Monday 18 August 2008

First Blog

On the off chance anyone has combined the words 'Medieval' with 'Miscellany', 'Adriatic' with 'Adventures' and stumbled across this little cyber offering vomited out of the leviathan that is Google, welcome or dobrodošli!
Think of this initial post as a teaser, written in the depths of a rather soggy August afternoon in Northern Europe somewhere, before the real fun kicks off in September with much of the aforementioned miscellany of the medieval variety that just happens to be in Zadar on Croatia's Dalmatian coast. Recently (or so I have been informed by night owl-type chums), Zadar has been dubbed the new "Ayia Napa", a place of fun, frivolity and possibly a large dollop of other dubious goings on that involve lashings of sun, sand, sea and šljivovica (plum brandy). Mainly due to the fact it will be autumn when I am there so all the sun-burnt tourists will have been blown out by the winds of the Adriatic and I have a tendency to nod off at about 10.30pm these days, I shall be painting a somewhat different picture of this stunning town, hopefully a combination of day-to-day life with whatever gems I happen to find whilst rummaging in the archives of the city.
"Why?!" I hear you cry, "Why would any sane person choose to be dust-covered in an archive on one of the more beautiful coastlines in this hemisphere?". Jolly good question, and when I think of a decent answer I'll stick it up here but what immediately comes to mind is "can you think of another way to justify three months living on the Dalmatian coast?".
For now though should you or anyone you know happen to be interested in / capable of conceiving of a Europe prior to 1789, particularly a small corner of Europe nestled along the bottle-within- a-bottle that is the Adriatic, do come back at some point in September. I shall try my best to regale you of adventures with saints, kings, queens, confraternities, Venetian macchinations, lashings of art, architecture and a spot of the mundane that will probably cover things like paper cuts, broken boilers and gesticulating wildly in a slavic language whilst trying to order coffee. Oh, and please; no comments about spotty dogs.
Tootle pip for now.