Ben Welsher | Writings

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 wo...

Split/Plitvice 31/08/2010 We stirred from dreams surrounded by our belongings which we had neatly strewn around the camp. After collecting the chaos the road called once more. A short drive brought us to Split and the Roman Emperor Diocletian's retirement home. His palace has been built on, in and around over the centuries and makes for a curious, amalgamated piece of architecture. We ate breakfast (byrek) and stumbled upon a giant man with a well worn toe. Gregory of Nin was a man who had some affiliation with a place called Nin, er...that's all I know. I do know that his big toe is reputed to bring luck to the rubber. After the calamities of the previous day a simple stroke of a digit was a superstition worth indulging. The day had brought precisely zero auto incidents thus far. But that is not how we roll so Mike smacked the car into a kerb upon entering a tunnel and we were only saved from a head on collision by his excellent driving (note, part of this statement is b*llo...