Today the local newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia), published a story about our plight to get our boat, the Labud, out of Arista Nautica‘s shed. It was a good article, describing how we want to use the boat to promote ‘real’ Dalmatian tourism. Unfortunately it doesn’t mention the work I did for Arista Nautica and [...]

David Hicks, of Arista Nautica and Arista Yachts, was questioned today by Croatian police in Split, regarding threats he made to us (Julie Morgan and Shane Braddock) on May 8th to harm us himself or use Ivica Viljac as a weapon. David said on the day, “I want to scare you to protect my friends, [...]

Whilst away on a trip this week I received a text message on Friday from David Hicks, an owner of Arista Nautica, who has been holding our leut, Labud, for several weeks, advising me I had some mail at my office. After weeks of trying to approach Arista and deal with this issue respectively, David’s [...]

The last two weeks have been a little disappointing – and between trying to fix the problems and run tours we haven’t had time to post regularly on the blog. Its written somewhere that bad news comes in threes – so hopefully we have good times ahead. #1 – Time Out Croatia We provided numerous [...]

Businessman Zeljko Kerum (on his campaign poster above), the local answer to Donald Trump, has jumped into the May 17th Split mayoral race as an independent, and is stirring things up. An open letter was published, this week, by several of Split’s ‘intelligentsia’ urging people to vote for anyone but him. But given Split’s recent [...]

This Wednesday (6th May), the law that 30% of Croatians have been dreading (and the other 70% have been praying for) comes into effect – it will be illegal to smoke inside any public areas, such as bars, cafes and restaurants (hospitals and the like have had this regulation for some time now). Smokers will [...]

With very little fanfare, this week Croatia (together with Albania) joined NATO, bringing the total of countries in the alliance to 28. (We previously mentioned the talks last year regarding this issue – here.) At NATO Headquarters in Brussels, on Tuesday,the two countries’ flags were raised in the presence of their respective Prime Ministers – [...]

On the telephone today I asked Ranko Bon to provide a short update in regards to Jupiter Adria’s golf course resort proposal in the valley below Motovun. He did more than that – and wrote a full account of recent events there, including local press reaction, on his Residua Blog. Last June we mentioned (here) [...]

A secondary reason for us coming up to Motovun this weekend was to help our friend Ranko Bon form a local branch of Green Party – Green Alternative (Zelena stranka – Zelena alternativa) here to fight against the incumbent mayor, Slobodan Vugrinec, in the up-coming local elections. For years the town council has not felt [...]

Last week the Sabor (Croatian Parliament) passed legislation dealing with golf course developments. Currently it is very difficult to organize a large parcel of land in Croatia for a golf resort as the country is divided into numerous small plots, many of which are owned by numerous owners, who may also be dead or living [...]