Parkiraliste - Looking For The Carpark Fairy

 Let's talk about parking.

Imagine if you will, the thousands upon thousands of people who are sitting on the beach (you've seen the pictures), jam packed with visitors. I arrive by bus, others do the same but most of those families travel on the autoput from the rest of Europe - France, I have Italians in the room beside me, Russians in the summer kitchen last night, Polish - they all have a car that needs to be parked. Somewhere. The old 'he's worth his weight in salt' could have been 'he's worth his weight in the carparks he can offer at his apartment!' 

If you live here permanently, you wouldn't even think about going into the centar by car - scooters, e bikes, walking (and you quickly learn the routes with the most shade).  There are no cars in the old part of town, and the ring road is a one way deadlock.

Any bit of spare ground is gold if you can park a car on it. And so... if you have a carpark that is your's or even if you think you have a proprietary right over a space, you lock it in.  By putting a chair in the middle of it to signal that it is yours. Even if it isn't.

Or by bolting one of the elaborate parking locks

to the ground that needs to be unlocked and dropped to the ground to park in the space.

And if you don't have a legit carpark, you just throw your car up onto the footpath, or park in the middle of the road. On a corner.  

I'm continually being told to 'walk on the footpath' but honestly it's a challenge with the cars all over it.

Someone recently set up this beautiful carpark in the centar, but maybe it didn't have a permit and now it's been shut down - who knows, bureaucracy works in mysterious ways.

There are conversations at the moment about how to address the parking problem,  maybe an underground carpark by the beach (sounds environmentally sound), maybe a big carpark  out of town with a shuttle bus. 

But how on earth would you transport your blow up pink flamingo in a bus....