13-VII-1976.

The night before this dad drove us to downtown Zadar and we (two) boarded the Liburnija, the big ferry boat which usually serves those who don't want to negotiate the 200-some km of the narrow Jadranska magistrala road, hewn into the cliff of Velebit, almost vertical in places. By today's standards that road is fucking dangerous; back then it was good enough, best that could be done.

The ship departed at midnight. The Liburnija usually ran the Zadar - Ancona line, most probably by day, and this was at night. And it ferried cars, many italian tourists would arrive that way. Though, they'd usually rush in on first of august, as that's traditionally the italian mass vacation month, the „feragosto“.

This was our first trip alone. It took some negotiating. I sometimes think she got her permission (to go to a vacation with her boyfriend) easier than I got this. To devil, I'm 21 and you guys still don't trust me to be able to survive two weeks without you? Whew. That's some vote of confidence.

We had our backpacks, the small crawl-in tent, inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags, praktika and some cash, of course. We slept on the deck, with dozens of others, mostly foreigners, who had the same idea. Funny how the hum of the big diesel engines first gives you an impression that it would be impossible to sleep, then just gets you asleep the next minute. We woke up to a wonderful sunrise over Velebit, too bad I didn't take any shots of entering the port, it's beautiful. I could have sacrificed one evening out for a roll of slides... but then didn't know where we'd buy that in Vrsar, didn't know the place. Actually, my knowledge of Istra was sparse, and had we not taken the trip to Trieste five years ago, I wouldn't know even that little.

Then we tried to hitchhike our way to Vrsar, just to save some money. Took a local bus towards Pula, picked a place and lifted our thumbs. For like three or four hours, no luck. I did remember some guy from few years ago, who said he hitchhiked from Canada (except the ship he took to cross the puddle) and then all across Europe and Slovenia and all the way to Rijeka, where he then had to take a bus. Rijeka is pretty much the weirdest coastal town we have, probably because it's the busiest port. So we took another local bus back to town, and then around 13:20 the bus to Vrsar (and we disembarked at 7:00, so this attempt to hitch a ride cost us some six hours).

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful, except that Istra is really somewhat different from Dalmatia, has a different vibe, which you can feel in the communication between people who board the bus at villages. Couln't catch what it was, though.

We got ourselves a pack of Fructal's juice, not to be too thirsty during the trip, the ventillation in the buses being notoriously bad, it had one bit of side window that would slide, the opening didn't exceed 15x40cm, and that was only on half of the frames. Which was even worse on this zigzagging road, the speed was never much, very little air flow. Fructal's juices were a miracle, first because of excellent packaging (always clean, can stand, can drink straight from it, pouring from it goes straight), and pure pulp of good and select fruit. There were similar attempts by „Podgorka“ of Osečina and „Šapčanka“ - the latter wasn't too bad, but the former I remember by exactly its quality, I wouldn't dump that into mush for brandy, did they even look at the fruit they squeezed? Even today, when I say juice, I mean Fructal.

I had some yellow print, i.e. a booklet on cheap paper, which usually contained new installment of "Lun, king of midnight" by some Frederik Ešton, which we knew was a pen name of Mitar Milošević, about whom we even knew where he lived - he was next entrance from that slow guy on my group at college. This time the episode was a bit short, so they filled the space with Dostojevski's "Gambler" - amazing to find a work of classic literature in a pulp edition. I read both during the ride.

The exciting part of the trip was the entry into Vrsar. For traditional reasons the bus has to make it all the way to the village center, which is in the bottom of the bay, on the coast. But the village itself is on a rather steep slope, and the coastal towns are built tight - easier to defend from wind and pretty much anyone trying to take it by force. The driver made it bare millimeters from the walls of the houses, and didn't even scratch a mirror, and he had to negotiate at least six elbow turns. Incredible.

The camp was on the northern arm of the bay, 100m. We checked in, found the place to put up the tent, left our things inside, and went downtown to eat something.

There are two places on the coast where you can expect to meet people from our town in some numbers (actually, we arranged with Sleš and his wife to meet here, but they didn't show up - divorced soon thereafter) - Vrsar and Makarska. I had a feeling someone would show up, and sure enough, we met Vasa and Dragica. In a few sentences we made them abandon the private room they had downtown and switch to sleeping in the car in the camp. The money would last at least a week longer that way. The next day they arrived, converted his škodilak into a blankettary ("ćebetasta") bedroom and stayed with us to the end.

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Mentions: 10-XII-1980., Dragica, Mika Zelenić (Sleš), praktika, škodilak, Vasa Šančev, Zadar, in serbian

7-I-2018 - 16-I-2026