That's All Folks!

I went for a final walk this morning, took my trusty camera along with me, wanting to record this beautiful time of the day, and the lovely walking track.

It is still quite shadowy at 7.30 now, and the water temperature has cooled sufficiently that I am not tempted to jump in without a towel to dry me and some sunshine to sit in. There are less people on the track – back to almost the same number as there were when I first arrived here six months ago – hard to believe that it is six months.

The café where we sit and drink coffee (guilty admission, sometimes we don’t walk far, just sit and laugh in the café) seems to have us as the only customers at this time of day.

I’ve started dishing out extra bits and pieces that I have gathered during my time here, and even went as far as doing the NZ thing and made some jars of pesto as gifts for people.

I was planning on taking the bus to Split tomorrow afternoon to start the trip home, but a friend has offered to drive me there, although it just prolongs the goodbyes – another round of drinks with my friend in Split and then onto the overnight ferry to Ancona.

And I’ve just found out that twenty members of the Planinara Klub will be on the same ferry heading for the Cinque Terra – ha, company for the journey, not just the standard fare of people returning from visiting Medigore!

So there it is – I did it. Six months. It has raced by, it has been wonderful in so many ways. It has made me evaluate the way that I (we) live in New Zealand, the culture that we have and the things that are important. It has shown me that I can live in a small space with very little around me, and shown me that I need the luxury of work in my life. And I see that it is a luxury when you don’t have it.

It has shown me that wherever you go in the world, people are wonderful. They open up their lives and their homes to you – and wherever you are, it is a smile and an open heart that are the keys to the whole shebang!

Thanks for coming with me – who knows what will happen to the long ramblings that have kept me company over my stay in Makarska – I’ve enjoyed knowing that you are there with me.

I’m sitting in a café with wi-fi (my internet in the apartment has finished) and the radio is blasting out a Croatian version of ‘Honky Tonk Woman – it is “Honky Tonk Zena” - - love it! Vidimo se, moguce druge godine!

Two Days to Go - oh my!

The air is filled with the sound of concrete mixers and concrete cutters – and everywhere you look you can see the signs of Concrete Reincarnation. The rule is here that if concrete has been laid, any man can cast it asunder and the paths are testament of years to this. Now that the tourists have gone the builders are busy.

The gym classes are busier too –women who were tied up during the sezona are now free to attend fitness classes and generally think about themselves (to a certain extent, sort of). I walked home from pilates with one of the women in class the other night ¬ - she had always said ‘hi’ with a shy smile but didn’t really say much more – having presumed that she didn’t speak English I was surprised at the conversation that we had walking home in the dark.

I asked what she did for work, and she said that she was a konobarica but that she knew that there was more to her than that. She has been working every day for the last 5 months, with not a single day off. She cannot ask for a day off or extra pay because she knows that there are others lining up behind her who would like her job. She knows that, her boss knows that – an employment issue impasse. She said that the time at the gym is the only thing that keeps her going, that she is tired and her body feels like ‘f***** sh*t’ (see, excellent command of the English language) and that she has decided to move to Zagreb and start some study. I commended her on her attitude and her English, and made the speech about the ‘world being your oyster and believing that you can do anything’. It’s the speech that my children have heard many times…. But maybe it is truer in New Zealand.

Now that the sezona has ended the first cracks of the PSS (Post Sezona Stress) are showing, with marriages falling apart and people needing counseling for depression. You see, it’s the old ‘idle hands’ thing. Having been ridiculously busy for the last three or four months¸ working up to 12 or 14 hours, 7 days a week¸ now there is nothing to do (unless you are a builder or related tradesperson), particularly if you no longer have job . That’s looking down the barrel of a long winter with nothing to do, and no money to do it with.

One thing that we talked about at dinner tonight is the financial cycle -

here’s how it goes. You don’t trust the banks because many of them collapsed during the recent war¸ so everyone deals in cash. Hardly anyone puts money in the bank – this means that not many people pay for purchases in shops by way of debit cards (our EFTpos cards) (because they have cash in the pocket not in the bank account). Shops encourage this by offering a discount for cash. If you have apartments, you make your guests pay in cash, Euros please. None of this goes in the bank, and it simply flows into the hands of builders for more apartments, or new cars, boats etc. If you are accounting for your apartment income to the tax department (a few do, ok, maybe 4 do), you underestimate the occupation rate and the number of rooms that you have – easy to miss that corner apartment. The sum total of this cycle is not very large if you are the government trying to collect taxes to support the infrastructure of the country.

