We used to greet tourists as explorers, adventurers, and welcome guests. So, what happened?
I love to travel. Always did. Ever since I was a kid, my parents were driving me around — mostly southbound for the coast — in an old “Fićo”, a Yugoslav version of the tiny Fiat 500. Our one was dull grey and as likely to break down on the road as it was to reach the destination. The saving grace for the little car was that everyone could fix it. I remember once jumping from excitement on the back seat, while the Fićo huffed and puffed up a steep hill. My dad had just announced that we should see the sea once we crest that hill, hence my excessive excitement. But, the Fićo’s engine suddenly developed a serious bout of cough. There was some spasmodic jerking, then the little car just slipped into a coma with a sigh. Dad barely managed to use what little inertia we had to slide on the gravel shoulder. He walked around the car and opened the hood — the engine was at the back — and let loose a series of loud and creative expletives. Mom quickly instructed me to immediately delete them from my memory. We extricated ourselves from the car to stand behind Dad and look at the engine. He held something that looked like a very thick rubber band, except this one was so frayed it was held in a loop by only a few threads. While Dad paced, shaking his big fists at the Fićo, still clutching the frayed rubber band, a tractor pulled behind us. A farmer in large rubber boots climbed down and greeted us, then bent to look at the engine. He and Dad talked about “the belt” needing replacement. The farmer pointed out that they’ll likely have the part at the car shop in the next village, some 20 kms further down the road. The trick was only to reach it. Then the farmer asked my mom if she, pardon him for asking, had a pair of nylon stockings and if he could have them. Mom looked confused, unsure whether to be offended or alarmed with this strange request, but Dad was the game and said that, of course, his wife would have the stockings. Still baffled, she pulled them from her suitcase, and in the next instance, the farmer tied them up around two wheels inside Fićo’s engine, where the rubber “belt” used to be. Powered by Mom’s stockings, Fićo made it up the hill and down the long downhill to the car mechanic. Our vacation by the sea was saved by a pair of stockings — “they don’t make them like that anymore,” Mom would say.
We lived in the continental part of the country, so naturally, most of our early vacations were spent on the coast by the sea. Vacation was synonymous with the sea, beaches, and sun. My relatives, who still live there, still save all their vacation days for the summer and spend them sunbathing and swimming. For me, though, the things have changed in my late teens, when I started travelling on my own. My wanderlust took me in the opposite direction from the sea. I discovered different countries, met different people, and learned about different traditions. I stayed with many different hosts and learned a very important rule for a traveller — when unsure how to do something, ask the host. That saved me from embarrassment many times and made the hosts like me as a guest in those times way before the reviews and ratings in travel apps. For example, when separating waste became a norm in the countries I travelled through, even though we didn’t yet have that at home, I’d ask what goes where, what needs to be separated, and how to dispose of it all. I know, that’s common sense, eh? But those simple questions and respect for the people and place made my travels so much more pleasant.
With such frame of mind, when my wife and I retired, we moved to the Croatian coast and became hosts, renting apartments to tourists to supplement our pensions, but also to meet new people and make their stay at our home enjoyable and memorable. At first, it worked exactly as imagined. We made friends and had many returning guests who liked staying with us. We were happy.
But, every year the way people travel changed a little. There were troublesome guests, at first only a few — the ones who’d leave the apartment as if a bomb exploded in it: floors covered with beach sand, mud, rocks, crumbs, stains and sometimes leftover food enough to feed a pack of hungry dogs; beddings, towels, dishes and even curtains dirtied in such extent they had to be thrown away; weeks’ worth of waste lying in torn plastic bags all along the walls, ants and roaches feasting on it; glasses and dishes chipped and broken, hidden deep on the shelves so they wouldn’t be asked to compensate; fingerprints and footprints (!) on the walls... At some points the number of “troublesome” guests evened up with the number of the good ones. That’s when we started questioning if we’re doing something wrong to attract people who don’t respect our home, our town and ourselves? Or, is it that people are becoming more inconsiderate? Could it be that, with everything that’s going on in the world, the human’s negative nature and cruelty is taking over common decency?
I have refused, and still refuse to believe that!
But, things got so bad that we stopped hosting tourists, to preserve our own peace of mind.
Now, on summer mornings I wake up just before dawn. It’s the coolest time of day, and the most pleasant for the morning run. As the grey sky shyly puts on skirts of purple and orange around the edges, I’m usually on my way, squeezing through the thorny brush on trails of the nature park which begins at the end of the road on which I live. Before the sun is even peeking up behind the horizon, I’m deep in my element, cresting one of many hills with an amazing view of the Adriatic. Cue in uplifting, cheerful music which comes to a screeching halt as I crest the next hill.
A dark green SUV with Hungarian license plates is parked on a mound where I usually take a breather and enjoy the view: to the left and right, the coast zigzags and undulates as far as the eye can see in eternal embrace with the sea. In front of me, the endless expanse of water shimmers silver in the morning sun. Except, on this day, I don’t have access to “my mound”, because of the said SUV. And a tent situated next to it, with two pairs of military-style boots at the entrance. And a pile of used paper covering human byproducts at the edge of the small clearing. None of which should be here at all — here, at the end of the hiking path where no vehicles of any kind are allowed!
When I pass again on the way back, the SUV is gone. What’s left is garbage, a lot of it, some in the bags, but most outside it, blowing on the breeze. There are food wrappers, bottles, and cans of various alcoholic drinks, even bags and boxes of newly purchased clothes and shoes. It’s too much for me to carry, even though I sometimes pick up when I see a discarded plastic bottle or a beer can. It makes me in equal measures sad and angry.
Something has changed in the way people travel. Every season brings more tourists who pollute and disrespect the place and the people whose hospitality they came to enjoy. Croatia is by no means the only one. Tourists defacing, vandalizing, and doing obnoxious things at the world’s most famous places are often in the news. Remember the couple who had sex on top of the Great Pyramid in Egypt? There are many other instances, from a Chinese tourist carving his name into a 3500-year-old stone relief in Luxor, Egypt, an Irishman carving his initials into the wall of the Colosseum in Rome, to vandals spray-painting the Bean sculpture in Chicago, or chopping down Saguaro cacti in Arizona’s Saguaro National Park.
I just hope people who travel can learn to enjoy the journey, and even more so the destination. Travel is a wonderful experience of exploring and discovering new places and meeting new people, or re-discovering the previously visited ones. It broadens horizons, it teaches us about life that is different from ours, but equally wonderful. It teaches us humility!
If I may, I’d like to leave you with a message from signs in Plitvice Park - a UNESCO-dedicated park of nature:
“Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, use nothing but time!”
And, as always, a song at the end, for the travellers among us: