Saving Motel Plitvice

An amateur photographer’s quest to preserve the history of an iconic building.

With Nik Maierle.

Listen: “Saving Motel Plitvice” (Episode #119)

Bonus Extras: “Saving Motel Plitvice” (Episode #119)

Ad-free version of “Saving Motel Plitvice” (Episode #119).

Transcript: “Saving Motel Plitvice” (Episode #119)

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and resource hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to all. 

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join today. 

[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your documentarian, Peter Korchnak.

Just over a year ago, I reported in my newsletter, the Yugobulletin, that Motel Plitvice had been demolished in mid-August 2024.

The complex at the Lučko rest stop, on the western end of the Zagreb ring road was built in 1984, as the first and only rest area on a Croatian freeway, then part of the Brotherhood and Unity Highway. The quote “magnificent work” of Zdravko Bregovec and Ivan Piteša was financed mostly by the Plitvice National Park, the oil company INA, and a now-defunct self-managing roads management company; Zagreb-based Industrogradnja built it in cooperation with some 30 subcontractors. 

The Motel Plitvice complex comprised a 3-story, 56-room hotel, two gas stations, two cafes on each side of the freeway connected with the iconic glass sky bridge, the Plitvička kuća (Plitvice House) restaurant, and an autokamp, or a car campground.

The design infused modernist architecture with a regional style of the Lika region two hours south where the Plitvice Lakes are located. Steep roofs and white facades referenced mountain architecture, and the interiors were fashioned in rustic style, with exposed wooden beams and rafters, lattices, heavy wood furniture, bricks, even a stone fountain harkening to the lakes.

Maroje Mrduljaš, architecture professor at the University of Zagreb, told the Index.hr news portal that, quote, “It is a very beautiful complex that is not only architecturally valuable but also a testament to the period from the 1960s to the 1980s when mass mobility of Europe’s citizens was democratized. The whole complex is witness to a fascination with highways, cars, and tourist movements from the north to the south and back. The skyway itself [built in a day] is unique in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia. Similar examples can be found in Italy. Skybridges over highways have also become a kind of sub-cultural phenomenon and the subject of serious architectural research.” End quote.

The complex which I’ve seen called a “cult motel” and the “temple of [1980s] Yugoslavian design” stood as a symbolic gateway to the eponymous national park.

For Zagreb residents and many others the skybridge spanning the highway was the symbol of the annual seaside vacation, located as it was at the beginning of the southbound freeway. They still carry memories from the place.

One legendary story has it that in 1986 the players of the Zadar basketball team who beat the Zagreb team in the championship game stayed here on the way home and celebrated, among other things, by emptying all the fire extinguishers in the motel atrium.

Aside from a rest stop, the motel and the restaurant became a popular wedding and celebration venue; the restaurant was famous for its lamb.

Arriving from Slovenia, Lučko was said to be the first place to get a coffee and beans; in the other direction it served as a pit stop for bus drivers from Bosnia and Herzegovina en route to Germany.

To be sure, the economic reality of capitalism did catch up with the place. The business just didn’t make sense anymore, and because of heavy use and poor maintenance over the decades the physical place was crumbling.

As those truck drivers increasingly shifted from sleeping at the motel to sleeping in their cabs and from eating at the restaurant to cooking their food on stoves in the parking lot, revenue declined.

And as rent for the land where the complex was sited and which is owned by the Croatian state highway company (HAC) rose at the same time, to some €65,000 per month, Motel Plitvice fell into massive arrears.

The company that owned the complex had operated in the red since 1996. Staffing fell from over 300 employees at its peak in the 1980s to just over 30 near-retirees a few years back.

The HAC sued and settled the dispute by taking over the facility. The plan was to re-develop, or to use their parlance “modernize and revitalize” the rest stop with new gas and charging stations, shop, restaurant, and parking lots.

If comments on my Instagram posts about the motel and its demolition are any indication, melancholy and cynicism pervaded the popular sentiment among people from the region.

• “The place was full of life once upon a time.” and
• “It is only us Balkans who are idiotic enough not to see the cultural, historic, and aesthetic value in this.” and
• “In ex-YU, we’re like, ‘It’s a historic site, let’s tear it down.'” and
• “Most nations need occupiers to oppress them and destroy their heritage, we Southern Slavs are completely capable of doing it all ourselves.” and
• “What a shame.” and
• “It’s sad that us Yugoslav nations don’t appreciate more what we have.”

But one citizen of the former Yugoslavia did appreciate Motel Plitvice for what it was. And he documented the place for posterity before it was razed. Today on Inspired by Yugoslavia: an amateur photographer’s rescue of history.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Nik Maierle was born in 1999 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

NIK MAIERLE: And then over time, slowly, as things developed and well, basically Yugoslavia disappeared, I sort of became nostalgic for something that was no longer there. And yet everybody around me, let’s say the older generations, were still touting how Yugoslavia this, how Yugoslavia that how it was better. Because, from their perspective, everything is getting worse.

