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I was shaking my fist in the air over this article to which I don't have any true investiture, other than to say, watch out for Slovenia. That country knows when they've got you over a barrel, they're going to go for all they can get. In this case, it's water passage rights that they don't actually have any right to, but will undoubtedly get for their scrawny 40km of Adriatic Coast at the Bay of Piran:       "The European Union has called off the next round of Croatia's EU membership talks, over its continuing border dispute with Slovenia."       Tricky buggers indeed. We'll see how much Croatia wants that EU membership now.

My writing here has been a bit hit and miss as far as regularity goes. This is because I've been writing a good deal more at other sites. It's not to say that I'm neglecting Hudin, but more using it as a place to write about my personal shiznit. I'm sure that the next time I go traveling (next month) I'll be putting up more here. But, for those interested who don't follow my Twitter spam feed, here are some of the recent things I've written:              Subsaharska on Maneno:       The Camera is not the Important Part Musing on the crazy equipment people buy when they really need to focus on the basics of photography first.       Finding the Names to Explain Chatting about the myriad of domain names. Honestly, probably not my best work, but it would be weird not to mention it sequentially.       W00t for more Languages! Excitement over Google expanding their African language options for search which is cool stuff.       The 'Web Free' (Web 3.0) Starts in Africa Part of the OLPC debate that went around the web a week or two ago as well as talking about the next iteration of the web (Web Free as I call it). One of the stronger things I've written, although it could be no end of boring for a deal of people out there.              Global Voices:       Croatia: Changing Eminent Domain for a Golfing Gain Maybe it was the cheesy title, but I hoped this would get more play on the site not just because I think it's the best researched article I've written there, but also because some people are really getting screwed in all this corruption happening in the name of golf!              Blue Danube Wine Blog:       A Cold, Wintry Revisit to La Vinyeta Tasty wines in Northern Catalonia.       A Taste of Slovenia at CAV Minor tasting event that was decent of Slovenian wines.       Cantallops, Where the Fruit is Wine From about a month ago, but another great tasting Northern Catalonia.

For a good long time, I looked and Rosé and thought, "What the hell is that?" Is it a white wine that's sexually confused or a weak red wine? Obviously, I knew what it was, but I just never really knew what the purpose of its slightly sweet, slightly clueless flavors were. It was to me what Merlot was to Miles. Then, while researching Vinologue a year and a half ago, I was kindly educated to the practical purposes of the wine.       As I quickly found, a meeting with Alen Bibich is not without a lot of food and wine. I tasted everything he had at a time when the legal drinking limit in Croatia was 0.00% (I heard it's recently been reformed to lovely 0.50%, but only for drivers over 24 as they can obviously still find their keys at a 0.50 much better than an 18 year old). Alen could see I had had a bit of it and so, for a final glass of wine he poured up a Rosé, which I was ready to promptly turn down, but he "coaxed" me to drink it by saying it was for "refreshment". Naturally, being a consummate winemaker, he was right, it was refreshing and as weird as it sounds, it gave me the boost I needed to get home.       Since then, I've been less afraid of Rosé. There is no way in hell I'd ever buy it though. I can appreciate subtleties in the very expensive variations on the type and that's where a good many people go wrong with it. They buy the cheap Rosé which is always invariably crap as the wine has far too much sugar because the grapes were forced to over-ripen just for the sake of picking and not for the sake of taste. This is wine that will kill you and not be the refreshing blast that I appreciate now.       If asked for my ideal wine lineup for an extensive evening dinner, I would have to say that it would depend a great deal on the foods served, but an overall plan would be:       - Bubbly: French ideally, Catalan Cava if not, and Californian lastly, otherwise skip it       - White: A minor glass of something to go along with the appetizers. Perhaps a White Garnatxa or a Verdejo.       - Red: Gimme the most of this. Serve me something deep with body. If it overshadows the food, that's not the end of the world as I'm probably starting to get drunk somewhere around here and only can taste the wine, so bring it on. Cab, Pinot, Garnatxa/Carignan.       - Rosé: Here it comes. Gotta have that pinky stuff to wash out everything else. You can see that by placing it here, I'm not appreciating the texture of the wine, but rather using it solely as a functionary wine. A grape mouthwash if you will.       - Sweet: Moscatell if at all possible. Garnatxa otherwise.       - Sherry: If still conscious a slightly dry fino to polish up the end of the meal.       - Bed: I'm not probably coherent at this point, or I'm trying to hit on a really sexy potted plant. Just roll me in to bed and make my excuses for me.       Anyways, that's my plan and how Rosé fits in. I'm still at a loss as to why they produce so much of it. Every wine shop always has endless dusty bottles of the pink that never seem to sell. Hell, when going to Auchan this last time, half of one wine aisle was just Rosé. Why? I mean, most of us aren't having six course meals that often, so it seems as if we're producing a wee bit much of it.

Someone went and left a Yugo in front of the Sabor (Croatia's main governmental building). And by in front of, I mean parked right in front of the main doors. It is pretty suspicious activity as most Yugos are currently within Serbian borders.       In the US, the equivalent would be parking a Chevy Citation (worst. name. ever.) on the steps of Capitol Building in DC. Obviously, this sort of thing can't happen in the US, but in Croatia, it's rather wacky how immediately accessible the federal government buildings are in the country. For friends and family living there, they know this is done due to the fact you will be going there a lot in your daily life.       Anyways, enjoy the embed below. If Croatian media outsmarts me, then try this oldskool link technique.       Yup, the media done went and foiled my plans. Curses! Use the link above if you want to see the coverage, although it's about as exciting as the second hour of the OJ chase.

At 18:25 yesterday, a car bomb exploded in Zagreb, Croatia killing the publisher and editor-in-chief of Nacional, Ivo Pukanić and journalist, Niko Franjić. Naturally, if such an event happened in US America, the immediate response would be to blame terrorist and that "damned El Kayduh". Such assumptions are not made in Croatia. They assume that it's the mafia instead.       While Split has always been known to be unsafe due to all the drug activity (which is of course all from Italy as such issues can't possibly arise domestically), the problems of safety in Zagreb have been escalating in recent events. It seems if you cross the wrong person, you can get you shot in broad daylight. Not a great image for a country relying heavily on tourism money at the moment.       Ironically, I was just having a conversation with a friend two days ago because I was asking him about Nacional and if they're any good. They're apparently better than most as they actually do research and create their own stories; an art lost on most in the media these days. Nacional had run a particularly scathing article on a one Davor Butković who is (or maybe was) a very prominent journalist in Croatia. The man is about as corrupt as they come and Nacional outed him on account of it. My personal grudge against Butković is for the fact that he writes blather about wine that I've found to be worthless. This is doubly unfortunate as it comprises the National Tourism Board's entire Wine Guide for the country, but I digress.       Pukanić had been fearing for his life for some time. I have no idea as to what his dealings were behind the scenes, but on the surface, he appeared to try to report on what was actually wrong in Croatia. This is not a popular stance to take. It has not been a particularly free media scene since the days of Tuđman and his propaganda machine (which thusly morphed in to today's newspapers) that was nearly on a level with Milošević's. The death of Ivo is undoubtedly going to have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in Croatia. If the EU ascension talks of 2009 get pushed back, I will not be surprised in the least. On the bright side, it gives all the competitors a chance to heap praise on their main opposition without losing any ground.

