The Archive

Dubrovnik o'teens

OK, I'll try to tell you all a little about the trip. Overall though, I'll warn you that it wasn't really as, erm, insane as the annual holiday can tend to be, so I may be forced to include some geographic and historical detail. Don't worry though, i didn't really learn anything, all this is coming straight from Wikipedia.

So, first stop was Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was described by Byron as 'The pearl of the Adriatic'. Presumably this was because of the beauty of the place. Or maybe he just meant it was small and expensive. Who knows?

Anyway, Dubbers is a strange kind of city. It has a picture-postcard old town (which I believe is now a legal requirement for all Medittriatic countries entering or in the EU) and as a result is populated with hordesof white-haired tour groups shuffling around the streets very slowly, following a woman waving and umbrella and reading guide books.

The old town is most famous for its city wall. This stretches over 2km around the old town, making for

a) a fairly secure medieval city, (until gunpowder showed up at least) and
b) a handy way of knowing when you are in an official 'sight' and when you're just out and about in town and can therefore start drinking.

This also means that anything worth seeing is kept restricted to a handy walkable area which you can knock off in a few hours and then get out of town to start drinking.

Oh, and a small side note. You have to leave the old town before you start boozing because the stone streets of the old town have been polished to a high sheen by generations of tourist footfalls. This leaves them impossible to walk safely along without sliding at the best of times, let alone after ingesting an EU wine lake.

In fact we suspect that the whole city is actually a fake, invented by a global cabal of hip replacement manufacturers and surgeons. Old people are bussed in by crooked tour operators offering historic quaintness and a squid supper and within a hundred yards of entering the skating rink that is old town, BOOM! Down on the floor with a snapped femur.

Still, there are things to see whilst inside the walls. You can get an ancient prescription filled at Europe's third oldest Pharmacy (not much to look at in truth. Not even a leech cabinet to be seen, just an old room. I think it must have been a Superdrug). Also, worship Jehovah at Europe's second oldest synagogue (beginning a theme for the region - early diversity followed by terrible ethnic divisions). And finally (barring a rubbish cathedral) some old palace that the Rector (sort of a 17th century PM) would live in.

Actually the rector thing was quite interesting, as the dude was elected for a month by the senate. Sounds good right? Small catch though. The winner was then confined to the palace, unable to leave without the permission of the senate, doomed to a life behind walls, signing marriage certificates, court summonses and autographs until a new rector could be elected.

Not that any of this was apparent from the exhibitions in the palace. In fact the palace followed a theme found throughout the tour, which was 'places of historic interest that fail to actually tell you anything about what happened'. Clearly the war led to a severe information panel shortage from which they have not yet recovered.

Still, the town was actually very beautiful and the surrounding countryside all dramatic cliffs plunging down to beautiful blue ocean. Good stuff.

Outside the old town, we considered out options for evening entertainment. There was only one. Latin Club Fuego, the only game in town.

Guess what music they played? That's right, house and R'n'B of course. Really, what else would somewhere called Latin Club Fuego play?

Oh, actually there was one other place apparently, that specialised in a local music known as Turbo Folk.

I know what you're thinking. It sounds like a heavy metal version of folk, or something with a hyper fast dance beat doesn't it?

Well it's not. It's a clever cocktail of the very worst of twee folk music, blended with the blandest of anodyne europop. And it's every bit as good as that sounds.

So instead of that, we chose a clever cocktail of various boozestuffs, blended into a giant vase and served with a two-foot long straw. Yes, it's a classic holiday cocktail idea and you'd have to be an idiot to buy something that tastes like downing a litre of Sunny D.

I hope I don't have to finish this joke. You've read this for long enough, you know how it goes.

Still, fun and dancing was had at Latin Club Fuego. We met some nice people (met being the past participle of 'annoyed by making drunken passes at') and had a jolly fun time.

Then back to the hotel, for it was important that we got a good night's sleep, as tomorrow we had decided it was time to go nautical...

to be continued.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:36 PM