Croatia in Closing

Given the amount of hype Croatia gets as a fantastic tourist destination, I must say I expected more and am not sure whether it would place anywhere near the top of my must see or must return to list.

First and foremost we found most Croatians that we encountered to be quite rude. A perfect example of it was the hostess in a highly recommended restaurant. We wanted to see the menu prior to deciding whether or not to stay. Since there was no one around and I saw the menus lying on a stool just inside the door, I stepped in and started looking for one in English. The hostess then came towards us, abruptly stated that she would give me one and then told me to get outside the restaurant and wait outside. When we finally decided that we did want to stay we asked her if she had room for three. She turns to us and says: “Does it look like there is room for three?” (All tables were full in the garden that we could see, but since we couldn’t go inside we didn’t know if there was more to the restaurant than that). Too stunned to respond to a comment like that we kept our silence and the hostess finally turned around and said: “But there is room inside across the street.”

The rudeness extended to store and bank clerks as well as some of our bus drivers. By no means am I saying that all Croatians are like that, but our general experience over the 11 days was that they were stuck up, thought themselves better than everyone else and considered it too much effort to have a smile on their face and to address others politely.

As for the beaches and towns along the coast: yes it is a beautiful coast, but so is the rest of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. Put together with the fact that many of the old towns look very similar Croatia seemed to be a nice enough place to visit if you have a chance to, but not necessarily a highlight, and especially not given that it is relatively pricey compared to its neighbours. If I had to choose, Slovenia would be much much much higher on my must-see list than Croatia.