May 15 page 51 |
2005 BALKANS TOURBen Oostdam |  PODSTRANA |
| The bus-driver put me off near Hotel Lav ("lion"), a well-known landmark right along the coast. I had made reservations on the Internet at a cheaper place more inland, Pension-Restaurant "Senator", so I set out climbing and asking. At first I was not very successful, then I saw a boy and girl playing volleyball in their backyard. The girl, all of 11, spoke some English and had a cell-phone, so she called the "Senator" and asked them to come and collect me. In the meantime, their parents started shouting from the top window in the house but she explained me away and I thought of what my own reactions would have been like in the USA - had cell phones exixted when my daughter Erika was 11, just about the age of Nabokov's "Lolita". |
| I was picked up by the mustachioed "Senator" manager and given a fine room first, then a large ice-coffee in the dining hall, which was filled with people attending a communion. |
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| They were all sitting along a large table, eating, drinking and talking and using me as their distraction. In the mean time, a boy with good English showed me it would be impossible to take the coastal ferry to get from Split to Dubrovnik taking in one or more islands. Later, in full season, it would be relatively easy. |
| Although it was hot, I went down the road to the coast and found the beach to be gravely gravelly, shingly and singularly deserted. I took some pictures before climbing up and taking a siesta. |
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