sap from all my pores. Marie copes much better with these things. She takes it all in stride. She's a cool cat, not much phases her. Me, on the other hand, I tweak and twitch and sweat and stink and generally flop about. I resemble nothing so much a slug foaming up on a poison pellet.

We were met at our stop by our Venice travel companions who welcomed us into the sunshine and helped us to our apartment, indulgently allowing us (or, rather, me) to babble incoherently and thickly through my jet-lagged dry-mucused mouth until I was able to step into a shower and wash my sludge down the drain.

Still, Venice. From the airport we took the boat over to the city and up the Grand Canal, dodging water taxis, water buses, gondolas, delivery boats, and the traghetti, with water slapping up against the broken plaster and exposed brickwork of decayed palaces, the weedy barber poles and dolphins of jetties, boats bobbing in the reflected, refracted, rebellious wakes of dozens of craft, towers in the distance leaning drunkenly over the rooftops, the Rialto bridge sad with its black boarding up on the outside (the Rialto is lined with shops that face inward on the bridge, so, like with a palazzo, the outsider is faced with the worst side, left to dream of the treasures within), the vaporetto stops crowded with tourists on the embarkation ramp and more the more canny locals who wait on the debarkation (disembarkation?) ramp to assure themselves of a spot on the boat.

Venice: side canals with footbridges framing gondoliers barking for trade; the Grand Canal, as mentioned, prostituting itself to the floods of tourists, winding its way towards San Marco and then the open lagoon; a city that shrugged off its haughtiness once Napoleon made it his catamite and ever has sold itself with a knowing leer to anyone with the readies. It remains a centre of maritime trade, but primarily as a waypoint for gaudy Chinese souvenirs making their way to a hundred fifty other countries.

I like Venice, that much must be said. It's a good way to begin, as well: I. Like. Venice. When I'm away from it for a long time I think I love it and talk about wintering there to enjoy it in its agonies of acqua alta, the snowfall on its bridges, and the weak, pale light and mists of the short days. But that's just my romantic side. Venice is ultimately a wonderfully medieval pain in the ass. It twists and turns on itself with no right angles in any of its dimensions. Alleys thin to the point where the fattest of the cruising tourists have to squeeze through, leaving their pound of flesh behind. It's a little too clean, though. The whiff of the sewers isn;'t enough. The streets need more ordure and rickety dogs to come fully to life. Otherwise it is a fine example of the way we lived before public sanitation and basic hygiene. It wasn't enough that nature was doing her best to kill off humanity, cities has to be made as unsafe as possible. Traveling by canal was safer. Still, you'd expect a little better planning. Why, I ask, why in the name of heaven do Italians insist on putting strips of marble into their streets? Those are killers. Even if you're travelling by palanquin, your slaves run the risk of flopping you over into the filth. This isn't just a medieval foible. The railway station opens onto a plaza of marble. For a country of people sporting fine leather footwear, this is insanity. A country of masochists.

I digress. But I sort of have to digress because so much has been written (badly) about Venice that I can't pretend to add anything new. Just worse. Read Ruskin's Stones of Venice if you like -- that is a lusty appreciation of the city, or the Memoires of Casanova if you can find it in an unbowdlerized and largely unexpurgated version, but Venice sort of defies the prosaic. Even Mann's Death in Venice is set on the Lido and not in the city proper; rightly so: the Ganymedean charms of young Tadzio couldn't last long if compared hourly to the lush and bosomy breathiness of the ex-courtesan mama-san that is the city herself.

It suffices to record that the back streets of that superannuated mistress offer more pleasure than the facade. The early morning caffe machiatto taken with a peach-jam-filled croissant at the Bar Ducale, the caffe correcto con grappa taken while pausing in a small square, the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, the pleasure of opening the shutters and stepping out onto the balcony better to hear an accordion in a gondola coming down the side canal and noticing an elderly Venetian couple at their window with his arm around her also listening and saluting the signor and receding back into the room when the goldola disappears and with it the lingering notes.

Yes, yes. The basilica, the palace of the Doge, the massive facades of the monumental churches, all of these are remarkable, but at their best at 6:30am, or at midnight, any time the crowds clear out and the sounds of the place take over from the sounds of the people.

