What do the islands mean to Croatia?
What do the islands mean to Croatia?
It is difficult to define the significance of a group of islands to a country and its inhabitants. You will certainly agree that there is something special about that moment when you set off from the mainland into the unknown. All your worries become unimportant and the everyday routine is left further and further behind.
Statistics will hardly tell you anything about the island villages and the isolated places enlivened by the local people and tourists who wish to get closer to nature. While separation from mainland can sometimes be a handicap, it also provides some protection from the factory chimneys and other misfortunes which come with civilisation. Instead, there are vast fields of lavander, ancient olive trees and vineyards, in immaculate harmony between man and nature. There are wine and olives, so a guest wishing to get closer to nature will stop at a small inn rather than a top quality restaurant. He will taste real home-made wine instead of some famous sparkling wine, he will sing the old island songs and forget the monotony of the everyday routine. Through the centuries and life's sufferings, an oasis of culture has remained here, a testimony to the identity, despite the many attempts, some temporarily successful, to destroy it.
The islands undoubtedly build their present and their future mainly on tourism. Statistics on growth in production and dry indices on increases or decreases in numbers of guests are not important.
Every guests is really The Guest here and his every wish is a comand. Hard-working hosts are well aware of this. They will offer home-made bread and smoked ham or freshly picked mandarins or fish granished with home-pressed olive oil. Without additives or preservatives but with that natural taste that you sense when you feel a togetherness with unspoiled nature during your visit to te island.
Every person in this country will speak about the islands with special pride and longing. If life is prose, thana visit to the islands is poetry.
Autors: Dalibor Rodinis and Sasa Skelin
http://islands.zesoi.fer.hr
