Belgrade and beyond

Posted on September 9, 2012 by EllieGee

After the prettiness of Ljubljana and the refurbished refinement of old Zagreb, Belgrade is care-worn and world-weary. Dirty, hectic, blisteringly hot, but with the vibe of a great city waiting to emerge and face another day too. Would we have enjoyed it so much if we hadn’t had Uroš to show us its secrets and hotspots?

It was just a short walk from our hostel to the centre of town and we started with a wander round the market with its bescarfed old ladies and tempting shiny fruit and veg. Onwards through the main pedestrianised thoroughfare of Knez Mihajlova towards the Kalemegdan citadel. Constantly fought over during centuries, it sits at the helm of Belgrade overlooking the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers, commanding views way up the Danube and over to the river island of Ada Ciganlija.

We wandered in parkland, past the striking Ivan Meštrović sculpture of Victory, and through the walls. There was a whole range of armoured vehicles starting with miniature tanks on display – part of the military museum. Within the walls the parkland continued and we came across two small picturesque orthodox churches.

On the way back we walked via Skadarska – a street in what was originally a Roma shanty, then rebuilt in the 1830s with homes for artisans and poorer civil servants and became the haunt of the city’s bohemians during the early 20th century. Still an arty quarter, it is lined with restaurants and bars.

A lunchtime in August was perhaps not the time to see it at its most atmospheric, but we ate lunch at one of the outside tables and watched the few people go by, go by, fending off beggars and a would-be artist clutching a few badly spray painted boards.

The heat radiated off the city’s pavements and buildings – around 40 degrees of it. We made our way down the shady side of every street back to our hostel hideaway for a siesta and chill out time.

Uroš’s plans for us that evening started with a drink at another bar nearby, where we were joined by Aca and his superb lime-green 2cv. We whizzed across bridges, including the magnificent new cable-stay Most na Adi, only opened on 1 January 2012.

We zipped by some more of the major sites like the temple – a huge unfinished orthodox cathedral all lit up, Tito’s and Milosevic’s former homes in a classy street of massive houses – a bit like London’s Bishop’s Avenue, around and about. We ate at Fabrika – traditional food with a twist. Everything was served very stylishly, perhaps overly so with little frying pans and sauce pans on slate plates. Our Serbian pals were sad that it had gone a bit up-market. But the food was excellent.

We were jauntily driven back to our funky hostel via the street where the bombed ruins of military headquarters still stood on either side. A poignant reminder that Nato forces shelled Belgrade for nearly 80 days back in 1999 during the Kosovo war. Uroš remembers seeing these buildings being hit while sheltering in a flat not faraway.

Next morning, we retraced a few of last night’s steps to see things in daylight. We got on our bikes amid scary city traffic to take a look inside the temple – more unfinished on the inside than the outside, but a corner of the cavernous structure is in use for worship, icons pinned up on builder’s fencing.

We also came past the shelled  buildings in daylight too – the military headquarters had been very carefully targeted.
After trying to cycle in city traffic, avoiding trams and tram-tracks, it was a relief to cycle over the bridge and along the Danube on cycle paths to Zemun, a small outlying rather picturesque town – more in the Hapsburg style. After exploring the cobbled streets which took us to the top of a hill where the Millennium tower sits with a large cemetery opposite, we found our way, first to a welcoming lounge bar for a cold drink and then along the river bank to a big barge reached by a rickety walkway – a restaurant, where we gorged on trout and white wine for very little money.

It was a cycle back in the heat but allowed us time to get enough rest for the evening. We’d only intended to stay a couple of nights, but Uroš invited us to attend a big football match. Red Star Belgrade were playing Bordeaux in the UEFA qualifiers. Never having been to a football match before we were very keen to go – especially to experience the expected atmosphere created by a very vocal and boisterous home crowd. Uroš works behind the scenes on ticketing the team’s matches.

As we neared the stadium, we abandoned our taxi and braved the thronging crowds. Adrian bought a scarf to try to blend in a bit. It took a little while to find Uroš and he took us up to a quieter ‘safer’ section of the stadium. I was frisked on the way in and was found to be carrying an offensive weapon which was confiscated (though luckily Uroš was able to look after my biro until after the match).

The supporters were as loud and lively as promised, singing and chanting the whole time – an electric buzz and we joined in when we could. A tiny group of about 30 or 40 French supporters were ushered into an empty section at one end, huddling together madly waving flags and scarves. It was a draw, but Belgrade certainly seemed to play a better match. Unfortunately on the 2nd leg in Bordeaux they lost and are out of the tournament.

Next morning, after working hard following the game, Uroš came to take us out for breakfast and say goodbye, and we also bade our farewells to Andrea and his wife Ivana. We wished we could spend more time there, but the city heat was oppressive and we were heading for some slightly cooler countryside. We thought it unfair on Serbia just to see Belgrade, especially as we’d been made to feel so welcome.

We only got on the road as far as the street with the cool hidden away bars on it before the petrol pipe which Adrian had fixed in Samobor, just a few days before, died. The pipe turned out not to be up to carrying fuel and had ruptured, spilling our precious petrol onto the streets. It had to be mended again at the side of the street. Luckily there were friendly mechanics nearby who could point the way to a car spares shop and supplied hand washing facilities after Adrian had fitted the new section of pipe. Our engine being at the rear, the bikes had to be taken off the back and all the stuff such as bedding, chairs, table and so on that we store at the back had to be moved forward. All in the heat as trucks thundered past. Still within an hour we had managed to get it sorted and were off.