We ate good meals--wantonly, not wisely--and, on Sue's birthday, took a late-night gondola ride from the Rialto down the Grand Canal and then through side canals where we were the only people on the water -- lightly lapping waves, the oppressive brick bulk of the narrowest parts of the canals slanting overhead, the bridges that we could touch as we punted underneath, the opening up of space into plazas with gleaming white marble churches hovering like fogbanks and coming up to touch our hands as we held them out to the side. A cough in the night. A couple arguing behind shutters. That's the time to ride the gondola, not as one in a queue during the day. Oh, yes, it is 20E cheaper during the day but what's the point? To save 20E and rob yourself of the sounds of the stones?

Money. Money. Parsimony destroys pleasure. Saving pennies. Taking the cheapest gondola ride. To refuse to pay the price of sitting in a cafe on the Piazza San Marco is to miss out on the pleasure of relaxing in that great place. There is no place to sit if not at a cafe, yet so many balk at the prices. I made that mistake in the past. Not this time. While the others toured the Basilica I sat at the Florian by the bandstand and ordered a caffe con panna and a plate of biscotti. Out it came on a silver platter -- a carafe of water, a chalice of coffee with copious quantities of whipped cream and a wafer on top. A plate of biscuits -- the light, vaguely lemony Burano biscuit, a hazelnut meringue, a rectangle of moist gingerbread, a flower-shaped biscuit also with lemon, and a sixth, the memory of which disappeared with its delicate sugared flavour. I sat in the plaza, taking in the basilica as the light played across its gold surfaces, listening to the bells of the campanile and the clock tower compete, I let the band lull me into a meditative state and just enjoyed. I enjoyed. Forty-five minutes of daydreaming in the most beautful plaza and so what that the cafe charges 6E just to sit? And 7E for a coffee? I paind ... let's say $32 in total and for that, for 45 minutes I was fully at ease and happy and in Venice. Money? It's a necessity, certainly, but a coffee with bicotti and hearing violins in the Piazza San Marco is a phenomenon.

OK, that last paragraph made me vomit a little in my mouth. But it's true. I'm sure of it. And what matter that I wasn't really at ease? That I felt it affected and myself largely out of place? That I was sitting at the precise spot where people feel the urge to stop and pose for the camera with their hips cocked and their fingers in Vs. So what that my nerves were shot from too much caffeine and too much waffly uncertitude? That just behind me sat a short and squat elderly couple yabbering in some American mid-Western patois that grated my already jangled nerve endings? That's all mere fact. It isn't truth. What's truth is the recond for posterity that I sat gracefully in repose while the world looked on enviously as I tasted of ambrosia and the waters of Elysium. For a brief moment I was a Hercules, resting after my labours. That's the truth and all that needs to be said. Vomit be damned.

That's not all that needs to be said. For me, the last word on Venice as it is came from the mouths of the American couple behind me at the Florian. Retirees, probably in their early eighties, they came up with the most elegant lines I heard during my stay in Venice. Perhaps the finest sentiment ever heard in St Mark's Square. To them go the final lines of these notes:

Woman: Mmm, that girl is very pretty.
Man: Yeah, she's got legs. When I was in Fort Leavenworth--I was a Major then--there was a girl. This fella told me, he said "that girl has got perfect legs: feet on one end, pussy on the other end."

Ah Venice, la dolce vita.

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Two Point Fifth: Venezia Postscriptum

I'm not really good with the standard travelogue of "woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head." I suppose I could mention the inky squid and serrated face gills of the sea creatures in the ancient fish market in Venice, finding La Pietra Filosofale where I picked up a leather plague doctor mask -- it took some doing and Lonely Planet maps are almost invariably wrong by a street or two (although, I wonder whether the fellow in the shop (the same who sold my friend Stuart a mask in 1998 -- a mask I had pointed out and have since regretted not buying) deliberately has his address wrong on the internet. After all, finding the philsopher's stone has to take some effort)--a dingy show cramped with the owner's tools and various anarchist slogans, walking the marble streets in misty morning and bringing pastries back for the crew, etc. etc. etc.

We also went across the lagoon to Burano. Burano's a funny place. A town at the north end of the Ventian lagoon in which the houses are a riot of colour. Everybody seems to have slapped around as rare a pastel as they could find. People ask why they would do such a thing. Me, I think they know a good thing when they see it. Why on earth would tourists spend an hour getting there if the houses were varying shades of decrepitude? As it is, Burano is a jolly little town with small lagoon fishing boats, living on the remants of its former lace-making glory and the pastel cravings of the northern races.

