6/27/2013

Military barracks (part 1), Pula, Croatia


Visited 20.4.2013 by skkye & jonahi. We made a trip of four weeks and hitchhiked through Europe to Croatia in five and half days. Our last driver, a lovely young woman, told us about these military barracks, Valelunga and Katarina. They are old, from Yugoslavian times, and abandoned after the war, probably in 1995. (I have noticed that in so many abandoned places there are signs about wars. In old houses of Finland it's the World War 2 and here it was the Croatian War of Independence.) This place was really huge, we could see similar military building on the opposite shore and also on the side where we decided to put our tent there was almost endless number of them. The buildings were of course quite destroyed, everything valuable was stolen a long time ago and they were like empty shells standing there by the lovely turquoise Adriatic Sea. The atmosphere was a bit creepy, but the calmness of the place told me that the scary times were long gone.

The barracks were also a place where local youngsters (and fishermen) were spending time, and when the darkness descended two French veterans came to our campfire and scared us a big time about junkies and bikers that lingered there and would see and smell our fire and find us. They left us with local emergency numbers and I spent a sleepless night panicking a bit - at last for no reason. Some people came there for afterparty at 6 a.m. but otherwise it was quite peaceful after all.

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