It was a bit too long a way to drive to the south west in one hit, given that we’d had a late start from the city, it was really hot, and the roads were slow. Before we got to our destination, the new petrol pipe failed. We couldn’t believe it. By this time it was heading towards 6pm, but off the bikes came and all the stuff was moved back and forth again. We had it fixed again shortly though – although not impressed with the pipe we’d bought we prayed it would hold until we could find something more lasting.

It was too far to get to the campsite we wanted to go to, so we went to one in the wrong direction but a bit closer at Ovčar Banja. It was the one that users of the camping review website had given bad reviews to. It was bearable for a night. Not many ‘touring pitches’, the rest of the smallish site taken up by permanent caravans, some of which had been there aeons. Although looking ‘dead’, they were still very much in use by the last few Serbian families on summer vacation. The ablution facilities were dire, but it was cheap and we pulled in alongside a friendly French couple in a motorhome who were also touring the Balkans.

Next day, we headed for Čačak to find some better petrol piping. We did so. Then headed west, but the campsite we’d first planned to get to didn’t live up to expectations and went further south to another goal – the Uvaz canyon. We found out about a campsite not too far from there, so aimed for this.  Down a dirt track with sparse signage, we eventually came out on a grassy hilltop. We were thankfully shown to a shady spot in an orchard before being lead to the house for coffee and sljivovica.

Adrian then fitted the new petrol piping yet again. The newest one was already showing signs of distortion. It seemed to be hard to buy piping of the standard and quality needed for fuel. When we did find it, it was hard to get the right size. It had been a very frustrating couple of days on the van petrol pipe front.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Serbia, Food stuff, Van stuff | Leave a comment

Into Serbia – from the border to Belgrade

Posted on September 8, 2012 by EllieGee

There is a plain that stretches east from Zagreb to Belgrade (and beyond), we were told. It’s as flat as a pancake. It was true. We rarely choose motorways, but we chose one to cover a chunk of distance eastwards and across the Serbian border near Lipovac. The border crossing was straightforward, the landscape didn’t differ but now we were in Serbia. The language is very similar to Croatian, but this time we had to deal with Cyrillic script, and another new currency.

Serbia was once the powerbase of the former Yugoslavia with Belgrade that country’s capital. Crossing into the country now from Croatia it was evident straightaway that Croatia was the more affluent neighbour. Things were scruffier and a bit more down-at-heal.

We originally intended only to spend two or three days in the country on our way to Romania, visiting our friend Uroš in Belgrade, and one or two other places. So warm was our welcome from friends old and new right from the start that it would have been churlish not to spare a few extra days and we ended up spending over a week there.

Our first stop was a campsite not far from Sremska Mitrovica, and after hitting a supermarket in town we followed the signs for Zasavica, leaving town along the river Sava whose beaches were crammed by bathers cooling themselves in the hot late afternoon sun.

The main village street was lined with fairly nondescript houses, then I looked more closely and behind each one there were farm outbuildings, often a tractor, land with a few crops growing, some cattle or sheep, hens – and lots of activity.

We’d heard good things about the Zasavica campsite – it had good online reviews, and we weren’t disappointed. It was hidden away surrounded by woodland just outside the village, with a nature reserve area next door. The pitches were grassy and shady, and the facilities were top notch, brand new and more akin to a hotel than what we’re used to (though the automatic taps for basins and showers didn’t work when there was a powercut next morning – luckily (and oddly) the disabled facilities had manual taps for both).

There were no other campers when we arrived but we had a warm welcome from the young female receptionist who after greeting us wondered why we’d come to Serbia. “Everybody hates us”.’ Being seen as the aggressor in the conflicts following the break-up of Yugoslavia must be a hard thing for the Serbian people, and as ever wars cast long shadows.

After settling in to our pitch, we were invited to partake of some rakija, and as we were doing so a Catalan family arrived, a return visit here on their way to and from Greece. They were now returning to Zagreb, where they’d rented their campervan, and were due to fly back to Barcelona the following day. We enjoyed a few rakijas together, hearing about their lives and their yearning for Catalunya to be independent of Spain.

Later the owners gave us loads of information about what to visit, helping to inspire us to linger longer.

We’d been in touch with Uroš in Belgrade who was expecting us the following evening. After a quick visit to the noisy donkeys, goats and other animals at the nature reserve next morning, we decided to go to Novi Sad – on the Danube a bit north of our direct route. Novi Sad is dominated by the Petrovaradin Fortress, a huge complex set high above the river.

Its many rooms are used as studios, workshops and galleries by artists and craftspeople. It sounded great and is an impressive sight. But it was August, and most of the artists had gone on holiday. You can’t win, avoiding the crowds on the coast, but finding the places you come to see closed because the owners are probably where the crowds are! We had a drink on a shady rampart terrace, and when the waiter finally came with the bill, we wandered across the river and ambled around the old centre of the town.

To get back to the main non-motorway road towards Belgrade, we passed through the small very delightful town of Sremski Karlovci, which has long been a centre of culture, religion and learning for the Serb people. The first schools started here and the first Serbian theatrical performance also happened here, which of course attracted writers, musicians, artists and theologians to visit or live in the town. We admired the many brightly painted buildings, old schools and churches, before heading on our way again.

It was a slow road into Belgrade – texting Uroš all the while. We didn’t have a good map of the city and of course no satnav, but he told us to aim for the tallest building in the new town. Where was the new town? We find it, we think, park at a petrol station nearby and Uros’s friend Andrea came to escort us to our ‘Belgrade home’. We followed him over a bridge into the older part of town. He was taking us to a hostel. The word conjured up images of sweat-smelling dorms with all-night noisy interrailers. We didn’t have high hopes when we pulled up in what looked like a rather downbeat area close to the bridge across the Sava we’d just crossed.

