The Summer is Over...

It's rainy, cloudy...cold. We actually installed air conditioning like 3 weeks ago - yes, at the END of the summer (we were stupidly resistent to air-conditioning - I have no idea why, now - not that we're using it much these days).

A friend of ours from Montreal visted earlier this week. Travelling alone. She's never been to Croatia before. Man, it would really suck to be traveling alone while the rain is pouring. But what a great attitude she has! She's a real renaissance woman - travels all over the place. Speaks 5 languages. Knits, sews...makes soap...builds things with wood - and I'm not talking about bird houses - the woman actually makes structures, like gazebos and things!

Otherwise, I'm happily gestating. 7 months, now. Waiting with baited breath and praying for a good outcome.

Zadar Road Work

Well, it's been awhile....but not too long (or so I tell myself).

What's been happening? Hmmm...

Well, they are in the midst of building a road next to my house (where I live AND work). So, in addition to drilling into solid rock from 7am, they have also been sucessfully drilling into my brain. The funny part is that this road is short. It's the perpendicular piece connecting two parallel roads. This road will be built by what seems to be one or two guys. And it all has this sort of keystone cop vibe. One guy gets out of the drilling machine....runs over to the backhoe...scoops up the rock bits and makes a pile....then runs back to the drilling machine. God Bless him. This guy can literally build a road all by himself.

We went on the boat yesterday. Just a day trip across the channel to Ugljan. We anchored south of Kali. Ate. Napped. Swam. That's the Croatia that I love. When you're in vacation mode, the place can't be beat - unless it's Sunday or a holiday.

Now it's Monday, again. Back to the drilling....

A Great Strange Day in Zadar

It was a weird day yesterday.

First off, that heat wave has definately broken. Now, it's raining...raining...raining and cold.

We woke up too late to go our usual mass (we went to an evening mass, instead) so we decided to go into town for a coffee. There, under near constant rainfall, we met a British pair who just arrived in town that morning. We chatted for quite some time and ended up inviting them to have lunch at our place. I thawed a few more pieces of meat, etc...and off we went. It was a great afternoon. They simply couldn't believe that we would just invite people over to our house for lunch - people we have only just met....and without planning. The day was lovely.

After mass in the evening, we went to a local hangout for a drink. There we met a family from New Zealand. We were completely charmed. We ended up sitting with them for hours, talking about anything and everything. They had 3 great super well-behaved and polite children, two of whom were born in Thailand while the father did a stint there. They were on a 3 1/2 month ˝vacation˝ -basically, a world tour. Great people.

All in all, a great - strange - day.

Zadar is HOT!

Sorry there's been such a gap in postings. It's so hot this year, I don't know what to do with myself. We're in the grips of a heat wave that hasn't been seen in 50 years. Four people have died, already...all of them in Zagreb, I believe - which makes sense...same temps but more humid and more smog.

We went swimming last Thursday. Despite the official water temperature - 24 degrees (celsius), that day - I believe, in truth, that it was closer to 19/20. Brrr. However, once you stop hyperventilating after entering the water, you become quite accustomed to it...dare I say, it's refreshing? Now the powers that be tell us that the water temperature at the local beaches is 27/28....so what does that make it in actuality? About 22/23 - which is not bad. This is the Med, after all. You never get the bathwater temperatures like you do in Hawaii or the Caribbean, for example. But it's great, nevertheless.

As an aside, I posted a predition awhile ago about the tourist season this year. Just based on my own anecdoctal evidence (what kind of tourists were coming and when), it was my contention that the tourists came earlier than usual to 1) save money by coming in ˝shoulder season˝ and 2) because Easter was late...add a little swine flu to that....and you get a nice confluence of factors which will spell disaster for the local tour operators and hoteliers. My theory was that come ˝high season,˝ this place would clear out. It's too expensive for what you get and people will stick closer to home. Well, it looks like I might have been right. Despite reports around Easter of ˝record breaking˝ numbers of tourists...and much poo-pooing of the pundits who predicted a disasterous tourist season due to the financial crisis, now...a month later and kissing the beginning of the official tourist season, the bureau which keeps statistics on tourism reported yesterday that visitors are down 38%. I won't say ˝I told you so...˝

Zadar Local Elections

So, local elections were yesterday, Sunday. As predicted, HDZ swept Zadar. This is a HDZ stronghold. VOX tv, a local station, featured one-on-one interviews with Minister Kalmeta (HDZ) and someone else on the HDZ ticket for last hour or two leading up to the campaign blackout which was supposed to take effect at midnight on Friday. The interview is tantamount, of course, to one giant infomercial for HDZ. Fine, what do I care? My questions is, where were the enraged lawyers for the opposition threatening to sue the station?

