September 13, 2020
In Ogulin: a photo gallery
Don’t get me wrong here, and disrupt all your life plans to rush to Ogulin. It’s just a town, but has more appeal and more to say about it than I’d expected. We’re here by convenience really, because it’s too far to bike straight through to the next larger settlement. It has its surprises though.
One of which was our pizza dinner at Stross Fast Food, where we enjoyed easily the best pizza we’ve had in the country here. I should have taken a photo. We have leftovers, but who wants to see photos of cold leftover pizza?
Another is the impressive Frankopan Castle, which stands right in the middle of town and just across the street from our apartment. It was built in about 1500 by Bernardin Frankopan, one of the most powerful noblemen of the time and the feudal lord over much of the surrounding region.
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The other big surprise - the biggest surprise really, since there are of course old castles everywhere over here - is the caves. There is a huge, yawning cave opening at the bottom of a deep ravine about a hundred yards from the apartment, right in the heart of town. And that’s just one cave. There are two other large caves beneath town, one long one running beneath the main street of town. Ogulin is the only town in Croatia and one of the few in the world apparently that is literally built on top of a complex of caves.
We aren’t cavers and didn’t have the time or energy to explore them, but if you were this would be a great place to come. There are walking route maps of the town for exploring the cave system.
Finally, there’s the ephemeral event in the central park this afternoon. A peculiar, pageant-like procession of people dressed in traditional costume, promenading slowly along a spectator-lined path from the front of the church to the center of the park. They walked in ones and twos, slowly, while an announcer commented upon them over a loud speaker as a band of musicians strummed a variety of stringed instruments behind her back - presumably describing the costumes and traditions, where they’re from, and so on. It’s quite a slow event, with the next person or pair beginning to stroll down the line only after the previous one had exited the arena to widespread applause.
A bit of an odd scene, really. I asked one of the spectators what was taking place. This is a surrogate for their traditional fall festival that would occur this weekend, and would ordinarily involve singing and dancing - maybe like the scene we witnessed last week in Samobor. The traditional festival was called off this year due to the pandemic, but they still wanted to honor the tradition and the cultures it represents.
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