Adrian waited with the van while I followed Andrea through some art deco gates. Behind these was a small apartment complex with balconies overlooking the yard below. We went up stairs to the first floor and into one of the apartments. My heart sang when I walked into Andrea’s cosy funky hostel and was shown our room there. As well as our colourful and air-conditioned bedroom, we had use of a kitchen and bathroom. All spotless and beautifully decorated, the Bridge Hostel turned out to be a haven in the midst of a scorching dirty city.

We did the formal paperwork – all visitors to Serbia must be registered at their accommodation and you get a registration card to show if necessary. Later we were asked for these when we left the country, although we only got proper registration cards from two of the five places we stayed at. Returning to the street where Adrian had found a good space for the van, I fooled him for a bit on the ‘grim backpacker hostel’ scenario, but couldn’t keep it up for long so thrilled was I with our latest temporary home.

As soon as he finished work, Uroš came to find us. A couple of streets down from our home, there’s a partially derelict grey street, beyond whose gates and doors lie groovy bars. We’re taken to a groovy bar. Uroš’s friends are already there. We meet them, have some beers and are then gathered up on a wave of Serbian hospitality and taken to eat all the local specialities in one go (it feels like) at a local diner. Platters of grilled meats, soups, delicious breads, crisp ‘Spska ‘salad – with tangy crumbled cheese on top, washed down with wine. Good company, good conversation. It turns out that Aleksandra is studying Scandinavian languages which of course prompts us to have a chat in Swedish … Not a widely spoken language outside Sweden, you still never really know when and how you will meet someone who can speak it! A great evening – we wander back with a large ‘doggy’ bag in hand – leftovers for snacking on the next day.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Serbia, Food stuff, Officialdom stuff | Leave a comment

The Lonjsko Rangers

Posted on September 3, 2012 by AdrianC

South-East of Zagreb, stretching right up to the border with Bosnia, lies an area of wetland following the banks of the River Sava. The Lonjsko Polje (which just means “Field of Lonja” – one of the villages in the area) is now a protected nature reserve, home to many rare species and habitats. For most of the year, large swathes of the land are submerged beneath water (or snow), with only the tops of the raised levees visible, and the reserve’s rangers run boat trips to watch animal and bird species. In August, of course, it’s a slightly different story…

As we drove into the area, we reached the village of Čigoć, famed as a “stork village”. Throughout the village, the tops of chimneys, barns, telegraph poles – everywhere – there were nests. But not one was occupied. Traditionally, the storks leave for their winter migration on St Bartholomew’s day (August 24th). This year, though, they’d clearly heard we were coming – and left a couple of weeks early to avoid us. Typical!

We headed through the park, seeing what we could see – and liked what we saw. Over a lunch stop in a field next to where a small tributory flows into the river itself, we had a think about the best way to do the place justice. Across on the other bank of the stream, we watched a small, older and probably ex-army 4×4 truck converted into a camper being half-hidden into the trees, ready for a bit of semi-stealthy wild camping. Wild camping’s illegal in all of Croatia, but particularly so in natural reserves – and whilst it would have been a great spot in many ways, we thought it a bit too visible, but each to their own. It did confirm our desire to explore the park in more detail, so we found the nearest campsite (a few pitches at the back of a small restaurant) and unloaded the bikes.

The afternoon sun was very hot indeed as we headed along the top of a levee, the parched earth below us on both sides showing no signs of the reason for the levee’s existence. A huge field off to one side contained what appeared to be a hundred or more horses, looking almost lost in the vastness of the scorched grass, more like a herd of antelopes in the African veldt. Eagles soared and circled overhead, watching intently for some small mammal to run for cover.

Eventually, we found our way back to the road, and turned back towards base. As we headed through several small villages, the area’s traditional houses, built of local oak which withstands wet rot exceptionally well, stretched along the inland side of the road. The amount of love and care that went into their construction is clearly evident in the quality of the detail.

Unfortunately, a large number are derelict now, the residential space on the first floor accessed by an external staircase (so that a boat can be tied alongside, no matter what the water level) and intricate carving clearly unappreciated. Left empty and unmaintained, windows and doors flapping blindly in the breeze, they sit alongside their replacements – generic concrete-and-blockwork houses with no character whatsoever, despite their undoubted practicality benefits.

As we headed out in the morning, we saw no sign of the wild-campers and their truck – had they left early, or had they been moved on?

At the other boundary of the park, the village of Jasenovac has a brutal past. During WW2, Croatia’s home-grown fascist government were enthusiastic participants in Hitler’s “final solution”. They decided to add to the list of groups they were targetting, though, with almost half of the nearly 90,000 names known to have been murdered in the camp belonging to Serbs. Not only was Jasenovac one of the biggest concentration camps in Europe, but it was the only one not actually run by the Germans themselves, regardless of which country the camp was located in. Nowadays, the site of the main camp is a memorial park and meadow, bordered on one side by a main road, but with several humps marking graves and hollows marking the locations of huts and other structures, with a huge concrete sculpture as the main focus.

Off on one side, there’s a steam locomotive with several wooden freight trucks as used to transport the inmates to the camp. The museum itself is free to enter (just as well, since the staff didn’t seem particularly inclined to even acknowledge the interruption that a couple of visitors posed to their ciggy break and chat), and extremely well done, containing a mix of the historical background, daily life in the camp, and the inmates themselves – both the stories of individuals who died, and videos of some of the survivors telling their own tales.

