Date:         Fri, 25 Apr 2014 07:30:20 -0700
Reply-To:     Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
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From:         Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Subject:      With the Westy through central Europe, Part 2 Croatia
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Recall that in part 1 we finished in Slovenia, the most prosperous of the former Yugoslav countries. To reach the Kvaerner gulf of the Adriatic in Croatia one turns off the motorway in Slovenia and go south. Between Slovenia and Croatia there are clearly conflicting priorities for this road. The Croats want to bring income generating tourists to their coastal resorts, and their half of the descent through the mountains is covered by a brand new perfectly straight motorway. The first Slovene part however is an ancient winding road no doubt still following the ancient trails where transportation would circle farm fields instesad of passing straight across them, and roads serpentine up and down mountains instead of going at a consistent grade in bridges. The Slovene part took a couple of hours the Croat maybe 30 min.

The first place we stopped in was Rijeka. It is a city of some 300,000 and the biggest shipping port in the ares. It is built on the steep mountain slope that goes directly into the sea. It is not really a tourist town, but has nice views of the sea for a stop or walk. It also has more shops than the small villages around it. Our first priority was to get a Croatian SIM card for the cell phone. Just like elsewhere roaming fees, particularly for data are high. The large number of countries in Europe means that I now have accumulated a similarly large stack of SIM cards. I had checked out the Croat mobile networks before leaving and found a shop that purportedly sells them. When we came to that shop they told me they only sold the starter kit with the SIM, but could not put the money/credit on it. Another shop said they had both, but would not help me get the SIM activated. Each European country had different requirements for registration and how strict
 identification is. I didn;t want to have to deal with foreign Croat language instructions on the phone or web (b.t.d.t. In Portugal I got voice working right away, but it took me a week to get data. Finally worked the day I was leaving. In Germany I had to do a web registration that assumed you had the control numbers from a German pass. I was lucky and guessed a number that worked after several attempts, but took me many frustrating hours on hotel wifi). Eventually I was lucky that the same shopping mall had an outlet for another network, VIPNET/Tomato, and they indeed were willing to set everything up. We enjoyed the sea views and had some ice cream, then continued on to the islands.

Krk is maybe the most popular destination in the area. Perhaps because while difficult to pronounce, at least the name is short and easy to remember. Perhaps also because it has a bridge from the mainland (instead of ferry). Our first stop was Krk town, the main village. Croatia is a main holiday destination, and has big commercial campgrounds that take a 1000 or more people. The campground we went to, Jezevac, is only about 1km from the village. Despite being pre-season it was pretty full. We got the single remaining somewhat close to the sea site, some 3-4 rows from the sea. The site was pretty small and our only glimpse of the sea was through a sturdy 2m tall iron bar fence. The next day we visited Krk. It is a nice village, with the old town wall preserved. What was less nice was that tourists would be offloaded by the busload, and each busload+guide created a human "plug" blocking the narrow lanes and making it difficult to explore independently.
 After a while we found a quieter corner on the other side of town, where there were more locals than foreigners and we spent the afternoon there.

We decided to move on to something smaller and drove to Baska on the south tip of the island. Campground was again a big affair with 1000's of sites. However it was divided into smaller sections. Amazingly there were a few sites available next to the beach. We got one of these. Again a tall fence between us and the beach, but this time it was an easier to see-through chain link fence. Sites were also more pleasant with a bit of grass next to the gravel pad. Baska turned out to be a nice town. The beach with the camping was touristy, but just a short walk beyond was the old village centre and harbour. It had a nice harbourfront walk and interesting side streets to explore. Old European houses have often been added to over the centuries (one did not tear down and then build new houses, rather expanded and repurposed.) One house had walks and stairways some inside, some overhanging the street so that to say go to the bathroom in the night from a 3rd floor
 bedroom one have to exit and enter the building several times on different levels. There was not a straight wall or angle anywhere on the house.

On the second day I took a hike up the mountain on the east side of Baska. Along the way I saw the ruins of old Baska, sacked and burned by Venice in 1380. The trail climbed further through a pine forest until it reached 380m elevation. At the top was a hikers shelter and several other trails. One lead northward. Passing through a gate in a stone wall, I moved in one step from the lush pine forest to a deserted moonscape of mostly rock, but a few strands of grass here and there. As far as one could see it was the same moonscape. The whole side on the north of the stone wall had been overgrazed by sheep. Some of the culprits were still there. With the little grass that could still grow there were only a dozen or so sheep on what seemed like at least 100hectares (200acres). I hiked down again and had a delicious fish dinner at a seaside restaurant. Maybe I should also have thought some about our oceans and overfishing...

So far we had experienced only brief showers, but on the fiftht day it was pouring down. Note to self: Time to re-do waterproofing on westy poptop fabric! Forecast for next few days didn't look good either. We had planned to visit Opatia/Lovran and then go back towards Slovenia through the numerous small hilltop villages on the Istria peninsula. Now we instead cut the Croatia portion short and headed back across the Alps to the north side, where the weather forecast was better. Due to some electrical gremlins the headlights would not work. Not good in the rain and poor visibility. Instead the blinkers would run the parking lights (which are small separate bulbs in the headlights on European busses). I looked for a long time for a parking spot under a roof to try to fix it. Finally at the 4th gas station I found a spot that didn;t obstruct anyone. Problem turned out to be a bad ground. Both the cable shoe and ground point were corroded. I tried to buy a
 new cable shoe at the gas station, but neither the one we were parked at nor the one across the street had any useful automotive spare parts whatsoever. Sign of the times I guess. Junk food and knicknacks sell better. I scratched off the corrosion on the old cable shoe, and moved it to an unused, cleaner grounding point. Now the headlights worked again. As a courtesy for lending us a dry workspace I filled up at the gas station and headed onto the motorway. A bit later my wife noticed the tank key was missing from its usual place. Doh, forgot the tank lid and key. Again had to drive some distance before a turnaround was possible. The turnaround was a single lane concrete bridge hanging some 200m above an inlet in the Adriatic. Quite an exhilarating drive! Retrieved the tank lid and headed back on A7 towards Slovenia.

