Hvar

Prior to arriving here in Hvar, we spent the week at another of Croatia's more-than one-thousand islands called Korcula in a little town called Vela Luka. For Cara, this was a week for welcome indolence, daily walks along the sea paths into town, and lots of reading. For me, it was a week of diving, which in Croatia means, mostly, playing with octopii.

I say "playing" of course in the same way a pre civil-war Virginian cotton plantation boss might claim to have had a "few Africans over for dinner and light entertainment." The harassment of Croatian octopii is this century's greatest civil rights issue.

The trick with octopii is to coax them out of their hiding spots by wiggling your fingers in a fishy fashion. Then, when the hapless creature investigates, you grab it and pass the terrified, ink-squirting creature from diver to diver for close inspection. ("You say they 'came from above, John, and probed you?' " says a concerned octopod therapist in a post-scuba encounter session. "Would you like to Reality Test this one, John?")

Octopii are extraordinary, curious creatures. You can approach them openly if your movements are slow, and you are polite. They will often tolerate--and even seem to enjoy--a gentle rub between the eyes. When an octopus grows tired of this, it'll glide a tentacle up and wipe your finger from its head. You can also place a small shell or stone at the entrance to a hiding spot, and in a few moments a timid hand will reach out and take the gift into its hole for further inspection. This is why it is wrong to eat them, and why the delicious octopus salad I had at Vino's Grill still troubles me.

Which brings me to this murderous fellow...



While we were dining on the harbour front we heard a sickening wet slap on the pavement. We turned to see the fellow above haul an octopus from the water and bash it to death on the concrete in front of the horrified yachters standing about attempting to look chic in their blue-and-white-striped shirts and bottles of expensive Croation wine, it now dawning on them that this is how their meal for the evening was beginning its journey to their plates. The next morning, we caught this fellow going for coffee and snapped his picture for the coming Day of Retribution (I've just finished reading "A Tale of Two Cities." If there is a octopod Madame Defarge, may she soon forget my goggled face.)

It is my temperament to look skeptically upon things, which is but one of the reasons I would make a bad travel writer, which is a profession devoted to capturing and sharing the romance of a place in order to make readers at home feel inadequate. But skepticism has only a slight hold here in Hvar. Yes, the harbour is crowded with yachts piloted by people who are wealthier than it is morally acceptable to be. Yes, it's difficult to see the ancient stucco walls behind the rows of restaurants and knick-knack shops. But the walls are nevertheless there in varying shades of ochre; rich and buttery in the Adriatic mid-day sun, pink and glowing as the sun sets. The marble paving stones have tiled the piazza for twelve centuries and have been polished smooth and gleaming white by the feet of sailors, merchants, warriors and tourists alike.

We are staying here in Hvar with Virginia, Mateo and his sister Maria. Maria in loose clogs, spends the day clopping around the courtyard, talking to herself, singing tunelessly along to the radio (what's big here is a revamped version of 'Super Trooper' by ABBA) and sometimes yelling at the stray cat who claims this place as her own. Mateo makes wine and "schnapps" from his own grapes, and olive oil from his own olives. The pensione reeks with the yeasty smell of fermenting grapes. By day, Mateo exercises his alchemical arts in the basement, and by night he cooks us whatever fish his friend has caught for him that day. Maria cooks the side dishes, which Mateo always invites us to admire at the end of a meal--'The Salada Maria! Good!'--so that she is included in the praise we heap on him for his skill at the grill. Virginia-who speaks English with a French accent, having spent a month in Southern Ontario as an au pair- breezes in twice a day to coo at her turtles and guinea pigs and to feed the chickens and two donkeys that reside in the back. As their only guests, we have fallen into the rhythm of this family; we have given up our itinerary, and do as they tell us to do, and eat as they tell us to eat. Which so far has not yet included octopus.

Lopud Island, Croatia

Most children who grow up with cats, if they have a slightly cruel streak, at some point will probably apply little strips of sticky tape to their pet's ears and paws. A cat that is abused in this manner becomes instantly immobilized with horror, much as you'd react if you found yourself suddenly covered in raw sewage. They won't return to any semblance of themselves until the tape is removed and a formal apology offered.

This is how I feel about sunscreen. There are times during the day that I could tear my own skin off. I mention it only because I want my friends who are now teaching to know that a day spent here...

...is not all calamari and cold beer. We, too, are suffering.

