Brijuni Islands

Thursday through Saturday, March 24-26, 2001.  We’ve had a busy few days here.  Steve was involved in a conference at the university here and all the social events that went along with it.  The dinners in the evening were really special and the trip to Brijuni Island on Saturday was very nice too.

We can now say we’ve been to Great Brijuni Island!  (Everyone keeps asking us that here.)  It’s one of the 1244 islands of Croatia.  Little Brijuni Island is only available in the summer months.  We went with a group from the conference which turned out to be a good thing – the tour of the island was in English.  Hooray!  We could understand what was being said!  

English was the common language at the conference so that was good for us too.  We met interesting people from Italy, Germany, Estonia, Iran, the UK and of course Croatia; lots of great conversations going on during the dinners and the trip to Brijuni Island.

We took a ferry to the island and when we saw it, well, let’s just say we weren’t sure we’d be getting back to the mainland – or even to the island!  The boat had way too many people on it, standing room only.  We were happy to learn the island was only 15 minutes away.  Obviously the boat made it without sinking but we had our doubts that it would.

Marshall Tito resided on Great Brijuni Island when he was the president of Yugoslavia and heads of states from all over the world visited him on this island.  The island is also famous for the Roman ruins you can still see there.   The Romans quarried the limestone and basically stripped the island of its trees.  There is also a 1600 year old olive tree that was struck by lightning and is still producing olives!

A very rich Austro-Hungarian bought the island and spent a fortune fixing it up.  By the time he bought the island it was covered in swamps (due to lack of trees and clay soil) and full of mosquitoes carrying malaria.  He drained the swamps, planted a tremendous amount of vegetation, and got a scientist to come to the island and this man (Koch) developed the use of quinine to cure malaria.  A few years later Koch received the Nobel prize in medicine for something else, I can’t remember what!  Guess it’s true – the mind is the first thing to go as you age!  The island became THE place to vacation for the aristocracy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Marshall Tito also made improvements to the island and now it’s a national park with a wildlife preserve on it.  No one lives at the island and the 2 hotels are only open in the summertime.

Go to the website listed below to see the photos of Brijuni Island. 

https://picasaweb.google.com/100390625521976559356/BrijuniIslands#