As I descended the steep stairs of the hotel located in the 19th century Villa Giardino in the center of Bol on Brac, I looked at numerous photos that testify to the turbulent history of this island and the town of Bol itself. On one of them was a massive wooden bed, and underneath it was written that the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph slept in it.
True, on April 23, 1875, the ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy spent the night in this house, which then belonged to the rich captain family Kraljević, during a visit to Brač. Bol was just one of many stops on his Dalmatian tour. Francis Joseph I stayed in these parts that year from April 10 to May 12, that is, a little more than a month. According to the most detailed list I can find in the historical archives, his itinerary, which would be the envy of many of today's globetrotters, looked like this: Zadar - Rab - Pag - Benkovac - Karin - Obrovac - Šibenik - Skradin - Krka waterfalls - Knin - Vrlika - Sinj - Muć - Drniš - Siverić - Trogir - Split - Brač - Omiš - Makarska - Klis - Trilj - Imotski - Zagvozd - Vrgorac - Opuzen - Metković - Klek - Slano - Ston - Gruž - Dubrovnik - Lokrum - Kotor - Meljine - Lastovo - Budva - Risan - Dragalj - Herceg Novi - Konavle - Cavtat - Mljet - Orebić - Korčula - Trpanj - Jelsa - Stari Grad - Milna - Hvar - Komiža - Vis.
It should be noted that this extensive tour took place three years before the Austro-Hungarian occupation of BiH, which at that moment was still in the hands of the Turks. The places he occupied today are located on the territories of two countries - Croatia and Montenegro.
The day before the emperor's arrival in Zadar, the armored ship "Kaiser", the ship "Radetzky", the corvette "Frunsberg" and the gunboat "Nautilus" anchored in front of the Zadar waterfront. The following morning, the yacht "Fantasia" and the ship "Gargano" arrived, and the imperial yacht "Miramar" arrived a little after 10 o'clock. It was a new iron ship 82 meters long, built in London, powered by steam, armed with two cannons. It had several richly furnished salons, rooms and work rooms. Hundreds of boats surrounded the imperial ships along the waterfront in order to see and greet the emperor.
On the trip, the emperor was accompanied by Zadar photographers Nikola Andrović and Josip Marko Goldstein, who published in Zadar in 1876 Light-painting album describing his travels. vel. Emperor King Franz Joseph I. through Dalmatia in 1875. The album contained 24 large photographs showing places and festivities in certain cities.
I am sure that hardly any of the people who come to Bol today know that Emperor Francis slept there. And judging by the languages I hear on the waterfront, they are mostly descendants of his former subjects - Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Austrians (or Germans), and in recent years tourists from Serbia have returned again.
Last year, Željko Stašević was the director of the Blue Sun hotel group, which, like the Sunčani Hvar hotel group (also in Belgrade on the water, Burj Khalifa and much more), is owned by Muhamed Alabar, whose fortune Forbes estimates at 3,2 billion euros. He told me that the airport on Brac is part of the Blue Sun hotel group. I immediately thought how great it would be if there was a direct flight from Belgrade to Brač, which would significantly shorten the journey for everyone from Serbia coming to this and all the surrounding Dalmatian islands - Hvar, Korčula, Vis... They would avoid the Split crowd between the airport and the port there, and save at least two or three hours.
And it happened that the email about it, which I sent to a friend from Air Serbia, resulted in the Belgrade-Brač plane flying twice a week from this spring.
In the meantime, Željko left this hotel group and went to London, and Alabar opened "Bristol" in Bol, the hotel's namesake, which he has been running successfully in Belgrade for several years.
...Beautiful Zlatni Rat…
When you type Bol na Brač on Google, on the first page of the search you will see a photo of Zlatni Rat, probably the most famous beach on the Adriatic. We are talking about a cape (rât) about a thousand meters long that laps into the clear and transparent sea. The beach is also special in that it changes shape and position, depending on the direction of the wind. However, this is one of those places that is more beautiful in drone footage than in person: although it looks like a sandy beach from the air, you will be greeted by small pebbles, the crowd is huge, and the water is not that clear and clean either. The winds that constantly blow here are suitable for kite lovers, so if you plan to swim a little further from the shore, be careful not to be "picked up" by a kite. In 2008, the Red Bull Golden Jump, the world's unique beach jumping kiteboarding competition, was organized here.
The people of Brač, especially the residents of Bol, are very proud of their partisan past. Namely, at the very beginning of the war in 1941, partisans broke into a military warehouse located in Bol and confiscated machine guns, military rifles, bombs, ammunition boxes and equipment for soldiers. The confiscated weapons and equipment found there were temporarily hidden in the attic of the local church, and then transferred to a cave. Because of this, the arrest of prominent Boljani who fled the place was ordered. From those fugitives, the first armed strike group on Brac was formed. The Ustaše authorities, with the help of the existing gendarmerie, tried to deal with the group, but failed.
photo: Robert Choban...and a monument to NOP fighters
On the fourth of August, an Ustaša punitive expedition arrives on Brač, blocks Bol, searches the area and arrests a dozen citizens, but fails to stop the strike group because the NOP already enjoyed great support from the people. Under the leadership of Josip Marinković Bep, the fighters carried out the first armed action in early 1942: they attacked three gendarmes who were returning from Bol towards Selc and Pučišće. On that occasion, the gendarmerie commander was liquidated, while the other two surrendered. Then their weapons, around 600 bullets and 50 kilograms of food were confiscated. On June 22, 1942, a company of Brac partisans was founded from this and other strike groups that formed on Brac.
On Sunday evening, there were many people on the waterfront in front of the Church of Our Lady of Carmel. Loudspeakers were thrown out for those who were listening to mass on the square in front because they could not fit into the church.
About ten meters away, a completely different painting in the "Branislav Dešković" Art Gallery. The opening of the exhibition was in progress Eine Kleine Molo Retrospective. It is about the works of an artist called Ivica Jakšić Čokrić Puko, who presents himself as an "anti-fascist artist, a fighter against tourism, democracy and Coca-Cola". The 71-year-old artist from Brac, with gray hair tied in a bun and a beard like an old man from Hemingway's novel, together with two other colleagues, recited and sang some kind of parodic cover of Oliverova Staircases in version Serenade with the mention of various Brač toponyms.
I looked at the later works, they are really original, paintings, sculptures and installations. Especially the pinecone installation signed with the lines: "When I was in Paris, I saw Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa is picking pinecones, you can see half of her p."
"Disinterested" Czech tourists passed by the Gallery, as Krleža would say, with ice cream in their hands they spelled out the German inscription on the exhibition poster and continued on. For the mass tourism of the 21st century, such contents are completely superfluous.
