Grove Koger

In May 1911, Thomas Mann and his wife visited the island of Veli Brijun (VEL ee bree YOUN) off the southwestern coast of the Istrian Peninsula. But what might have been an idyllic holiday didn’t turn out that way. The weather was bad and, says Mann’s biographer Ronald Hayman, there were no sandy beaches. So the couple moved on to the Venetian island of Lido, which was destined to become the fatal setting for Mann’s Death in Venice. 

In that famous novella, you’ll remember, the writer Gustav Aschenbach takes a night train to Trieste and a boat to Pula as he makes his way to an unidentified Adriatic island. Lying “not far off the Istrian coast, it had beautifully jagged cliffs facing the open sea, and it was populated by rustics wearing colorful tatters and speaking a language full of outlandish sounds. However, it kept raining, the air was oppressive,” and there was no “gentle, sandy beach.” So, after ten days, the writer takes “a swift motorboat” back to the naval base at Pula and a “steamship that was about to weigh anchor for Venice.”

On our 2013 visit to Croatia, Maggie and I followed in a few of Mann’s (and Aschenbach’s) footsteps, visiting Veli Brijun as well as Fažana (fah ZHAH nah), an attractive little seaside community across a narrow strait from the island. We had taken a long bus ride over Istria’s grassy, rolling hills and a much shorter one from Pula. And while we planned to return to Pula for half a day to see its famous Roman amphitheatre, Fažana promised a more relaxing experience.

Like most of Europe, Istria has a complicated history, one involving the Austrian Empire, Italy, Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Slovenia in the last two centuries alone. But you could be forgiven for thinking that not much has ever happened in wonderfully placid Fažana itself. Look hard, and you’ll find a mention here and there in the history books. But broaden your search to include the Brijuni (bree YOO nee) Islands, and you’ll see repeated references to Josip Broz Tito. The Yugoslavian dictator was fond of the area, and made Veli Brijun his summer residence.

The influence of Italy is hard to miss in the peninsula. Italian has been the second official language of Croatian Istria since 1994, and it’s also an official language of the areas of Slovenia bordering on Italy. And Fažana itself is very Italian in appearance.

Istria’s climate is a bit milder than that of the southern Croatian coast, but when we were there in late summer, we couldn’t have asked for pleasanter days. (Mann really should have postponed his trip.) Our hotel, the Marina, lay on the seafront, and every morning we enjoyed caffè macchiatos (more robust versions of cappuccinos) and breakfast on its terrace, gazing out across the water to the islands on the horizon.

One day we booked a tour of Veli Brijun that took in its modest assortment of Roman ruins and exotic animals (most of them gifts from heads of state visiting Tito). But my most vivid memories are of two of the island’s autochthonous species—its amiable goats and the large noble pen shells (Pinna nobilis) that we saw living in the island’s little harbor. The shells, which can grow to a length of four feet, are now in serious decline throughout the Mediterranean and have been declared a protected species.

About those sandy beaches, whose absence so disappointed Mann and his character—there’s one now, apparently constructed since Mann’s time. Hartleben’s 1913 Handbook of Dalmatia mentions a “well-kept beach,” although it doesn’t specify whether it’s sand or pebble. But there are none of the “beautifully jagged cliffs” that Aschenbach saw. It’s an imaginary journey that he’s on, after all, and those cliffs may well be harbingers of the dangerous beauty awaiting him in Venice.

Maggie’s photographs show our hotel in Fažana and a friend I made on Veli Brijun. The postcard of the island’s harbor dates from 1913 and the map from 1912. The photograph of a noble pen shell was taken by Hectonichus and is reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia.

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