Window Shopping With Old Money– Opatija (Traveling The Croatian Coastline #17)

Rijeka was supposed to be a teeming, uber industrialized port city. It was all those things, but also much more. My first sight of Rijeka came several kilometers south of the city looking across the Kvarner Gulf. It was a toy town to the naked eye, a sort of urban mirage that mimicked a miniature model. it was as though someone had stacked Legos on a stretch of land fronted by the sea. Rijeka’s towering concrete apartment blocks, the skyscrapers of Titoism, looked like they were part of an overgrown Potemkin village when seen from a distance. A spectacular seascape sidled up to the city, while the Ucka Massif rose in the background. The bus journey down into Rijeka was more akin to a rollercoaster ride than a motorway. The highway looped back on itself at times as the bus attempted to navigate the rugged terrain. Nature’s bounty made me long for an outdoor excursion rather than an urban one.

Rough & Real – Reconsidering Rijeka

I immediately began to wonder why no one ever mentioned the landscape surrounding Rijeka. It was quite an introduction to what was supposedly one of the more industrial cities in Croatia. My perspective changed once our bus arrived in the city, it was as though we had fallen from heaven back into reality. Rijeka was a brash, loud, noisy place. There was none of the languid pace to be found among the masses of rubbernecking tourists in Dubrovnik or Zadar. The idea of strolling was anathema on Rijeka’s sidewalks, everyone was walking with a purpose. Rijekans looked like they were hurrying to an appointment. In other words, this was a working city. I was elated that we would be returning to Rijeka for several days after our visit to Pula. From what little I saw of Rijeka, it was going to make for a fascinating contrast with all the other places we were visiting. Rijeka was not on the tourist circuit, which from the looks of it was quite a shame. The city looked rough, gritty, blue collar and quasi-socialist, the kind of place that did not care what other people thought of it. Indifferent to outsiders’ thoughts, Rijeka was a love or leave it proposition, on this day we were trying to do both.

Rijeka’s bus station left a lot to be desired. It was difficult to even figure out where the station was located. Our bus pulled in to drop off and pick up passengers. The station, if it could be called that, looked like a large parking lot surrounded by congestion. Despite this, I found the bus stop at the station satisfactory. There was a free toilet within a short walking distance of where our bus was parked. Oddly, this toilet was not part of the station. Getting to it required crossing one of the city’s busiest streets. On the way back to the bus, there was a Mlnar, a chain of bakeries that was quickly becoming my favorite for breakfast and lunch on this trip. The stop in Rijeka only lasted 15 minutes, but it was enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. Now the final stretch of our journey to Pula started. We soon left the bustling city behind and were back in the world of Croatian coastal tourism. As a matter of fact, we were about to travel through where it all began.

The beauty of it all – 15 minutes from Rijeka

Blinded By The Past – An Opatija State of Mind

Until the mid-19th?century, Opatija (Abbazia in Italian) was just another fishing village along the Kvarner Gulf. Little did its inhabitants know that it was on the cusp of a major transformation when Rijeka businessman, Iginio Scarpa constructed the Villa Angiolina as a palatial holiday home for his family. The Villa was also open for use by the many aristocratic acquaintances of Scarpa. In 1882, the villa was purchased by Friedrich Schiller, head of the Southern Railways for Austria. Schiller decided that Opatija would be the perfect place for the upper and middle classes to spend holidays by the seaside. This was at a time when modern tourism was beginning to take hold in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Soon lavish hotels began popping up all over Opatija, many of these still exist today.

I saw several hotels and a plethora of turn of the 20th?century villas as the bus slowly made its way through the town. There was a paradisaical feel to Opatija with its villas, hotels and palm trees closing in on the waterfront. Anyone looking for the glories of Austria-Hungary would do well to start here. Aristocrats and the moneyed class spent their holidays at Opatija. Rubbing shoulders with the famous and frivolous who descended on the town throughout the year. Due to the excellent climate, Opatija was promoted as an escape from the harsh winters that beset Austro-Hungarian lands in Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike so many other fin de siècle places in former imperial lands that I have visited, Opatija still looked to be doing a fine trade. Its many mansions were splashed out in an eye popping array of pastel colors. Sure, there were some of the usual concrete communist constructions blighting the town, but the vibrancy of Opatija was so illuminating that it blinded me to any of the later excesses.

The place to be - Early 20th century advertisement for Abbazia (Opatija)

Finding Love – Romance In The Air

Viewing Opatija from the bus made me feel like I was window shopping with old money. It would not have surprised me to see an archduke or archduchess throw back the shutters from one of the multi storied villas and exhale the history each of those aristocratic inspired confections held within their walls. Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth wintered here. So did Crown Prince Rudolph and his wife Stephanie before death pounded the final nail to the ill fated coffin that was their marriage. Long before Archduke Maximillian was shot in Mexico or his wife Carlotta went mad, they were hanging out with the smart aristocratic set in Opatija.

Anton Chekov, a man who knew a great deal about tragedy, also spent time in Opatija. And why not? The weather was good, the women were sophisticated and beautiful, the men well educated and smartly attired. There are very few places from pre-World War One Europe that still give the feel and flavor of the fin de siècle, Optija is one of them. I imagined getting off here and never leaving. Holing up in some grand hotel and writing novels of lost love affairs of those who have come and gone in Opatija. I knew by my love at first sight that romance was still in the air at Opatija.