Day 17—Time stands still on Great Brijuni Island

This island was Tito’s private summer retreat for 50 years until his death in 1979.  The country then opened access to it in 1984 and deemed it a National Park.  During his rule, he continuously invited politicians and celebrities of all stripes for a retreat, negotiations and hopefully a gift or two.  Preferably exotic animals.

The Man.

His vision, after WW II was to create a Nonaligned World.  Yugoslavian had the Soviets breathing down their neck from the north and NATO wanting his allegiance as well.   He felt a ‘third order’ was necessary and got India and Egypt to sign on.  Over time and indeed still, there are 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement.  It represents more than half of the world’s population, but in today’s modern world, irrelevant. 

 

Part of the world map in the museum.  Note: Kanada is Canada, Meksico is Mexico and SAD is USA. 
You provide your own commentary here.

The irony of Great Brijuni Island is that the museum was created in 1986 to honor Tito and hasn’t changed since.  A real time warp.  It is really a museum of a museum.  School groups and mostly German tourists and we admire the world as it saw Tito in the glory days of 1979 with black and white photos of Tito do everything and meeting everyone on his beloved island.  Since most of the exotic animals given to him in those heady days died, we find them poorly stuffed and deteriorating in a natural history display.

 

This is a cool, living lizard.

We also visited Pula on the coast.  A lot more interesting and a lot older than Grijuni Island.  It has some of the top Roman ruins in Croatia.  Its amphitheater is one of  Rome’s best preserved.  Although just the sixth largest, it is impressive.  Indeed, it is still used for concerts.

In town, we came upon a Roman Forum.  Bombed and patched by the Allies in WW II. The Arch of Sergius.  (Notably Michelangelo’s favorite Roman artifact in Pula).  A great inscription on it states, “Silvia of the Sergius family paid for this with her own money.” And an intact Roman floor mosaic by the shipyards.  This was discovered as pula-ites were cleaning up after the war and discovered 6 feet below the current ground level.  One has to wonder what else lies below Pula from 2000 years ago.