History repeats itself, of course, and the conflict of the early 1990s left another mark on Jasenovac. The architect of the memorial sculpture, Bogdan Bogdanović, was mayor of Belgrade in the 1980s – until disagreements with the soon-to-be-notorious Slobodan Milosevic led to his becoming a dissenter. More directly, being on the main route to the Serbian border, and right on the Bosnian border, the village was heavily hit – bullet holes still mar many of the buildings, although the church has been rebuilt after being blown up.

With that in our minds, it was time for us to complete our tour of the ex-Yugoslav countries, and head east to the border with Serbia.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Croatia, Travel stuff, Wildlife stuff | Leave a comment

Colourboration – Set in stone

Posted on September 1, 2012 by EllieGee

Click to see larger image (1280×1156, 951.7 Kb)

This time my colourboration with blogger Lynne at Dovegreyreader draws on inspiration from stones. In our travels we come across no end of stones, from pebbly beaches to rocky mountains, from elaborately stone-carved cathedral frontages to the tumbledown ruins of homes from aeons  ago. We have seen mountains torn apart in pursuit of stone, and we have seen the stones that mark a person’s passing. So many stone images from landscapes to works of art to practical uses – the collage above offers just a very few images from our recent travels. They are:

1. Stalagtite formations in the cave at Paklenica National Park, Croatia – stone being formed.
2. Lion carving, Sibenik Cathedral, Croatia
3. Ancient script, Butrint, Albania
4. Wall, Hvar, Croatia
5. Wherevertheroadgoes, the stony rocky road to Theth, Albania
6. Found art, we came across three stones placed like this in a row on a park bench in Zagreb, Croatia – see image below.
7. Marko’s stone-carved letters, Ljubliana, Slovenia
8. Stone shelter, Hvar, Croatia

Now over to Lynne to see how stones have inspired her.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, Colourboration | Leave a comment

Once upon a long, long time ago

Posted on September 1, 2012 by AdrianC

Somewhere in the home counties of England, a small child screamed her first scream. There must have been a taste for travel in her blood already, since her mother was a Viking who’d landed in the UK.

Some years later, for a nice round-number birthday, that small child – now a grown woman – drove in an acid yellow and green 2cv from Las Vegas, through Death Valley, and entered California for the first time in her life. She’d lived in the US, Canada, Australia and Sweden before, though.

Exactly ten years later, for an even roundieth-number birthday, that same small child is in Bucharest, a year and a bit into a life in a small van.

Her parents aren’t about any more to celebrate with us – but this trip is their birthday present to her. We miss them every day.

But, most importantly of all… Happy birthday, Ellie!

Posted in Personal stuff | 8 Comments

Zaturday in Zagreb

Posted on August 31, 2012 by EllieGee

We couldn’t leave Croatia without visiting its capital, Zagreb. After leaving Samobor we headed to the only handy campsite, just behind the motorway services south west of the city. Luckily, and contrary to what we’d heard, there were transport links from here into the centre. A bus left from a village just a short walk away and linked into the tram system about halfway into the city. Glad to find it a basic but good and fair priced site, we parked up, hooked up and caught the next available bus. Within 40 minutes, including a hunt for the right tram stop, we were in Zagreb itself.

We arrived in the central square in the lower town ‘Donji Grad’. The older parts, and most of what we initially wanted to see was in the older upper town ‘Gornji Grad’ area – just a stone’s through away. First off was a wander through Dolac – the extensive indoor food markets on the lowest level and stairs up the colourful open air fruit and vegetable market above it.
We always hit the best markets at their height in the early part of the day when we are unsure what our plans are and can’t take as much advantage of the tempting produce on offer as we’d like. However, a welcome drink in the flower market area set us off for an extensive wander, taking in the cathedral and then down Radićeva,the picturesque street which divides the rival Gradec and Kaptol districts and is lined with bars and restaurants. Being August the city is relatively quiet we learnt, its inhabitants on holiday, including our friends Yankee and Maja, unfortunately for us, and most tourists also at the coast.

We spotted a tiny old world checked-tablecloth restaurant with its cool terrace hidden away from the street. The Mikina Klet serves up traditional food at very reasonable prices and we tucked into the local speciality ‘stari purgers’, not a variation on a hamburger, but savoury pancakes stuffed with spinach or ham and smothered in a creamy cheesy topping.

We climbed the stairs to the Gradec area, finding pristine old streets and squares of mostly newly renovated and painted Austro-Hungarian era buildings, the city’s Whitehall and museum district rolled into one. The garishly colourful roof of St Mark’s church was its centre-piece.

On the other side of the square a building was being refurbished, in a passageway alongside it stone reliefs were against a wall, and exploring beyond found more stone artifacts lying around.

The stone gate into Gradec was more of a cobbled passageway under buildings housing a shrine to the Virgin Mary with a sixteenth century statue behind a grille purported to have miraculous powers. There was an alcove to one side with pews for worshippers and it was lit by votive candles. The tray these were placed in was overseen by a wax lady. Not a lady made of wax but the one who was responsible for scraping the wax away to avoid any conflagrations.

It was Saturday afternoon and most of the museums were closed so we explored the streets and found an intriguing museum that was open. We’d seen brown signs to the Museum of Broken Relationships and here it was looking both funky and open. Conceived in Zagreb and functioning as a touring museum too, the rooms display significant items from broken relationships together with their stories. It was strangely compelling, from teddy bears to artificial limbs … tales of love, requited, unrequited, and loss – long distance romances not lasting, or the death of a loved one.