We three (Kim Clayton joined us a few days ago) are now on a small island called Lopud which is just a kilometre or so off the Croatian coast. Lopud is gorgeous, Mediterranean,and car-free. The village of Lopud, cast like a handful of stones along the coast, dots the narrow beach for a few hundred metres. Rough, paving-stone lanes bounded by crumbling stone walls, draped with lemon, pomegranate and fig trees wind into the steep hills behind the village, mostly terminating at tiny, crumbling chapels. Walking through the village, you pass modest, soviet-era hotels, long abandoned and ruined, among which a new breed of young, hip, hoteliers offer clean rooms, wi-fi and fluent English. A walk into the hills takes you to the ancient fortress walls, slumping into heaps of overgrown rock.

As we progress through our year, I have been draughting an increasingly onerous Constitution to govern how we shall go about the business of travelling. The first law on this document is "Always go for a sure thing." There might very well be a nicer, cleaner restaurant somewhere down the street, but often there isn't, and a hungry Bruce is just no fun to be around. Cara tolerates these edicts with equanimity, just as long as it's clear that she has the authority to repeal any law at any time.

Anyway, my most recent addition to this document is "Bruce will no longer take any form of travel that includes the adjective 'night.'" The night train from Paris to Venice should have been romantic. It was, instead, a steamy six-berth compartment stuffed with belching, shirtless, Belgian youth. The night ferry from Italy to Croatia seemed promising, too. Except that there were no cabins and we spent the night in the so-called bar sittting in upright plastic seats. Except that the large Italian woman sitting on top of us began vomiting. Except that the ferry staff, suffering from seasickness themselves, wanted to go to bed and refused to assist anyone to clean up the mess and told us we'd have to live with it until morning.

Cara's tenacity in these situations always astounds me. While I was thinking that my only option for the night would be to stand politely in a corner, occasionally dabbing at my soiled shoes, Cara roused a young attendant from her stupor and demanded that we be allowed to sleep on the couches in the locked restaurant. Not even the surly Italian waiter who opened the doors at five A.M. to start breakfast dared to disturb our righteous sleep.

Long time no blog. We’ve had minimal internet access, and what little access we did have was committed to a long-distance war with UPS. I could be dull, and explain the whole thing, or I could just ask you to trust me when I say that if UPS and all its ugly brown trucks and all its ugly-brown-shorts wearing employees were to burst into flame all at once, it would be no bad thing. Even if you hated Tom Hanks in “Castaway,” go FedEx the next time you need something mailed.






Since the last entry, we’ve been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Normandy, Paris and Venice.


Glasgow has a whole lot of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which is nice; but, really, when you spend time around CRM, you realize that he really doesn’t like people very much. His genius is unquestionable, but it wasn’t so expansive that it included “cushions” or “people with bums.”




The fellow who invented bagpipes didn’t like people much either, but unlike Charles, he did understand cushions. A well-filled bagpipe would make an excellent pillow so long as you could keep it quiet. As Cara and I were leaving Glasgow, we arranged to have ourselves piped out of town. Quite special.







Britain, in general, was like a homecoming. I don’t mean because I have Old Albion in my genes; it’s because the British know how to form queues. Scandinavians don’t know much about queues. They’re Vikings, so they don’t smile, ask permission or wait their turn. If you dig an open grave anywhere North of 60 degrees, it’ll be immediately crammed with Scandinavians who, seeing an open space, will hurl themselves at it just so they can get through it before anyone else. The British, in contrast, queue with astonishing precision.



To illustrate: while in Edinburgh, we queued for a Fringe show, and the line began across the street and about a dozen yards from the entrance meaning that the back of the line was actually directly in front of the entrance while the front was some thirty people beyond it. In Iceland--had anyone been foolish enough to have begun a queue in the first place--the last people in line would simply have done the logical thing: run like hell for the door the second it opened before any of the luckless buggers in the front could figure out what was going on. In Britain, however, the most astonishing thing happened: when the attendant opened the door, the line bent double in one synchronized movement, crossed the street, and entered in precisely the correct order. It was like an Esther Williams movie. I nearly cried.

And if you think Canadians like to say “sorry” you should hear how the British go on about it. It’s like they’re still feeling guilty about the whole Empire thing, and they want you to know that, sincerely, just because they momentarily blocked your passage, they’re not going to install a Governor General in your country. Promise.


Now, let’s be honest, shall we? I know that many of you are just about to head back to the classroom after what I hear was a pretty crappy summer. You have my deepest sympathies, and for that reason, I won’t tell you about Paris or Venice. Yet. In the meantime, I’ll be thinking of you all, and I wish you the best semester yet.