Zadar

I am on the bus traveling to Zadar where I will yet again give a guest lecture to an audience of students and faculty at the University. It is raining, so there’s lots of fog and although the landscape is very green, the tops of the hills are in cloud. This will be my first visit to the coast, and although I’ve been told that Zadar was heavily bombed during WWII and much of the old town was destroyed, I’m sure enough will be left to give me pleasure. And it’s on the sea. How could that be bad?

Bus travel is not like train travel. Okay, that was a stupid thing to write. But what I’m noticing is how noisy it is. People talk and talk and talk, either to their traveling companions or on cell phones. I swear two women behind me have talked non-stop for three hours. And the ubiquitous cell phones, those weird one-sided and very loud conversations. There’s also music playing. I’m trying to drown it all out with a podcast but with not much luck.


And then I arrive and my host walks me around the town. A medieval cathedral is truly magnificent--and was spared. It's built on top of earlier churches, Roman. 

In the museum across from the medieval church. Look and you can see its reflection in the window.

Pedestrian shopping streets, and Croatia tie shop. The tie was invented in Croatia. Or so they tell me.

A massive cruise ship was docked practically downtown!

While we're walking along the pier, there's a sea organ playing music. It is underneath the concrete and the movement of waves make beautiful, haunting, whale-like sounds. Oh, and the building at the end of the pier is where the University of Zadar English department is housed. 

Yes, this is where our English colleagues at the University of Zadar get to go to work.

You can swim in front of the building. This guy is a famous scientist, cast in bronze, directly in front of the Faculty building. 

After the lecture, dinner. Tonight I enjoyed a raucous conversation with three colleagues in the English and French departments. Croats have a lovely sense of irony. As one of them said when I commented on that: you have to have a sense of irony to live here. I think that's one of the things Croats and Canadians share. On my plate: turkey fillet stuffed with wild asparagus served with sweet/salty boiled new potatoes. 

Oh, and by the way, vote people!