From here we looked up at Kula Iotršćak or Burglars’ Tower, part of the city’s fortifications. We climbed to the top for the views and to see the cannon which is fired at noon every day. We’d somehow failed to notice this earlier though.

Below this a tree-lined pathway, Strossmayerovo šetalište, lead along the edge of the hill overlooking the lower town with arty stalls and a bar with tables alongside at which we supped a beer.

Late afternoon and we thought a little retail therapy was in order before we embarked on a walking tour of the lower town. We found one of the main shopping streets we’d passed in the tram earlier, but … it was deserted. The shops were closed, they closed at 3pm and weren’t reopening later as we would have expected in a major city. I would have offered Zagreb up as a perfect weekend break destination – but with the museums closed on weekend afternoons and Mondays, and the shops closed so early on a Saturday and many of them closed on Sundays too, just make sure you are there on a Friday or a Tuesday as well. By the time you’ve oriented yourself it’s time to go home.

But it isn’t really because there’s always the u-shaped walking tour of the lower town. Known as Lenuci’s horseshoe after the town planner who set it out,  it took us past the big city regal buildings – archives, libraries, theatres, more closed museums, parks and botanical gardens. We were particularly taken by this art nouveau building, designed by Rudolf Lubynski in 1913 – the National Archives with its owls.

In a park near this you can see sculptor Ivan Meštrović’s wonderful ‘Well of Life’ created in 1905.

Another of our favourites was the yellow art pavilion set in another green space near the also grand railway station where a tram driver paused his tram for my photo.

After all that walking around we had earned another beer. We headed back to Radićeva which was getting lively with the early evening passegiata. Great people watching as a beer and mojito were drunk while we tried to figure out our timings around the few remaining buses back to the campsite.

In the end we found another lovely bar with its own brewery which did big plates of food for very little money. We dug in there for the evening and continued our perusal of the rest of the population, taking pictures of St Katharine’s spire as the last of the sun’s rays caught its golden decorations.

Eventually we caught the last bus back having overshot our tram stop and waiting for a tram back from the next stop.

Luckily we were very early for the bus, especially so as it was already waiting. Our timetable said it left at 10.45, but barely a minute after we sat down the driver climbed aboard and promptly closed the doors and set off at 10.30.

You must have been able to feel the sense of relief hovering in the air around us.

We’d had a great Saturday out in the city.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Croatia, Food stuff, Travel stuff | 1 Comment

Vanfettling

Posted on August 30, 2012 by AdrianC

With probably somewhere north of 50,000km under the van’s wheels over the last year and a quarter, there’s a few jobs been waiting for suitable facilities, and for some parts to be sourced. Finally, everything landed in one place, and it was time to get grubby again.

Albania had taken a toll on the van, and we finally figured out that a very scary sounding rattle from the back was related to one rear corner sitting much nearer the ground than it should. We’d broken a rear spring.

Purely by coincidence, another user of the Club 80-90 forum had a pair of brand-spanking rear springs for sale, despite the proper ones for our Westfalia camper being long unavailable. He’d been sent them in error, looking for different springs for his Syncro 4×4 van. Since he was going to be sending them out to us anyway, we decided to get a few small bits, via a Brickwerks order, sneaked into the same package whilst we were about it. And so, installed in the yard, the van went up on axle stands, the overalls went on, and under I went.

A slight delay was, of course, caused by saying hello to the kittens. Unfortunately, though, the bold little black one who’d so charmed Ellie previously had probably been a bit too bold for it’s own good, and hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks. One of the driveshaft joints that had been replaced back in France had been repeatedly coming loose, causing all the grease to escape, and the joint to make ‘orrible noises. Since that needed to be unbolted anyway for the spring, it seemed like a good idea to swap it for the spare good-used one we’d kept last summer. Especially when the noisy one fell apart in my hands… They do dismantle and reassemble, relatively simply once you get the knack (think ’80s executive shiny chrome-and-black leather desk puzzle), but when I put the worn one back together it seemed to be locked firmly in place, instead of moving smoothly. Not good.

The same corner also gives a home to part of the cooling system, a plastic “tower” which distributes coolant to the heater and radiator as well as separating any air out. We’d had a few slight drips from there, and I’d assumed it was a common problem, a welded joint failing. Thanks to another 80-90 user, there’s a fairly straightforward fix for that, but I’d decided that a replacement was wise insurance. As it turned out, it was just as well, since removing the old one saw the stub for the heater pipe just fall off and crumble. The plastic had totally delaminated and failed. Only good luck had stopped us losing all our coolant…

Whilst all the coolant was out of the van, it was the perfect time for a couple of other minor jobs on the cooling system – a replacement temperature sensor for the fuel injection, giving us a much nicer cold start, and a new fan switch after the old one seemed to lose the low speed in Montenegro (it still kicked the fan in, but only on the very loud high speed, and only when the temperature was a bit warmer than ideal). We’d also had some drips of coolant from the front. The van’s engine’s at the back, but the radiator’s at the front, with long plastic pipes connecting the two. To prevent the plastic being crushed by over-tightened hose clamps, VW put steel inserts into the pipes. Over time, though, these inserts loosen, and can cause the hoses to pop off. We’d come very close to that, with only that same good luck causing one insert to wedge at a slight angle. Once that was all sorted (well, temporarily – only expensive replacement pipes will properly sort it), it was time to pour gallons more coolant in. The engine in this van is basically the venerable Beetle engine, but wearing a wetsuit – and VW quickly found that using normal antifreeze caused corrosion of the studs holding the cylinder heads on. As a result, they developed a different antifreeze, red in colour, which is nowadays fairly common – but still far from cheap. Remember those long plastic lines? We needed plenty of it…