We've eaten well on this trip. Drunk well, too. The pernicous thing about my international mystery phase was my introduction to all the things effete detectives and their burly worker snitches drink throughout the day. Thus, my mornings in Venice began with a caffe correto con grappa -- a hit of espresso mixed with grappa and a pastry or two at the Bar Ducale. An ombra (small glass of wine) bianca would get me through to lunch, and a spritz -- soda water and aperol -- would take the edge off of the tourist sweats. Then vino vino vino through the meals. No wonder Italian food all tastes so good.

From Venice to Florence, then.  

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Third: Florence -- How to win friends and influence people

Now, Florence is a place that does the soul good. Where Venice revels in its medieval chicanery, Florence pretends to a Renaissance charm that it doesn't really have -- it is overlaid with the gaudy afterbirth that was the Grand Ducal phase of later centuries -- but it manages the pretense so well that you forget that it is a city that really did its best to destroy the very renaissance it helped create.

The renaissance was a bloody thing: a medieval Mildred Pierce birthing an ungrateful child for whom she worked herself to death trying to get it into the best schools and a good marriage. I like that vicious period. Florence had it by the bucketful but prefers to show off her frippery. The Medici were much more interesting from Cosimo through Lorenzo, all the way until they lost the papacy. Once they got too big and married into the nobility of Western Europe they became the Kardashians of the day.

Anyway, again this is just meandering rubbish. I'm working out an idea in my head. But mind and body being what they are, my thoughts are influenced by a back that was wrenched out of shape by a vicious Thai masseuse the day before we left. She managed to torque my pelvis into a moebius strip of torn nerve endings and pulped ligaments. Pain, yes, but (nastier) whenever I take a step down that I'm not expecting (a constant on cobblestone and flagstone streets) a muscle or two in my lower lower back appears to disappear and my body collapses for a second before I regain control. She also did something to my tailbone such that I have a pressure against it that makes me feel like I've always a turd in a dangerous place.

Again, I digress; Florence is lovely. It has the wonderful jumbled confluence of different architectural styles but of a height and colour that display sympathy from one building to the next.

From the train we dropped our bags off in our hotel room and ventured into the town centre. A quick bite at a trattoria and I took Marie through the leather stalls to emerge at the Baptistery. The great thing about that approach is that newcomers sees the cool green and white marble of the Baptistery after the heat of the street market, breathe sighs of relief but then quickly lose breath as they emerge fully from the side street and catch a glimpse of the northwest corner of the grand cathedral, the facade of the Duomo itself. That's stunning. Spectacular. Worth the travel, worth the pain. I've been here three times now and it repeatedly takes my breath away. They've cleaned it beautifully and the whole face of the cathedral looks like it could have been built last century.

From there down to the Arno, facing west so Marie could first see the Ponte Vecchio -- the old, still-living bridge -- with the afternoon light illuminating it.

Again, what can I say? The light is fantastic and the city brims with charm. Tourists as well. I suppose that's the thing about Florence and Venice -- they trade on their period charm and don't feel any great need to innovate. They are as they were and they will remain the same, changing only sightly as the decades pass. Maybe they are dead cities, too enslaved to the past, too chained to the tourist dollar/yen/yuan to have the vibrancy of cities that need to try harder for their identity.

We walked the streets in zigzags, palazzo to piazza, chieso to mercato, soaking it all in. Neither of us are desperate to go into every museum, see every painting, every madonna, every saintly relic; we enjoy the urban landscape and the open spaces, where things are vibrant, not enbalmed and entombed in glass cases. Coffee, gelato, antipasti, prosecco, all those appeared in our hands as we cruised the designer stores (Gucci Kids!) and gawked at the street life.

We differed in opinion on one shop -- a lovely perfumeria that has been in Florence for centuries. I went in imagining it to be a crowded little apothecary shop brimming over with herbs and aromas. Marie had no expectations. In the end, it is a sprawling set of rooms, each beautiful and richly designed, with products displayed like icons. I found it too sterile for my taste -- again, I like the mayhem of the medieval, not the conspicuously ornate symmetry of Florence's later pretentions. Marie, on the other hand, was not expecting a place so beautiful and was more charmed by it. We both raised out eyebrows when I asked for a sample of the tea they were pouring (a Japanese bancha) and the woman poured me out the absolute dirty dregs of the pot. She was a humbug and I pooh-pooh the store now as a second-rate tourist trap masquerading as high class. Still ... it was beautiful and I wish I could have made one of the mannequins they hire as staff show enough enthusiasm to persuade me to purchase their admittedly lovely products. I desperately want to spend money but I can't unless I am dealing with people who enthuse me enough about their products.