The flow on from that is that if you have a legitimate job, you pay a huge amount of tax to cover the others that dont. The formula is that the population is declining (able bodied men who hadn’t yet gone forth and multiplied were killed in the war, and women are having less children, often only one) plus the high unemployment rate, less the cash society means that those suckers who are doing the right thing are taxed within an inch of their paypacket to ensure that there is money under the government’s mattress to run the country. No mean feat when corruption is high and personal pockets are being lined…

Today was my last day with the rowing kids – just starting the goodbyes.

Had coffee after rowing with a rowing mother who has become a friend - Dinner out tonight with friends… lunch tomorrow with friends…part of me just wants to creep away, jump on a bus and disappear, (I hate goodbyes) but another friend wants to drive me to Split and stay and have drinks until the ferry sales in the evening. I feel privileged to have made such lovely friends and I will miss them. (this is one of my girl rowers!)

Zagreb - Finale

So, final dissertation on Zagreb, then I will stop.

I decided to take a cycling tour of Zagreb, despite my misgivings about bike seats (based on French experience).

They said to meet in front of the Mimara Musej at 10. Adila, our guide, was pleased to know that I was from New Zealand as it would seem that the results of a survey (apparently not the same guys from Contiki who decided that NZ women are promiscuous) were in the paper that morning, and that NZ was listed as fourth in the world as the place to do business – easy administration, trustworthy, absence of corruption, (loose women) etc- , and feeling disillusioned that morning, she had googled our country to see if she and her husband and children could emigrate there (immediately). The population of our country may increase soon by four… (your thoughts Diana?)

There were only two other customers, an American couple, so the four of us set off. I wanted to see if I could sneak the bike into my backpack, it was so wonderful! Such a seat, such handlebars!

The tour was three hours of basically getting the layout of the inner city – stopping at various places for history lessons, comment and local themes – you know, politics, Tito etc. It made us appreciate the real town planning that went into the city at its inception. There is a wonderful horse-shoe shaped green belt with glorious trees and ponds with statues and fountains, all donated by the founding citizens. These parks were full of people sitting, walking, relaxing in the sun, and staring at the idiots on the bikes.

There are university campus’ scattered throughout the city and so the streets are full of young people, which adds to the dynamic feeling of the city. People from Zagreb compare the city to Vienna. People who don’t live in Zagreb say that the people who do live in Zagreb and say things like that have delusions of grandeur…

We followed the trams along the tram tracks, wended our way through pedestrians on the footpaths (the Americans kept ringing their little bells), and glided through parks.

At the end of the three hours, I doubled back to check out the Museum of Broken Relationships. The concept of this museum was dreamt up by a couple as they separated, to deal with various things left from the relationship that they couldn’t decide what to do with. It has developed almost into a therapy of sorts for people from all over the world who have items left from relationships that they wish to put ‘somewhere’ to emotionally close on what has perhaps been a traumatic severing.

Interesting concept, and I thought that it would be quirky and amusing, which it was for the first few exhibits. (Aside - The original (separated) couple have continued to travel the world together exhibiting the museum and there are all sorts of whispers about whether they will get back together – the world loves a happy ending).

The reality of it was slightly different, because never having personally been vitriolic at the end of a relationship, I was taken aback by the emotions in the stories which accompanied the exhibits!

There was an axe – the donor, a guy, had been in a relationship with a woman who decided after a few months of moving into the guy’s house( with her furniture), that she had fallen in love with the neighbour (a woman). They confessed, said that they were going to go away for a fortnight together and then she would be back…. And so for each day that she was away, he chopped up a piece of her furniture!

There was a wedding album with the accompanying message – ‘married 2004, cheated 2005. If you ever develop enough culture to visit a museum, I hope that you will understand what you did to me!”

There were 9 different rooms each filled with themed momentos, each with their own anger and their own story. When I left, I felt infused by a negativity that I didn’t recognize as mine.

To move on from that feeling, I decided that a visit to the Mestrovic Gallery (with a ‘sh’ and a ‘ch’) would be a good solution, which it was, thankfully. Mestrovic was a twentieth century sculptor and architect from Croatia and is arguably the greatest sculptor of religious subject matter since the Renaissance. He is the first living person to have a one man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

His work is situated in what was originally his house in Gornji Grad. It is a beautiful setting, and his work is magnificent, worked in brass, marble and wood. The statue of Gregory of Nin in Split (you know, the one that the tourists (including myself) have photos of themselves taken whilst rubbing his big toe) is one of Mestrovic’ works, as is the Fountain of Life in Tito Square in Zagreb. Come to think of it, I think that that is one of the suggested name replacements for the current reference to Tito!

