Vela Luka, more, you

If you want to go to Korčula, the Jadrolinija ferry from Split will cost you around fifty euros per person. Fortunately, there is a much cheaper ticket, but at the kiosk of another company, at the back of the building with the counters. A catamaran is a kind of sea bus. As we sit on the upper deck, I think about how some words travel through centuries and languages. So does the word catamaran. It comes from the Tamil language and means logs tied together in a raft. The word was brought from distant seas by English sailors and pirates back in the 17th century. Over time, catamaran began to mean any vessel with two parallel hulls and a platform connecting them. So I sit on that platform and look forward to Korkira.

The Greek name of the island is the basis for the modern word Korčula. Since Greek settlers more than 23 centuries ago found the island densely covered in conifers, they called it Black Korkira, to distinguish it from another Greek island that bore the same name - today called Corfu.

The journey can take a long time. First we dock in the town of Hvar. Of course, we remember our stay on that island a few years ago. This time we will not disembark. Our destination is Vela Luka.

PORT WITHOUT A REEF

The pier in Vela Luka used to be right next to the Riva. They moved it a little outside the city. This gives us the opportunity to walk along the coast. What we find is not what we expected on Korčula, which has a reputation as a fancy destination.

The huge abandoned halls are marked with the word “Greben”. This was the company that fed Vela Luka and half the island. It fell victim to the Croatian version of transitional privatization. The former pride of the island’s industry survived with reduced business until 2011. Then the Greeks ordered patrol boats for their maritime guard. Athens fell into the vortex of the global financial crisis and dragged “Greben” into that vortex. We pass by the monument to ruthless capitalism as if it were a cemetery.

Then we have a view of Vela Luka, which survived the economic collapse. The small town in an idyllic bay called Valo here has turned to tourism and pre-industrial activities - fish, olives, wine.

We stayed with the talkative landlady, who does not hide her love for her hometown and her desire to pass it on to her guests. She recommended a place that had more moderate prices than the others. And that means that a liter of house wine costs not 25 but 16 euros. Since we are on Korčula, the wine list is dominated by the Pošip variety. Bottled wines are between 25 and 60 euros per bottle. Homemade Žrnovo macaroni is 20 euros. The Croatian coast is exclusive in terms of prices. On the other side of the Adriatic, some 200 kilometers from here, in Bari or in the beautiful towns of Polinjan and Monopoli, everything costs significantly less. Now that we are where we are, we wanted to visit Korčula.

In those days, while walking along the coast - Vela Luka is wrapped around its bay on three sides - we found places where it was worth staying with a morning coffee and simply looking at the sea. One of such cafes, where mostly locals sit, talking loudly in their dialect, is located right next to the bus station. Ikavian music and the rocking of boats - without the interference of language from the tourist Babylonian confusion - conveyed to us an unusually clear feeling of tranquility. Here, as on Šolta, the seventies of the last century still linger a little.

ONLY MEMORIES WILL REMAIN TO ME

One of our favorite places has become an installation in the shape of glasses. Metal Ray-Ban glasses the size of a handball goal are on the shore. They are written: I only now see what it means to me.. For everyone who knows that song, the lyrics start to play on the local radio - Vela Luka, more, you... Admittedly, he wrote "vidin" and not the literary "vidim". He was born here too. Back in the sixties, he dedicated the song to a Vela Luka girl with whom he studied in Zagreb. Until 2014, he did not allow the song to be recorded on studio albums. But the voice of another Vela Luka resident, Oliver Dragojević, who gave that song his unique voice in live performances, remains one of the most emotional interpretations. The glasses on the Vela Luka waterfront are dedicated to Oliver - people can see his birthplace - with his eyes. And right there, where, as the locals say, he went fishing in his boat.

Also interesting is the duet between Oliver Dragojević and Jasna Zlokić, also from Vela Luka, whose maiden name is Dragojević. The two of them built a cathedral of voices for their homeland by singing Žuvela's song.

Oliver was born here and buried here. Those two dates that, like brackets, compress someone's life on a tombstone are connected in his case to this place. The entire region was fascinated by the farewell from Split in 2018 after Oliver's death. Far fewer know that the funeral in Vela Luka was probably even more poignant.

So we headed towards the Cemetery of Saint Roch in Vela Luka. We climbed along ordinary streets, far from the tourist routes. Life here went on at its slow Mediterranean pace. The pomegranates in the gardens were ripening. The higher we climbed, the more low stone houses on estates with gardens glowing with red earth were along the road. Wild olive trees grew alongside the road. We picked two twigs.

The cemetery is located at the top of a steep slope above the town. The approach is overgrown with well-groomed cypress trees. From there, there is a beautiful view of the bay and Vela Luka. We climbed the terraces of the cemetery, from which it is as if the dead are observing their former life on the coast. Oliver Dragojević's grave is actually a family tomb at the very top of the cemetery. His parents Marko and Kata, as well as his brother Aljoša, rest there. He was the last to arrive. It is easy to recognize the place where he was buried. Flowers and objects testify to the connection between the people who love his songs and the singer who colored Dalmatia with his voice: rum from Jamaica that is more than two decades old, cigarettes, angel figures, wreaths, flowers.

We waited for a larger group of tourists from Slovenia to listen to the story of Oliver. Then for everyone to take pictures. We sat at the top of the cemetery and listened to the Slovenian words crossing each other, becoming more and more muffled, down by the chapel. Another couple came by. Then a woman. Then some other people.

I imagined what this place must have looked like on August 1, 2018. Thousands of people. Singing. Some with tears in their eyes. Cellist Stjepan Hauser performs the instrumental "The Seagull and I". In a secluded place by the sea. It's beautiful. The local klapa sings Remembering Vela Luka. There are also Jibonis. And Raja. And many others.

