Julia Molden continues the diaries of an amazing group of students embarking on the first full day of our 2024 Croatian Language and Culture Course. The week starts with an expertly guided tour around Rab Town and Julia highlights some of its fascinating rich history.

In and Out and Round About

And so starts our 2024 adventure with a group of eighteen of us meeting outside the tour office in Rab town and being introduced to our guide Romana.  When we were all safely arrived, off we set across town, up steps and down steps and along the stone streets of the Old Town on our way, firstly to the cathedral, with the intention of paying a quick visit before the Sunday morning service started at 10.00 am.  When we got there people were already arriving for the service but we managed to have a quick look inside before leaving and setting off up and down more stone steps and along more stone streets to visit more churches as well as monasteries, all located within the picturesque Old Town.  After a couple of hours of this, we finally arrived at a café/shop for refreshments and a demonstration of how to make Rapski kolać or Rab cake, a speciality of the island.  While we enjoyed lemonade and some samples of various biscuits and cake, a young lady demonstrated the making of Rab cake before asking for volunteers to have a try.  Phil had the first go, followed by Trish, both with reasonable success, and then after a shot of rakija we set off again across town towards our lunch stop.

We had been asked to choose between fish or meat in advance, and the fish eaters were served with a starter of thinly sliced octopus, followed by a meaty white fish with sauté potatoes, while the meat eaters had a starter of carpaccio followed by a pasta dish with strips of beef.  Suitably refreshed, we all piled into a minibus bound for Kampor to visit, yes, another church with a museum and then on to an old Italian concentration camp established in July 1942 during World War W2.

All the time Romana was telling us about the rich history of the island, from the time when it was settled by the Illyrians in 350 BC, through its times as a Roman municipality, in the first century BC, and as the centre of the eastern coast of the Adriatic when it was called Felix Arba.  The patron saint of Lopar, St Marino, moved to Italy and founded the Republic of St Marino there in the 4^th century.  From the 11^th to the 13^th century Rab was governed by Croatian rulers, as well as members of the Venetian republic, as a free Adriatic commune.  It was sold to Venice in the 15^th century and was involved in the Battle of Lepanto, between allied Christian forces and the Ottoman Turks, in October 1571. It continued to belong to Venice, until Napoleon came to these parts at the beginning of the 19^th century.

We rounded off our tour of Rab by taking a short walk along the south coast, and then moved on to a beach at Supertarska Draga, but by then a refreshing drink was more of a draw than a swim in the very shallow bay, although this was a wonderful bay for families with small children, or for those who want to sit down in the water rather than swim!