Basically at that point I had run out of time. Dinner and wine were calling before the late flight back to Split. *sigh*. Yes, Zagreb. Lovely.
(Big shout out to my friend in Zagreb - thanks, it was wonderful!)

Zagreb - Part 2

Ok I give up – the images that I can find on the internet are copyright protected and I can’t add them to the text. Sorry – you can of course search the images yourself if you want to see what I am talking about…(grandparents, ask your grandkids how to do it).

I want to talk about erasers – I’ll say erasers, not rubbers, in case you get the wrong impression of what I am talking about – this is a family blog after all.

Croatian politicians have a passionate relationship with erasers. If something doesn’t suit, rub it out. Gone, justlikethat.

History no longer suits? Rub it out. Street names no longer appropriate? Rub them out and change them. I was joking with a friend in Zagreb (or maybe not joking) and suggested that all street names should be in pencil to make it easier to change them. Or maybe just blackboards and a piece of chalk.

Ban Jelacic Trg is the main square in Zagreb – it was the trading place for the various craft guilds when the two towns (Gradec and Kaptol) existed on either side of the creek. It also contained a spring for water supplies so it was an important place. It was named Harmica originally, and then in 1848 when Josip Jelacic became the first ‘ban’ or ruler it was renamed Ban Jelacic trg. A magnificent statue in his honour dominated the square – sword raised in Hungary’s direction! Take that Hungary! The creation of the position of ‘ban’ was the start of independence from Austria, so a fairly important part of history.

But then came Tito – Jelacic was then derided as an Austrian Collaborator – they rubbed him out, removed the statue and put it into storage (not under the bed, it’s quite large) and renamed the square Trg Republike!

Oh, but then came the independence of Croatia and they rubbed out the republic notion and out came the statue again! It dominates the trg again.

Now Tito is out of fashion – they have merrily rubbed out any references to him – I think that the last reference is to the beautiful theatre in Tito Square – and there are discussions (oh, there are always discussions!) about getting out the eraser again!

Near the large railway station there is another magnificent statue – Kraj Tomislav. He was the first King of the Kingdom of Croatia – in 925. He was acknowledged as such by Rome. But… the eraser is sliding out of the pockets again – there are discussions (there always are) that perhaps his mother was not Croatian (maybe Bosnian or Serbian – can’t remember which) and therefore not an appropriate hero for the now independent Croatia. The discussers are suggesting that perhaps he wasn’t actually ever really legitimately crowned, maybe the ceremony wasn’t conducted correctly, and so the crown may fall – and down will come the statue and the eraser will deal with the history books! I love it!

We were chuckling about the passports – When the country (under Tito) was Jugoslavia the passports were Red – Red for the glory of communism. When Croatia became an independent country, with great haste the passports were changed… They must be Blue Blue, not Red – divorce yourself from the connotations of the Red, Blue! And they no longer refer to Jugoslavia – you were not born in that country even though in fact, if you were born more than 20 years ago, that’s where you were born – the eraser has removed that country too.

The chuckle was because as Croatia inches towards EU membership, guess what colour the passports will be….RED!

Zagreb - part 1

Now, if you are one of those people who say that you buy Playboy Magazines for the articles and don’t look at the pictures, then this blog is for you – I went to Zagreb and didn’t realize that the battery was flat on my camera… so there is an article but no pictures!! Ja sam glupost! I am stupid. I couldn’t believe it at first.

And then I thought about it some more and decided that maybe sometimes we are so busy taking photos of things that we forget to look at them. (Don’t you hate it when I put a positive spin on everything?)

Well. Zagreb. My first impressions (arriving at 8.30 at night) were that it seemed very clean and tidy and organized. These first impressions still hold true.


Do you want history? Briefly? Most of what I can tell you I found out from the Musej Grad Zagreb – the city museum set up on the Gornji Grad (or upstairs as it is called) in the old town. Please be impressed – I am a bit of a speed museum visitor – my concentration for museum visits is short. This museum was so (quiet and uncrowded) that I spent two hours in it! A new world record for me. It was beautifully set out in small rooms, each room chronicling the next step in the history of the city. It was as though you only had to take bite-sized amounts of history in each time you went into a room so it wasn’t so overwhelming. Next time you visit Zagreb, promise that you will go there.

Here we go… (and I'm trying to work out how to insert images from ‘another source’ ( I know you are visual people and I don’t want you to get bored – forget about the Playboy conversation, you can look at the pictures).