On a totally different plane, we both really enjoyed coming across a cavernous shop on one of the less traveled streets -- it was a cross between an antique store and an art display. It ran back into its building in a series of vaulted rooms, some crammed with cabinets full of old wallpaper, others with vintage telephones and broken dolls. All rooms had artwork that was either animal or sexual but done in a Ralph Steadman style. The place was like a frozen scream of pain from a weasel caught in a leghold trap ... but peaceful too. It was so disconcertingly _not_ the Florence of the guidebooks. It made me want to spend more time finding the subversive nooks and crannies filled by those who flunked out of the art schools that litter the city. That's the Florence I'd like to go back to if I go for a fourth time.

I reacquainted myself with the copy of Michelangelo's David in the Piazza Seignore. I prefer it to the real thing because it is weathering in the open air. I don't mind a fake at all if it is performing a better function than the original.

Donatello's David in the Bargello has nicer buttocks, though. He's far too self-consciously cute (looks like he conquered Goliath by throwing glitter in his eyes and puting coquettishly) but you could bounce a quarter off of that ass. Michelangelo 0 Donatello 1.

In the end, it was Florence, and like its art it felt preserved under glass. A wonderfully showy place ... and that Duomo! Like an alien ship set down in the plaza, or as if the cathedral had risen out of the ground intact. A damn fine piece of architecture and a damn fine city.

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Fourth: Bologna and the Mare Adriaticum

Now Bologna, Bologna's a town I can get my head around. We were only there for a handful of hours but I liked it almost immediately. It's a city with a modern purpose -- a city that happens to have great age and style to it. I could see myself living there for a while because the heart of the city doesn't just have fashion boutiques, trattorias and souvenir shops, it has hardware stores and students and filthy cars and beautiful buildings and and and.

Marie pointed out that it is the arcades that make Bologna and I have to agree. The weather was threatening thundershowers but we mostly got sunny skies; it was nice to know that we could have wandered much of the old city without any rain hitting us.

Bologna reminded me of Glasgow or London (in the best possible ways) and I liked it.

Tilley clothing, on the other hand, I don't like. My dislike begins with its total lack of style. I'd be willing to forgive that if it lived up to its promise of being washable and dryable overnight. I've not encountered any Tilleywear that required less than 36 hours to dry. Except perhaps if one were traveling in the Mojave desert. Otherwise the poor traveler is required to pack it wet or pack it dirty and to curse the misfortune that ever drove him into the Tilley store in the first place.

The only clothing I ever found that could really be rinsed at night and worn in the morning was (other than cheap synthetic socks I found in Dublin) Camel brand clothing. Cigarette manufacturers make my kind of clothing. I don't know what fabrics they use but the Camel clothes dry out faster than a 5-pack-a-day smoker's left lung. Can't get it in North American so I always keep an eye out in third world countries.

Bologna has Europe's oldest university and some very very cool bookstores. Check. On the negative side, we were there from eleven to three so most things were shut for lunch. Is that a negative? Actually seems sensible to me. So check and mate.

And guess what? Italian trains actually do run on time. If by time one means geological time. I assume they still use diesel fuel and given the delays the railway company probably got the oil direct from the dinosaurs. I'm sure I saw an engine dragging a bromtosaurus-sized IV behind it.

No. I'm lying. Five minutes, ten minutes, maybe. But given the Florence-Bologna line hit 270kph you'd think they could push it a bit and make up the delay. That highspeed line is pretty fine. And inexpensive. Essentially $20 to get from one city to the other. In 45 minutes. It costs me that much in time to get to the Port Mann Bridge. And I won't get much further on the remainder of the 20. If this is why Italy is in an economic crisis give me some of it and call me Alessandro.

If the state-owned train line is half decent, the privatized ferry system is about a third decent. Yes, competition does allow for reduced prices. That's about it. I didn't bother checking into safety records; I didn't want the actuaries to win.