Fortunately, Louis’ cousin-in-law (or something) runs a car spares shop just down the road, and we soon became regulars. We’d popped in on our last visit to get oil, and were back for coolant this time. Then, whilst the back wheels were off, I thought it wise to take the brake drums off. Ooops, new linings needed – the weight in the back had taken a toll since Sarran, and they were very thin. So thin that, where there’s a small indent in the metal backing, I could break a bit of the lining off with a finger… No problem – they were ordered and arrived within a couple of hours. Then, on changing them, the brake cylinders themselves looked more than a bit tired. Fortunately, a pair was in stock, since there’s still plenty of our old T3 vans in use as workhorses around the Balkans. We’d also found that the exhaust had been getting louder and louder. Since we’d had a brand new stainless system sent to us back in Sicily, we knew it would only be something fairly minor. We’d managed to lose one of the two clamping straps for the silencer, though (Tunisian rough roads this time), and I suspect that’d put more strain than intended on one of the pipes, which’d started to fracture. Not a great problem, given where we were – in the yard of undoubtedly the best welder we have the good fortune to know. Just as well, since there was also a small but slightly crunchy section of floor needing a patch.

With that all refitted, it was time to restart the van and make sure it was all healthy. Oh, wait. I’d forgotten to tighten a clamp on one of the coolant hoses to that tower, half-hidden just above the gearbox and under the bed. The resulting spray of coolant quickly shrank back to a fine jet. No, wait. It’s not a jet of coolant – it’s PETROL! WHAT THE…?

Barely an inch from the clamp in question, there’s a short stretch of rubber fuel hose, connecting the plastic pipe from the pump to the engine bay. Since the van’s got fuel injection, that pipe’s under a lot of pressure – about the same as the air pressure within the tyres. Whilst I’d had a good look over the hose I could see, that bit’s so well hidden that I’d completely missed it – and it turned out to be utterly knackered.

With a date-stamp on it that said it’d never been changed since the van was built, the slightest tap whilst I was working near it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and petrol came gushing out… Amongst the stocks of parts and tools we had on board, there was a length of brand-new fuel pipe, just in case. With that fitted, all was well, and it was time to take our leave from our wonderful hosts again.

Posted in By Country - Croatia, Van stuff | 1 Comment

Palaces, castles… but no wine

Posted on August 29, 2012 by AdrianC

The crossing back into Croatia was straightforward, without any of the disputed identity problems we had coming back in after Bosnia – and we gently bimbled through a very pleasant landscape of gentle hills and woods. Eventually, we arrived at Varaždin. The town had the honour of being the capital of Croatia, albeit for only eleven years in the mid 18th century, between the Viceroy arriving to lust after the recently widowed (and reputedly gorgeous) wife of a local noble, and a pipe-smoking youth burning the entire place down after tripping whilst chasing a pig. No, seriously…

The centre of the town was, of course, heavily rebuilt from the ashes of the pig episode, leaving us a wonderful collection of Baroque palaces, interspersed with onion-domed and pastel-coloured churches. On one edge of the centre, there’s a castle, complete and in use to house a museum of weaponry and furniture. Our guide book assures us it’s the best museum in the region, but since it was – of course – closed when we arrived, we can’t comment.

Instead, we headed to the cemetery.

The local official responsible, back in the early 20th century, decided that cemeteries tended towards the morbid and sombre – and that he’d prefer much more of a “park for the living”. Row upon row of conifer was planted, and interspersed with headstones and memorials tending towards the dramatic and art deco.

Over time, the line between the two blurred and artistic tastes changed, with mossy sculptures looming out of greenery, next to modernist angular stonework emblazoned with the communist five-pointed star.

The road then took us through the Zagorje, an area renowned for vineyards and “chocolate box” castles. We stopped off at Trackošćan castle, the site of almost constant building and rebuilding from the mid 13th century through to the late 19th, with the end result sitting high on a small hill, overlooking a lake.

The area’s also renowned for vineyards, but they seemed to be avoiding us. We caught site of the odd vine-covered hillside, mostly in the distance, but trying to follow the signs to wineries just left us lost down tiny back lanes with no sign of any life or fermentation whatsoever…

We couldn’t really linger and hunt, as we were heading back to Samobor, to see our friends Louis and Ana again. They’d taken delivery of the van bits we’d managed to miss on our previous visit to them, so a few days in the workshop beckoned…

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Croatia, Travel stuff | Leave a comment

Oh, Ptuj!

Posted on August 23, 2012 by AdrianC

Back in 1995, the 2cv World Meeting was held in Slovenia, around the Maribor and Ptuj area. This year, Maribor’s the European Capital of Culture. I don’t know which is cause, which is effect, or whether it’s pure coincidence, but that’s twice now that Ellie’s coincided with major events in this small town…

The town itself is Slovenia’s second largest, with the only university outside Ljubljana. That doesn’t exactly make it a great metropolis, though – the population’s only about 90,000. It’s a lovely town to wander through, with some beautiful old buildings, especially in the waterfront area along the banks of the river Drava. At each end of the main waterfront, there’s an old tower, remnants of the original fortifications. One, the Water Tower, now houses a wine bar – a perfect spot to while away part of the afternoon, of course, admiring the architecture and the excellent local white wine known as “Šipon” – legend has it that Napoleon gave it the name, by tasting a glass and exclaiming “C’est si bon!” (It’s so good!), which promptly got re-rendered…

Wine is a feature of the area – the gently rolling hills all around are covered in vines, and the centre of the waterfront in town is marked by a beautiful old house half-hidden behind what’s believed to be the world’s oldest grapevine. Over 400 years old, it still produces enough grapes annually for about 25 litres of wine to be made.

