Heading East for Easter: Zadar to Split

After the wintry day at Plitvice, we turned south and headed down to the city of Zadar on the Dalmatian coast.  We spent a couple of days there before continuing along the coast through Split and towards Dubrovnik.

This seemed to be the typical decor of the coastal towns of Croatia.  This is an old church in Zadar.

Along the boardwalk in Zadar there is this little contraption - a sea organ.  The waves coming in force air through the pipes creating a constant soundtrack to your walk along the sea.  It's not exactly ripping Mozart pieces or anything, but it is kind of interesting - only thing is that it doesn't turn off, ever!

Lots of rustic looking side streets in Zadar.

This square in Zadar was cleverly named the "Four Wells" square.

View of a small harbor in Zadar.

The "Lion Gate" - Zadar.

Sunset from the balcony of our B&B in Zadar.

As we stopped in more towns along the coast we kept seeing massive growths of this purple flower hanging on buildings.  Not sure if it's lavender or not.

One of the churches in Sibenik - mugs of individual townspeople that made donations were immortalized in stone along the outside.  It's said that the more you gave, the better your face.

Beautiful garden in Sibenik.

We also wandered across a cemetery in Sibenik that offered some excellent views.

Sibenik

View into the waterway along Sibenik.

Hrvatska - "Croatia" in Croatian

As we drove around this country we couldn't help but notice some of the evidence from the war of independence.  We came across some small villages that looked like the Alamo and had not been rebuilt or moved into since the war - usually because Serbians had lived there.  This is a public building in Sibenik that had visible damage to the facade.

In Split we walked around the quaint little "old town", but other than that the only thing worth seeing is the sculpture gallery "Galerija Mestrovic" - Croatia's answer to Rodin.

"Job" - one of Mestrovic's masterpiece, really captured the agony that he must've felt.

While this Pieta is made of plaster, Mestrovic made a real one from metal that is apparently on the campus of Notre Dame where he was a professor (if anyone can give me an "amen" on that).  Mestrovic moved to the United States in 1946 and remained there until his death in 1962.  He still has loads of work in various places in the USA.

This one was Marisa's favorite.  The carefree nature and facial expression won her over immediately.

My favorite was the Cyclops, cocked and ready to toss this boulder somewhere.

After the museum, we walked down the road another 200 meters to a small chapel that houses some of Mestrovic's wood carvings.  He made 28 of these bad boys along with a huge crucifix that are on display here, illustrating the life of Christ.  I liked this one because it shows all of the ridges carved in the wood.

It was a rainy day in Split, so I can only share one photo to give you an idea of the old town.

I can summarize the Dalmation coast by saying that it's fabulous when the weather is nice and kind of a downer when the weather is crap.  If you plan a trip to Croatia, make sure it is the right time of year.

--Justin

Heading East for Easter: Zagreb and Plitvice National Park

Continuing our Easter Break journey, we took an early morning train from Budapest down to the capital of Croatia - Zagreb.  We met up with our friends, Katie and Patrick, to spend a week driving along the Dalmatian.  We only spent an afternoon in Zagreb, which seemed to be enough, before heading off towards the beautiful Plitvice National Park (pronounced PLEET-veet-seh).  This post covers those two stops on the trip.

When you spend all of your time traveling around Western Europe you are made aware of the major damage and change caused by two World Wars.  While most people are familiar with these pages in history, I imagine less are familiar with the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.  For me this was a huge history lesson on a conflict during my lifetime of which I was aware, but too young to comprehend the politics behind it and naive to the atrocities committed here.  Throughout the next couple of posts I'll attempt to share my current understanding of those events.  Here's an introduction:

Ilyrians (modern-day Albanians), Greeks, and Romans first settled various towns along the coast that stayed until the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th century.  At that point there was a flood of barbarians and Slavs throughout Europe.  Slavic Croats had control of most of Croatia by the 7th century and in 925 AD a guy by the name of Duke Tomislav united the tribes into a united kingdom.  From the 12th century Croatia was ruled by foreign powers such as the Byzantines, Hungarians, Venetians, Ottomans, and eventually the Habsburgs (from Austria).  All of this shifting of power left the Balkans a huge mixture of ethnicities and religions.  The three major divisions were: Catholicism (from Charlemagne and the Habsburgs), Eastern Orthodox Christianity (from the Byzantines), and Islam (from the Ottomans).  The ethnicities that emerged were: Croats and Slovenes (Catholic South Slavs), Serbs (Orthodox South Slavs), Bosniaks (Muslim South Slavs), Hungarians and Albanians.  More in the next post.

In one of the churches in Zagreb they had an inscription in this cyrillic language that the Croatians considered adopting when they gained their independence from Yugoslavia.

It's a tradition in this region to hand-paint eggs for Easter and to give them to friends/family.  In Zagreb and other cities we came across these eggs on display in public plazas.

More eggs in Zagreb - sort of like the Cow Parade if you've seen that in other cities.

After doing lunch and walking around Zagreb, we took a 2-hour drive out to see Croatia's most popular national park.  Little did we know that we would be hit with some cold, nasty weather the next day!

 Plitvice National Park - still breathtaking even in the crappiest of weather (sleet/snow).  It's basically a huge system of lakes and waterfalls made from travertine, a mineral similar to limestone (calcium carbonate).  The lakes are all so clear because the bottoms are all covered by this stone, rather than mud.

Easter Sunday at Plitvice

The good news was that there weren't that many people as stupid as us to brave the elements.  That kept the paths reasonably clear.  They have built an extensive network of wooden walkways that literally go across the lakes and waterfalls.