Here's the system for getting onto a ferry in Ancona: 1) arrive at the Ancona train station; 2) three weeks earlier, have prepared for this by seeking out internet advice on how to get to the ferry terminal; 3) realize that the internet information is woefully out of date but see a sign pointing to a ferry terminal bus; 4) discover that there is a free bus and a pay bus; 5) fret about how to pay if the latter comes first -- does one need to get a ticket at a tobacco stand eighteen blocks away or is cash acceptable? 6) gratefully board the free bus; 7) bus drops off at the ticket agents; 8) get hard tickets in place of internet tickets; 9) wait 30 minutes for the same bus to make its rounds again to continue journey; 10) ride the bus to the embarkation point; 11) go through passport control; 12) wind up in an Ellis-Island-style hall with no signage; 13) wander out onto the jetty up to the nearest ferry branded with your company's logo (in this case Blue Line); 14) walk up the car ramp past surly Croats; 15) get passport and ticket checked and get waved in the direct of a variety of blue doors; 16) choose the door with the staircase, haul bags up two steep flights; 17) find the information desk where they hand out room keys; 18) hand over passport and get keys for a room completely different from (but comparable) to the one assigned forty five minutes earlier; 19) haul bags to a cute little cabin and collapse; 20) after dinner, find out that the cute little cabin has paper thin wall, a hippopotamus snoring on one side, Croat chattering boozers on the other, and no air conditioning.

Then go to Croatia.

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Fifth: Croatia ( the place where your neighbour went on holiday): Split

I remember that during the later days of the Cold War I heard--repeatedly--that the Soviet Bloc was in a time warp: that going there was like stepping back in time a few decades. That still holds true. Sort of. Blue Line Ferries was playing music I last heard at a high school dance. Smokers still hold pride of place in restaurants. The ferry had a disco with plush banquettes Boy George used to sprawl on.

Split is a little classier than that but smokers can still feel respected, if not loved. And it sells Camel brand clothing. Yes! The Second World still cares about me. And I care about Split.

We left the ferry at the ungodly hour of 0730 and yawned our way to a Gardaroba (left luggage facility) where a delightfully scary old woman about the size of Andre the Giant expressed Slavic incredulity at the idea that we would check our bags for a 30 hour period before opening the door, slapping us out of the way and (wo)manhandling our bags into her keeping.

Luckily Split is marvellously self-contained. The whole central city area is not much bigger than the map I kept folded up in my pocket. Thinking it would be a fifteen minute walk to the Emperor Diocletian's palace that composes a solid half of the old city I was boggled to discover us there in less than five.

Now here's the thing. In the third century the Emperor Diocletian was a good ol' boy who rose through the ranks, got adopted by the then-emperor, did a decent job of administering the Empire, persecuting Christians, and all that sort of thing, and retired into this palace he'd had built in what is now Split. Retirement didn't go too well for him, and less so for his wife and daughter whom his successor had murdered. Diocletian poisoned himself and that would be that except that his palace remained and over the centuries got taken over bit by bit so that its walls and buildings are integrated into the city of Split. Or the city is integrated into the palace. Things get a bit confusing. Nonetheless, it is pretty darn spectacular and we were in for a nice treat because the day we arrived was the city's saint's day -- party time for the Splitters and we few, we lucky few spectators.

We wandered the waterfront in the morning sun, around the palace and ended up having a coffee in a shaded cafe against the north wall. It was the waiter who pointed out the festivities which started with a parade at 1000, commencing at the cathedral in the heart of the palace. We poked our way through the iregular alleys and emerged into the stunning little square that houses what has to be one of the smallest cathedrals going -- it is mostly just an octogon on top of what was Diocletian's tomb. That serves him right.

So we got good seats where we probably shouldn't have been -- with the press photographers -- and waited for festivities to begin.

Digression the first: We're so damn fortunate to have English reigning as the imperial tongue. We can blithely get by almost anywhere and we have to really try to get off the grid in order to find a place where we'll struggle to be understood. I can't imagine a Croat coming to Canada and asking "Hockva miz spleetzeq nik shmelmaqk?" with such insouciant self-assurance that he'd be understood. This is wonderful and guilt-inducing at the same time. But that's global capitalism for you.

Further, both M and I are amazed at how difficult it is to find, say, a T-shirt with anything other than English on it. Even in more 'local' areas. I just want to buy some article of clothing that I can't get back home for cheaper.In terms of shoes, Converse rules right now. Converse is actually adept at bulding hype to buy their shoes as one travels -- they distribute different shoes in different markets. Now that is good thinking, but from where I sit it's not as good as finding a T-shirt labelled with a punk-country-disco Croat band named "Nstzase Polkza." Can I find one? Ne.

Hell, I can't buy souvenirs anymore. There's nothing new. I can't get anything abroad that I can't get at home cheaper. Kurt Cobain t-shirts, the Godfather t-shirts. The rest is plastic crap and ashtrays no one really wants. No wonder we're left buying each other soaps and foodstuffs. That's all that's left: hippy dippy handmade artisanal herbs and spices. But, really, how much fucking lavender does any person need?

