Day 115: Trogir

JULY 27 - Today dark clouds move in from the Adriatic, and we get rainstorms on and off through the early afternoon. It really changes the look of the coast, which up to now we’ve only seen scorched in sun. Fortunately we did our island trip yesterday, as today would have been difficult.

I’m glad we started our visit to Croatia by staying in Zagreb. It felt to me like a real city, basic and lived in. All the cities along the coast are so oversaturated with tourists that I struggle to visualize how they must look during ‘low season’ (late November to April). Even little Trogir, which I chose specifically because I wanted to avoid tourist crush, has proved to be similar to everywhere else. Looking out from our veranda at the main street, even in the rain I see the sandaled mobs, trudging off to the street market for souvenirs.

A bit about Croat nationalism. Back when the Balkans were a battlefield of influence by the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empire, Croatian culture was predictably suppressed, as was Serbian and Slovenian culture. Croatian historical identity was linked with the Slavic people and the medieval Croatian state. When Yugoslavia formed in 1918, there was the idea to create an autonomous Croat state within it, but of course this angered other groups who also wanted to do exactly this, most of all the Serbs. During WWII, there was actually, for a brief time, an independent Croatian state, supported by Nazi Germany, who was already occupying the region and looking for a puppet state to recognize. This state included much of today’s Croatia, along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and bits of Serbia and Slovenia. But Croatian nationalist sentiment disappeared from public view after the defeat of Italy and subsequent post-war rule of Tito in Yugoslavia. It would only succeed again in 1991, when Croatia declared independence on the same day as Slovenia.