Friday, May 06, 2011

The time-traveller’s waterfalls

...or the lost art of building great hotels

Time-traveller, when you are traveling to Plitvice and you think its main attraction are the waterfalls you are wrong, so wrong! The true gem are its hotels. And we are not talking boring design hotels here. We are talking true socialist style hotels. And not only one, many of them. It’s a whole theme park. With great attention for the detail a world long gone has been recreated on the shore of lake Kozjak. In this world waiters wearing ridiculously short ties (an item of fashion once, well, fashioned in Croatia and nowadays widely replaced by the track suit) push carts down the endless lanes of a restaurant where designers went crazy and created a fifties retro look, probably in the seventies. Next to a hotel with never ending corridors with lush orange carpets, where you can experience your very own shining. Location scouts looking for the perfect spot to shoot The Shining II (starring Charlie Sheen or Steve Buscemi, not finally decided yet): Call off the search! And the coffee… Oh the coffee. In a world full of espressos and baristas in which it is hard to find a cup of really bad coffee, even more so in a country under the influence of its neighbours, the grandes nations of cafĂ© culture Austria and Italy. But what’s being served up here must be the grand cru of the worst powder to ever hit the filter. UNESCO: I hereby officially file my job application as an ambassador for a new category of world heritage that deserves recognition: world heritage hotels. Hear my call: These places need protection!
Also, the waterfalls were truly amazing.
For the record: The old town of Split sports the highest number of shoe shops per capita in the world.
Music lovers and those with an interest in unusual instruments should consider a stop at Zadar and listen to its sea organ, a kind of flute played by the waves of the Adriatic. I had the impression it was playing the OST of 37.2 le matin on repeat.
it's all about the ties!
designer bathrooms


endless corridors
I want one of those


the devil's in the details
die lampen leiden am meisten darunter - Max Goldt



yeah, the waterfalls are alright.

dressing, Croatian style
pretty in pink, isn't she?