WITWISA: A Gimme

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Profile:Croatia

Meet Croatia

- Coastline country mirroring Italy to the east

- Severed ties with Yugoslavia beginning 1990 leading to the "Homeland War" '91-'95

- Speak Croatian (nearly identical to Albanian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian)

Stray Dog Rating (out of 5): Oh sure, by day it's not too bad but come dusk the mongrel cats come out from the protected architecture sites to clean up, at least in Dubrovnik(3.5). Otherwise it wasn't so bad (1). Didn't see a dog that was stray (0).

Cuisine: To borrow a phrase from southeast Asia - same, same, but different. Every restaurant has an identical menu of fish and meat, leaving me with grilled vegetables and inferior attempts at Italian dishes like risotto (just regular rice) and particularly mediocre pizza. With the bears whoever felt like cooking prepared from the cellar full of vegetables, potatoes, pasta and rice with plenty of garlic. When nobody wanted to cook bread ripped from the loaf with local honey had to suffice.

Sidewalk Safety: In the village these obviously did not exist but you were most likely to see few vehicles out tractors, if you did though the roads were narrow that only one car could really pass at a time. The old cities had limestone smoothed to a marble shine from thousands of years of treading and restricted vehicles which was nice (watch out for the delivery vehicles in Split though.)

Rambling Impressions: It seems necessary to break this into Bear and Non-Bear impressions for these were entirely different. With the bears there was a great sense of community in the small, somewhat remote village of a few hundred. One shop, one bar, one restaurant allowed people to live simple lives, primarily based on agriculture and forestry. I really enjoyed the friendliness and helpfulness that this brought, even as a volunteer who was quickly immersed into this even through a translator.

Non-Bear had its pluses too. Driving through the mountains, littered with lengthy highway tunnels, is gorgeous as the pines mix with the deciduous trees on their side. Once you cross you've got vibrant blue sea overlooked by the range. Here are resplendent walled cities of Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik in order of increasing beauty. Dubrovnik is utterly gorgeous and worthy of its barrage of visitors.

Profile: Italy

Meet Italy

- That boot on the map you may have seen
- Nearly 2/3 of all Italians are employed in either service or tourism
- For example the tiny city of Venice (pop. ~200,000) sees 20,000,000 visitors in a year!

Cuisine: Can you fault them for having pretty mediocre beer when it's washing down the world's favourite cuisine? (Yes.) I suppose I had my fair share of wine anyhow, a really nice Chianti in Bologna but it was the food that was the main event. Included was our self-guided pizza tour of Naples, thin crust with tasty sauce and really tasty but not too overwhelming cheese, the smoked buffalo mozzarella a knockout. Then the pasta, especially the spicy pepperoncini with oil and garlic. Gnocchi and mushroom risotto weren't half bad either. Those are the main events but the land of cannoli and tiramisu (both of which I will normally pass on but were alright when I dipped a spoon to try Kate's) does the meanest gelato. Partial to the nut - Bacci, pistachio, creamy hazel -I vied to try two flavours at every sitting (or standing) which became a nearly daily ritual (occasionally two a days) regardless of how full of pasta I was. The cone in Rome with a smack of fresh cream - also normally passed upon - was particularly delightful.

Stray Dog Rating (out of five): Only pets!

Sidewalk Safety: Things are pretty slick for all those visitors. Traffic moves relatively well but you gotta keep an eye out for those sneaky scooters that like to scoot wherever they please. Walk with confidence on the zebra stripes.

Rambling Impressions: Whoa, who are all these people?? I suppose I knew Italy was a tourist destination but, by golly, after traveling out of, or at least shoulder, season through eastern Europe it was a little overwhelming at times to deal with. "I'm paying how many Euro to be shoulder to shoulder with all these dummies?" said the curmudgeonly stuck-up traveler. Still there were some remarkable things that duly deserve to be regarded by people who have traveled from afar. Rome has a gluttony of gems, it isn't even fair really, while I can totally see the original appeal of Venice even if it's now much harder to note through the throngs of souvenir shoppers. I'm glad to have done it and perhaps on a shorter, romantic venture might return but I definitely prefer more authentic, open pastures.

Indiana Andrushenko and the Chianti Sun Cycle

Pursuing the assailant into the enormous and empty cathedral Indiana made immediately for the stairwell. This wound up 463 concrete steps and besides his own heart beating he thought he could hear footsteps ahead of him. Closing the gap by taking the stairs two and three at a time he turned the tight wind of stairs to catch a glimpse of the source of the pounding noise; just a lowly security guard. He hadn't seen anything so Indy squeezed past to reach the ringed observatory just beneath the frescoed ceiling. Nobody was here except the painted angels so he scrambled further still to the final flight of steps. Bursting onto the roof he found himself dazzled by the morning daylight beaming onto the orange clay roofs a hundred metres below. When his pupils dilated he confirmed that he was the only one atop the cupola while Florence slowly woke below him. Due to the low density of pedestrians in the piazza below he was able to detect the culprit forcefully stealing a bicycle and setting off toward the Roman gate. Just as Indy was wondering how the escape from an enclosed dome had been possible with only one way down he discovered another way down - a rappelling rope was hooked on the lip of the gutter. Rather than risk it himself he descended the stairs in a hurry, pushing past the first of the paying tourists who were making their way up without any idea how close they had come to a madman.

Procuring a bike for himself (with a promise to return it) he had a pretty good idea of where the fleeing man was headed and set out to catch him. Snarled traffic in the city centre made the flexibility of the chosen means of transportation a decided benefit, allowing him to exit the city walls in short time. From there the ride became trickier as the climbing began immediately. In fact the first few uphill kilometres were nothing compared with what was to come. Ordinarily an avid cyclist Indiana could feel the rust in his legs from months off of his beloved bike due to extensive travel away from home on assignment in recent months.

After the first forty kilometres he began to feel his thighs burn on the extended climbs through the hills of Tuscany. There was no time to waste though so except short pauses to reconfirm his tracking information he forged onward. Not much later his reconnaissance instructed him to veer off the paved roads and into the forested trails. It became transparent almost immediately that the path was mountain-bike-only and the bike he had was decidedly not a mountain bike. Alas he had to work with the tools at hand and rumbled over the boulders and through the mud as best as he could. Near the river he lost the scent and was instructed to return to the original route. To his consternation this required him to redo a long climb he had completed prior to the sidebar. If that one hurt it was the seven continuous kilometres up into the Chianti mountains that followed which really took its toll; 10° and 12° inclines are no easy task.

Down the other side he was sure he would narrow the gap as he flew like gangbusters. Every muscle in his body tensed, down to his hands wrapped lightly on the handbrakes in case they were warranted, as gravity fed his velocity into and out of the winding turns. Vineyards were a leafy blur, insects met a sudden end on his face. The route led him through cute Tuscan villages but there were more important objectives at hand than sightseeing.

In the end all signs pointed back to Firenze; over 110km, not including the 90 minute offroad jaunt, seemingly all up hill but obviously breaking even as he began where he started. Not exactly where he had started though, for the pursuit ended dramatically in the Piazza del Michelangelo. As the sun burned out on the bridges and the dome where it had all begun nearly 11 hours earlier Indiana finally got his man.