Saturday, 15 February 2025
Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas - The editor and big chief of The Dubrovnik Times. Born in the UK he has been living and working in Dubrovnik since 1998, yes he is one of the rare “old hands.” A unique insight into both British and Croatian life and culture, Mark is often known as just “Englez” or Englishman. He is a traveller, a current affairs freak and a huge AFC Wimbledon fan.

Email: mark.thomas@dubrovnik-times.com

The low-cost airline Flydubai could soon be operating flights to Dubrovnik. According to a report on the specialised website EX-YU Aviation the airline is considering launching flights to both Dubrovnik and Ljubljana.

“In the next one month we will be announcing our set of new summer destinations and a lot of European routes are coming, especially in the South. We can't talk about them right now but some of them that have been mentioned, like Dubrovnik and Ljubljana, may be in our network,” commented the Vice President for Commercial Operations, Jeyhun Efendi to EX-YU Aviation. Adding that discussions between the airline and Dubrovnik Airport have already been held.

An interesting Chinese TV show entirely dedicated to Croatia will be broadcast in China in mid-December.

Last month the Chinese TV crew of the TV show titled Tian Tian Xiang Shang (‘’Learn well and progress more every day’’) visited Dubrovnik and Zagreb, where they filmed funny stories about Croatia, its people, culture, food, music etc.

While filming in Croatia, the Chinese were accompanied by the legendary Croatian football coach Miroslav Ćiro Blažević, the singer Jelena Rozga, the Croatian cellist Ana Rucner and the famous pianist Maksim Mrvica, who has already had a star status in China.

A few days ago, the second round of filming about Croatia titled ‘’Croatian Rhapsody’’ was recorded in the city of Changsha. It is interesting to note that ‘’Croatian Rhapsody’’ is one of Chinese fans’ favourite compositions of Maksim Mrvica.

The filming was held in the studios of the Chinese TV station Hunan TV. Apart from Mrvica, the TV show also featured the Croatian Ambassador to China Nebojša Koharović, the owner of the restaurant ‘’Stari Puntijar’’ Zlatko Puntijar with his daughter Matea, the Xiaoting Chen-Li family, owners of the well known Chinese restaurant ‘’Asia’’ in Croatia, as well as the Croatian singer Lana Jurčević.

The 90-minute long TV show about Croatia will be broadcast on the 15th of December and it is expected to attract the audience of one billion viewers, as much as the TV station Hunan generally covers in China. However, this number could be even larger because many people will watch the TV show online via internet links and social media.

This TV show will surely be a great tourist promotion of Croatia considering the fact that the new Chinese middle class, which can be hardly compared to any other in the world, spent $261 billion while travelling across the globe last year.

In its latest issue, The Economist has looked into the matter of naming airports in the Balkan region.

The British weekly newspaper considers that airports in the countries in the region were named in a way to annoy each other, thus, as a first example, they singled out Zagreb Airport describing it as a ‘’new futuristic edifice’’.

‘’It was renamed after Franjo Tudjman, the father of the Croatian independence movement. In the bloody war, Tudjman fought against Croatian Serbs who were supported by Serbia and who established a short-lived and separated Serbian republic on a third of Croatian territory. In 1995, most of these Croatian Serbs were exiled’’, wrote The Economist.

‘’Among victims of the ethnic cleansing were also cousins of the world’s most famous Serb and inventor Nikola Tesla. He was born in a Serbian family in 1856 on the territory of today’s Croatia; however, he immigrated to America. Both Serbs and Croats consider him as one of their own. In 2006, the airport in Belgrade was named after Nikola Tesla, which some of Croats found disturbing’’, continued The Economist.

The British newspaper stated a few more examples such as Priština Airport in Kosovo, which was named after Adem Jašari, the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army who was killed by Serbian forces. ‘’For Albanians he is a hero, and for Serbs he is a devil’’, wrote The Economist. Of course, there are no flights operating between the airports Nikola Tesla and Adem Jašari.

Interestingly, this whole story with naming airports started with Greeks in 1992 when they named the airport in Thessaloniki after Macedonia in order to spite the newly established independent Republic of Macedonia. Later in 2007, Macedonians did the similar thing; they named their airport in Skopje Alexander the Great. However, the new Macedonian government wants better relations with Greece thus, it is possible that the Macedonians will change the name of the airport in Skopje after all.

In addition, The Economist commented that there are still exceptions to this practice stating a failed attempt of Bosnians to name the airport in Sarajevo after the former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović. The airport in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica is simply called Podgorica, but it still bears the TGD code, meaning Titograd, as was the name of the Montenegrin capital while Montenegro was a part of the former Yugoslavia.

Dubrovnik is really getting into the winter spirit! Programme of the Dubrovnik Winter Festival has been successfully promoted all around – in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Split.