Zagreb is a city with a rich history, dating from Roman times.
Old Zagreb was two settlements situated on two neighbouring hills: Gradec (also known as Gornji Grad) and Kaptol, with the houses lying in the valley between them along what used to be a creek (it is now a beautiful cobbled street lined with cafes and sunshine).

Over the creek and between the two towns was a bridge over which the people of the two towns would meet to trade insults and throw a few stones. Only once was there ever any real squirmish on the bridge where a couple of people died. The bridge was then called ‘krvav most’ – “bloody bridge’. The most spectacular thing about the bridge is that there isn’t one. Not a bridge in sight. It stands at the top of the disappointment list for tourists who really really came to see this bridge.

The Cathedral in gornji grad has had a tumultuous past – it was originally consecrated in 1217, but later in 1242 it was damaged by the raids by the Tartars. After 1263 it was restored and rebuilt. Fearing a Turkish invasion, the Bishop of Zagreb had the fortifications built around the Cathedral and his residence. The Turks didn’t ever reach Zagreb. Then the Cathedral was badly damaged in an earthquake years later and an Austrian architect (Bolle) was sent for to reconstruct and modernise the building in the Neogothic style.

In the museum there are pieces of the cathedral which were removed including statues of the disciples from around the main doorway. What fascinated me was the removal of one part of the façade which clearly shows the triangle with the eye in the middle – the unmistakable symbol of goddess worship. There was a lot of reluctance from parishoners to let go the female part of the deity lineup, and the church leaders were forced to include Mary as part of the church.


The other fascinating thing (for me) was that the church was re-built in sandstone in keeping with the style of the remodelled cathedral. Sandstone goes a beautiful dark colour as it ages. But the people of Zagreb want the clean white colour. One of the local women told me that she has never in her life seen the cathedral in all of its glory, because there is always a part of the building shrouded in scaffolding while the façade is cleaned.

It’s a lifetime career. Start at one side and by the time you get back to the start it is dirty and you need to start again. Do it slowly and make it last even longer!

The only remaining part of the fortification around the upper town is the Stone Gate – this has become a shrine to Mary and is more popular as a place of worship than the cathedral. The story goes (and I’m sure it is accurate) that during one large fire which threatened the city, all that was left in one pile of rubble was a picture of the Virgin Mary, untouched by fire. Candles are lit at the shrine under the Stone Gate, and plaques are attached to the wall giving thanks for specific things that people don’t want to let pass without acknowledging.

Walking across the quiet deserted trg Sv Marko (where is everyone, and why are those men in dark suits standing around the corners of the square with those ear pieces attached…)
St Marks Church – spectacular from the outside but locked so I have no idea what it was like inside – the roof is unusual.

But the thing that this wee trg (square) is famed for is the witch burnings! Over 400 years , 140 women were convicted of witch craft but the death penalty of burning was stayed in most cases. In 1756 Maria Theresa banned the death penalty for witchcraft.

In the museum there is a list of women who were convicted of being witches, and the sentence meted out. A couple died in the dungeons, but those who were burnt at the stake met their fate in this beautiful square. Imagine!

The witch hunts on the square are now limited to the normal vagaries of political life – because this square is also where parliament sits. And seeing as you mentioned the Prime Minister Jadranka Kozor, she who is leading the Anti Corruption campaign, beating the anti-corruption drum, she who was the former PMs deputy, who handed him over to the powers that be when he was charged with corruption… and twas also she who signed the same documents that have him in the proverbial, but she says that she had no knowledge of what Sanader was up to because she didn’t read the documents that she was signing. Everyone needs a deputy like that, particularly if they then step up to lead the country! Attention to detail being a necessary part of being a Prime Minister – it’s in the job description. Oh, and taking responsibility for one’s actions is also in the job description I think – I’m sure I saw it in the fine print..

And it was the body guards of all the politicians waiting by their big black diplomatic cars that I had observed in the square. It was the first day back for parliament the day that I was wandering around. We wondered if they were discussing whether it was worth trying to push through and have an election this year, or whether they should just close their eyes tightly and hope that no-one notices if it doesn’t happen.


That’s enough for now – I am a bit sleep deprived. More tomorrow.
Maybe with pictures.

promaj

I had an interesting discussion this morning about a phenomenon that I have touched on lightly (so lightly you may have missed it), and for the sake of correctness, we will call the phenomenon ‘promaj’ because that is in fact the correct term for it. The discussion had to be brought to a hasty end because the person I was discussing it with was taking the conversation as a personal slight on their intelligence. Whoops.