When we were finally alone, we approached the grave. We laid our olive branches down. I said, “Thank you for the letters.” Apparently that was loud enough for the elderly woman who was watering the vegetation in the cemetery to turn to us and smile. We smiled back.

We went down to the city. Vela Luka was different in our eyes now. It was as if we had seen it for a moment through Oliver's eyes.

Right behind the Stari Ribar tavern is a beautiful stone house with blue shutters, wooden shutters that in Dalmatia are called škure. This is the birthplace of Oliver Dragojević. Today we walked in his footsteps, backwards. From the last to the first bed.

KORČULANKA MUD

One morning we boarded a local bus and headed to the nearby wine village of Blato. It is located about ten kilometers from Vela Luka, in the mountainous interior. The basin in which it is located was once a lake. It would fill with rains in the fall and winter, and in the summer it would dry up, leaving behind the most fertile land on the island. At the beginning of the 20th century, a tunnel was dug to the sea, with a total length of 2,240 meters, and Blato was drained. This created the largest fertile area on the Dalmatian islands. Viticulture experienced its golden days.

The peasants no longer had to build their own "meje" - as the stone walls are called here, preventing rain and wind from blowing away the fertile soil. By then, the total length of dry stone walls in the Blato field and on the hillsides was estimated to be 60,000 kilometers.

In 1911, the Zlinje linden avenue was planted, which stretches the entire length of the town and is said to be the second longest linden avenue in Europe - after the famous Unter den Linden avenue in Berlin. We walked along the avenue, visited the local church, and peeked into the park. We set out in search of a winery.

About a century ago, the island's vineyards were hit by phylloxera, a pest that attacks the roots of the vine. It destroyed the basis for the survival of many families. People are moving out en masse. Today, three times as many Blato people and their descendants live in Sydney as in Blato itself. Those who stayed started from scratch. Some families who grew less famous grape varieties fared much better. One grape variety in particular has shown exceptional resilience - Cetinka. This is an old, indigenous white variety from Korčula that gives the wine a light body, exceptional freshness and drinkability. It forms the backbone of the local wine Korčulanka. We bought it at a local winery, and we drank the same wine with lunch in a tavern.

We returned to Vela Luka in the afternoon by bus. Behind the wheel was the same smiling Asian-looking driver. Croats drive Germans and Irish people. They are driven by Nepalese people. The man paid the fare properly but gave one ticket instead of two. He did not bring this custom from some exotic country, but adopted it. I experienced the same thing about ten years ago from a local driver in Istria.

MOSAIC WALK

Vela Luka likes to highlight its street mosaics in tourist brochures. The Luka Mosaic is a project whose ultimate goal is to build the longest floor stone mosaic in the world. It all started in the summer of 1968, when Vela Luka hosted The first international meeting of visual artists. Around thirty world-famous artists came to the town and created mosaics that were then placed in public areas, promenades and in institutions. In addition to the artistic one, there was also a political message. Tito's non-aligned Yugoslavia brought together artists from countries stuck in the Cold War to create together. In the centre, the names of the participants can be read on a commemorative mosaic plaque.

After almost half a century, in 2017, a local association The visual arts of Vela Luka decided to revive this tradition. Under the leadership of academic sculptor Ante Marinović, a project was launched with the aim of decorating the entire three-kilometer promenade along the coast with mosaics.

Every day we walked along hundreds of unique stone mosaics depicting marine, animal, historical or abstract motifs. We didn't have time to ask if we could also install a few pebbles in Vela Luka - a permanent art workshop has been launched in an abandoned factory. The participants are locals, but also tourists from all over the world. So far, people from several dozen countries have left their mosaic signature. Visitors can come to the workshop led by an artist for free, and after learning the basics of the craft, they have the opportunity to assemble their own mosaic from pebbles. A trace in stone. It's like writing a poem in visual language.

On the penultimate evening in Vela Luka, the bay was bathed in a long, rosy glow. The sun was sinking into the sea, right into the bottle neck of Vela Luka Bay.

The next night, the bora brought rain. It pounded on the roofs, you could hear the waves crashing against the rocky shore. On the inner kaleidoscope, images from the previous days alternated. Coffee by the sea at the bus station. Oliver's grave and the beautiful view over it. A cracked pomegranate in a neighbor's garden. The sun pours hot sparks into the sea above the roof of an abandoned shipyard. Strangers shout at each other in taverns in a way they never would at home. One restaurant owner speaks disdainfully about the competition, and we are the only guests in the place. Moments of peace while walking along a part of the coast that has not been groomed since the seventies, so the old concrete has blossomed into mysterious geographical reliefs. Vela Luka like a time machine. The smell of grilled fish. The sound of a Dalmatian canzone, Oliver's voice.

I was thinking about what kind of stone mosaic I would propose for the workshop. A poem by one of the greatest Croatian poets of the last half century, Danijela Dragojević, comes to mind. He was also born in Vela Luka. He didn't give interviews. He refused literary awards. In a way, he was the only true monk of poetry among Croatians.

The greatest poet and greatest singer of Croatia from a small port on Black Korkira. Surnames.

The song I had in my personal electronic collection was called Night. I said it to myself so as not to wake my companion.

Whom we killed, we killed.

Whoever killed us, killed us.

And the rain still falls on the roofs,

sidewalks, parks, heads,

old and new moisture moistens memory.

Something is closing and opening. Where are we?

We won't be able to sleep at night anymore.

We are that night.

The next day we thought we would travel in the morning. But they changed the schedule. The bus to Korčula only left in the afternoon. We were even happy. Vela Luka reminded us of our childhood on the Adriatic with its colors, tastes and smells. Only the prices are this old, cruel.

What matters is that after the stormy night a bright day dawned. And that it is ours - we are that day.