Exotic holiday - in Istria

1972 Does everybody remember their holidays through music? I certainly do, and none more than my first real foreign holiday

We were entering our final six months at school. Six of us decided to celebrate by going on holiday together. To the sunshine, the beaches, the Med. But somehow we decided that we were not going to go to Spain or Majorca, where most Brits were heading. We decided,  for some reason I cannot recall, on Yugoslavia. There was one company specialising in package holidays there. I took home the Yugotours brochure and came under its spell as I gazed at the endless photos of the glittering blue Adriatic. It appeared though that the more southerly resorts - Dubrovnik, which I had heard of, and others which I had not - were out of our price range. So we settled on what I now know as Istria, and the village of Rabac. We booked it in January. I constantly went back to the brochure as I waited for the winter nights to end, and I was constantly playing this track from the majestic new Yes album. It seemed to speak of the colours and scents and freshness of the exotic country that awaited us.

And the holiday lived up to and surpassed all expectations. The sea was blue, the water crystal clear, the pine trees bewitched with their scent, and mixed with the exotic smells of grilled meats and different tobacco. But most of all it delivered the opportunity to engage with the locals working in the hotels. The guys, bold and macho, who thrashed us at football, and the girls with their devastating Slavic looks, who would hold your gaze the way English girls never would; and the bewildering variety of new alcoholic drinks they would ply us with deep into the night as the crickets kept up their incessant chatter. I was totally, utterly hooked! And so many years later when I fell in love with Istria all over again, "Roundabout' was on the car stereo.