Don’t even try to buy a bottle though – it’s exclusively donated to the great and the good, in beautiful if tiny bottles. Inside the house, slightly blandly over-modernised into a wine centre with very little information about anything and staff that didn’t seem inclined to recognise your existence, there’s displays of copies of various certificates accompanying donated bottles to various world leaders, but with no indication of who Bill Clinton chose to share his bottle with, or whether Pope J-P II used his for communion or just kicked back on a Friday evening with it.

The tower at the other end, the Judgement Tower, is currently in use for an art installation, meditating on the eternal duality and how that relates to water. Or something. On the ground floor, there’s a dripping pipe above a hot plate – the drop falls, sizzles and evaporates. Water is wasted. That’s evil. Upstairs, there’s an identical dripping pipe, but falling into a pool – the drop is saved, and that’s good. Whatever. The building was certainly beautiful, with a fantastic view of the wooden rafters and the brick arches forming the upper floor.

We’d got chatting to a lovely pair of Germans at the campsite, Markus and Brigitta, who’d come to Maribor solely because of it being the Capital of Culture, so were fitting in as many of the events as they could. They told us about a free concert to be held in the street on the Sunday afternoon. Nobody was particularly clear as to quite what it involved, other than a “Hungarian electronic” band. So along we trotted, and found that the band – Voler Mouche – were very much to our taste, and very good indeed. I could try to describe them, but – hey, this is 2012. Click on the link, and have a listen to them yourselves.

Leaving them, though, we needed to head up a steep cobbled street to return to the bridge back over towards the campsite – unfortunately, a minor misjudgement and misplaced cobble led to a strangled yelp heralding a tangle of bike and Ellie lying unceremoniously against a large stone planter – pedal and brake lever firmly poking into soft parts, later to develop into some very dramatic bruises but no real harm done.

After Maribor, we didn’t go far – just a few miles down the river towards Ptuj. A small town, but with plenty of old streets winding gently around and up a hill crowned by the castle. There’s a campsite just outside town, at a water park (billed as a Thermal Spa, but it really isn’t – it’s a swimming pool complex). Far from cheap, but a bit (lot) of relaxing in a sauna was just what was needed to loosen Ellie’s aches up, so much so that we ended up staying a couple of nights. One day was filled with the town itself, the next was a great excuse for a bike ride around the wine producing areas that Ellie remembered (although not exactly where) from ’95. Off we trolled, following the tourist office’s wine route map. After about 10km, though, my front tyre was getting very soft, and pumping it up didn’t help – so round we turned, and limped back to a bike shop we’d spotted on our way out of town. We bought a new inner tube, and they kindly lent us some tools, so we were sorted quickly. The route out we’d taken didn’t seem inspiring, though, and we didn’t want to retrace, so we headed out of town a different and much more attractive way. We didn’t see much in the way of vineyards, but after lunch by a small lake full of huge and shadowy fish, we continued onwards. Eventually, we came to a village with a sign board containing a big map – which suggested (after a certain amount of debate) that we wanted to bear right for a circular loop back to town. We did, and the road climbed and climbed. We couldn’t find the next road, though, only farm tracks with absolutely no signage, or an indication as to straight on taking us way out of our way. Hmm. The debate continued, at a temperature that rivalled that of the day. No, the map wasn’t of help. No, I didn’t take a photo of the map on the sign. No, I don’t want to just return the same way, but do you have any better ideas…?

Eventually, we agreed on something, and just headed back the same way. Strangely, the road seemed about a third of the distance – looking at the map later, we realised why – we’d climbed about 200m in the 20km or so we’d headed along, but it’d been so consistent (apart from the last leg) that we’d just not really noticed.

Once back at the campsite – hot, sweaty and utterly knackered – there was only one solution. Yet another swim and sauna…

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Slovenia, Food stuff, Personal stuff, Travel stuff | Leave a comment

Border country

Posted on August 21, 2012 by EllieGee

We were sad to bid farewell to our friends in Ljubljana, but it was time to hit the road once again. We headed south-west and then took a road north up the Vipava valley, not so very far from the Italian border, in the heart of the Kras or Karst region. It’s a limestone plateau with  Mediterranean vegetation and typfied by caves and sinkholes, more arid than the lush alpine scenery we had enjoyed on our day trips from Ljubljana. We opted not to visit the famous caves of Postojna and Škocjan and instead headed for less touristy areas.

As we looked for the turning to the village of Štanjel that Peter had said was worth visiting, we spied two heavily laden young backpackers. As we passed they stuck their thumbs out. We pulled up ahead of them not expecting to be able to offer them a lift because we would soon be leaving the main road. It turned out that they were French and trying to get to Štanjel too. They’d failed to find the hiking route and very gratefully jumped into the van, saving themselves a long tarmac walk in the heat of the day.

Štanjel more than lived up to Peter’s promise. It was fortified and on a hill top with narrow streets and alleys climbing up in different directions from under an archway in the walls, the quirky spire of the church presiding over the sun-baked stones.

There was very little there apart from some lovely houses, a lot of them having been recently renovated or in need of urgent attention, and a really good tourist office.  The image below shows a typical cottage with stone gutter and its well outside. The handful of other tourists we came across were also all French, travelling in different ways.

We explored the whole village which was siesta-ing gently, and bought a jar of honey for sale from shelves outside one of the houses, leaving money in the honesty jar.