Translations of concepts that run so deeply in a culture are often difficult - often, the English words used (or any other language, not to be blaming the English language) just don’t do the concept justice, just don’t go deep or wide enough. Or take into account the ‘ooohh’ factor.
The closest that I can come up with is ‘draft’ … but more deadly.

Not to put a too finer point on it, you are committing a cultural sin to have a draft in your house here. Two windows open and you are playing with the devil. Even in the middle of summer, searingly hot, you are risking your health having a cross-draft blowing through your house. If I am to believe what I am told, the following illnesses could ensue – bells palsy, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple schlerosis, and the common cold.
The draft thing extends from the house into the car – again, no breezes. Keep those windows shut – or maybe just one at a time (goodness, I’ve been in cars with breezy air con fans… - different thing? Oh, ok..)

You are well-advised not to go outside after a shower without drying your hair – one person told me that you should wait an hour before going outside after washing your hair – because the same sorts of illnesses await you. And don’t even ask how many people have told me that you shouldn’t wash your hair when you have your period, or in the evening just before going to bed. (Just a thought.. is sea water different from shower water in terms of its power to make you sick?)

Definitely no ice-cream eating with bura blowing – you will have a cold justlikethat!

I remember this sort of conversation with my grandmother with comments like ‘wear a longer shirt because you will get a cold in your kidney’. None of which the teenage girls of my generation or this generation ever suffered from, despite ignoring the well-intended advice.

The reason that the conversation started was because I was asking about the number of people here who wear brace-like supports around their waist when they are on a motor bike. I presumed that this was because people had issues with their spines – you know, these braces look like the ones that men wear when they are lifting weights. But I am not in a town of people with bad backs, but a town of people who are protecting their kidneys from a chill. Does the company selling these particular braces really have a morbid concern for the welfare of the collective kidneys, or is it riding on the popularity of the collective belief in promaj?

I mentioned the concept of Critical Thinking the other day. As a nation, dare I say it, New Zealanders are taught to question - and we do. Authority, government - sometimes to our parent's despair and to our detriment. Is this part of that?

Perhaps I need a more scientific approach to this - and so would ask that if anyone living outside Croatia, where they do have cross-breezes in cars and houses, and they don’t wear kidney protectors, (or knows personally anyone who has developed Bells Palsy as a result of having wet hair in the wind), could send me some statistics of the illnesses mentioned above, we could then have a discussion on it. Damn and blast – I may have to leave the top on my car until we have a conclusion on this one!

And in the mean time I am going to go and put a plastic bottle half filled with water on my front garden to stop the dogs from soiling the path….

Looking forward to hearing from you on this one.
(I’m off to Zagreb for a couple of days…)

oh, and I found a new cousin...

FKK

I sensed a few raised eyebrows when I mentioned the nudist beach.

Croatia has the most nudist beaches in the world (or we could call them Naturist Beaches), that is, official ones. And some of the most beautiful.

In fact the only beach around Makarska which isn’t nudist is the main one, the one that is jam-packed with up to 10,000 people in the sezona, and who wants to swim there (that’s a rhetorical question). All of the other beaches in walking distance are clearly marked with FKK.

I had worked out that that sign spray painted on a rock delineated the ‘with clothes at your option’ from the main stream beaches.
I didn’t however know what it stood for, so merrily looked it up on Google with my (and your) education in mind. FKK - Freikorperkultur - German for Free Body Culture. Which comes as no surprise because it is the Germans and the Dutch (apart from the Croatians) who are very comfortable wandering around the beach bez kostim za kupanje.

The main beach at Tucepi makes it really clear with a big sign with FKK, with a line crossed through it, but the ones at either end are FKK – the one at the Podgora end even has cafes to sit at.

And to be honest, I admire the fact that the people on the beach just don’t care about their body shape, or whether others will judge them for being overweight or no longer sylph-like – because most of the bodies are over 50, and our bodies don’t look like supermodels, and do have some mileage on them at that age.

I guess it fits in the same basket as my comments regarding the over 60 year old bakas (grandmothers) that I sometimes join on the beach in the morning after rowing (although they have disappeared now that the weather has cooled a bit). They are all in bikinis, and completely comfortable with themselves. And correct me if I am wrong, but that would raise an eyebrow in New Zealand. I know, because I have raised an eyebrow at myself still wearing a bikini, telling Danica to please tell me IMMEDIATELY it is time for me to stop wearing one, and I ain’t 60 yet! Here, I have even bought a smaller bikini – who would have thought!

So there it is - the positive side of beach culture here in Croatia.

Still not completely sure about those boxer speedos on the men, but guess I have a couple of weeks left to get used to them if I really put my mind to it.