It's usually the case the proper names of places get squat upon on the internet quite quickly. For instance: unitedstates.com, congo.com, and spain.com are all crap sites that someone is sitting upon to collect advertising money or until they get the right offer to buy it off of them.       So it was the other day that I was bouncing around various Croatian city names to see what came up. Much like the examples above, the variety of names that I tried were all being held by cyber squatters. For kicks, I tried rijeka.com which forwards you to this gallery page. While the gallery takes and insanely long time to load, it's worth it as it's one of the most comprehensive collection of old photos from Rijeka that I've ever seen. If you're feeling bored, got to the page, get a cup of tea/coffee, come back, and give it a look.       To give a little history, Rijeka is Croatia's most northern coastal city east of the Istrian Peninsula. It also happens to have one of the most boring names in the world as 'rijeka' simply means, 'river' in Croatian. This was derived from the original, Italian name for the town which was 'fiume', that also means, 'river'. Visitors to Croatia will know Rijeka as a northern hub for trains connections to the interior, buses to Istria (probably Rovinj or Pula), and the end of the line coming up from Dubrovnik. I've been there twice although my gallery is pathetic at the moment. Despite its grunginess and overall aura of being a port town, I quite like the place. I don't know if this comes from the fact that until the last century, it was a crossroads between Romance language and Slavic language speakers, as well as serving as the main port for the Austrian Empire, but there's something to it. Croats often call it a feeling of "rock n' roll".       If you ever pass through, spend a day checking out the few sites and getting in to the vibe of the town, which I like a great deal more than Split. If you never fancy yourself hitting up Croatia's main port city, then just enjoy the photos of the link above.

I never understood what the appeal of Dvigrad, Croatia was for me. I can't even precisely remember how I got so interested in this pile of rocks and debris, in the first place. I think I remember reading something about it before my first trip to Croatia in 2004. I didn't make it to the ruins that year, being too weak with a cold while in Opatija to make it further west. Upon returning home and later planning for another trip to Croatia, I stumbled across more pictures of the ruins and some history which I think added to the allure a great deal.       So, in 2005, I finally got to see Dvigrad. Naturally, it wasn't this colossal kingdom that was laying in a preserved state as I think I had built it up in my mind. No, it was piles of rock walls that still stood reasonably well despite basically no maintenance to the site. I put up a little gallery of that trip which I need to add more to at some point, since it documents the site at it's worst to date.       It was funny that while we were there, we bumped in to some Italian workers who were striving to preserve the site, or at the very least stop it from crumbling more. After all, the whole town is there on this hill, but in pieces. So, in 2007, on a return trip, I saw the result of their work. A lot of trusses had been put in and the mortar repairs in the stones. It looks a bit different now as you can see in the more recent Dvigrad gallery.       We have ghost towns in the US that are maybe 150 years old at most, but we don't have dead cities like Dvigrad which is over 1,000 years old. Despite this history, it was unsuccessful in living any further, dying out in the 17th century. Yes, I know that there are all kinds of cultures that have ruins that are much older and more impressive, but for some reason, this one I found interesting. There's some kind of a sadness to it, like the crumbling ruins are in a constant state of sighing, waiting for history to swallow them up once and for all.       But, the end might not be as near as it may seem. A plan has been put forth to continue the restoration efforts and as unbelievable as it seems, given the state of the ruins, actually rebuild the whole town. The reason behind it being that it could be a good tourist attraction and museum for the area, which needs some museums badly I might add. Despite all the history that has passed through the area, there is little done to show it. This is most likely the case due to the lands being part of either Venice and then Italy for several centuries until just sixty years ago. Whatever the end result, I do hope that it gets restored and cleared out more. If for no other reason than to allow stupid kids from Zagreb to go freerunning all over it.