PETER KORCHNAK: Maierle is a 3D artist in the video game industry, living in Graz, Austria. 

NIK MAIERLE: As a[n] artist, visual[ly] stimulated person, I really like the esthetics of Yugoslavia, and it just slowly developed a passion for it visually, more or less than anything else, because, well, I can’t really talk about the culture, except from what people told me and reading and learning online.

PETER KORCHNAK: What is it about the esthetics of Yugoslavia? What is captivating? Describe it for us, are we talking about any specific period or any specific artistic form? Tell us more about that. 

NIK MAIERLE: So Yugoslavian design was very strong in the 60s and, I think, up to the late 80s. In general, the aesthetics, as well as the origins of Yugoslavia and the technology and design of everything of it, a lot of it used to be from big Slovenian companies. 

One of those key moments was when I saw a phone. designed by Iskra. Which is, maybe was a Slovenian company specialized in electronics, and basically it was throughout the entirety of Yugoslavia. Gorenje, a really Slovenian company, massive in terms of design, and still a functioning company, but just a shadow of its former self.

And then, I noticed less and less interesting designs, or even just less and less companies from Yugoslavia or Slovenia now, and the design language changed completely. 

You had these very rough or basic to a certain point, primitive looking designs that were functional first, like washing machines, fridges, tables, space heaters, everything was built solidly. You could throw it at a wall, and the wall would get damaged. So there was a certain level of quality and consistency of it. And through time, it just disappeared, and with it, the feeling and everything associated with it. 

It used to be apartments basically furnished entirely with Yugoslavian products, and now there’s none, unless maybe in a workshop or garage, what was left over from Grandma’s, and people just keep it, and it still works as it did. And now there are things that are 46 years old that just still work.

PETER KORCHNAK: Maierle noticed Yugoslavian-architecture-inspired elements in the strategy video game Red Alert. That was the last drop that motivated him to explore the design language of his parents’ country.

Which brings us to Motel Plitvice.

NIK MEIERLE: I have a folder where I collect images, visuals, renders, basically just something [sic] that stimulates me, something that is unusual, be it architecture wise, visualization wise renders. And as I was going through that, I saw the overpass of Motel Plitvice. The difference is, I didn’t know what that was, where it was, I just thought, Oh, that looks almost Japanese-y, futuristic, something 60s or 80s. Unsure what. And I just let it pass, but I made a mental note. 

And then one day, I was browsing the Croatian Subreddit saying that Plitvice was going to be demolished, and front and center was the picture of the overpass. And I thought, Wait, this is next door? This is a few hours away from me. Why didn’t I know that? And that basically just sparked, well, whatever it sparked, to go and try to document it and try to save it, because if it’s going to be demolished, it’s not going to exist anymore, and nobody’s going to care about it, because, clearly nobody knows about it.

PETER KORCHNAK: And yet, there were generations of people in the former Yugoslavia who passed through that place on the way to the sea. And you know, for you in Ljubljana, this would have been definitely out of the way unless you somehow went the Zagreb way and then down to the coast, but you know, it’s understandable geographically that you might not have gone on that stretch of the freeway. Interesting. 

I visited the place twice, in May 2022 and 2023, just as each summer tourist season was about to begin. It was like walking through the memory of the Yugoslav 80s if the era got abandoned and drafty—and shot at.

During the Covid pandemic, the facility had been turned into a quarantine facility for transiting truck drivers.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the motel served as a shelter for refugee women and children.

On my first visit, an elderly guard, smoking at a table outside with a few women, yelled at me to prevent me from entering.

A year later, the refugees were gone and the motel again a commercial accommodation. I looked around inside. Within a few snapshots, a manager dashed out of his office to ask what I was doing. In my best but purposefully American-accented Croatian I said I was a tourist and wanted to take photos for Instagram of the place before it gets demolished. He just nodded and retreated.

The toilets were the busiest rooms in the complex.

There were few buyers of the few things in the shop, and barely anyone was getting coffee in the two vacant cafes, one on each side of the highway. It felt exhilarating to walk through the skybridge that connected them. 

In one of the two sleepy cafes I ordered an espresso in an original Motel Plitvice cup. I asked the server if I could keep the cup. She said no and, walking back to the kitchen, added, “Just steal it.” (Collectors tell me you can find the cups at flea markets around the former country now.)

In the other cafe, I asked another server about the impending demolition. She shrugged without a shred of sentimentality.

“But you’ll be out of the job,” I said.

“There’s work,” she replied. “If you want a job, you can get a job.”

Meierle visited the motel complex the same year.

