Keen to get a major role in the next Game of
Thrones
series , our roving star
struck , swashbuckling columnist , Peter Burleigh , leaves Tunisia and accumulates
more frequent flyer
points as he heads for Dubrovnik
, where the smash hit is filmed. Burleigh is also available
, at short
notice , for the
next Pirates
of
the Caribbean , to be shot on location in Queensland, if bad boy Johnny Depp
breaks a leg or is keel - hauled in a nightclub . Burleigh's latest dispatch, found washed up inside a bottle on a potential nuclear waste storage site in North Queensland's Great Barrier Reef, follows :
 |
| Fleeing German confrontation. |
How
do you get to Croatia from Tunisia in 24 hours? Easy. That’s what you say.
Get up bloody early, then get on a plane in Djerba (after paying an additional
visa fee for our second week in Tunisia), fly to Paris, change airports, get on
another plane and hope it’s going to Croatia. Ideally we would have travelled
as the crow flew, reducing our travel time to around three hours, but the crow we have chosen to fly
with is drunk, lost, on LSD . We had three hours sleep in a quick in-out hotel at Paris-Orly airport. We didn’t
have time for any of that in-out funny business,especially as the revellers
downstairs laughed and shout until 1 a.m.
This
year we seem to have spent far more time outside the EU than in it, and have yet another week to
make up to fit within the Schengen
rules. There aren’t many places left to go to unless we count Uzbekistan,
Utopia, Belarus or Turkmenistan or Atlantis, so we decided to return to
Croatia. It would be wasteful not to use
the Croatian language we’ve learned – where else can we play Bitch Volleyball , Kerry Oakish, Argery,
and do Pull Jeem? Because I have been doing my Croatian Pull Eggzrzyziz and have not yet completed the course, I look like
Arnold Schwarzenegger above the waist and Woody Allen below.
We hope we won’t have to battle German tourists for the " Dick Cheers ", but we’re
somewhat battle-hardened by now and know we must put our towels out before dawn
to claim our Cheers. Last week we sat in two empty deck chairs at the Tunisian
resort and a few minutes later a blonde German girl turned up with a hotel
official, claiming they were her chairs, that her boyfriend needed to be in the
shade for medical reasons and that we were ‘not being friendly’. Incidents like
this cause wars.
We were polite enough not to tell them where to shove it, but
when we refused to move, international conflict was sure to follow. Luckily the
bemused Tunisian official pulled out two more chairs and an umbrella and
squeezed our German friends in beside us. Any poolside pleasure we were having
evaporated instantly, so we went to the Pool Bar for counselling and consoling.
Anyhow, we’ve landed at the Astaria Hotel in Milni, about 8km from Dubrovnik. In this area the village development along it is immaculately cared for . As this is the last week of exiles away from the EU , we're determined to enjoy it .
 |
Napoleon muscled in .
|
Typically
packed with tourists from huge passenger liners in the harbour, the main
‘roadways’ (basically in the shape of a Christina cross) in the old city are
hard to navigate, but once you move to either side the narrow cobbled streets
are magic. The big white pavers are rounded and worn from centuries of foot
traffic. Tiny shops crowd together, equally tiny restaurants push tables out
into the street, spruikers try to talk you through doorways and into cafes. One
spruiker with a large grin says: “Sorry for yelling at you, but it’s my job.”
The good natured Croats are aware how much they need tourists but they don’t
show the resentment you sometimes find in other countries. The lanes are hung
with flags, the street lighting is contained in old gas-lamp fittings. No
conventional signage is allowed. One of the few overt concessions to modern
life is the hundreds of air-conditioners dotting the walls along these narrow
pedestrian ways only six people wide. Only small carts could have passed
through.
 |
| Pit stop here. |
The old town, or at least the town surrounded by battlements, is predictably packed with churches and monasteries of all denominations and architectural styles side-by-side with artillery positions and watchtowers and sniper positions to repel invaders. The walls – in places six metres thick – were never breached. The town did fall to Napoleon after the city negotiated a surrender on favourable terms to avoid a destructive siege and bombardment. But this isn’t History for Schools – the place brings out an emotional response because it’s so human. Unlike a giant cathedral built to impress and overawe, Dubrovnik is a place built to protect. Sure it can be expensive; it’s one of the world’s major tourism destinations. Because it’s genuine and not built by Walt Disney it squeezes the clichés out of you. How many times can you use the word ‘spectacular’?
Throughout
the Dalmation coastal strip, construction cranes loom like mantises over new
apartments and hotels. It won’t be long before the place is over-developed and
superficial, but right now the shore, the stone, the pines and the shoreline
pathways are dominant. You feel the place hasn’t been defeated by progress and
that there’s still plenty of fun to be had.
