Dubrovnik Revisited
So, how does Dubrovnik compare when going there at the end of May as opposed to the beginning of April? Well, it's more crowded for sure. The tourists are coming in in throngs, but you just learn when the herds are out walking the street and you can get around them. For reference, it's mostly the late morning and then the early evening. If you head out at times other than those, you'll actually be able to walk down Stradun without any major headaches. Head out in the throngs though and you'll want to start punching out the cows as they drift down the narrow streets. Of yeah, there are a lot more Americans there now, but so far these seem to be the more adventuresome souls and we haven't gotten the doofballs from the Midwest or the snobs from the Coasts that give Americans the worst of names when traveling abroad.
The tourists aren't the worst thing though. They pretty much just stick to the main streets like the Stradun and they don't venture on to many of the side streets where you can still get around pretty easily. What is tough is the heat. When we were there it was about 33C (90F) which with the humidity was tough. Even our friends and the other residents had more than a few choice words about the heat because it was apparently very much out of season for the area.
Of course a lot of heat makes one thing work really well and that's swimming. This time around, we were actually able to go in the water. It was a little cold at first, but we got used to it quickly enough. That was probably the biggest change that I was thankful for over visiting a year ago because the water is beautiful and amazing. While I'm more of a "power wader" as opposed to a strong oceanic swimmer, I could still appreciate the water and being able to see everything that was drifting past my feet.
I think we actually saw more of the places in Dubrovnik the first time we were there, but the one thing we didn't see was the Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art which while not one of the museums like there are elsewhere in the world is an amazing building with a nice, growing collection of pieces.
We did see the Aquarium again which didn't really change much from last year, but was a nice place to find refuge from the hot sun that was outside.
I really wish we had seen Cavtat again or Trsteno, but at the same time, it was a nice, relaxing spot in the holiday. My friend Ivana and her rooms were a welcome thing because it provided a nice base away from the complete confusion of the old town, but still close enough that we could walk there or take the very fast bus.
Needless to say, Dubrovnik is still great and while it is getting more tourists, they seem to be handling it pretty well despite that. I suppose this is the way of former Ragusa as they have always managed balance over the years, whether it be getting both the Turks & Venetians happy or just holding on to their culture with floods of Americans and Germans wandering their beautiful marble streets.
30 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: croatia, dubrovnik, the europe
A Lot of Nerve
It wasn't just that the door on our train had problems and held up the train. It wasn't just that the train in front of us had problems, stalled and had to be taken out of service, thus crowding everyone on to our train. It wasn't just that once we were in Montgomery, the train turned around without warning (I could have gotten off and walked had I known, damn it) and suddenly became a train going the opposite way that I had to desert and run across the platform to board the other train once we got back to the station we came from. And lastly, it wasn't the fact that my normally long ride of 35 minutes, became one of an hour and 15 minutes, nor the fact that the pleasure of this costs me $8 round trip.
No, it wasn't all this that really pissed me off. It's the fact that the Bart employees think that they can strike for some reason. For some bewildering time now, they think they deserve the raises that management is holding back. But my recent adventures today weren't anything new. This kind of poor service has been going on for the last six months, but I have little choice other than taking the train as I don't have a car.
What nerve. What honest to god nerve the union has thinking they can strike now because they aren't getting paid enough. Those people who sit in the little booth all day (and no, they don't take tickets, machines do that) make $61,000 a year. They need a raise?!! It makes me ill to think that they're going to cripple the Bay Area with a strike just to ensure they get raises for a job that they're doing poorly. And we all know that these costs are just going to be passed on to us in the end, so they're only hurting the riders who will stop riding at some point. So, think about it before you do it, you short-sighted fools. It hurts all of us and your gains wil most likely come at a huge price.
30 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: bart, ramblings
What Happened to Split?
