On the trail of Red Zora

We have to admit, we were not familiar with “The Red Zora and Her Gang” by Kurt Held. Until our retreat participant Maria heard that we wanted to go to Croatia, pulled the book out of her sleeve and said: Read it. Do we have. Not quite yet, but enough that we wanted to go to the setting of the story, to Senj. The story - by the way, not entirely untrue, Held actually met a red Zora and her gang on a trip to Yugoslavia in 1940, is wonderfully embedded in the place at that time, its location by the sea, the view of the islands of Rab and Krk and the above City towering castle. Well, the houses of the old town have seen very little renovation work since then. A few restaurants and cafés for tourists have grown out of just a few ground floors. Thanks to EU funding, there is now an extensive network of paths that lead to the castle, with plenty of benches to relax on, as well as trash cans and lavish lighting.

The market square, the scene of busy activity in the book, serves - as unfortunately so often - as a parking lot.

We had a great pitch on a small, family-run campsite right by the sea. Almost even nicer than the place itself was the small restaurant attached to it, where the rest of the family who were not at registration could be found. English chart soft songs were played that were just above the pain threshold. However, if you wanted to drink a second glass of wine or even coffee, you had to endure that the playlist in random mode kept returning to titles that had already been played.

We lasted through two glasses of wine AND coffee. And at the end I was allowed to photograph the ingenious four-group portafilter machine!!