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about all the problems that have come about as tourism has exponentially grown in Croatia. Now, it's time to get in to what I feel should be done to solve some of these problems. Keep in mind that I'm not expert or elected official. I'm just a guy with a blog, Croatian heritage, and who has traveled a great deal in Croatia and likes to write.       Croatian tourism is an economy that could easily be a good economy, as opposed to the rather malignant one that it is now. There are a number of changes that would need to come about to make this happen though. The first big one is in dealing with the infrastructure. Take the new A-1 auto cesta that I talked about in Part 1. This was built to be the Tourist Express. It is true that a good connection was needed from the interior out to the coast, but was this entire road needed? There already was a train connection, which I might was also worked on to speed up transport for passengers.       When thinking about this, one needs to keep in mind that the A1 is not finished. There is a stretch that is being worked on from Split to Dubrovnik. This segment is coming at a great expense due to a bridge needing to be built to skirt the strip of Bosnia Herzegovina left over from the Karlowitz Treaty. Let's assume that the road from Zagreb to Rijeka and Zagreb to Split was needed. The old connection to the coast, was a small, meandering road that was difficult to traverse. The new one makes things a lot better. But, the extension that is being worked on from Split to Dubrovnik is unnecessary. The road that connects these two areas is a good road. It's small, but it's good. So, why build the new one? Simple, to get tourists to an already overcrowded Dubrovnik faster. This is the simple answer, but at the core, I think that there is a bigger problem.       Most people don't realize this, but there is no Ministry of Tourism in Croatia. Well, there is, but it isn't by itself. The official name is the Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development or MMTPR. You see, tourism has been intertwined with several other departments that I believe create a conflict of interest. Tourism projects would naturally get in line first for development over say a hospital, which is under a different ministry. The solution? Strip out the Ministry of Tourism in to its own separate department and make it have to put out its hand for an equal share of the pie. It's an crippling practice to be putting too much money in to projects to promote tourism that take money away from other projects that could promote a better standard of life for the Croatian people. The Germans and Hungarians that will eventually be zipping down to Dubrovnik will love it, but the Croats getting to endure being #43 in health care for the world won't see the benefit.       The next big step that needs to happen is to stop promoting Beach Tourism. At the very least, promote Beach Tourism in the off season as well, so that people can go enjoy the "fresh sea air" and the people in the coastal communities can have an economy based upon a regular as opposed to a seasonal source of income. But, the best course of action, is to scrap the beach bit altogether. People know it. People are coming. Enough.       Croatia needs to start promoting the interior. The country has lovely, wonderful spots that, while not near the sea are great to visit. The Zagorje is a nice place full of rolling hills and fresh springs (this is where Jana water is bottled.) Medvednica and the Međimurje are also lovely places with serene villages, good white wines, and castles for those interested. Spas are popping up in these areas for those who really want to relax. You're not going to relax at the beach in high season, but up there, you can. It's peaceful.       There are also towns that could be promoted more. Dubrovnik and Split get the majority of the press as they're coastal towns. But, Zagreb is a town that I've been to four times now and really love. The buildings are all from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Crown, there are a great number of parks, and about 10 museums worth visiting. Varaždin, Samobor, and Karlovac are also nice towns to visit. While a one or two day stay would be plenty per each of them, they offer that Central European feel, but far cheaper and more relaxed price than say Prague.       There are even decent skiing slopes in northern Croatia, but based upon the promotional materials now, you wouldn't think that the country had any snow anywhere. There are also many parks, but with the exception of Plitvice, they get little mention, because most of them aren't on the beach. It's true that the park of Mljet is surrounded by water as it's on an island, but again, it's a spot that is over hyped because it sits on the Adriatic.       Then there is Istria. This little peninsula is a microcosm of everything that is wrong and everything that is right about tourism in Croatia. I covered all the things that were wrong about it in Part 1, which center around the Beach Tourists who flood there. But, in Istria's defense, I think that it's more for reason of proximity than for promotion of the beaches, that the tourists have come. It's literally a 20 minute drive to Istria from Italy. It's maybe three or four hours at most from Austria. It's just really close and so, the Beach Tourists flock there with little that can be done except to try and accommodate them. But there are things happening in Istria that are very interesting. For one, there is wine, lots of wine. Terran (Refošk) and Malvazija are excellent varietals and these wines give more of a reason to visit than warm waters. It also creates a sustainable economy for the area. From this, other things have risen up like Agritourism. People have found that staying in the middle of bucolic hills, surrounded by wine vines can be a pleasant way to spend a holiday. This is something I might add, that can be done year round and is thusly not a big seasonal "kaboom" followed by nothing except hoping that the next season is the same.       Then there is Grožnjan. I don't know who is in charge of this little town, but they're doing good things in showing how to properly run a tourism economy. They have arts and crafts being sold in cute little stores of the old town. They have a Jazz festival that is an outgrowth of the International Cultural Centre of Young Musicians. They have truffles, wine, and good restaurants as well. All of this is in a town with maybe 100 homes, in the center of Istria, and a good half hour drive drive from the almighty beach. But the people who go there, don't go for the beach. They go for the charm of the little town and the fact that out of all of Istria, it was the one place I could actually find listed rooms to rent. There is much to be learned from this town for all of the rest of the coastal towns.       And that's what it comes down. There is much for Croatia at large to learn in how it handles its tourism. I would most likely be slapped for saying it, but they could learn a lot from their neighbors of Slovenia and Bosnia Herzegovina. The difficulties these two countries have in that they are nearly beach-less is what makes their tourism industries stronger than in Croatia. They have had to develop places and destinations for tourists and in doing so, they inevitably develop places that are going to have sustainable tourism simply because they are not flippant Beach Tourists.       Croatia will level out in the end. It has to. This will either be a smooth road, paved with long-term thinking and an overall plan for tourism development to co-exist with the people in the country, or it will be a bumpy road with localized recessions and depressions that will ultimately bring the whole country down if too many things are built on the premise that the Beach Tourist is forever. Only time will tell and it, as well as neighboring Montenegro and Albania will be interesting countries to watch over the next decade.