Admittedly I wasn't blown away from Split in Croatia the first time I was there a year ago. I stayed two days and saw most of what there is to see, which is the old town, Diocletian's Palace, museums, and some of the outlying town. It was all right, but I wouldn't really rave about it. The amount of grafitti that littered the place was unbearable and it was a very dirty town. Needless to say, going from there to Dubrovnik was a pretty impressive change.
Now that I've seen it a year later, I'm not only let down, but a little sad. The Diocletian's Palace has become nothing more than a shopping mall inserted in to a 1,700 year old structure and the town itself is all but dead. Honestly, I think that there was more life in Rovinj and that was 1/8th the size.
I can't really pin my finger on what it is that's gone bad there, but I guess it has something to do with being over-touristed. Since Split was spared all the evil of war that Dubrovnik saw, it recovered quickly, but recovered to what? It's just a spot on the Adriatic now that people wander through. It's like there's no point to the place. There certainly aren't any beaches directly in town that are any good and as you start walking out of town, it gets very commercialized very quickly, the old homes fading to Socialist-era apartment buildings with laundry out the windows.
I certainly wouldn't say it was the low point on my trip (that was probably Trieste) but at the same time, it doesn't have any lustre to it. It seems like it has given up, forgotten what defines it to grab on to the tourism money that flows through. Croatian friends say that there is a large drug problem there now and that might be part of the problem, but you don't really see it as someone just visiting the town. All I can say is that its just really sad. I hope the same fate isn't waiting to befall Dubrovnik and the rest of the coast.
28 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: croatia, split, the europe, tourism
The Movie Slump
In one of what has been a long stream of reports lately, the news states that movie box office totals are off 7-10% from where they were last year and that the box office totals in general are slumping. It's not suprising seeing as how it now costs at least $10 to watch a movie in San Francisco. And besides the cost, in my mind, there has been very little released lately that has been any good. I just watched Batman Begins (fantastic by the way), but that was the first film I've seen in an uncountable amount of months. I did see Star Wars Episode III, but that was in Dubrovnik for about $2. If I had been here, I would have waited for video.
This all makes me ponder as to when the cries of "It's file sharing!" or "Piracy! Piracy!" begin to get louder. We've heard it all before when music sales were slumping. They claimed that it was due to online file sharing. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. There isn't a good study that found a direct correlation between slumping sales and file sharing except for the very weak argument that when sales went down, file sharing was growing. This is like saying that I think because it was been raining for the last month that my car isn't driving well, while ignoring that fact I haven't done any maintainence to it in 60,000 miles. I feel that this is a very apt analogy actually, because it seems that the recording industry thought they could just sit back and let their record producing formula play out and keep making them money. In other words, they've been putting out nothing but junk music for the last 7-8 years and it's finally starting to show that no one is buying it.
Think I'm jaded towards today's pop music because I'm closing in on 29? I thought so too until going to Europe just recently and heard music on the radio that I actually liked and would even buy. To be honest, the only music I buy these days is from artists that have been around more than five years. The current stuff is awful and people know it. There may be one good single, but with iTunes or the other countless electronic distribution methods out there, people can get just that one song.
So, I think we should really apply the same thinking to the movie industry. After all, it has become an industry. There is a set plot outline that they follow and expect people to keep going to. Yeah, they change up the stars and mix and match, but it does little good as it is all very staid in its ways. Do I feel that everything coming out is garbage? Absolutely not, but you have to weed through many, many ticket booths to find something that is indeed good. I'm very spoiled in being in San Francisco where there are enough independent movie houses that run the smaller releases I can go see.
As for watching movies in the bigger theaters, I don't do it anymore. For my girlfriend and I to go, it costs $20! That costs more than what the DVD costs to buy and OWN. Why do I want to spend that and get a one time viewing out of the show? Yes there's that theater experience, but these days, that is not something I enjoy. Besides the things that have always been there like people talking through the film and laughing at everything that happens, there are now people who talk incessantly on their cell phones through the show. ?!@#$%#! Add the ads in on top of that (the ones that play before the movie starts) and you get an experience that isn't worth so much. I much prefer my Netflix queue and the $20 that costs me each month to watch about 12 movies or so. I can use the bathroom whenever I want to and eat food from my own kitchen.