So, yes, all electioneering was supposed to stop. Forget baby-kissing and photo ops with celebrity supporters, Zadrani like free olive trees from their candidates. Sadly, that too was supposed to end at midnight on Friday. No informercials. No new campaign posters. Of course, this strict prohibition was completely ignored in Zadar but HEY, as it turned out...according to GONG - a national whistle-blowing group - it was completely ignored everywhere in Croatia, and by all parties. Laws, like signed contracts, serve as mere guidelines rather than real directives/prohibitions. But I digress.

So, things will continue business-as-usual in Zadar. The wild west...

Introduction to New Flavors

I get a lot of questions about the food in Croatia. I like to eat and apparently other people do to, so I thought I would start posting what I'm cooking for lunch each day (lunch is the main meal - as is often the case in cultures which historically honored the siesta). A new feature on this blog then is On the Menu for Today (right column, first entry) so readers can check in to see what's cookin'.

Talking about ˝Croatian Food˝

I don't know what constitutes ˝Croatian Food˝ per se since I do notice some differences between the typical fare in the North - say, around Zagreb or up around the Hungarian border - versus what we have here in Dalmatia. So, I would be leary to talk about such a thing as ˝Croatian food˝...let alone SERBO-Croatian food which you still manage to hear from time to time in the English speaking world (Note: feel free to just forget those two words in conjunction with each other). Up north, the taste profile is more Eastern European. It's a more sour taste profile - sour kraut....things made with splashes of vinegar. It's actually a taste profile that I know well having grown up in a heavily German part of the country. But we live in Dalmatia. Generally speaking, I would say that Dalmatian food fits the average North American's notions of the Mediterranean Diet. Lots of olive oil. Lamb. Procuitto served with hard cheese and bread. Ironically, despite being on the sea, fish is quite a bit more expensive here than in the U.S. but people still go for it...Sardines, anchovies - in an oil and vinegar marinade or marinated in oil and salt, sea bass, octopus, cuddle fish, various kinds of shells (mussels and so on), shrimp and the mother of all fish, Scorpion Fish (škarpina - ugly but tasty). Tripe is actually pretty popular around here, but I personally haven't gone for it.

Now, since I'm American (with no Croatian background whatsoever), I bring slightly different tastes to the picture. Whenever we have guests over for dinner, they are often curious what the would've gotten exactly what they would have had they gone to anyone's house. However, for the past year or so, I've been slowly introducing some new taste profiles whenever we've had guests. Take, for example, potato salad. The typical service here would be boiled potates with sliced raw onions, vinegar, oil and lots of salt and pepper. Last summer, I started serving more American-style potato salad...meaning the kind with mayonaise & mustard, chopped hard boiled eggs, pickles, olives, red onions, etc. This stuff was like crack for people. I think I could make a fortune going into the potato salad business here. It's like the potato salad that they know and love, but pumped up. Another surprise for people here was the concept of carrot cake. Cake made from carrots? How weird (!)...but is it? Not when you taste it, my friend.

We'll see what this summer holds.

Dear Croatian in America,

First off, thanks for your comment on A Story of Corruption. Your point that corruption happens in the U.S. is well taken and correct. However, I wanted to write a more substantive response to you because what you said is the most common defense that we hear and I think it's worth dealing with in detail.

Yes, corruption is a world problem and individual cases do happen in the US. However, the difference that I am highlighting here is a societal one. Corruption in Croatia is a societal ill. So much so that Croatia's own Ministry of Justice saw fit to produce this brilliant Anti-Corruption ad. It is also very likely a function of corruption that this ad aired for all of a few days before it was yanked and banished to the depths of the archive never to be seen again.

In addition to classical corruption scenarios where envelopes pass back and forth under tables, I include among the rot, the building of illegal houses and buildings as well as the pay-offs that happen to get building permits (when permits are actually sought). I include among the corrupt those people who hire complete incompetents because he/she is so-and-so's nephew. I'm talking about the workers who spend most of their time at work going for coffee and standing around but draw a full day's wage. I'm talking about the women at the open air market who charge tourists more for their products than they do locals. I'm talking about the thousands of ˝veterans˝ who never enlisted for the war (but are the right age) who scam the system to get the benefits (and there are many benefits). I'm talking about millions of dollars raised by patriotic members of the diaspora for the war effort that were shuttled directly into the pockets and personal accounts of local Croatians which to me personally is one of the most disgusting violations of trust in recent history that I've ever seen.

So, you see, I'm NOT talking about individual cases of one back scratching another. I am talking corruption as societal rot. Corruption in Croatia is absolutely pervasive and at all levels of society. The fact that it is a more accepted mode of doing business is true and not only sad but a serious impediment to development. The difference that I am highlighting is that in the US, when corruption is made public, people are actually scandalized, the public is outraged and people are forced to resign (e.g., Blagojevich) and often go to jail.

Now, there are problems in the US. No doubt. Moral relativism. Violence. etc... But corruption as a societal ill is not one of them.

If I could vote in the upcoming elections here, I would vote for USKOK (the anti-corruption wing of the Federal Prosecutor's office).