Separating the women: Marisa and Katie

...from the men: Patrick and Justin

It took us probably 3 hours or more to make our way around the whole place.  I can't imagine what it would be like in the summertime with busloads of tourists walking single-file along the wooden pathways!  

So despite the weather we had a memorable time in one of the most beautiful natural wonders I've ever seen.  Ironically, it was at this very park that the first shots (and casualties) of the fighting between the Croatians and Yugoslavia took place on Easter Sunday of 1991.  The Serbs occupied the park until 1995, which actually helped the park to recover from the impact of tourism. 

--Justin

Aufstieg for Eintracht!

There's plenty to frustrate Americans when it comes to the game of soccer, or football as the rest of the world knows it.  One of the main things that blows my mind is the mutual acceptance of the "tie" throughout the season, for which teams earn 1 point.  Equally anti-climatic is the lack of a playoffs system or even a championship match.  Instead, most leagues (including the German Bundesliga) have a season-long point system in which all teams play each other at least twice (home and away) and earn 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss.  At the end of the season in May, whichever team has more points is the champion for that season.  Simple enough.

I do appreciate that this system rewards teams that are consistently good all year, rather than a team that scrapes by into the playoffs and then gets hot to take the title.  Besides that, the one thing that I really like about the German Bundesliga (and other football leagues in Europe) is the system of relegation.  The system only exists because there are multiple divisions of play (similar to college American football), of which only the first three are important to anyone.  They way it works is simple:  the top two teams of the 2nd division are automatically promoted to the 1st division at the end of the season, while the bottom two teams from the 1st division are automatically demoted ("relegated") to the 2nd division.  This also takes place between the 2nd and 3rd divisions and it ensures a slightly different looking league each year.  It also gives teams at the top and bottom of both divisions a huge incentive to play hard through the end of the year.  But there's one more thing.........

......The team that finishes 3rd from the bottom of the 1st division and 3rd from the top of the 2nd division play each other in a two-game series at the end of the season with the winner earning the last spot in the first division.  This year saw major drama as the 3rd place 2nd division team - Fortuna Dusseldorf - defeated the 3rd from bottom 1st division Hertha Berlin, which is a rarity in this country.

However this blog focuses on our home team Eintracht Frankfurt who dropped down to 2nd division last year after losing the last 5 games of the season.  It was so lowsy that the die-hard Frankfurt fans rushed the field and attacked the Eintracht players at the last home game.  This year they loaded their roster and finished 2nd in the 2nd division to move back up to their rightful spot in the 1st division.  Here they call it an "Aufstieg".  We were fortunate to get to go to the last home game for Eintracht this year against TSV Munich 1860.  Eintracht had already advanced at that point and they ended up losing 0-2, but the celebration afterwards.........and taunting of the opponents' fans...........along with the presence of hundreds of riot police made this game a memorable experience.

Commerzbank Arena (formerly Waldstadion, or "forest stadium" since you have to walk through half a kilometer of wooded trails from the train station).  In the nicer months the roof retracts some sort of canvas covering to let in the sunshine and the breeze.  It's one of the nicer stadiums in Germany, built for the World Cup in 2006.

They had some nice color coordination happening in the stands - black and white trashbags to put on in your section.  I thought that putting on plastic on a quite warm day was a bad idea, so I stuck with the jersey.  It kinda seemed like cutting weight for wrestling or something.

The "Ultras" are basically a hardcore fanclub - nearly like a gang in some cities.

TSV 1860 Munich fans setting off a flare/smoke bomb after a second goal.  Notice that they completely cage the opposing fans into a section to avoid any mixing.  You'll see why after the game...

Although they wear UGA colors, we still support the good guys in red and black - Eintracht Frankfurt!

Game-day face.

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So Frankfurt loses 0-2, but since they are moving up to the 1st division and this is the last home game, the Ultras and other Frankfurt supporters bust through security and rush the field

Eintracht players that had hoped to have a nice celebration with their families on the field - like our "Friend" in the green jersey - had to cut the celebration a bit early....

...due to the hoodlums wearing bandanas and balaklavas running with flares towards the Munich fans

As you might imagine with most sporting events in Europe the riot police then come on to the scene...

...and beat down a few hoodlums with their clubs.

Then it was back to the celebration for at least an hour after the match.......that Frankfurt lost.

All I can say is that I've never seen anything like this in any sport in the U.S.  It's an unbelievable cultural experience that I recommend to anyone.  I'll put up with a few ties and no championship game for this kind of day at the park!  Congratulations Eintracht Frankfurt - especially #29.

--Justin

My first European Opera

Our last night in Budapest we decided to kick up the class a notch and go to the opera. I have never been to an opera in Europe and Justin said it is something everyone should do. He went to a few on his study abroad in Germany back in college. The Budapest opera house was absolutely beautiful and just walking in put me in the mood for some high-class opera.

The spiral staircase leading to our seats

The amazing ceiling painting

Justin looking so sophisticated in his plaid

The place was covered in gold crown molding and these box seats were definitely a highlight

The view from our seats...not bad huh?

Now that I have raved about the opera house I wish I could say the same about the opera. We watched a Richard Wagner opera all in German with a screen translating it into Hungarian. One mistake Justin and I made was not reading the synapsis ahead of time and not having a clue what was going on. Now, Justin knows some German but even if the opera was sung in English I still think we wouldn't have understood it. We made it through the first Act or about an 1.5 hours and decided we did not want to waste 5 hours of our life sitting through this just to say we saw an opera. So I can check a European opera off the list and move on to other classy things. In the end we found an awesome restaurant and enjoyed the rest of the evening doing what a 28 and 30 year old do and not what a 70 year old does.

--Marisa