Tourist Playground

A photograph of Nekula’s St. Moritz in today’s newspaper—the usual touristic piece funded by commercial interests highlighting adventures & food. The photograph however came as a surprise, the kind of loveliness on display quite unexpected. All the luscious green firs up immediately behind the town, sturdy buildings and no sign of boutiques and fanciness. Not at all what one expected. The very wealthy were preserved from crassness possibly, the cultivated, seriously wealthy. (Possibly they still existed and visited such sites.) Jewellery and watch makers in this alpine town were likely hidden in modest shop-fronts without any advertising apart from the family name perhaps. Glitz and dress-up excluded within that locale. Examining the wide angle shot over the morning tea one understood better how cousin Neki had spent thirty years in St. M. and developed such an affection for the place. In fact it presented a very close counterpart to the Montenegrin coast. There were always the mountains, the stand of firs ringing round and then the lake—Neki had mentioned a lake freezing over in winter and skaters taking over. Here the water was on the doorstep of the compact little town, like our village in Boka anchored to the life-giving source. Human presence and behaviour could only impact so far in such setting; visitors would be forced to adapt to the environment, adjust their rhythms and quiet themselves. There was an other worldly feel to this display, an uncanny absence of modernity and ugliness. The Sound of Music was filmed in such a setting, but the truth was the mountain domain exceeded the solace of music. In a recent mail Neki had been told he could be visited now in his adopted new home of Zurich, when St. Moritz had always been assumed to be impossible.