Digression the second: I can see why cruise ships are festering Norwalk-viral swamps. Split (and Dubrovnik, where I am writing this in my wee room overlooking the Adriatic, the fortified walls of the city, and fishing boats puttering about) are where every cruise ship goes to get laid. There's lots of cruise ships here, partying, mingling, getting together. And each day they violently disgorge their passengers in a multicoloured surge of vomit that swamps the streets. That's fine; sailors gotta eat too. But what I've noticed is that these rotund, gouty, colourblind masses--the men at least--invariably neglect to wash their hands after using the toilet. I can't begin the imagine the fecal load on the pepper grinders at dinner on these ships. Or is it rebellious behaviour on land after being sanitized to death onboard the ship?

So. Yeah. The cathedral in Split's old town accumulated a crowd of local dignitaries and churchmen of various stripe. We had bishops and priests and all sorts in crown-ish type hats. The sun gave way to spotty clouds and a grey ceiling formed over the city. The procession started just a minute or two before the first fat drops of rain came down.

Lads and lassies in local costume carried flags. Men with leathers and guns followed. Priests next, and then a palanquin on which one clergyman carried a large silver bust of the saint or hallowed eponymous churchman. I can't tell you who it was because I asked three or four times and the closest I got to a name I could understand was "Grdnskt." The dignitaries followed, all in white scarves and sporting blue umbrellas. The umbrellas were a nice touch because the rain decided to pelt down but the procession was led by priests and I've yet to meet a Roman Catholic or Orthodox priest who didn't milk his time in the spotlight until the tit hung limp. Slow and with lots of stops for prayers and chants -- that's the way it went.

We found our room: out back an alley behind the Posidjin Restaurant and up two flights of rickety wooden stairs worn soft as velvet by decades of feet. A lovely little homemade place with some quirks, e.g. I loved how the owner ran the sink drain into the shower stall. Nicely done, if a little odd, but what do you expect when you are in a centuries-old building jerrybuilt into the walls of an ancient palace? Building codes? Hah! And who was the first person who moved into the palace? Did they whistlingly saunter into it and--when no one was looking--slap together a few sheets of 8th century plywood and hope nobody would notice? Imagine trying that there days. The sheriffs or bailiffs would be 'round with a scary piece of paper within the hour.

We napped until the rain stopped, and then joined the town in its celebrations: the waterfront was packed with bingo players are balloon sellers; the cafes, bars, and restaurant were filled with familes, and the city walls pulsed whitely with the late sun and onset of dusk. Not bad. Just don't drink the wine. I suppose that there's good Croatian wine but they don't believe in serving it as house wine. Croatia seems to be a beer country.

Almost every Croatian we met treated us well. Split was absolutely great. Again, like Florence, like Venice, you have to get out early to be able to breathe. The cruise ships start squirting out their passengers at about 0800 and by 0930 the buses have also arrived. The locals have adapted but they haven't fully embraced the soul-destroying ethos of tourist capitalism; they still remain pleasant, are almost apologetic about asking to sell you things, and enjoy being helpful.

Not so the people who work in public transit. They gave up all affection and warmth years ago. Old ladies selling bus tickets have a gaze that acidstrips your layers away until your bare lie shines through. Efficient and abrupt. Contemptuous and jaded. If we are all guided by the stars, their patron star must be a binary system of two black holes of pure loathing. The warm Croatian light seems to dim around their hutches and kiosks and the lingering screams of past purchasers circle their event horizons.

Anyway. And anyway. Fish. Sea Bream grilled to perfection. Anchovies, cheese and tomato on bread. A plateful of fried smelt. A half-litre of beer. Pomegranite rakji. Hot sunny days.

After a visit to the Doctor of Hats "I am! I am! The newspapers, it calls me Dr of Hats. 45 years standing right here. Right on this spot I am Dr of Hats!" for a natty red jute number, we boarded a bus that had come in from Zagreb and we wound our way up and out of Split for our next port of call: Dubrovnik.

And there, behind those walls, this part of the tale shall rest.

Adriatic ODD-yssey Part the Sixth: Dubrovnik: Where Walt Disney went to die

I left you leaving Split on a bus that had come through from Zagreb that morning and was destined for the city of Dubrovnik.

We drove not along the coast but into the interior to hook onto the new motorway that Croatia is building along the length of its country. This excited me because the Croatian countryside looks exactly like the that of Borduria or Syldavia in my old Tintin books, particularly 'Destination Moon" and "the Calculus Affair." I drifted in a reverie of shaven-headed gangster secret policemen (who looked like our pair of busdrivers: thick and prickly), plots within plots, and racing to escape the certainty of a recital by Bianca Castafiore.