Dubrovnik Tourist Board promoted one of the most lovalble Dubrovnik festivals in Slovenia, or more precisely in Ljubljana in Stritarijeva street on Thursday, November 10th. Promotion continued at Cvijetni trg in Zagreb on Saturday and ended on Sunday, November 12th at Peristil of Dioclesians Palace in Split.

Vocal group Kase was entartaining everybody with traditional Christmas charol from Dubrovnik - Kolenda and everybody got the chance to try prikle, arancini and other Dubrovnik delicacies while learning the rich programme of fourth Dubrovnik Winter Festival. Dubrovnik Tourist Board made sure that everybody knows that Dubrovnik is the city for all seasons.

The Dubrovnik Winter Festival offers a rich and varied gastronomic, cultural and music program and this type of promotion has proved to be excellent considering the number of people gathered and interest of foreign and domestic tourists for Advent in Dubrovnik.

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The Dubrovnik American football club, the Dubrovnik Sharks, have released a new promo video. Cheerleaders, fully padded players and stunning scenes of the historic Old City all set to their very own song, written especially for this new video.

We were certainly impressed with this great video, which was produced by LMT Studio, and we’re pretty sure that you’ll all love it.

Check out the video

‘’Order books for ships in Croatian shipyards are full for the next three years’’, pointed out Gordana Ribarić, the manager of the Department for the manufacturing industry at the Industry and IT sector of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK).

On representation of Croatian companies at the international exhibition for maritime technology ‘’Europort 2017’’ held in Rotterdam from the 7th to the 10th of October, Croatian exhibitors acquainted with new trends in the Dutch shipbuilding industry and held a series of business talks with representatives of international shipbuilding associations.

Ribarić stated that Croatia is trying to keep up with trends in European shipbuilding such as the increase in the demand for cruise ships, especially for polar expeditions and offshore wind farms. She also emphasized that the Croatian shipbuilding industry has a long tradition and is a very significant branch of industry, which is highly oriented to exports and has a large impact on trade balance and employment in the country.

Following the good news from Rotterdam, it seems that in the next three years the busiest Croatian shipyard will be Brodosplit from Split, followed by Brodotrogir from Trogir, Uljanik from Pula and 3.Maj from Rijeka.

Europort is one of the most important fairs of maritime and shipbuilding industries in the Netherlands intended for shipbuilding and marine-related products and services.

The 38th edition of this year’s Europort fair gathered more than 11,000 exhibiting companies from 45 countries and more than 30,000 professional visitors.

After his first performance in Zagreb in 2000 and the second one in Osijek in 2006, the famous Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, guitarist, photographer, philanthropist and activist Bryan Adams returned to Croatia.

In front of almost 10,000 fans, Adams held a two-hour concert at the Zagreb Arena on the 9th of November 2017 as part of his world tour ‘’Get Up’’.

The Canadian rocker opened the concert with his well-known hits such as ‘’Heaven’’, ‘’It’s Only Love’’, ‘’Somebody’’, ‘’Summer Of ‘69’’ and (Everything I do) I Do It For You’’ and was more than surprised to see that the Zagreb audience was singing along with him.

Interestingly, the audience also responded well to the songs from Adams’ new album ‘’Get Up’’ such as ‘’You Belong to Me’’, ‘’Go Down Rockin’’’ and ‘’We Did It All’.

At the end of the concert Adams performed the acoustic version of the hit ‘’All For One’’ from the popular film ‘’Three Musketeers’’. On this occasion, the Zagreb audience sang along with Adams instead of Rod Stewart and Sting in a beautiful atmosphere filled with thousands of lit lights from mobile devices. It was a perfect and romantic ending of a great concert.

Property prices in Dubrovnik are still the most expensive in Croatia according to latest figures. The average price per metre squared of an apartment or house in Dubrovnik is 3,757 Euros. Whilst the capital Zagreb is at 1,736 Euros and Split at 2,430 Euros.

Property prices in Croatia in general have risen. In October house prices throughout Croatia rose by 5 percent compared to October 2016 with the most sought after properties in Split and Zagreb. After Dubrovnik the most expensive properties are in Opatija were prices average out at 2,955 Euros.

The huge difference between the prices on the Adriatic coast and the interior of Croatia continues. The average property price in Slavonia is still well under 1,000 Euros a metre squared, only Zagreb and Varaždin have average prices over 1,000 Euros.

One of the cheapest cities in Croatia for real estate is Sisak were prices in October averaged only 707 Euros per metre squared, meaning a large house with land averages out at around 150,000 Euros. For the same price it would be difficult to find a one-bedroom apartment in Dubrovnik.

The Voice of Dubrovnik

THE VOICE OF DUBROVNIK


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