Split is my hometown and it might seem to you that it’s only natural for my first article to be about it, but actually that is not the true. The true reason was that today I run across an article in New York Times by Alex Trevar. Now, I also need to admit that I’ve deliberately chosen my title to make you think that Alex is claiming that Split is only a stopover (and that I disagree) but that is not the case here. In fact, I agree with Alex 100% who seems to have discovered Split as a great place to visit (and to stay!) despite its reputation of a stopover!

But Alex makes it very clear at the first page: “Irrefutably, the numbers bear out the image of Split as a stopover. According to the Split Tourism Board, about 188,000 visitors stayed overnight in Split last year, but about 4.5 million passed through town. Split’s reputation, however, seems certain to change…”

The numbers speak for themselves but numbers will also get you nowhere. You must already know that “numbers” and “reputation” lie sometimes and in this case it is going to be revealed if you just ask “why is it like that?”. Because there is nothing to see and do in Split? No way (there it goes into my headline)! I’ll give you 2 reasons: 1) there is not enough hotels in Split and that lowers number of overnight stays, 2) Split is Dalmatia’s largest city and the “Transportation hub” of Dalmatia which pumps up the numbers of passes through.

So, the truth, as Alex too has discovered: “…But the thought of the city as merely a way station seems silly when you walk through the Old Town with the sun throwing golden morning light across the white stone streets…“.
“…It wasn’t until last May that I decided to explore Split - loaded with night life, historical and cultural sites, and around nine miles of beaches with crystal clear water - and started to see how shortsighted I’d been…”

(more…)

Couple of years ago my day job started to stress me a lot. I love the industry (IT, Internet) but getting up in the morning suddenly became a problem while just a year ago I was jumping out of my bed and running to work full of enthusiasm. Someone once said to me: “blessed is the man who enjoys going to work, but even more the one that also happily returns home”, and now I wasn’t enjoying going to work anymore (and going back home was never easy for a workaholic like me). So, I quit my job and found something much less stressful, moved into new flat with my girlfriend and bought some land with a plan to invest in some tourist capacities. Trust me when I say that this was a huge change in my life!

Also, I started thinking about building this site - “Croatia Holidays - a personal perspective”. Croatian tourism was always my interest and I’m quite passionate about a lot of topics there. That’s why I decided to invest in it and that’s why I decided to start this site too. I want to share my passion with you and enjoy in the process! There was always something fulfilling working in travel industry, working with all those happy people on vacation, helping them find apartments, hotels and other accommodation, beaches, bus lines, airlines information, weather, maps, etc. I remember this from my student jobs and the time when my family rented apartments to tourists in the summer.

I will try to transform all of that into this website/blog/directory. I will try to help you with your vacation in Croatia, gather interesting and useful data, give tips and guides, and answer your questions. I’ll do all I can to move away from cold professional articles served by news agencies or sales agents that use it only as wrappings for services they sell. I will give you “a personal perspective” and make sure you know that human beans, made from flash and bones, are behind this and not some multinational travel agency. I hope you stick around and see what we can offer you. I promise you that content will constantly grow on croatia-croatia.info!

And before the end I need to point out just one more thing. It’s about English language. I already made a static page here but want to repeat it again:

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English is only my second language and I apologize to all of you that find my articles full of errors making them difficult to read. I hope you will find my articles useful anyway.

When I was thinking about starting this site this was one of my biggest worries and I almost gave up the idea. But then, some wise men persuaded me to continue, to turn this around and make it my advantage. A “personal perspective” of a Croat about Croatia is rarely written in perfect English, they said, and what about all those Germans, Italians, French and other tourist traveling to Croatia - they may find it even easier to read - it’s their second or third language too.

But I promise you I will try to improve it every way I can. I will try to get them proof-read by native English speaking people, translate them from my language, and pay copywriters on some topics… but all this depends on funds available, funds raised from advertising and affiliate links.

You can help too. Please DON’T HESITATE to email me with corrections and improvements. I could use your help.

Thank you for your understanding,

Psiho
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