Continuing TCN’s look at the best bloggers in Croatia, whose words and impressions about Croatia are read all over the world. TCN catches up with the team from Go Hvar on February 14, 2016.
With almost 8,000 articles about the island written in four years, our sister site Total Hvar might be the best known blog about Croatia’s premier island, but although I am very proud of what we have achieved, I personally don’t think it is the best blog about Hvar. That title goes to Go Hvar.
1. How did the Go Hvar blog start, and what were you hoping to achieve?
We got into blogging kind of sideways. When we bought our house on Hvar, we started to discover all kinds of fascinating stuff about the island, very little of which was available in English. For example, on English Wikipedia, Vrboska was described as a small tourist village on Hvar with a nudist camp. And my reaction was – oh that’s lovely, all my friends are going to think we bought a house in a nudist colony! So we set about filling in some of the blanks from Croatian reference sources. It was all good language practice for me but the formality of the articles wore distinctly thin after a while. Setting up the GoHvar blog was a reaction to that, allowing more freedom to write personal comments about any topic that interested us. It’s both a notebook and a way of sharing what we love about the island.
2. Your themes of art, heritage, wine and nature are a different world to the party image Hvar is fast achieving. Tell us a little about your themes, and how do you think Hvar’s image should be portrayed?
Well, we’ve never really been party animals, and our experience of the island is probably closer to that of the locals. I’m an artist myself and always enjoy exploring the cultural aspects of any place we visit – art galleries and museums of course, but also just the little details of the buildings, the red roofs against stone walls, the fishing harbours with their traditional boats, and the rugged beauty of the landscape. For us, that’s what gives a place its individual character, its sense of place. Over the years, we’ve become enthusiastic ambassadors for Croatian wines, and especially those from Hvar. They’re world class and deserve to be more widely known. It’s just fascinating to wander through the vineyards on the Stari Grad Plain and think they have been in production for 2,500 years! The feeling of connection down through the centuries is very special. We’d love to see the natural beauty and rich heritage of Hvar given more emphasis in promoting this as destination for visitors.
3. Introduce us to some of your favourite blogs on Go Hvar.
Favourite blogs would be the topics that took us more time to research, knowing very little about it to start with. So, feeling a minor earthquake in the supermarket one day got us reading about the local fault lines, and the history of major quakes in the area. Throw in a bit of history about the importance of the local seismic station and you have The Adriatic on a Plate. Still our go-to reference when we can’t remember the details!
In the same way, we loved getting to know one of the most famous early works in Croatian literature – Hektorović’s On Fishing and Fisherman’s Tales. It was written around the time of Shakespeare, so you can imagine the challenge of reading a travelogue in traditional old Croatian poetry format. It needed all the assistance of a scholars edition with modern Croatian translation, plus the expertise of Himself, a native Croatian speaker, to achieve our English summary!
On the more simple observation side, we take lots of photographs when out and about, and every so often we’ll collect them into a blog. A typical example would be It isn’t just an ordinary sort of boat, which features some of the local fishing boats, such a big part of island life.
These days we also write about our expeditions beyond Hvar to other places in Croatia. So we have a couple of blogs about Brač and Korčula, and a series on trips to Dubrovnik and up the northern Dalmatian coast, including one of our favourite outings – Enraptured by raptors on the Dalmatian coast.
4. You are obviously in love with the island. Tell us what makes it so special for you?
Of course all the Croatian islands are beautiful in their own way, with remarkably different characters. Hvar became very special to us almost immediately on our first visit. It was mid-April 2008 and there was a stormy jugo blowing, lots of rain and heavy fog covering Brač and the mainland, but as soon as we took the ferry to Hvar, it all miraculously evaporated, and we found ourselves in brilliant sunshine! And how beautiful is this island, with the green of the pine forests, honey-coloured rocks and the deep blue of the sea! Hvar has a very happy combination of gorgeous scenery, ancient history, stone villages, good food & wine, friendly local people, lots going on and all within a fairly compact area. We feel very much at home here, and really enjoy the peaceful island life.
5. Three things on Hvar you would recommend people to see which are off the beaten path.
Rent some bikes and explore the back roads around the Stari Grad Plain. You’ll get a real sense of connection to the island’s past. There are the remains of ancient Greek watchtowers, Roman villas, medieval chapels, and trims, the old field shelters. Get a map from the tourist office in Stari Grad and enjoy!
Go taste some wines! There are several wineries around the Svirce, Jelsa, Vrbanj and Vrboska area with tasting rooms and/or konobas that also serve food. We’re working our way around them, and wine tasting on Hvar is a journey of discovery!
Visit the seasonal village of Humac. On the road up you have spectacular views towards the northerly island of Brač, and if you take the path up to the panoramic telescope, you’ll see Korčula, our neighbour to the south. Great hiking opportunities, lots to see in the village with beautiful wildflowers in spring. And Konoba Humac is a great place for lunch or dinner!
6. How well is Croatia promoting itself internationally as a tourist destination, and what suggestions do you have to improve its promotion?
The best promotion of Croatia recently has been in the form of TV programs, such as Rick Steves, Anthony Bourdain, etc. They actually encourage the idea of going to more out of the way places that have special features to offer. We’ve noticed that many American travellers will opt for a cruise that calls in at Dubrovnik, and from that they believe they’ve seen Croatia. That’s kind of a shame, for although it’s a beautiful city, they do miss seeing so many other wonderful places. I like the look of the smaller groups of themed holidays – active hiking and biking, food and wine, sailing, culture trails, nature trails. Sadly, the coastal ferries are no longer an option for island hopping.
If you compare the websites for the Croatian National Tourist Board and the Scottish Tourist Board (Visit Scotland) they appear at first sight very similar for similar-sized countries with tourism an important economic component. However, once you start researching a trip to Scotland, their website is rather more helpful in offering different interest-based views, and importantly, it has a blog with some nice chatty personal stories. That definitely gives a friendlier impression!
7. How do you see the blogging scene in Croatia?
We love to read personal views of places, people and things in Croatia. Total Hvar has been invaluable from the moment it first started, as a way of knowing what was happening on the island. Other favourites in English that we read regularly are Secret Dalmatia, Taste of Croatia and Wines of Croatia. They’re real sources of information, and make very entertaining reading. More recently, we’ve also been enjoying Istria Outside my Window, for its very gentle observations on local life. And, of course, Total Croatia News has been covering all kinds of interesting topics that might otherwise have escaped our attention!
