After the captain’s dinner last night, where we all rather tearfully hugged and said goodbye to each other, it seemed oddly strange to see everyone again and to once more say goodbye. But this time everyone was in a hurry to leave, and the crew of the ship and our guides we also in a hurry for us to leave as well. Mike and Wendy left before anyone else, as they had to catch an early flight to Basel and a connection to Venice. So we did not see them this morning. By now they should be on yet another bike ride, this time from Italy to Istria. Everyone else we once again hugged and made sure that we all knew that we would all welcome each other should we meet again, though of course the likelihood is that we probably never will. Still, the offers were honestly made by all.
John and I were, I think, the last to leave the ship. We really had nothing to do today except to find a way to get to Split to catch the night train to Zagreb. Most of our other companions had driven here from other parts of Europe, and many planned to catch the ferry from Split to Ancona on the other side of the Adriatic Sea. It is apparently easier to drive from there to most parts of Germany than it is to go through Croatia and Slavonia. I suspect that the roads are much better. But I was surprised that most of them had not flown as I thought that airfares were now pretty cheap within Europe. But John and I did not have any particularly easy way to get to our fairly nearby location, either. There is frequent bus service between Trogir and Split, but we have probably overpacked for this trip and have no desire to try to cram large pieces of luggage on a bus and maneuver crowded bus stations, many not much more pleasant than their American counterparts. We ended up finally getting an Uber to pick us up. This was not as easy as it sounds, either. Uber has only recently arrived in Croatia, and its legal status is unclear. The taxi industry as always is ferociously opposed to competition. It is not safe for the drivers to put the customary U symbol on their cars, and both drivers and passengers have to be cautious about meeting.
We were able to meet, however, and on the way there John asked Damir, our driver, if he knew of a place near the train station where we could get a cheap room for the day. John did not want to be stuck wandering around for 12 hours in the heat, particularly if he had to take some or all of our luggage with us. Now the same kind of conversation in the United States or Britain would likely result is a blank stare or an admission that the person has absolutely no idea how to answer the question. But Croatia is in many ways like other developing countries where everybody is scrambling to make a living and where family and interpersonal relationships are strong. So Damir called his wife, and she called a friend, and before long they had a place arranged for us, and just as we had requested, it was not expensive and quite close to the train station.
It was not completely easy to get there, however. Despite a long history of fascist and socialist governments, both of whom seem to be able to usually built roads by displacing peasants and blowing up historic buildings, Split is a traffic nightmare. Perhaps because it was summer, perhaps because many people were trying to get on ferries, traffic in the central city was gridlocked. It took us the better part of twenty minutes to travel six blocks. But we finally made it to our apartment for the day.
Damir posed on the steps of the apartment for us
and we did get to meet a slightly anxious “neighbor."
I never learned the name of our landlady, though I am sure we were introduced. She showed us the flat, and it was indeed exactly what we wanted and needed. The price was set at 375 kuna, about 55 dollars, and that was perfectly reasonable as far we were concerned. I had paid more than expected that morning when I settled our shipboard expenses, so I was a little shy of the amount. She told me just to leave it on the kitchen table when we left for the train. I cannot imagine anyone anywhere in North America being so trusting. But then I am from Los Angeles, the place where pay-before-you-pump gas was invented.
We settled down and rested for a bit, and both of us enjoyed taking a real shower after a week on the boat. On ship we used something like a kitchen sprayer to clean ourselves, so even a small shower like the one in this apartment seemed like a something from a high-priced spa in comparison! But we did not want to spend the day in the apartment, so we needed to figure out something to do. Reviewing the highlights of Split in our guide books, we discovered that we had covered most of them in our short previous visit. There was one, however, that we had missed and it sounded interesting. It was a museum devoted to the work of the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović. Most interesting of all, it seemed to be located in a former home of his, a Roman-style villa overlooking the sea.
Google Maps told us that it was a 30 minute walk, but neither of us wanted much to walk today. The temperature was somewhere about 90, and the relative humidity could not have been much different. So we took another Uber there. This time traffic was distinctly better.
The Meštrović home is located in what is still an affluent part of Split. The house does rather look like a Roman villa, though without the elaborate peristyle entryway. The picture I tried to take of us did not come out well for some reason, so this one is borrowed from Google Images.
We bought our tickets from a booth near the entry and walked through the gates. It was so miserably hot that it seemed like torture to walk up those stairs, but we made it. The columns seen above were wrapped in some kind of yellow fabric. I could not tell if it was supposed to be art or it was just some kind of routine maintenance.
I was vaguely familiar with Ivan Meštrović, but other than identifying him as a sculptor I would not have been able to say much of anything about him. So, a film introduction to the artist helped give me some details. Meštrović was born in 1883 in a small village in Slavonia, the vast interior of central Croatia on the other side of the Dynaric Alps. His artistic abilities and his interest in sculpture were noted early, and his parents apprenticed him to a stone mason in Split. But Meštrović’s ambitions were much bigger than cutting stones in a small town, and he left for artistic studies in Vienna. He quickly made a name for himself there, and he became a member of the influential Succession group. His work was very popular and he soon had exhibitions in Rome, Paris, and London. Meštrović’s early work shows both his interest in classical Greek and Roman art and the obvious influence of Auguste Rodin.
But the First World War shattered the bourgeois European society that had nurtured Meštrović, and like many others it made him reappraise his religious tradition. For Meštrović, this meant becoming more deeply Catholic and his art became dominated by religious themes. Meštrović returned to Croatia and settled in Zagreb, now a part of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. He also began building a summer home in Split, and that home is the current gallery. Meštrović could afford this because he continued to be one of the most popular artists of the first half of the twentieth century, and he had commissions throughout Europe and North America. But Meštrović could not avoid the increasing problem of Fascism, particularly the Ustaše, Croatia’s homegrown Fascist movement. He was arrested and imprisoned by the Fascists, and facing possible death, went through a period of deep spiritual despair. Friends of Meštrović tricked the Croatian authorities to let him represent the country at the Venice Biennale. He never returned. After the war, he became an American citizen and took positions at Syracuse and Notre Dame. Some of his best work, like this statue of Job, come from this time.
Part of Meštrović’s plan in building his summer house in Split was that it would some day become a museum, a gift to the Croatian people. Along with the house, he decided to build a small chapel. This is located about 500 feet from the main house and directly overlooks the Adriatic. The chapel is built in an early monastic style with a cloister and a small basilica.
The interior of the chapel is stark, dominated by an enormous crucifix.
Along the walls are wood bas-reliefs illustrating scenes from the four gospels such as the nativity
and the woman washing Jesus' feet with her hair.
It is a remarkable achievement, easily equal to the similar chapels by LeCorbusier and Rothko.
We returned to the apartment and rested for a bit more. In the evening, we went out to dinner in a restaurant that received high marks on the travel sites. It was pretty good, but not all that memorable. We went for a stroll afterwards. The sea front in Split has not completely gentrified, and there are once grand homes from the Austro-Hungarian era that have been turned into what seem like flophouses. We did come across an odd piece of public art in this slightly rundown neighborhood.
Socialist art does not age well….
On our way back to the apartment, we stopped to listen to a group of women singing.
I am not sure if it was their age or simply the heavy smoking of almost all Croatians, but most of these ladies were baritones. Still, they sounded reasonably good.
Tonight we are off to Zagreb on a sleeper. I am not quite sure what it will be like, but it should be fun.