The Motorway races along but incompletes halfway to Dubrovnik so the bus takes off onto old twisty side roads into little towns perched along the spines of ridges, houses and churches terracing up the sides of hills, away from the fertile fields below. At times we parallel or travel under the motorway constuction -- fiercely utilitarian concrete bridges sweeping overhead.

There isn't a tree taller than me for hours in any direction: rocky ground and scrubby (but lushly green) vegetation.

Then came the river delta -- a vast swathe of fertility that slides into the sea. Like the Fraser valley -- wide and long and richly farmed. A long time to cross that, then onto the coast with its dramatic swoops and cliffs and tight turns and little towns and my god is there a law agaist building houses in this country with a roof that is other than red? What's wrong with a nice blue roof? Gingham check? No, it's all red ripply drainpipe roof everywhere you look. But it doesn't matter because cruise ships in the distance cluster morosely, signifying that Dubrovnik is just around the cornerand over a fancy new bridge then around and back under it we arrive.

Byron called Dubronvik 'the jewel of the Adriatic' and who am I to contradict that foppish aesthete? It's ... pretty ... but it knows it. It's the head cheerleader in a midwestern US high school. All hairspray and powder and perfumes and pleats and fancy shoes with the arrogance that comes from being top dog. Look more closely at it/her, though, and you see that the facade is a bit more patchwork than natural.

Dubrovnik is damn pretty and it makes you pay for the privilege of being there lest you don't value it highly enough. It gleams and it's main street has the polish of a themepark. But it is real, underneath. Even the horrendous bombardment of the town back in '91 didn't diminish it, or maybe it did by creating more space for international chain stores to open up. Poets and painters were burned out of their studios and restaurants and trinket venders took their place. But who cares about poets and artists? Well, the artists who paint endless watercolours of Dubrovnik's churches and monastery and clock and walls and boats, they can stay. People who pretend to be 'real' artists shouldn't be flouncing about the place grumbling about the high price of coffee and the death of the town.

No, Dubrovnik is pretty and is sort of built in a vee with steepish hills sliding up from the main street that runs the 300m length of the town. The higher up those hills you go, the more you encounter schools and housing and dilapidated buildings. Tourists tend to stay on the main street where it is nice and conveniently flat. The whole is encircled by walls that are metres thick and tens of metres high. Walking the top of the wall takes a good hour and a half without a break and you have to feel for the poor sentries who walked that under the blazing sun for hours at a time.

The walls are thickest at the water, whence was expected the attacking fleet. The inland walls are thinner but there's a deep grassy moat and then more red-hatted houses climb up the steep hillside that encircles the entirety of Dubrovnik--old town and new.

So that's the geography. It's got a fairly easy grid system (ish) to get around on and any number of indifferent restaurants to choose from.

Having taken the cable car to the top of the mountain behind the old city we were struck at how much more beautiful it is from above. It is a perfect little walled city and at that height you can't see the people and hear the hubbub. We sat a ways away from the terminus of the cable car system, beside a grave marker of a soldier who died during the fighting in Dubrovnik in the 90s and we just watched the city as the sun lowered itself in the sky. A cruise ship set its sails and ventured out from the harbour, blasting its horn as it passed the city wall. Perfect. Dreamlike.

This morning we wandered the walls, after having familiarized ourselves with the old city itself the previous day. We then came back for a nap and both had dreams, waking dreams as well as sleeping ones, about fantastical cities. And now I understand and appreciate so much better Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" which I may have mentioned in an earlier note. If not, I'll say first that he's possibly my favourite writer. His 'The Nonexistent Knight' introduced me to a whole world of great writing. Now, Invisible Cities involves Marco Polo (who, funnily, Croatia also claims as their own) spinning stories for the Great Khan of cities he has visited on his travels. It becomes clear to the Khan that these are all fantastical variations on one city, which happens to be Polo's home town of Venice. So, having gone through Venice, Florence, Bologna, Ancona (with its phenomenal cliff of architecture), Split, and now Dubrovnik, it's no wonder that when we close our eyes M and I both see walls with roofs, moats filled with markets, walled towns in which the building move around, clockwork cities, towns with nothing both bridges crossing from house to house. Impossible forms come from improbable places.