Upcoming Part 3: Austria: Salzburg and Hallein

Martin (82 Westy 1.9TD in Canada and 85 Westy 1.9WB in Europe)
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw/


On Wednesday, April 23, 2014 6:41:09 AM, Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA> wrote:
 
My two daughters, wife and I traveled though central Europe over Easter, mainly through parts that historically were part of the Habsburg empire. While these countries have seen a lot of  change in the past 100 years, they retain much of the Habsburg architecture and some of the habits.

We live and work west of Munich this year, so this was the starting point. Our goal was to reach the Adriatic, where we had not been before, and it would be a bit warmer for camping than north of the Alps. A bit of route research on google maps and viamichelin revealed several routing options. The quickest route is almost all motorway and goes through Munchen (D), Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR). Via Michelin has routing options such as cheapest, shortest and "discovery". Many of these would instead of the new motorways and tunnels, take us on smaller mountain roads and passes through Kitsbuhel (A) and Udine (I), or Innsbruck (A), Brixen (I), then following near the (A)/(I) border in the mountains to Udine (I). Particularly the last one looked appealing. Several years ago we had been in the Meran region of Italy and liked it. I assumed this would be similar. However a cold front passed through just before our departure, so we
were unsure ow road conditions would be at high altitude. Therefore in the end we chose the first, almost all motorway route through Munchen (D), Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR).

Germany has by far the most traffic of these countries, and not surprisingly we ran into congestion when trying to go through Munich. There were roadworks on the middle ring road, and we missed turns a few times. The most annoying had no immediate turn opportunities and lead us on a motorway almost back to where we started. After some 50-60 km unnecessary extra driving we finally made it out on the east side of Munich. I had wanted to avoid Munich altogether as we live south west of Munich and wanted to go south east. However there are no significant east-west roads going south of Munich (but many north south).

More surprisingly than the Munich congestion was another hour or two of congestion on A8 in the middle of nowhere near Chiemsee. Here the local autobahn gas station profited from us and others by upping the gas price to Eur 1.70/l (Normally about Eur 1.50/l in this region.) Another tactic some gas stations have here is to raise the price 10c in the morning when people are on the way to work and don't have time to look around, then lower it in the afternoon. We had originally planned to stop in Salzburg, or one of the scenic small towns nearby. Unfortunately due to the congestion instead our stops were forced at unpleasant motorway plazas for gas and food. When finally out of the congestion we kept driving to make up for lost time and had to leave the Salzburg area for the return. Germans have a very short, distinct word for congestion "Stau". I guess that is appropriate as it seems to happen (all too) often.

After the frustrating motorway stop-and-go I was worried how it would be on A10 in Austria, which is a major European through-fare. Luckily, wherever the A8 traffic went it wasn;t onto A10. We had a congestion free trip through the Alps. Before the trip I had worried that A10 would be dull. However after the cold front all the peaks were snow covered, and the scenery was rivaling the world famous ice fields parkway between Banff and Jasper in Canada. A10 is a modern motorway, and all grades were below 5%, which was also very Westy friendly. We were able to go uphill at 90km/h in 4th on the way to the Tauern tunnels at 1400m, then coast downhill at 100-110km/h towards southern Austria. We stopped at Ossiaticher see, near Villach, and camped right on the eastern lake shore. Price was Eur 30. It is rare to get a shore spot in Europe, but Easter is pre-season. We noticed the pre-season aspect overnight when the temp fell to about 0C. There was some frost on
the grass in the morning. Daytime highs were on the other hand a pleasant 15-20C. That's typical for the mountains. The campground was impeccably maintained and had a nice playground for the kids. 

Most people drive right through Slovenia in their hurry to reach the Adriatic sea. We stopped in a small village Prestranek. In the middle ages, the local kingpin (Furst) would usually build his castle on the highest point. In Prestranek instead the hilltop was crowned by a group of high rise apartment buildings. Socialists all over Europe favored public housing. The communists also thought that rural village people should live communally in apartments instead of farm houses (that they had owned themselves prior to communism). These Slovenian public apartment blocks had stood the test of time better than many others. (E.g. in Sweden, Britain, East Germany and Romania much of the 60's and 70's public housing stock is in dire need of renovations or tear down). However, after the abolition of centralized economic planning, the inhabitants of the apartments have had to become more independent. Previous lawns in front of the apartment buildings now housed
chicken coops and vegetable gardens. The apartment dwellers were busy chopping and stacking wood for heating during the next winter. The apartment buildings appeared to have newly installed chimneys for wood stoves. (Before several of these buildings would be communally served by one hot water heating plant - usually providing an unreliable source of hot water for showers and heating). Overall everything appeared neat, and a good example of adaption to new conditions. Not far away a few new villas were rising. Perhaps built by the winners of the new capitalist system.

Upcoming in part 2: Croatia: Rijeka, Krk, Baska. Austria: Salzburg and Hallein.

Martin (and '85 Westy 1.9l)