Skip to main content

One way, not another

Plivice/Zagreb - 01/09/2010

No swimming, no fishing, no straying from trails, no wrestling the bears. Simply shuffle round in tightly packed column taking the same pictures as those that went before you, leave. The Plitvice Parks are an eden but a tightly managed one. I cannot decide if this is the only way they could remain as they are or have had their natural beauty somewhat diminished by the railings of man's modern impositions. One cannot deny the sumptuous visual banquet they present though. The lakes are aquamarine at depth to clear, crystalline purity in the shallows. If a person were permitted to plunge into the deep blue they would surely hesitate lest it all be the flat, paint-daubed canvas of a master artist. The fish, their fins tinged with cornflower blue, bathe in the sunshine in perfect awareness of their protection. The flora and fauna seem oddly monocultural, is this a place of preservation or presentation? What primordial force draws us to water, causes us to wonder at waterfalls? Two hydrogen, one oxygen and the genesis of life I suppose.
The force of time drew us back to the car and our tarmaced trail, Zagreb lay ahead. Another city, another hostel, quite the pensioners we are. Hoping to get ahead of our curve through Eastern Europe for the first time since leaving Istanbul we needed to ditch the wheels (in a non literal sense, again). Zagreb's road system is a crisscrossing morass of one-way roads bespeckled by trams and bemused foreigners. There are no straight lines in this city, not between a person and their destination, left turns are banned. We were thwarted in our attempts to return the vehicle and there would be no absquatulation on the early bus out for us, time to tarry. Our last meal had been eaten too many hours ago on the roof of a car in a layby so we decided a dinner involving chairs, a table, cutlery and plates would be something we could stomach. My baby Octopus drew a grimace from Mike but he tried one nonetheless, you next Clarke. Fin.

Comments

Popular posts

The Duke

Pub review They say: "We came for a skittle on a Saturday night and they were very welcoming but you know how you hear about lizards ruling the world, the barstaff had a very lizardy look. Make your own mind up!" --Craig Savage 4/5 I say: 'The place where everybody knows your name' The claim is painted onto the wall and doesn't seem so outlandish on this chilly Tuesday night as there is no-one in the pub to know my name or not. Dry January? I can't imagine that's a thing around these parts. You don't keep over 30 pubs in business with virtuous gestures like that. It might be a Tuesday thing. Per usual I try to find a quiet corner with my beer, surely an easy task in an empty pub? Not so. Speakers hang from every nook and carpet the space in a thick fog of sound. It isn't even the usual autotuned pop/R&B dirge being vomited into my ears. That stuff I can confine to a background hum. Instead it's the pre-match commentary for the Brighto

Sisyphean Airlines

Day 56 - Panama City We nearly didn't make it into this slip of a country. Cruel fortune had us standing in the queue for the only Panamanian border officer who had read and decided to adhere to the rules. "Return ticket?" bugger.  His steely, uncompassionate gaze was unmoved by our desperate explanations of our travel 'plans'. Bribery also failed to move him to endorse our entry so our bus driver, with infinite generosity, offered to relieve us of another $36 to write up a return ticket to San José that we would never use. This finally satisfied the entry requirements and the stamp thumped down. The country is divided by a synonymous strip of water down which floats a not insignificant quantity of the world's goods. Though our initial plan was to dive the canal, renovations kiboshed that idea and we had to settle for the traditional topside view.  On initial viewing the city itself seems built on the wealth its transoceanic connection brings.  Buildings soa

Angkor Whaaaaat?

Day 5 - Siem Reap With the water festival finished we has one more place to visit in Cambodia. Angkor Wat is an indisputable wonder of the world and the largest religious monument ever constructed. It sits within a temple complex covering 400km², the scale of which is impossible to adequately describe. Its towers seem to rise organically from the ground, the stone flowering from the earth into wonderfully symmetric form. Only modern capitalism and totalitarian hubris seem to inspire similar architectural endeavour as the gods did in the past. I don't necessarily agree with any of those ideologies and their human cost but religion's diminished power permits me a less coloured appreciation of its monuments. In the stone of Angkor Wat you see reflected the same desire for, and defiant belief in, permanence that runs through our species. I see it in the chiselled signage above the entrance to long dead banks and businesses in the City of London. The owners thought the gilded lobb