Monday, July 4-Thursday, July 7: Bus station in Split, island tour of Trogir, a night at the hospital in Split, and an awesome tour in Trogir
Monday, July 4
After Plitvice, we made our way to Split to pick up our friend Carol Lilly who had been doing research for her book in Beograd, Sarajevo, and Mostar. She took a bus from Mostar that was to arrive in Split around 2:00pm, but nothing really goes as planned especially in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Having parked the car about a quarter mile from the bus station, Steven--now hobbling miserably on bloody feet--and I walked about in the Diocletian Palace section of town near the water.
Diocletian was Roman emperor from 285 to 305 CE. He was born in Dalmatia not far from here and built a palace retreat in Split. If you know anything about him, it's usually about his persecution of Christians. Weirdly, just 15 years later, his successor Constantine (of Constantinople fame) would legalize Christianity, setting Rome on the trajectory to become one of several patriarchates and later the seat of Roman Catholicism. Anyway, the palace in Split is fully integrated into the old town, sporting restaurants, bars, and upscale shops. Tourists gawk and young fashionable residents come here to be seen. This area and several others throughout Dalmatia including Dubrovnik were site locations for the HBO series "Game of Thrones."
We didn't do much walking (naturally); rather, we parked ourselves in a bar and drank beer until Carol's bus was slated to come in. On our way to the bus station, we heard a lovely acapella group we think from the US singing a choral piece while photo-op Roman-dressed soldiers and tourists looked on.
Carol's bus finally arrived a good hour or so after the scheduled time, and we made our way back to the car in the searing heat. I can't emphasize enough how miserable poor Steven was. As I explain below, it was just the beginning of his misery.
Our destination for the next three days was Trogir, another ancient city greatly imprinted by the presence of Venice for four centuries from the Renaissance on. From the pictures posted on our host's AirBnB site, I imagined it would be easy to get to their place and just as easy to park. But NOOOOO. Winding narrow streets across bridges and crosswalks packed with tourists. I missed our turn off suggested by the Google and ended up circumnavigating the entire island of Čiovo opposite the mainland portion of Trogir. Once we finally got to our destination, our hosts popped out of their house on cue to greet us. Bruno and Blaga were absolutely delightful. The two are retirees in their 60s, and like so many Croats here and elsewhere throughout the country, they supplement (or possibly entirely derive) their income by renting out apartments to tourists in their house. They gifted us homemade olive oil and Kraš cookies, pointed out the procedures of the household, and courteously left us to our own devices.
Once we had settled in, we made our way across the short bridge to the Trogir mainland to find a place to eat dinner. This place, like so many Dalmatian towns, was packed with tourists. Through the narrow winding Romanesque-Gothic-Renaissance streets of the town, we chanced upon an excellent but pricey restaurant called Trs. We later discovered that it was Michelin rated, which would explain the $170 tab. But hell, this is our wedding celebration tour and a reunion with one of my oldest, dearest friends. The place was enchanting. Over us hung a trellis full of grapes and vines. The food was--to be expected--excellent. The opening night of Trogir Summer Nights had begun with a lovely outdoor concert we could hear from inside the restaurant. We had a tremendous time catching up with Carol, reminiscing about our crazy adventures from the past, and arm-chair analyzing the situation in Ukraine, Russia, and, the insanity of American gun violence. (Highland Park had just taken place today.)
We were all wiped from the day and crashed summarily upon getting back to the apartment.
* * * * *
Tuesday, July 5
The next day Carol fetched some groceries, we breakfasted, then we all set out for our day-long excursion to three islands in the vicinity of Trogir. I had booked the trip several weeks before through TripAdvisor, but as we saw NO signs or booths along the riva (promenade by the water), I was getting nervous about whether this was going to take place. As you know, "nervous" is my operative mode. Finally, a guy in a speedboat pulled up wearing the Trogir Tours Izod shirt, and we were in business. We were just six altogether on the boat: Steven, Carol and I, a lovely couple from Manchester, England, and our operator Karlo--a young guy in his early 20s who brought us around to the three islands we were to visit.
