This Is Typical Weather for Here

Split, Croatia

SPLIT, CROATIA Outside my hotel room on the promenade overlooking the harbor and the Adriatic beyond, a band blasts out La Bamba and I Want to Light Your Fire. The hotel, a part of the crumbling ancient palace that covers several blocks dating back to the Romans, was the cheapest I could find at $130 a night, the most I've spent so far. As I explored the narrow cobbled streets of the old town and palace, under perfect 72 sunshine degrees, a shop clerk told me, "This is typical weather for here." If so, it's paradise. However, beyond the old town and the palace, are the ugly soviet era (I should say Tito era) concrete apartment buildings, contruction projects that have been put on hold, and paths and by-ways strewn with garbage. Unemployment is very high. The clerk at the desk said, "I've worked every day this month. I don't want to lose my job." A businessman who imports motorcycles told me his problem is all the rules that the government imposes. "These are rules that the wealthy interest groups have devised to keep out competition." Paradise has a strong undercurrent of disfunctionality that in part may be due to the ravages of years of war and lingering hostilities. Entering Croatia from Slovenia I went through two passport checks. Until then I hadn't gone through a single passport check. Prices vary from an excellent dinner for only $13 to a modest hotel room at $130. The businessman blamed East/West hostilities for much of the country's problems. "They didn't want us to be a non-aligned country as we were under Tito. If it had been left to the people, we'd still be a federation, but," he added, "not communist." That's not the sentiments I got in Slovenia, who had fought a ten day war for their independence and where some still feel sentimental to the social structure under Tito. The main act must have come on outside. A young woman singing Croatian pop has them clapping and hollering. I gotta see this.