I have enjoyed the last fours years of travel, visiting Croatia. I love the country and while my meager claim to being Croatian is small, I feel a good deal of kinship to it. It is after all a beautiful country with snowy, wooded mountains at one end and crystal clear waters of the Adriatic Sea at the other end. It's hard to not want to travel there and until recently it was rather undiscovered by a great many tourists, including Americans. This however, has changed.       With these changes a blight has emerged in Croatia as it seems that a vast chunk of the country and nearly the entire swath of the coast is centered on one single economy: tourism. To this I might add that they are focused on Beach Tourism. Yes, the rude, soak up the sun, get drunk at night, spend as little as possible, clog the highways kind of people are flocking to Croatia. But, why are they flocking to Croatia? The simple answer to this is that it's cheap. Actually the simple answer to this is that it was cheap.       This is where the problems start to rise for Croatia. When I first went looking for a guidebook in 2003, there was one by Rough Guides and one just about to come out from Lonely Planet. They touted the affordable life that travelers could have if they hopped off to this strange place most people thought a war was still being fought (it officially ended in 1995 with the Dayton Accords by the way.) Fast forward four years and there are something like six solid guides for the country and several ones about specific regions or cities like Dubrovnik. Instead of hearing from friends and family, "Croatia? Why the hell do you want to go there?", I'm getting, "Hey, where is the cheapest place to stay in __________?" Undiscovered, Croatia is no more.       Despite all of this, Croatia found itself in a tough spot at the start of the 21st century. Unemployment was extremely high and still is, at a bit over 9% (the US is just below 5% and people are currently worried about a recession here to give you gauge for this.) So, instead of letting tourism develop in a natural manner, the government took the rash approach of pumping the hell out their coastline to attract Beach Tourists. It wasn't necessarily the worst plan and their official tourism slogan of, "The Mediterranean as it Once Was", was catchy if not a bit pedantic. They already had a good deal of the infrastructure in place to handle Beach Tourists, since the coast had been developed from the 1950's onward by the then Yugoslavian government. They also had a long history of Beach Tourism, which you can seen in places like Opatija in the northern part of the coast where holiday mansions and retreats were built in the 19th century. So, in theory, people + beach + Croatia, should = kuna.       The problem with this approach was that they didn't know when to let up on it. As far as I know, ads are still playing on BBC TV promoting this aspect of Croatia. The net effect has been incredible successful in getting people to the coast of Croatia in the summer, but it has ultimately proved to be massively detrimental. I can sum it all up in one conversation I had with two Irish girls that were staying at the pension we were at in Jelsa, Hvar. They realized that we had traveled the area a bit and then had the gall to ask, "So, you wouldn't happen to know where the sandy beaches are, would you?" Needless to say, I didn't know as I like the pebble beaches and without this information as well as their inability to know that the Prošek (a delicious sweet wine) the couple served was incredible good, they moved on the next day. They were cheap girls who couldn't even spend money on a guidebook and just wanted to drink. They were the epitome of the people who come to the Croatian coast.       