At our first stop, Mali Drvenik, a small island with a lovely sandy beach, Karlo was just going to moor off the coast and let us swim around right there near the boat. Fortunately, Carol had the presence of mind to ask him to dock so that Steven could join us on the beach while we swam. (Feet, don't you know.) Unlike most beaches in Croatia, this one has sand. I can't tell you how good it felt to jump in the sea after dreaming about it for the last 1 1/2 years. Carol and I bobbed in the water for a time, while Steven hung out on the beach and later a cafe.
Our next top was Veliki Drvenik where we went to a cafe near the dock. The owner was this hippy chick in her 70s whom all the Trogir Travel guys seemed to know from way back.
Šolta was our third stop. Here we had a great lunch for about an hour or so at Konoba (Tavern) Moni. I had calamari [pržene lignje], Carol some sort of fish, and Steven just had šopska salata, his new favorite dish.
On our last stop we went to a different part of Veliki Drvenik to swim some more. The place was packed! Carol and I made our way gingerly into the water, trying not to slip on the rocks. Some young people on a party boat about 100 feet away were whooping it up on a slide built right onto the boat. The English couple joined us for a bit, while Steven checked out another cafe on the shore. He later reported to us that several of the wait staff broke into six-part harmony (klapa), a style of singing traditional in Dalmatia. He said it was the highlight of his day.
We spent a good 8 hours out on the island tour. Karlo returned us back to the riva, and we made our way home to the apartment. I picked up a couple pizzas (two 12"), some beer and Schweppes bitter lemon (Steven's new favorite drink), thinking we would crash for the evening. Boy, was I ever wrong....
Steven was lying down on the couch. I had asked him how he was feeling, knowing his feet were killing him. Carol, ever mindful of bacterial infections gone wrong, asked if he saw lines creeping from his feet up his legs. That's when we discovered that his left big toe was swollen and demonstratively infected. I texted Rick (my brother-in-law, the podiatrist) a picture of Steven's feet who confirmed that we should have it checked out by a doctor right away. As Steven and I dithered about what we should do next, Carol quietly went to her bedroom, got dressed, and readied herself for a trip to the hitna pomoć [emergency room] in Trogir. That was that. We were about to spend the next 7 hours seeking out medical care for Steven in not one, but TWO different emergency rooms. Let me explain....
The cab we called brought us to the first emergency room in Trogir. Weirdly, or presciently, the cabby asked whether we wouldn't want to go directly on to the one in Split. As it turns out, he was right. The two attending doctors just simply looked at Steven's foot and said, "well, you need to have it examined by a specialist in Split," then proceeded to charge us 330 kuna ($47) and sent us on our way with a referral. No prescription for antibiotics, no pain killer. The doctors assured us that at this time of day (8:45 pm), it would probably only take 20 minutes or so. Right.
We called the cab company, and sure enough, the same cabby appeared and drove us on to Split. I was in a daze, Steven was delirious from pain, and only Carol had kept a cool head about her. The cabby "generously" offered to wait for us while Steven was treated. I said nothing, because we had no idea how this all would play out. Once we arrived at the KBC Split (Clinical Hospital Center)--an enormous complex of dozens of buildings stretching over several blocks--we tried to make sense of where to go. Signs all over the place indicated that EVERYONE had to wear a mask, no exceptions. And, of course, NONE of us had the presence of mind to grab one. After a farcical amount of time, trying to figure out where exactly we needed to go, the cabby--bless his heart--still letting the meter run, helped us find the correct entrance. As it turns out, the Trogir doctors were far from the mark. We were directed to the Emergency Surgical Reception (Hitni kirurški prijem) several buildings down from the place we were told to go. Picture dozens and dozens of people--patients arriving in cabs and ambulances, loved ones and friends milling about outside, nurses and doctors on their breaks smoking--and you have a sense of the general chaos and confusion that greeted us that balmy, frenetic night.
As Steven and I entered the triage room, Carol took care of paying the cabby. We later learned that our trip to Split cost us 450-some kuna (about $65), 27 miles away from Trogir. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but compared to a regular Uber that runs about 230 kuna, it's double the going rate.
