Dateline Solin: the Reef

Greben - the "Reef" - lies in the center of a great stone basin several kiolmeters across.  At the top, stark stone walls scorched by the sun in the summer, battered by the bura winds in the winter, rise sheer into the circle of sky.  Farther down, scrub oak and other tough, wiry, prickly plants take hold. From Greben, just past the WC "Pis" in the back,  you can follow the slopes downwards until they debouch -  as it were - into the city of Split and the Adriatic just beyond.

Greben itself is an unlikely structure in a country of the unlikely and improbable.  Constructed of two shipping containers supplemented by plantings and add-on sheds, it seems to be a tiny grocery market situated on a dirt strip alongside the highway climbing to Klis.  Cars roar in and out all day for cigarettes or a quick snack or coffee from the vending machine.  Now and then, older men, for the most part, crowd in and purchase a half-liter bottle of pivo -  Kaltenberg or Karlovatcho or Ojusko - then take it behind the store where a small arbor has been constructed, thickly covered by some sort of vining plant or weed that along with a frequent breeze provides relief from the fierce sun.  In this intimate shade, there is a battered table or two and a few chairs and lots of empty beer bottles and cigarette stubs.  During the day, this is the social center of the neighborhood, as local men joke or bait or rail, often in non-stop monologues.  Many of them are retired or are taking a break from their work in loose free-lance jobs.

If the arbor is already occupied, the men may take a delapidated chair to the shade of some slight trees that run alongside the two bocche ball courts that are Greben's most striking feature.  Drinking their beer, they shout conversations to those sitting across the courts in the arbor, fully participating in the social melee. 

As evening brings some cooling, more men arrive and the focus moves out from the arbor to the ball courts constructed of white painted concrete blocks.  Here games may last all night, with the many on-lookers ringing the courts on homemade benches or chairs, furnishing non-stop comment, advice and admonition.  Losers, of course, buy the beer.