From Dictator’s Island to Everyman’s Idyll

Many dictators of communist regimes lived like kings. Nowadays, anyone can visit their villas, spas and hunting grounds. Josip Broz Tito, having had almost 40 years in power in the former Yugoslavia, was perhaps the most self-indulgent leader in Europe, with hundreds of establishments for his exclusive use. Among them were the Brijuni Islands in the Adriatic Sea, just off the Croatian peninsula of Istria.

I grew up in Croatia under Tito’s personality cult. All of us schoolkids had to write letters to Tito once a year for his birthday; the best (mine never among them) were read aloud at a public ceremony. Twenty years ago, I emigrated to the U.S., and even after Tito died in 1980, to my mind Brijuni (pronounced bree-YOU-nee) remained an image of mysterious glamour. So when I visited Croatia last summer, I couldn’t resist the temptation to visit Tito’s seaside hideaway.

I drove 3 1/2 hours from the Croatian capital of Zagreb to the tiny Adriatic port of Fazana. That night I dined on a pizza with sardines and gazed across the water toward a few dim lights that marked the port of Brijuni, two miles away. (There are 14 islands in the Brijuni archipelago, most of them uninhabited rocks.)

In the morning, the ferry was an hour late, but that didn’t prevent the waiting tourists from singing. An old woman in black, a refugee from the war-ravaged Croatian town of Vukovar, was selling scarves and other touristy artifacts.

On arrival on the car-free island, I booked a room at Hotel Neptun, right on Brijuni’s little harbor. It’s not quite a town--three hotels on the waterfront, their cafes, the Brijuni Museum next door, a few villas and a boathouse. I set off to explore whatever was beyond that on a rented bike. Sweet whiffs of cypress and olive greeted me. In the meadows, dozens of reindeer grazed--yes, reindeer--their presence explaining why there was no underbrush below the cypresses. I passed a large golf course where a couple of men played, and red-clay tennis courts, empty because of puddles left by rain the night before.

The bike tires sang along on the paved paths. The rocks along the shore descended into the sea like staircases. Now and then I’d stop for a swim. In European fashion, the women on the beaches were topless. At a small bay, the site of old Roman ruins--temples to Venus, Jupiter and Mars--I came upon a small group of men and women swimming and sunbathing in the nude, oblivious to anyone passing by.

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The main island, grandly called Great Brijun, is not large, less than four square miles, but I couldn’t ride all the way around it. The western half was closed off, and armed military guards watched the gates. Behind the fence was the White Villa where Tito received visiting dignitaries.

Tito kept another of the islands, Vanga, entirely to himself. There he raised fine grapes and exotic animals. Photographs in the Brijuni Museum show him petting the animals and raising his glass in toasts, mostly in semi-profile because he considered that his best aspect. (The museum also has a small exhibit on Brijuni history and a sizable collection of Tito’s dead trophy animals.)

While Tito enjoyed himself royally, his numerous enemies were baking on the sun-scorched Goli Otok (Naked Island), a penal colony about 60 miles south.

The federation that Tito forged as Yugoslavia has fallen apart and into war, but not much has changed in Brijuni. Istria, not long ago half Italian and half Austrian, is now part of Croatia, and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman spends two or three months of the year in Tito’s villa. (A joke I’ve heard more than once: Why does Tudjman so frequently place his right hand over his left breast? So you can’t read the “Tito” on his shirts.)

Close to the restricted area, I ran into several men on bicycles who affected a leisurely air; however, they all had portable phones, crew cuts and sharp muscles--security, no doubt. A green military helicopter sat not far from the White Villa. Elsewhere on the island, security was either absent or unobtrusive.

In my day of exploring I saw remnants of Stone Age underground dwellings, relatively well-preserved ruins of Roman palaces and a walled Byzantine fort. I stepped into a 15th century church dedicated to St. Germanus, where, as the sun streaked in and livened up pale blue frescoes and inscriptions in ancient writing, I had a moment of meditation, tempting me toward piety.

To find out about the history of the island, I tagged along with an English-language tour group from my hotel, led by a jovial student of economics. (The tours are brief--basically, the museum and Tito’s animal park--and are arranged by the hotels depending on the guests’ language preference--English, Italian, German or, of course, Croatian.) In the waters between the big island and the mainland, our guide said, there was a battle between the Venetians and the Genoese in the 15th century. Supposedly, with scuba gear one can explore the remains of the sunken ships.

We ran across a monument to the 1905 winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, Robert Koch. It depicted a girl giving him flowers in thanks for his work on malaria.

Brijuni used to have swampy areas, which made malaria endemic. At the end of the last century, Paul Kupelwieser, a wealthy Austrian, bought the Brijuni archipelago and employed Koch to eradicate the malaria sources so Brijuni could be developed as a resort. Kupelwieser laid roads, fashioned parks, installed a water line from the mainland and built hotels and a racetrack.