At this point, I was useless, stumbling all over myself in Croatian, trying to explain our circumstances. The triage nurse was terrific and reassuring. Her English was excellent and nearly accentless. She obviated the Catch-22 mask requirement by providing Steven with one she pulled from her desk. It was at this point, I realized that I would not be able to accompany Steven further. The attending RN (a Nurse Ratched-type) who popped into the triage room made it abundantly clear that only patients could enter the emergency room. Indeed, signs all over the place indicated that only children and patients with dementia could be accompanied by their family members. While the triage nurse sought to advocate on Steven's behalf for immediate treatment, the RN clearly drew the line. Steven had to wait his turn, and he could do so with us outside on the few benches beside the entrance or alone inside the waiting room. But he was NOT going to be seen right away. Ugh.
I won't bore you with the tedium that followed. Just imagine us watching dozens of people, nearly all with ambulatory issues, coming and going ahead of us, while we just sat there trying to stay awake and in good spirits for one, two, four, and eventually six hours. The triage system for some reason alotted Steven the very last spot for visitation by a doctor at roughly 1:00 am. I know the Croats like to boast about their medical system, but, damn, this just seemed ridiculous. We were literally the only people left outside the clinic entrance except for nurses and doctors and ambulance drivers hanging out and smoking. The endless parade of patients before us who streamed out before our turn was truly farcical. Even Carol who has seen her share of emergency rooms over the years lost her charitable demeanor and stopped defending the KBC Split staff right about this time.
One truly bizarre six-degrees-of-separation moment occurred when Steven was waiting briefly inside the emergency room reception. He started speaking with an American woman who had been brought to the emergency room an hour after they had arrived in Split from LA. No sooner did they arrive when they got into a car accident. Her leg had been broken, and the orderly had brought her down from x-ray. She asked him where he was from, and Steven replied New York. He asked her the same, and she replied LA.
"Oh," said Steven, "my son lives in LA."
"Oh, yeah, where?"
"North Hollywood."
"That's nowhere near my place. What does he do?," she asked.
"He's a commercial dancer."
"Really, what's his name?" Evidently she works in the industry.
"Juan Zapata."
"I've heard of him, and he's really good."
"Yes, he is."
And then she immediately pulled up a picture of him on her phone.
"Yes, that's him," he replied.
Then she said, "I've heard he's really, really good."
So shout out to you, Juan!
Even after Steven was seen by the doctor, we had to wait another hour and half for lab results to confirm that , yes, he had an infection in his toe. (Oh, for God's sake, we KNEW that!) And finally when the attending physician finished his second smoke break and agreed to check on the lab results around 2:00 am, Steven was discharged with a newly rebandaged foot, a prescription for antibiotics that they did NOT fill there in that part of the hospital, and a referral to see a plastic surgeon (!) for his foot. Carol had shared with me her thoughts an hour earlier that it would probably have been better to stay in Trogir and wait until Wednesday morning to find a private doctor who could write Steven a prescription. Yes, but we had NO idea how bad the infection was. And since Steven has had issues with his feet ever since the spider bite incident several months earlier, we were not about to take any chances for fear he could lose a digit or an appendage or even his life.
You know, the saddest part of this whole "adventure" was that I had to cancel the Croatian cooking class in Trogir I had booked for Steven several weeks before. He was really looking forward to it.
Once our evening fiasco had come to an end, I called an Uber which seemed to appear instantly, and we finally, wearily, made it back to Trogir around 3:30 in the morning.
I never wanted to visit Split in the first place, and now we've been there twice in 36 hours.
Wednesday, July 6...
...had already begun while we were at the KBC. Naturally we crashed for several hours. Steven stayed in bed until well after noon, though Carol was up at 7 (I think) writing out her thoughts to process what we had experienced the night before. When I got up, we tried to work out what we needed to do to salvage the rest of our Trogir excursion. Initially, we were going to take a ferry to the islands of Hvar or Brač, but, hell no, because that meant having to make a stop in Split. (Sorry, but I have come to fucking HATE Split.) We chanced upon a walking tour advertised in Trip Advisor. Ordinarily, as historians, we would spurn that kind of tour, but it was only an 1 1/2 and seemed like a low-impact, inconsequential way to fill out the rest of the day. Little did we know that it would turn out to be a highlight of our trip.