Netflix is just one of the ways the technology is changing the shape of movie distribution and we get back to the statement I made earlier about how I suspect the piracy charges starting to be levelled. We were first made very aware to this in these well-produced but misguided PSA's that ran before the films telling people not to steal movies. To be honest, I sincerely feel that people are not pirating films in any way that is going to greatly impact ticket sales. It is very true that you can find any new release on a file sharing program these days, but I've seen the results and they're horrid, especially when blown up to a 42" plasma screen size. If you actually download a film that is full DVD quality, then you are downloading 4.7 gigabytes of information. On a standard DSL connection of 1.5 megabits, that would take 6 hours at maximum speed. The catch is that you don't get maximum speed when file sharing and this would more likely take several days to download. Sure, there are people that will leave their machines on constantly and do this, but do you seriously think that people who are taking the time to do this are the kind of people that you're losing in the theater?
Huh? What? But they're stealing! They're thieves! Of course and there will always be thieves out there. Thieves don't have a ton of common sense though, because if you work out the raw cost of electricity and high speed internet line over the time of download of let's say 4-7 days, that will cost about $7-12, which can be more than the cost of the ticket! I know, I know, people will say that they have the machine on anyways and pay for the internet by the month, but if you toss in the fact that it's illegal and that MPAA is out there looking for theives, then in my book that's just not really worth it.
This is what I'm getting at though. The movie industry is putting out a lot of garbage these days and instead of saying that people are stealing their films and not paying for them, they need to understand that their quality level is in a hole they dug under a deep level of complete garbage. The Lord of the Rings movies made billions and could have easily been stolen (probably was for that matter), but people went to see all of them in the theater because they were a set of movies that you actually wanted to see in the theater. I think that Francis Coppola said it best (pardon the paraphrasing) in that when he was making his best films in the 1970's, there were people in charge of the movie companies that liked making money, but also liked making good films. These days the people in charge only care about making money and the spirit of film is gone. So Francis, what will happen to fix this? "Someday, those people will be gone." We can only hope so...
27 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: film, ramblings
Hotel Astoria Zagreb
One year ago, I was in Croatia for the first time and ended up staying in the Hotel Astoria when I was in Zagreb. I stayed there for a couple of reasons. The first being that it was one of the few reasonably affordable hotels in Zagreb at the time; a real "bargain" at $95 a night. Another reason is that I really didn't know my way around Zagreb (it does have 1,000,000 people in it after all.) And lastly, it was pretty darn close to the train station.
Naturally, once we got there, we were gravely disappointed. The hotel claimed ot be a three star, but in reality it was a two. The room we were in was pretty dingy, yet functional. The shower was really hot, which was a nice change after the pension we were in in Opatija. It was definitely close to the train station and we were apparently lucky to get a room at all, seeing as how it was the day before Easter Sunday when we rolled in to town. But still, it was a dump and I wasn't pleased with it at all, especially for the price.
Fast forward to the current day and you'll find that Hotel Astoria was bought out by the Best Western Hotel chain. This brought with it many changes, including a complete and utter remodel a few months after I was there the first time. You wouldn't recognize the hotel anymore from the old one. The floorplan is still the same, since I think it was built out of massive conrete Socialist slabs, but everything has been replaced. What was once an aging down in the dumps place to crash for a night or two has become a very luxurious three or three and a half star hotel. It's all very fancy with card readers for the doors, motion detectors for the lights, a new elevator, and countless other improvements.
As for ammenities, the Chinese restaurant that was in the Lobby floor is gone. They took over that space and put out a hell of a spread for breakfast (which is included in the room fee.) There is also internet available. It seems expensive at first, but if you work it out, it will cost you maybe two or three more dollars an hour than one of the cafes, but it's worth it since you can always use it and it's right there in hotel with you.
