I am back from 10 days in Croatia. While it was a great holiday, I do have mixed feelings about the way Croatia is developing as a destination.
This year we did a route from Split to Dubrovnik via the two islands Brać and Hvar, so basically some of the most visited places in the country. Our stay in Split coincided with a techno festival, so the city was packed and prices for accommodation even higher than usual. We had rented an apartment some 15 minutes by car from the old town, the apartment was nice, and the lady who received us did not speak English very well, so I had an opportunity to speak my basic Croatian with her. We really just stayed for a day in Split, then we took the ferry to Brać, where we had rented an apartment in Bol. I liked Bol, it is a small, quiet village/town within walking distance from the famous Golden Horn Beach (Zlatni Rat).
I did not however like the town of Hvar very much. It was very crowded, everything was really expensive and almost all beaches around the town are privatised. A famous beach bar offers sunbeds for 40 euros a day! I found Stari Grad to be much nicer, less crowded, more laidback and with some interesting cultural sites, like the Dominican convent and the house of Petar Hektorović, an important poet and Renaissance figure, passionate about fish, who wrote in both Croatian, Latin and Italian.
Driving from the island of Hvar to Dubrovnik, we made a quick stop in the small town of Neum in Bosnia and Herzegovina for lunch. Nowadays you can avoid crossing the border thanks to a bridge Croatia has built in order to connect the southern part of the country with the north, but my son and daughter thought it would be fun to add another country to the list of places they've been to. Apart from a border control post on each side, the only real difference you notice is that road signs are in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, that they use a different currency and that (if you come from the EU), roaming is no longer included in your mobile data.
Dubrovnik, known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, was a disappointment in my eyes. Although its medieval walls and narrow streets are impressive, it is again far too crowded and very expensive. You hardly hear any Croatian spoken in the streets, but just about all Western European languages. There were large "Game of Thrones"-groups on guided tours as a lot of scenes from that series were filmed in Dubrovnik. (I must admit I haven't seen one single episode of this show.)
I fully understand that tourism provides an important contribution to the country's finances, but I think the most popular places in Croatia are starting to lose their charm because of it. I sort of enjoyed last year's holiday on the small island of Rab more than this year's trip. Sure, there were tourists in Rab, but it was more low-key and local, now it seems everybody wants to go to Split, Hvar and Dubrovnik, and with ever increasing demand, prices are hiked and the local population becomes invisible.
But I don't want to debate the pros and cons of modern tourism, so I'll talk about the Croatian language instead. I continued my studies of it during my trip (I always get a lot of studying done on the beach), and it certainly is my intention to continue studying Croatian for the time being. Firstly because it would be a pity to give up now that I am approaching a solid A2 level, secondly because I do intend to return to Croatia in the future. I want to visit Istria at some point, and I would also like to go to some less touristy places inland, including the capital Zagreb, which I visited may years ago on a business trip. Not to mention that Croatian is useful if ever I go to neighbouring countries like Serbia.
Still I want to get back to some other languages as well. I have not read any Latin for two weeks, and I am debating myself whether to return to Ancient Greek or (re)start Modern Greek instead. Now that I have got a taste for more Slavic languages, at some point I would also like to explore Czech or Polish. Romanian is still lurking in the background. And then there is maintenance and development to be done with Dutch, Romansh, Catalan...