After Kupelwieser’s death, his son, Karl, gambled away most of his inheritance in one night. At the end of the night, his wife left him for a Hungarian military officer. Unlucky in games as well as love, young Kupelwieser killed himself. At least he was lucky in death; I’ve never seen a tomb more tranquil than his, overlooking the bay through a screen of olive trees.

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The pride of Tito’s Brijuni was his “safari” park, which we toured in a little open tram. Camels, a gift of Libya’s Col. Moammar Kadafi, were grazing. An old Istrian bull, which looked very much like a Texas longhorn, stared at us. Zebras played with their young around a 1,500-year-old olive tree that still bears fruit. A pair of elephants, a gift of India’s Indira Gandhi, lumbered around their fenced area. One of them lifted her leg in greeting, a trick she had learned to entertain Tito’s guests.

Among the many birds in the aviary was a parrot dubbed “the last communist in Croatia” because if asked, “Whom do you love?” supposedly he answers, “Tito.” However, when I asked him in Croatian whom he loved, he stayed silent. Perhaps he noticed a tinge of English in my Croatian, and perhaps Tito had told him not to speak to Americans.

Later, in the museum, I looked at the pictures of Tito with other heads of state, including Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, on Brijuni in 1956. It was the occasion of Tito’s unsuccessful attempt to unite--and, no doubt, to lead--the nonaligned movement, which stood between the East and the West. Then there were photos of Tito with Fidel Castro, Tito with Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, Tito with socialists Willy Brandt and Salvador Allende and with movie stars such as Sophia Loren and Richard Burton.

Because of Tito’s foreign policy of advancing international peace, the Brijuni became known in Europe as the Islands of Peace. Lately, it has been the site of negotiations to restore peace in the former Yugoslavia. The first time around, success eluded the various warlords and mediators until the process was moved to a less idyllic place that inspired nobody’s envy, Dayton, Ohio. Still, there is an aura of peace here; the fighting has not spread to Istria. What failed elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia--peaceful coexistence of Croats, Serbs and Muslims--seems to work in this region, which is closer to Venice and Trieste, Italy, than to Croatia’s capital city, Zagreb.

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After my day of exploring, I sat on the terrace of my hotel and watched how the hues changed: From the intense blue of the sea--more intense than anywhere in the world, I believe--and the pale blue of the sky, there was a gradual reversal. The sky darkened, and the sea lightened into a silvery glimmer. Across the narrow strait, little towns perched on hilltops looked like boats, with church steeples like thick masts without sails.

Although I am basically a vegetarian, as a tourist I am eager to experiment. And so I enjoyed the entree du jour on the hotel’s dinner menu: venison in a sauce over “Parisian” noodles, helped along by the local red wine, all for $15.

Not much went on in the evening. Several yachts docked. A group of Russian businessmen strolled back and forth. The peacefulness allowed me to catch up on some reading and writing, while a pure and cool breeze played in the curtains.

I understood why James Joyce and Thomas Mann spent a lot of time on Brijuni; Mann mentions the island and its malarial climate in “Death in Venice.” The villa they stayed in is vacant and in disrepair. The doors squeak and hang loose on their hinges; cobwebs sparkle in the sunshine. There are plans to renovate the place, but in its present state, the old days are still there, caught in the cobwebs.

Departure the next day was slow. While drinking espresso to speed up the mood, I fell into a conversation with a genteel Italian couple. When they found out that I planned to write about Brijuni, they protested: “We like it so quiet. We walk into the sea without a worry in the world. We read, and we actually get along. Please, don’t write about this place. Let it be our secret.”

The delay finally was explained: The ferry had broken down. A Croatian Navy frigate gave us a ride to the coast. To sustain the farewell mood, when we docked in Fazana I had another tastefully plebeian pizza.

Novakovich is an essayist and short-story writer who also teaches at the University of Cincinnati. His new book is “Salvation and Other Disasters” (Grey Wolf Press).

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GUIDEBOOK

A Break in Brijuni

Getting there: The easiest way to visit Brijuni is to drive--it takes about an hour--from Trieste (or elsewhere in northern Italy) to the harbor at Pula, Croatia, where ferry and sightseeing excursions are available; a day trip costs about $30.

Where to stay: The hotels--Neptun-Istra and Karmen--are right on the harbor and charge the same rates: $56 per night with breakfast for two. I recommend the Neptun-Istra, the larger; English is spoken there. Telephone 011-385-52-525-100.

Guests at the Neptun-Istra can add lunch and dinner for $20 per person per day; wine is extra.

The ferry from Fazana, a few miles closer than Pula, is free for people with Brijuni hotel reservations.

Villas for four or more persons can be rented for about $150 per person per day. These may be reserved through National Park Brijuni; fax 011-385-52-521-367.