What's striking to me is the inherent laziness of beauty. The lack of incentive to invent and innovate. Food, for example. This region is flush with anchovies. Everyone eats them. But does anyone think to make an anchovy gelato? I don't think it'd be good, but the closest I've seen anyone come to an inventive gelato in Europe thus far in my life is "American flavour" -- essentially vanilla and Snickers bars. No wonder that Vancouver fellow won the world champion gelato trophy for his maple syrup, bear scat and seaweed gelato (or whatever it was). No, the world is coming to their doorsteps so the only incentive a person has is to sell the lowest common denominator to as many commoners as possible.

A friend recommended a wonderful-sounding theatre/restaurant club in Florence that I would dearly have loved to have tried, despite my lack of Italian. Perhaps there's a market, M suggests, for someone to write the non-tourist guides to places, particularly UNESCO world heritage sites, highlighting the more local things that are happening. But. But. I can't help but wonder whether that too is problematic. After all, at least in the developed world we're all doing much of the same thing, watching much of the same TV, awards shows, cinema, etc. and is there anything new. Is there any there, there? someone I should be able to remember once queried. Does it ever make sense to leave home?

In one of my more erratically-brained states I was going to go to New York for two weeks but I couldn't make it work, so I toyed with the idea of telling everyone I was going to New York, getting a load of food in, and spending the two weeks obsessively writing up my travel adventures in that city based solely on the Internet -- I'd travel the streets via Google Streetview, develop stories about my interactions with the people captured by those cameras, go into museums via their websites, follow the news, and essentially live in New York for two weeks.

I didn't do it. I probably just needed to get laid. But I'm still intrigued by the idea. And the more I travel, the more I enjoy the movement of travel (train, particularly), the more I enjoy sitting and watching the world go by, but--also--the more I realize I dislike everything else about travel. Art Garfunkel might have had it right when he walked across America with nothing but his Walkman. And a support van.

I joked with Bill that I needed to achieve high political office because I want museums and cathedrals and the city walls of Dubrovnik to myself and I couldn't think of a better way to achieve that than to be a serious target of assassination. Maybe the Internet is the best way to go. It's that obsession for authenticity that dogs me. But I wonder too if tourism is like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: there is no authenticity -- merely by observing, we are changing things.

So, finally Dubrovnik. Then a flight to London to see good friends, followed by a flight home via Amsterdam. God willing. But first, there remains Dubrovnik for another 20 hours or thereabouts. And Dubrovnik is, like Florence, a showpiece under glass, but unlike Florence it hasn't had decades of the intense tourism the West has wrought. So it is forced to adapt quickly and it is in danger of taking on the greasy, sickly sheen of the pulpier of the coach tour or cruise ship passengers. What do tourists want? Cleanliness. The Japanese want lots of cheap identical items to give to friends back home. Comprehensible menus. 3D explanatory films Opening hours adhered to. We want quick, slick, clean, vintage, and fun. We want Walt Disney to run these places.

We want old zombie Walt to come and take over from these inefficient locals. We want to be able to tick off "Florence, Venice, Split, Dubrovnik" and say:

- "we saw that, weren't it quaint? And weren't the people so friendly? And their costumes..."
- "National dress, Honey"
- "Not the men dear."
- "No, not the men."
- "And their costumes were so pretty. And they spoke English so well, it was very easy and they took dollars so we didn't have to worry about exchange rates or things..."
- "I never can figure out those fiddly numbers, myself."
- "And we picked up olive oil soap from Florence, and soap with olive oil from Venice, and special packs of pretty little cubed soaps with essence of olive oil from the ferry."
- "And I got Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts from Venice and Florence, and one from Split that said 'there is no Hard Rock Cafe in Split' with the Hard Rock Cafe logo, and a Hard Rock Cafe T-Shirt in Dubrovnik even though there isn't one there they've got the T-shirts."
- "But you can't get a decent big cup of coffee anywhere. I'll say if I had any regrets it's that they don't have a Timmy's or a Starbucks anywhere near where we stayed."
- "But, by God, they had American gelato! Full of Snickers bars! Wouldja believe?"

Yes, I would believe. And I pray that Dubrovnik finds its way despite us. Because it is a better place than we deserve. It's a damn fine place and I'd like it to stay that way. Even if that means I can never visit it again and have to view it on the Internet.

Of course, I've seen the place now, so I would say that. I've got mine, Jack.

And maybe my last post contained the best summation for all of this: it's a grand world, a beautiful, miraculous, special world. But I'm not bringing you home any piece of it. Only photos; because how much fucking lavender does any one person really need?

Thanks for reading. See you back in the real world.