Ultimately, the government should have realized there is no need to attract the Beach Tourist. They come of their own accord, migrating according to the winds of cheapness. These are people who only want to sit in the sun and they don't give a damn how nice the water is, as long as their can go back north with a cruel chocolate-strawberry hue to their abused skin. I've witnessed firsthand how these people have been treating Croatia. In Dubrovnik, that town is full. Don't go. Stay away. You literally will not get in. In Hvar City, people party to all odd hours of the night, vomit and piss on the streets, go lay in the sun and then repeat this all the next night. In Istria, every single spot it crowded, from the most pristine rocks to the lowliest mud hole on the Adriatic (sun is sun to the beach tourist.) Korčula City sees throngs of idiots roaming that small town drunk and trying to pick up the local girls. The roads are clogged, including the brand new auto cesta that runs out to the coast and was built basically to pump tourists out there. The congestion isn't because of the roads being small, but because there are just too many cars going to the coast during the summer and the result is the same as if you tried to push a pig through a garden hose.       But, beyond all these problems which could be seen as merely annoyances, there is the issue that tourism is smashing the local economies of the coastal towns in to being solely sustained by tourist money. This creates the first main problem of a group of people who work for three or four months and then have no income for the rest of the year. But, even more so, things like bars, nightclubs, strip joints, and whatever else start popping up just to cater to the tourists, thusly obliterating any sense of local culture from the people in the area. And once all this gets built up, you end up having an economy for the area that has its market driven by a single service. We all know that's bad and that the main thing any investor will tell you is that you need to diversify. The Croats who have focused on tourism for their main source of revenue are feeling the pinch of this already. Inflation is out of control on the coast and goods are very expensive for the locals to buy now. But the other fact is that the price of hotels, apartments, and rooms has gone up massively as well. In 2004, I paid 35 Euros a night for an entire apartment flat in Dubrovnik. The same flat is now about 100 Euros a night four years later.       This is all very bad for attracting the Beach Tourist. They want cheap and this is not cheap anymore. In fact, it's nearing or is the same price as places like Spain and Italy. So, there is now a glut of housing in the area and people are having a hard time filling all their rooms. By no means does this mean that Croatia will become a bargain again, but more the fact that hard times are ahead for a great chunk of the country that has heavily invested in the Beach Tourist.       This is all very negative of course and it's easy to complain about all the problems of an area. This is why there is a 'Part 1' in the title. In Part 2, I cover what I feel needs to be done to avert these problems. While these are personal observations of mine, they are from someone who knows the country well and has seen it from one end to the other. Okay, I admit that I haven't been to Slavonia yet, but I had to save something for a future trip!

Fresh on the tail of my Top 5 Croatian Reds, I thought it would be timely to mention my favorite whites for the year. While solidly a red drinker, I was shown the glory of being that is the white wine in the Mediterranean, where even the Chardonnay tastes good (no idea what they do to crap it up in California). These may not be whites for white lovers, but at the very least, they're damned fine wines:              5. Pošip Čara - Marko Polo       Pošip is the primary grape of Korčula and for a reason. They do it very well there. Even though this is from a large producer, it's still a very tasty and mild white that can be enjoyed anytime despite the cheesy name.              4. Demian - Malvazija       In the south of Istria, they make mighty fine wines, despite the shafting they get from the establishment. This is a solid example of the whites made here.              3. Kozlović - Malvazija       Way up in the north of Istria, they're making whites like this that are crisp, sweet, delicious and perfect. This is one that you can get in the US and worth every penny it may cost.              2. Zigante - Vero       An Istrian maker who have this barrique version of the standard Malvazija that is a perfectly balanced wine.              1. Bibich - Lučica       Heaven in a bottle and from an area that isn't known so much for its whites like Istria. It's a blend of several whites in the area including one called Debit. The newest vintage that's just been bottled is flat out incredible and as far as I've heard, already sold out!