Overall, it was a massively welcome change. Naturally, the prices went up a little, but only $20 a night compared to what we spent before (Zagreb is not a cheap place to stay in general.) I expect the prices to go up a bit more in the future because this is a really nice place now and it's in a very strategic area. While not right in the center of town, it's only a ten minute walk from everything.
I might want to mention that with the changes came some side effects. One is that the carpets haven't finished "out-gassing" and you'll smell that strong and horrible new carpet smell for awhile yet. I'm sure that will go away, so if you're reading this six months from when I wrote this, please disregard. The other item is that the staff is still learning the systems to some degree. This will go away with time as well I'm sure, but it had the funny result for us of going in to what was supposed to be our room and finding it not finished being built. No one had notated this in the computer, but luckily there was a spare room that happened to be on the top floor.
There are some places that are cheaper in Zagreb, but overall this is a pretty smashing deal right now. Just watch out for the motion detectors in the bathroom. When you're taking a shower, they get fogged over and sense there is no one in the room. You basically need to rub the little buggers with your fingers to get them to come back on.
25 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: croatia, hotels, the europe, the europe, zagreb
A Retraction
Okay, I made a rather large goof in what I said a few days ago about the Tate Modern. In my enthusiasm to spread information, I misinformed greatly. You see, as I was recounting my walk through the Tate Modern, I came across what I thought was the history of it as it related to the National Gallery because I was looking at what I thought was the floorplan of the the National and where the Tate Modern used to be before it outgrew the space of the National Gallery. Such is not the case as an English friend of mine pointed out.
The Tate is actually a group of four museums. Rather than misquote again, you can read up on it for yourself. I don't really have an excuse for getting it so wrong, oh wait, yes I do, I'm an American and we excel at excuses. So, it must have been the time difference, too much tea, geopolitical forces rupturing my subconscious or some other thing that made me too freakin' lazy to go and look up that actual history online. Beautiful, eh?
24 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: london, museums
Croatian Trains
They're something else and to say that they have "character" isn't saying enough.
Compared to the routes Amtrak has been banished to, the Croatian trains cover some amazing areas through the Croatian countryside. It's fun to watch as you twist through river valleys, over snowy mountains and past the various towns and cities that pop up along the way.
Of course, from long before I ever took my first train anywhere in Croatia, I was wise to this oddness of them. My aunt who visited the former Yugoslavia in 1980 told me that the train conductors love to mess with the tourists by holding on to their passports until the very last minute the train leaves the border.
While I never had anything that extreme, I did have adventures last year when I took the train. I only have a few new stories to add this year.
The first one is that the train still isn't running all the way from Zagreb to Split. One year later and no change! Yes, you can take a bus from Split to Knin and then take the train, but that does little good to sate you on the fact that the tour guides talk about this tilting train that does the trip in five hour now. I'm guessing sometime soon this will be up and running, but as of yet, no dice. So, the bus is the way it is. It's not bad by the way, but it's just no train.
My other fun bit was when we took the train from Zagreb to Ljubljana to catch our flight out of there. The car we were in had a buzzing sound. Not just a little fluorescent kind of hum mind you. It was this screaming, grinding sound which got increasingly louder as the train accelerated. We asked the conductor about it with hand gestures showing something like a swarm of wasps buzzing around us and he flicked some switches at the front of the car. Nothing really change and he came back saying in English, "Do you speak Germany?" which of course we don't and he shrugged, said some things in Croatian which Jenya and I both got to mean there wasn't anything he could do about it. Luckily we still had our earplugs from the San Francisco--London plane which came in mighty handy for that two hour ride.
Needless to say, we didn't hear sounds from certain spectrums for the rest of the day.