For the rest of the morning, Carol and I decided on visiting several places in town: an antique store, an old book store (antikvarijat), and a cemetery (Carol is writing a book about cemetery desecrations during the wars of the 1990s).
The antique store in the old city turned out to be a tiny hole in the wall filled with Glumpat, Tschotschkes, knick-knacks, and "art" by artists likely famous in Croatia and Hungary but not necessarily outside this part of the world. We left after less than 10 minutes.
The antikvarijat in back of the department store turned out to be long-since closed. So that left us with the cemetery.
It was a gradsko groblje (municipal cemetery) somewhat up the hill from the market place. I have to say I felt enormously privileged to tour it with Carol, as she helped me notice elements of the headstones I would certainly have overlooked. She spotted the (Yugoslav) Partisan stars on certain graves indicating participation in the war. We noticed a monument to the "victims of fascism" (read: the Italian occupiers) and to the "heroic fighters" during the Second World War. The earliest part of the cemetery had headstones in Italian for people who had died before the First World War, when this part of Dalmatia had a substantial Italian population. The family name Buble (as in Michael Buble, the Canadian singer) was prominently represented all over the cemetery. Buble is an Italian surname.
Carol also explained that the difficulty finding headstone artifacts that depict exclusively non-religious Partisan references is complicated by renovations made later by family members who simply changed out the headstones to something that conformed to their religious sensibilities. I found it fascinating that these plots are not necessarily in perpetuity. Your plot is a lease for about 50 years. To keep it going, family members have to renew them!
Why, oh why, did I not take pictures!
After a good hour or so here, we made our way back to the apartment, took care of some laundry, and chilled out until our walking tour. Poor Steven was pretty much confined to the couch, trying to keep his feet up as much as possible. The good news is he perfected the art of playing solitaire.
Carol and I met our tour guide Daniela at the main gate on the riva at 6:30 that evening. As much as I would love to recount every charming anecdote and remark she made, this blog entry is now--it seems--several hundred pages if printed out. I'll try to be brief and stick to highlights:
- Daniela is in her late 20s, married with two kids. She grew up in Trogir and attended the economics tourism high school located just south of Trogir. She just yesterday graduated her university studies in this area. She works for Discovery Tours but has started her own business taking people to her grandmother's property for a tour of authentic Croatian/Dalmatian cuisine and folk costume.
- Her father is around 51 and fought in the 90s War for Croatian Independence from Yugoslavia (read: from the Serbs). He was somewhat traumatized with PTSD and was wary, if not hostile toward Serbs until Daniela's sister married a Bosnian Serb whom the family has come to love and embrace as their own.
- She told an anecdote about her uncle who was an officer in the Yugoslav army when the war broke out. Denied leave to join the Croatian army, he was imprisoned in Macedonia. Daniela's grandmother made her way essentially hitchhiking to the prison. With the help of a Serb, he was freed.
- What makes Daniela's tour so awesome is the way she contextualized and personalized the places we visited. She has a sharp eye, and a good sense of the history. She did not patronize us at all, possibly because Carol pointed out that we were historians of the area. Her way of unpacking art history elements showed a keen sense of pedagogy. I kept thinking that it was too bad she's not a teacher.
Below I've posted several of the places Daniela showed us.
We said goodbye to Daniela at Kamerlengo Fortress and later had dinner at Cocktail Bar Dominik, right around the corner from the old monastery and church of St. Dominic. We spent much of the time unpacking our experience on the tour. Carol and I discussed several of the remarks she made about what the Croats call the Homeland War (Domovinski rat) of the 1990s and how she deftly maneuvered what we thought would turn into a nationalist rant. This turned into a conversation about the state of affairs in the US, especially on the divisiveness in American society over race, guns, and politics.
Wow, what a day! What a trip!
Next post: Thursday, July 7-Saturday, July 9: Dropping off Carol in Obrovac, Chilling in Opatija, On to Pazin
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