[Hier auf Deutsch]
We finally had a day which was supposed to have no rain at all. So, we were headed off to
Nin, 17km north-ish from Zadar. Nin is an ``island'', inasmuch as you need to cross bridges to get to it. Here below you can see in the map pretty clearly that Nin's southern border is really separated from "land" by a very narrow canal:
Good to know: At some point in its history, Zadar was similarly separated from land by just a narrow canal -- which got closed off and became the Fosa, and Zadar became a peninsula. Apparently, the muckity mucks have it in their heads to re-make Zadar an island in the future. Who knows if it'll happen.
What you can also see in this map above is
,,Park Solana Nin". It's not
really a park, per se, just a place where they make salt from saltwater (and have been for ages).
IMPORTANT TIP (about riding the bus in Zadar): We ended up feeling that the only way to figure out how to get from point A to point B was to find a blog post or so where someone else had done it already and copy them. Or, walk (20-30 min) to the main bus station and ask the information desk for help. When you do manage to find a bus, it's not clear where the bus will stop -- you kind of have to hope other people will want to get off the bus at the same time, or you have a GPS-friendly map on your phone and push the button roughly when you think should work.
So, one such blog said that instead of hoofing it down to the main bus station, one (if staying in old-town Zadar, which we were) could instead take the bridge across, go up a few streets and then catch the bus there. That bus stop redirected us one street further, which we then spent some time walking up and down to find the precise stop.
We were rather early, and the Bus came when it was supposed to. It was about 17 Kuna for the trip to Nin. The bus had no list of stops inside and no PA system where the driver says where/when stops happen. Luckily, we were not the only ones getting off in Nin, so it worked out.
The strange lettering/alphabet in the next pic also says ``Nin", in Glagolitic -- an old form of Croatian alphabet. Made by the guy for whom Cyrillic was named (he didn't actually make Cyrillic, he did lay the groundwork -- which I guess was exactly this).
``The Glagolitic alphabet //, also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet, from the 9th century...The two monks later canonized as Saints Cyril and Methodius, the brothers from Thessaloniki, were sent to Great Moravia(modern Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 862 by the Byzantine emperor at the request of Prince Rastislav, who wanted to weaken the dependence of his country on East Frankish priests. The Glagolitic alphabet, however it originated, was used between 863 and 885 for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište)founded by the missionaries, where their followers were educated.'' (wiki)
Outside the city are these two clever posters, the picture of Nin is shown correctly for the direction your approaching from. In the first, you're approaching from the south, and see the long, narrow beach in the background. In the second (where you're technically leaving Nin), approaching from the north, you see that same beach in the foreground:
We walked from the bus stop to Nin intself. Next to the tourist info was the city. Well, in particular, Branimir, an important Knez (~Duke) of Croatia. Nin is behind him.
``Branimir (Latin: Brannimero) was a ruler of the Duchy of Croatia who reigned as duke (knez) from 879 to 892. His country received papal recognition as a state from Pope John VIII on 7 June 879.[During his reign, Croatia retained its sovereignty from both Frankish and Byzantine rule and became de jure independent." (wikipedia)
That's about as much as we know about the guy.
I also like this next pic of his statue, since it looks like he's magicking up a storm:
Nin claims to be the oldest city in Croatia. I suppose it's possible. I don't really have any commentary for/against this. I suppose I found a site talking about the history of the region.
Here's a rambling post that seems to support this.
Outside the city, near the gate was this ship, a replica of the kind of old boats that Croatia/Zadar/Nin was known for (not sure if this is circa Roman times when they sided with Rome in Pompey's rebellion, or circa Venetian times (17th Century or so)):
The gate of Nin reminds me of the
Alamo:
Nin has a few tiny streets and more statues and churches. I don't know what this statue is doing -- is he carrying something? Throwing something?
Nin has, in particular,
two tiny churches. One is actually inside the town, so we saw it first (church of the holy cross, built 9th Century):
I'd show you more pics, but it was pretty hard to take decent ones inside, since it's so tiny.
Nin also has the ruins of the
biggest Roman temple of the Adriatic . Sad story: they found ~8 awesome larger than life statues of emperors and gods. 4 are now in the archeological museum in Zadar. The rest ``disappeared" shortly after they were dug up. Only ~10% of Nin's been excavated/explored archeologically. These are probably related.
We had the same problem as on Ugljan when it came to lunch -- restaurants were ``open'', but not serving food. We finally found one that was serving food and I had some nice chicken wrapped in bacon.