23 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: croatia, the europe, trains
The English "Y"
As I was jostled, tossed, and bumped about as we descended to Stanstead airport on our way from Ljubljana, I looked over at the English gentleman sitting in the windows seat of my row and he looked back. I could see the terror behind his eyes as a bolt of lighting flash around or maybe even through us. But, on the surface was a calm veneer that quite politely said, "My, it's a bumpy one coming in, isn't it."
Such is the way of the many of the English on planes I've met. It seems that if something is to be negative or of a bad nature, you just toss a "y" on to the end of it to make it bad. For instance, as the plane was being pelted by rain (in freakin' June!) the pilot came on through the turbulence and said that it was a little "showery" outside and we were unfortunately going to see this all the way to landing, which as I emerged from the cabin in the said rain was just like Venice, minus the pelting rain and 12C temperature.
I don't know how far it goes. If it was so screaming hot that hell opened up and demons were coming to the center of Trafalgar to flay the backs of lawyers and marketing directors, would the people watching it all just say that it was a tad bit "summery" that day? Me thinks so.
It's nice, it's genteel and of course polite. I like the over-abundant "y" they use, but now I'm wise to it.
22 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: customs, england
Downtown Ljubljana to the Airport
I should have listened to my cousin, Marko and taken a taxi. I only realized this as we were coming back around on the mammoth loop that the bus from downtown Ljubljana takes as it winds out into the surrounding country on the way to the airport.
The bus is cheap (less than $5 if I'm converting correctly) but it takes awhile. I guess a taxi for a group of four probably would have been cheaper. It certainly would have been faster. I believe that it's only a 20 minute trip that way and close to an hour on the bus.
The other big problem is that you need to get the Slovenian Tolar which is a joke of a currency. It's about 200 of them to the US Dollar and the bus station will not take credit cards. So, you go in get 10,000 SIT, get your bus ticket and look at the rest of the currency in your hands and wonder what the hell you're going to do with it, since London exchange agencies won't touch the 200 SIT notes as they're only 50p. If there was ever a country that needed the Euro, this is it. Luckily, between us, we had enough left over for lunch, which was good as we were hungry and food is very cheap there. It also "forced" us to see a bit of the downtown which was quite nice and requires more a trip sometime in the future.
The bus is definitely convenient because it's right next to the train station, but this is also a central hub and we were unfortunate to get on the bus the same time all the school kids were and it was extremely packed with no where to put luggage.
Once again, take the taxi from downtown Ljubljana to the airport. I think things will be a lot easier, although the airport is so incredibly small, even getting there "late" won't make it that hard to get on your plane.
21 06 2005 0 comments
Tags: airports, ljubljana, slovenia, the europe
London Sunday
If you are popping through London with a connection flight, then do it on a Sunday. If you have only one day to spend in London as you may be popping through, avoid Sunday at all costs.
Here's the thing about London on Sundays, it's dead. Now, this is most likely just due to the central area not having things for all of us visiting tourists to do, but at the same time, it's a tricky situation. There are virtually no plays or shows on Sunday. I seem to remember that the last time we were there, there were no shows on Monday. I don't know if this changed recently, but it caught us a bit off guard. Also, most stores, restaurants, etc. all have limited hours on Sunday, from around 12:00 to 18:00 at the most. So, shopping is a bit of a tough item to come by.
What can you do on a Sunday in London then? If the weather is nice, then the parks will be nice, as well as full of people to watch, which is always fun. While the shops have limited hours, they're still open, so try and get in a few hours of shopping if you feel the need. The museums are also usually open, so you can check out the exhibits, but be warned they'll probably be packed, so maybe hit up a few early on with some shops later on. Then of course, there are movie theaters. Naturally, there are the big ones where you can see the big releases, but there are also small ones like the Prince Charles Theater right off Leicester Square where you can find some great movies playing at VERY cheap prices.
Just be forewarned about the Sunday lull in this great city and you'll do fine.