NIK MEIERLE: I’m a nut for architecture, there’s something that just speaks to me. I just have to try and recreate it, or see it, or just get out of my mind. So I said, Okay, I’m going to do it. I was thinking, you know, it might be a good idea to make 360 images for it. And as I was researching this, maybe a day before, Insta 360 released a phone attachment. So basically, you just put your phone in a selfie stick, but it has an app that goes with it, and it’s a motorized selfie stick, which takes the 360 photos for you. I said, Great, this is going to be easy. 

And I simply went there, checked it out, and started taking photos during the night. Because, well, why not? And as I spent an hour in the overpass, I thought, well, I should at least check out the hotel. I asked the person in front Hey, can I take photos of hotel? Said, Ah, not really, because there are other people here that don’t like photos being taken of them. And I said, Oh, well, I guess this is where my journey ends. So I just sat in the hotel, had a coffee, and just absorbed everything that the hotel was. And so I went to back to my place in Zagreb and decided, well, I’m going to call it a day and go back there tomorrow, hope for the best. 

There was a different person in front and I said, Hey, can I take pictures? Like, Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, sure, you can, there’s no manager, so I can’t really tell you not to, but you can take pictures. I even showed her the 360 rig. I said, I’m gonna take quite a few pictures. Like, yeah, that’s fine. And so I went on my way.

Four hours later, 50, 60, photos. I came down and the lady came up to me directly. “Oh, I thought you were just going to take a few pictures, not like do the entire thing. Where are you from? Who are you working for? What is this for?” And I thought, well, this is going to be it. “Do you want me to delete the photos?” “Oh, no, no, it’s fine. Just don’t post it. Remove all the people.” And that’s when I told her, “When or if the hotel gets demolished and everything, I will post them a year later. Sounds fair?” “Yes.” And then I just left. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Maierle returned to Zagreb a year later, in mid-summer 2024, and decided to take more photos of Motel Plitvice.

NIK MAIERLE: You know now the thing has an actual date that it’s going to get demolished. And I said, I’ll take a day of my time to go photograph it. Did the photography again, and suddenly I see that the overpass is leaky, the radiators have been removed. There’s just trash all over the place, it just felt off. The store was closed. Some signs were stolen… I guess it’s going to be actually demolished. So I went to the hotel again and asked, Hey, I’m, can I take photos of this place? Then it was like, oh, yeah, sure, no problem. Here’s the key of the room, don’t touch anything.

And so I went about it, doing the exact same thing I did the year before, just officially I could do it. And as I was done, I sat at the bar and talked with people. “Oh, well, Good that I came here a few months before it gets demolished.” And the guy looks at me, “What do you mean a few months, it’s going to be demolished in a few days.” I understood the ninth month, not the ninth of this month. 

PETER KORCHNAK: That again is August 2024.

NIK MEIERLE: That just kickstarted another thing. And it just started talking with people, everybody that worked there that day, I just started talking to them, and then it started making sense why everybody was drunk and just happy singing in the conference room. And yeah, I got quite a few gut wrenching stories from that.

PETER KORCHNAK: So you were there right at the end. So what are some of those stories? Can you share what you’ve heard?

NIK MAIERLE: The barman here? Well, he started his job at 19 or 20, worked there a few years, then it was the war. So four year hiatus, then he came back, and now, I think, the way it was, he’s basically worked here and spent more time here than anywhere else. So he was basically, I think, five years away from retiring and just explaining how he felt about this place and how everybody else feels. Like, how do you start a job, go to war, survive, come back, and continue working in the same place?

He told me, like, “Go talk to the cook.” So she was there the month of the opening, and her last days were basically the week of the closing. She was there the entire time, her first job and her last job. And she kind of explained how this place was bustling with people, how the paint on the wall like those stripes, they were made for a series in, I think, the 8— 90s or 2000s and they just left them because it fit. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In mid-twenty-tens, scenes in the nostalgic TV series Crno-bijeli svijet (Black-and-White World) were filmed here.

NIK MAIERLE: And one other person was there, also a barman, server, whatever, he was, the [sic] lovingly fun guy said, “Yeah, used to be a staff of 100 per day, it was like, easily a 1,000 or 2,000 people going in and out, the kitchen was 24/7, dancing, and there was even an outside patio area where it was constant service, Tito, everybody and everything.”

And that just kind of brought everything home.

Hotel Plitvice, it was a hotel designed for the everyday person. It was a place where people hung out, had fun, enjoyed themselves. So it was for everybody, and there wasn’t really a barrier to say, what is lower class, what is upper class. And that kind of showcased itself in the design. Nothing was pointed out, oh, this is expensive, this is posh. It was just pure design.

Years ago, I was researching Yugoslav architecture, and supposedly, a lot of designers from Africa were studying in Yugoslavia, not sure where exactly, but a lot of them took the knowledge back home, and you can see an abundance of Yugoslavia architecture, or at least inspired and mixed with African design in their own designs, philosophy, aesthetics and language. 