The other side of Nin has a gate as well -- here's a small (somewhat damaged/in ruins) door/gate and a bridge. The water there is the canal by means of which Nin is an island:
We walked along towards the sandy beach in the north
 |
| Velebit Bergkette |
Here's a better pic of the (Velebit) mountains and the sandy beach. The shack is where you can rent kites for kite-surfing. We did not try this out.
En route to said beach, we ran into some more kittens. One was brave and played with us for a bit, the other just watched.
 |
| you can guess which is which |
Here's the not-so-brave one looking on:
The houses hereabouts are either white, grey (concrete-colored) or very colorful. E.g. here's one that's on the market:
A man on a bicycle approached us, asking "Deutsch?" (i.e. do you speak/are you German?). After some shrugs and nods he launched into a rambling sales pitch for an excursion (,,Ausflug") to the most beautiful beach(
Saharun), ,,like the Carribean"(Karibik). I already had the flyer he was waving around, which I said and we kept going. He seemed nice enough. Not long after, when we were actually at the shore, a woman approached and asked if we needed rooms (also in German). Nope, thanks.
Walking along the sandy beach, we saw a lot of people wading quite far out -- 50m or more. It was very shallow there (not sure if that's relevant for kite surfing?).
After all this, we had a bit of time left to go to
the other super-tiny church, St. Niklaus.
It really struck me as the kind of silly place you'd've seen in Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (trivia: the name in German for this film is ,,Die Ritter der Kokosnuss" (the Knights of the Coconut)). That was sort of spot-on, inasmuch as Nin/Zadar was a stopover for people on Crusade:
Here, I included people in the pic standing next to the church to make the scale clear:
This is the best one, in my opinion:
This tiny church was built in the 11th Century and the ,,spy-tower" was added in the 17th Century. I'm reasonably certain that the hill it's standing on is an old grave-mound.
Spy-tower? Why'd they need that, you say?
Well, the Venetians (that's a story I should really tell, give me a second) --who at that time were in control of Nin/Zadar -- were at war/fighting off the Turks, so it was used to see if Turks were approaching.
So --
that story. From 1202.
Pope Innocent III: Hey Venice, I need boats and troops for the next Crusade.
Venice: Sure, Pope. We'll drop everything for a year and do nothing but build you boats.
[time passes]
Venice: Here's those boats you wanted, Pope! Where's the money?
Pope Innocent III: Uh, well. Turns out, I don't need so many boats. And don't have the money.
Venice: Fine. We're going to go sack Zadar to pay for this.
Pope Innocent III: No! Don't do that! I'll, uh, excommunicate you!
Venice: Psh, whatever.
[sacks Zadar]
Pope Innocent III: [excommunicates the entire city of Venice and the crusading army]
Or, if you prefer more formal language:
``The Siege of Zara or Siege of Zadar (Croatian: Opsada Zadra) (November 10–24, 1202) was the first major action of the Fourth Crusade and the first attack against a Catholic city by Catholic crusaders. The Fourth Crusade sacked the Croatian town of Zadar, a rival of Venice, despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding such an action and threatening excommunication...Innocent III negotiated an agreement with the Republic of Venice, Europe's dominant sea power at the time, involving the construction of a fleet of warships and transports. The deal stipulated that about 35,000 crusaders would need transport and the Venetians would be paid 94,000 marks of silver, to be paid in instalments...After the Venetians had suspended their commercial operations for a year to build and crew the ships, only about 12,000 showed up at Venice to man and pay for them...The crusaders thus found themselves only able to pay 51,000 marks to the Venetians. In response, the Venetians indicated that they would accept the invasion of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), a Catholic city on the coast of the Adriatic, as well as nearby Trieste, in lieu of payment for the time being. Zara had rebelled against the Venetian Republic in 1183, and placed itself under the dual protection of the Papacy and King Emeric of Hungary[9] (who had recently agreed to join the Crusade)...Though a large group of Crusaders found the scheme repulsive and refused to participate, the majority agreed (despite the written protests of Innocent III), citing it as necessary to attain the larger goal of taking Jerusalem. In 1203, Innocent excommunicated the entire crusading army, along with the Venetians, for taking part in the attack.''
If you were wondering, he later absolved them.
Alright, fair enough. What's the view like?
Here:
Alright. Onwards. We took the bus back from Nin and wandered around looking for the pizza-and-calzone window-restaurant I'd seen before
,,Pizza Cut Dado" and tried the calzones. Delicions.
Next blog post(s): two days of swimming, some Croatian oldies music. Next day after that, sea-kayaking. After that - Plitvice lakes! (amazing pictures of amazement).
