Guide through events for April - Istria

Vinistra 2005 -( 29.04.-03.05.) Hall of SRC Veli Jože, Poreč
«Let us drink. Why wait for the lighting of the lamps? Night is a hair's breadth away. Take down the great goblets from the shelf, dear friend, for the son of Semele and Zeus gave us wine to forget our pains.» Thus spake Alkaios from the island of Lesbos, while wine-loving mortals can go to Poreč, to the 12th international wine fair of Vinistra, and delight their palates with the charms of the alchemic process of turning grape juice into Spiritual Matter and with the tastes of the best Istrian and other olive oils, brandies, prosciutto, cheeses and other products. If you don’t intend to sniff glasses, spit into buckets and make similar wine tasting tricks, but just want to creep in there to forget the factory-made, biochemical fusions of wine features that lead to the darkest synesthesias in our language, I believe you’ll come to the right place. You won’t have to imagine, like Bukowski, Scottish castles overgrown with moss, an azure sky and cumuli to gulp your favorite nectar. But take it easy, you don’t want to trade the wine vision for a cerebral fusion or fission.

CESARIA EVORA (10. i 11.4. u 20 h) Zagreb
KD Vatroslav Lisinski
10 and 11 April, 20 h
Tickets: 200, 240, 270 kn

The queen of morna is coming to Zagreb again and promoting her ninth studio album, awarded with a Grammy, Voz dAmor. Born in 41 in Cape Verde Islands, she was 47 when she made her first album with the help of the young Frenchman Josė da Silva. Her third album, Mar Azul, attracted the attention of European audiences and started what eventually became the global myth of a barefoot singer with a cigarette in her hand. She mostly sings in Creole Portuguese, a mixture of African and French dialects. She describes her music, morna, as blues because it expresses her painful life. Evora’s blues of her green islands often tells the hard tale of slave trade and isolation of her country. She blends sentimental folk melodies, full of yearning and sadness, with the sounds of acoustic guitar, violin and clarinet. Although most people in the audience don’t understand a word she is singing, Cesaria has found a unique language understood by all the suffering, loving, poor and melancholic people around the world, a language of a unique music that takes you to a small house near the ocean, among white sand and African rhythms…

16 - 17 April-OFF ROAD 4x4 BARBAN
The Istrian village of Barban welcomes the fans of mud and off-road vehicles for the seventh time. The organizer of the event, Klub Off Road 4x4 Barban, announced some new things: a largely changed route of the roadbook, a longer track, more "extreme" tests on the hard track and many small details that must remain the "organizer's secret" until the start of the race. For the owners of "ordinary" off-road vehicles, who will find satisfaction on the easier track, there is a changed and longer track with all kinds of natural surfaces.

16 April OLIVE OIL FAIR-House of Youth, Vodnjan
Our bonny peninsula is known not only for its truffles and wines, but more and more for its olive oil, as even the most obtuse people must have noticed over the past few years. One of such events, which never pass unnoticed, is the Vodnjan Olive Oil Fair. Experts believe that trees in southern Istria make the best olives, which are transformed by skilled peasants into the best and tastiest oil. For yet another year, the House of Youth in Vodnjan will give a warm welcome to all exhibitors and visitors.

Unique Play of Nature

Apart from the Brijuni Islands, the only national park in Istria, there are six different categories of natural heritage under protection.

The mountain massif of Ucka, also the highest peak in Istria, was proclaimed a nature park, since it is the natural environment of several protected plant and animal species.

Special reserves of botanical-forest vegetation are Motovun Forest and Kontija Forest, a special marine reserve is the sea and sea bed of Lim Bay, whereas Datule near Barbariga is a special paleontological sight.

Istria also has six forest parks - Zlatni rt, Sijana, Skaraba, Busoler, Kasteja Peninsula and Soline Hill near Vinkuran, and nine protected landscapes - surroundings of Istarske toplice near Buzet, Lim Bay, Pazin abyss, Rovinj archipelago and coastal area, area of Gracisce - Pican, area around Labin, Rabac and Prklog Cove, upper and lower Kamenjak with Medulin archipelago and area of Ucka.

There are five botanical nature sights, mostly centuries-old trees, one zoological nature sight - Pincinova Cave, three geomorphologic - Markova Cave, Podbaredine Cave and Vela Draga below Ucka, and one geological nature sight - Fantazija Quarry. Along with the line of cypresses at the Rovinj cemetery, the park in Nedescina is also considered a monument of park architecture.

Plitvice Lakes National Park

The natural attributes of the Plitvice Lakes National Park, uniqueness and sensibiliry of that phenomenon, deserve a full attention of our visitors. Recreational aspect of stay and the amazement with beauty of the area that conquers by its natural diversity and harmony of shapes and colours in any of the seasons, is based on many mutually conditioned natural characteristics.
That is a specific geological and hydrogeological phenomenon of karst. The series of 16 bigger and a few smaller lakes, gradually lined up, separated by travertine barriers for which the period of the last ten thousand years was crucial, and which were ruled by ecological relations similar to those of today - suitable for travertine depositing and for the origin of the lakes - are the basic phenomenon of the National Park.
Travertine forming plants, algae and mosses have been and still are playing an important role in their creation, thus making a very sensitive biodynamic system.
Transitive type of climate between coastal and continental with microclimatic diversities makes summer pleasant and sunny, while on the other side winter is relatively long, harsh and snowrich. There are large forestry complexes in the Park area, of which some sections are protected as a special reserve of forestry vegetation due to its primeval characteristics (Corkova uvala virgin forest). Diversity of places and living conditions makes possible for numerous species of plants and animals in watery and terrestrial areas of the Park to develop with no disturbancy.
It should be stressed that all fundamental things that do determine the Park, make a very fragile structural and functional complex, sensitive to natural changes and to incautious human actions.
UNESCO has declared it with all rights as the World's natural inheritance. All that was mentioned in this short introduction shows a big importance and the reason why this Natural History Guide of The Plitvice Lakes National Park is being published. It should come into hands of every single visitor and draw his attention to numerous attractions of the first Croatian National Park.