As we were about to leave, we found ourselves in the courtyard of the simple castle building, having spotted some cool t-shirts for sale outside. As we went inside to ask about different sizes, we found that it was an art gallery displaying the work of Lojze Spacal (1907-2000), whose family had originated in the area. We paid the small entry fee and went in to look at his wonderful graphic prints, mosaics, stone carvings and paintings. The t-shirts featured one of his graphic prints, his other work was related to the Karst landscape, or was a nod to the politics of former times. He was born in Trieste a short distance away in Italy and had been imprisoned for anti-fascist views in his early twenties, which was where he made his first woodcuts. The building is a work of art too, dating from the 16th century but built on an earlier medieval site, and we looked through the tall windows over the surrounding countryside.

The lady in the tourist office had suggested a route for us through more sleepy villages. With an accidental visit to Italy when we missed a turning, we sped onwards around the Vipava valley region. We were aiming for a campsite at the Saksida winery  near the river, not far from Nova Gorica. It took some finding, but when we did, it was a tiny camping area set amongst vineyards. Just one other van was parked up – Claire and Steve on holiday from teaching jobs in the UK. Good to chat to fellow Brits again.

The camping fees included a tasting of three wines (it stated on the flyer). In the meantime a German couple had turned up, and one of the owners came to say that her father, Jožko Saksida, would be holding the tasting at 8.30pm. So the six of us were ushered into a cool tasting room in the cellars and stood around a barrel table while a generous measure of each wine was poured into our glasses. It was very good wine, and before too long the expected three tastings had become nine tastings, including their sparkling wine and the 55-euros-a-bottle brandy. It was a great evening – a lot of delicious flavours and aromas, new friends and talk that continued into the rest of the night.

Mr Saksida had told us of an award-winning pizzeria in the vicinity that apparently had the third best pizzas in the world. At lunchtime the following day, we convoyed to Branik with Claire and Steve and had an early lunch of the promised wonderful pizza at the Ošterija restaurant.

Our bellies full of pizza we headed north along the Italian border into the Brda region – visiting Dobrovo, a small town at its heart. Part of the road there had been thoroughly fenced in with photography forbidden signs as it passed through Italian territory. Also a wine region, we couldn’t ignore another opportunity to taste some more local wines, so we went to the cellar vinoteca beneath the castle for another wine-tasting interlude.

The girl in the tourist office there asked if we’d visited the village of Šmartno on our way. We’d passed through but not stopped. She looked a bit put out, so we promised to stop there on our way back to the main road northwards. It was worth it. A charming fortified village with many recently renovated buildings, each with a photo of former times on one of its walls. A wander round showed that there were plenty more waiting their turn to be worked on.

Our drive northwards along the Italian border took us back into the Soča river valley we’d visited with Peter and Alenka a few days before.

The weather turned as we drove on, the sky turned black and rain started falling steadily, and the landscape became alpine.

We were spoiled for choice for campsites in this more touristy area and settled on one that in spite of early promise turned out to be less inspiring than we’d hoped. No matter, we were stuck in the van for the rest of the evening anyway.

The next morning dawned fine though as we set off to see just one of the many World War One sites that are scattered throughout this border region. I had to read up – being familiar with the World War One history relating to the battlefields of France and Belgium, what was the story here? In a nutshell, Slovenia was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which, together with the German Empire and Italy formed the Triple Alliance and was at war with Britain, France and Russia. Italy didn’t enter the war straightaway though, and when it did, it switched sides to fight against its former allies. The Isonzo Front stretched along the mountainous border region above the Soča valley and fighting here went on from May 1915 to October 1917. Around 300,000 soldiers lost their lives in the area. You can see cemeteries, memorials, trenches and other evidence of the war, and a Walk of Peace trail commemorates these events.

We visited Mount Kolovrat where well-preserved tunnels and trenches wind their way into and over the mountain ridge, with lookouts and command posts dotted around.

There were tremendous views from this vantage point across the Soča valley into Slovenia on one side and out over Italy towards the Adriatic on the other, but the harshness of conditions for those caught up in the fighting is beyond imagining.

The current border is of course open as Italy and Slovenia are both members of the EU signed up to the Schengen agreement. This border runs pretty much up the middle of the mountain ridge and was decided in 1947, according to the marker stones. Back in October 1917 after the final battle, the Italian border had been pushed back to the Piave River on the Italian side. We wandered in and out of both countries talking about the different borders we have crossed, how many times the lines have been redrawn, and how many people have lost their lives as a result.

Heading westwards we found more lush river valleys with sparklingly clear waters, verdant meadows and villages. Every ridge or mountain top with its bulging church spires, made of copper. Having seen a bit more of the west of the country, we were now en route for the eastern town of Maribor. On the way there, totally unplanned, we saw a brown tourist sign showing the old town of Škofja Loka. We passed through the new town first and it didn’t grab us, but a little further on spires and interesting looking roofs appeared, and we turned off down a narrow lane and found a parking spot. It was a real gem of a town, painted buildings, churches, alleyways, a walk up to the castle buildings housing the museum through a landscaped park. A really lovely place to linger on our journey across country.

We were looking to overnight at a free eco-camp (with voluntary donations gratefully received), we’d noticed when on our tour with our friends. It was about halfway to Maribor, and we are keen to support such ventures when possible. The conditions of camping in this small patch of woodland included not telling major guidebooks, so I won’t name the site here just in case (please contact us for details if you are planning a trip to Slovenia and want to know more). The basic facilities included a set of recycling bins with their own witty messages – the paper bin could include Angela Merkel’s book and the plastics bin could include plastic bags – but not if they were from Lidl.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Slovenia, Food stuff, Travel stuff | Leave a comment