So that is something that’s basically gone these days.

PETER KORCHNAK: Maierle recounting his memories sounded like stories about the end of a civilization, of the world.

Maierle subsequently photographed Hotel Pelegrin in Kupari the same way he had Motel Plitvice, before it too was demolished in June this year. He wanted to document Hotel Jugoslavija in Belgrade as well.

NIK MAIERLE: I heard it was gonna get demolished, but I was still employed. Oh, it’s gonna take some time. Nope, next week it was gone. So that was the only real disappointment that I have, that I couldn’t see that in person.

PETER KORCHNAK: Maierle has made the digital photos he took at Motel Plitvice available for free on Gumroad. The link is in the episode transcript at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC – “Balkan Blues” by Sticky Keys]

Nostalgia has to contend with utility, I told the Monocle magazine last year for an article about Motel Plitvice. 

​​The modern traveler might be left wanting and in reality there was no practical reason to cross the skybridge.

But then the gas stations will be replaced by a gas station and the cafes with a cafe. Perhaps sometimes it does make more practical sense to start from scratch rather than update the old or fix what isn’t working.

But, as many Croats will argue, the demolition of this unique piece of architecture, without even attempting to consider preservation or somehow saving it, speaks to the larger issue of how their country values cultural heritage from the socialist era or honors sound environmental practices.

As Mrduljaš, the architecture professor said, “It is sad to see beautifully designed and well-executed spaces of the past replaced by new ones just because of the belief that architecture, especially interiors, must resemble what is found on the Internet. The whole world becomes the same as a result: one-dimensional, inauthentic, and without history.”

What’s more, Mrduljaš added, “in times of ecological crisis and the necessity of recycling, demolition instead of adaptation is completely inappropriate.”

Installing a “tasteless” gas station that’s typical today would be, Mrduljaš concluded, “an example of cultural regression.”

And so it goes. While the world and local cultural elites express increasing appreciation for Yugoslav-era architecture, on the ground , the signs point in the opposite direction.

Of course, it’s not really about the architecture itself, but rather what it represents.

“Nothing lasts unless it is incessantly renewed,” wrote Charles de Gaulle.

It applies to memory as well: erasing the trigger of a memory helps erase the associated memory itself. If you stop remembering, you forget, and conversely, the object of memory is only alive as long as someone remembers it.

If summer vacations at the Adriatic during the Yugoslav times are some of the former Yugoslavs’ favorite memories, demolishing Motel Plitvice and places like it that evoke those memories helps to erase the time and the place they come from as well.

When wrecking balls do the job of forgetting, we’re all left standing in the dust. Then we fuel up at a shiny new gas station, and get back on our way.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s it for today’s story. But before we sound off an update on a project you heard about on Inspired by Yugoslavia some 50 episodes back, in Episode 66, in January 2023. Yugo: A Graphic Biography was a work in progress by Rima Sabina Aouf, a Croatian-Yugoslav-Syrian graphic artist from Australia, living in the UK, about her mother who was from Zagreb.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: So my mom passed away, unfortunately, just a few weeks after your show came out, where we discussed Yugo. She’d been sick with cancer for quite a while at that point, but fortunately, I got to play your episode for her when she was in the hospital on what was truly one of her last cogent days. And yeah, she was really moved. I remember she said to me, I lived a really big life, didn’t I? So yeah, I was happy that she got to have that experience because of us, Peter.

, yeah, and then after she died, I actually didn’t want to work on the book for a long time. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t even listen to this show.

So yeah, while I guess Yugo is a historical text that I hope will connect with many people, for me, it’s also very much a personal one, and I was really making it for her and with her, and I didn’t feel meaning in it for some time, so I really stepped away. 

And also, I think it it seemed like hard work, like I guess I knew that the text was going to have to change with her passing, and I didn’t want to think about what those changes were going to have to look like. 

But weirdly enough, I had just started thinking about the book again and have returned to it just a few weeks before you got in touch to do this episode. 

PETER KORCHNAK: I reconnected with Aouf for the nonalignment series earlier this year, as her father, who is Syrian, had studied in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. 

RIMA SABINA AOUF: Yes, the fates are looking after us, right?

And the first thing I did when I was like, I’m going to start thinking about this work again, was I started listening to Remembering Yugoslavia, and it’s really helped me to connect with the material and to feel passionately about it again. So I can’t be the only one who who gets that from this.

Basically what I’m saying is, you take away some of us having to do our own research.

It’s very early days. So, yeah, okay, no, no timeline. But anyone, yeah, anyone who wants to know about it can find me online.

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening and traveling with us. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member and take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. Additional music courtesy of Sticky Keys. 

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Bok bok!

[SOUNDBITE]