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).

Agro-Tourism Fair in Skradin

Husband and I went to Skradin on Saturday for the first-ever Agro-Tourism Fair. Overall, it was fairly lame, although there were some good booths. One of our favorites was Uljara Laća which is a new refinery for olive oil in Skradin. Good oil AND they were peddling bread bowls with little fried fishes called girice (I don't know what the translation is). Maybe they won our hearts because we were expecting to chow down at this agro-tourism fair and instead got nothin' but the bread bowl.

Neverthess, we ended up with lots of treasure at the end of time at the fair. You get a picture of our dinner room as a bonus. Husband went nuts on the meat and that's a serious wheel of cheese. The other bits are a jar of pear preserves, a cake from Imotski and various wines and liquers.

While the actual fair could have been ˝done˝ much better, I am completely charmed by Skradin. They were all pirates back in the day, you know, and consider it a feather in their cap.

Fishing on the Bridge

Last night, we were walking across the bridge and saw a guy fishing. Now, we see this guy fishing off the bridge every night, but honestly, only last night did we actually witness a strike. So, he's fashioned a ˝spear˝ from what looks like a hoe with points instead of a flat edge. He ties the other end to the bridge and HURLS it at amazing speed into the water....and I mean, amazing speed. Now, the bridge is 10 feet above the water....and it's nighttime. How does he see the fish?

Nevertheless, we saw him fling the hoe and pull out a rather sizable fish.

Tourists Have Already Descended on Zadar

Holy cow, has the tourist season started...or WHAT! There are what seem to be a million foreigners all over the place. What's remarkable, however, are not simply the numbers of early tourists but also their composition. Easter to May are considered the shoulders of ˝the season,˝ meaning, the prices still haven't hiked to their summer peak. Usually, we get the Polish, Czech...Hungarian tourists during these months. Then come the Germans, Austrians, Australians, Americans/Canadians & French, followed by the Italians in August. By the end of the season - again, the shoulder - you start to see Czech, Polish & Hungarian tourists again. This year, however, is COMPLETELY different. We are already overrun with Germans and Austrians...some Australians/Brits & French.

Of course, the Croatian media is eating this up. ˝See, there's no crisis in Croatia....˝ in I-told-you-so fashion.

Au contraire.

My theory is this: I think that we are going to continue with this overwhelming blitz of early tourism before the prices spike to high heaven and then tourism is going to crash and burn. Look. It's no secret that it's cheaper to go on vacation to a warm destination in the off-season....even if it's only slightly off-season. It's an 8 hour drive from Munich to Zadar...the weather's great here. Some people are already swimming (I can guarentee that it's the tourists who are swimming this early because no local would so much as dip a toe in the sea, right now). But the snow birds are thinking...Why not head down in April or May, avoid the crowds, the exorbitant prices and we STILL get a taste of the sea for our vacation.

We'll see.

A Story of Corruption

We got a call from a friend of Husband's the other day. They've known each other for twenty or so years. He's the CEO of a very large company in Croatia and was in town (our town) for some business. The transaction was that his large company was buying up a small local company so he was in town to finish the deal. However, there was a final twist that he couldn't have anticipated, he told us. At the end of the day, this small-ish local business owner made a sort-of ˝thank you˝ speech - lauding this friend of ours for being very fair to his company in their dealings together. At the end of the speech, he reached out and handed our friend an envelope. Inside the envelope was 15,000 euros. This local business owner explained that it was a thank you from him and that when the deal is final at the end of the week...he'll give him another 10,000 euros. (I'm sure the 25,000 euro ˝thank you˝ would demand repayment sometime in the future - by, who knows what - maybe by hiring his nephew to be the Plant Director or something of that ilk).

Our friend was pretty disgusted with the whole thing. And while, he heads one of the largest companies in Croatia, he's got a North American work ethic and so these business-as-usual practices here seem to shock him time and time again. Of course, he refused the money and told us that he wondered how many of his employees - below him - had taken their envelopes through the months of putting this deal together. I'm sure there were plenty. I wish I could say that we were shocked, but that would be a lie.

Even in my short time in Croatia, I've seen - just in our daily life - corruption. From the local accountants who will charge us 4 or 5 times the going rate for their services under the rubric that ˝these people obviously have more money, so they should pay more for those services.˝ That mentality as common as rock in these parts. One of the most stark examples of corrupt behavior happened right after we moved to Croatia and bought a boat. When we went to pay our taxes on that boat, we were told by this tax person, ˝oh no, it's quite impossible for us (the tax authority) to determine what you owe...but here (as a scrap of paper was slide across the counter), call him...he'll come out to the boat and appraise it.˝ Of course, we PAY for that appraisal - and this tax person gets some of that money. Well, obviously this didn't pass the sniff test so made a call to the previous owner of the boat - who called the tax office in his town. And this guy cheerfully faxed over the specs and taxes owed on our boat to our local tax person.

Oftentimes, we hear from people here ˝well, there's corruption everywhere...˝ And yes, there is corruption everywhere. But it's not standard practice - everywhere. And even in egregious cases in the U.S., like Enron for example...people go to jail. And perhaps, most importantly, IT IS ACTUALLY A SCANDAL in the public forum. Meaning, members of the general public don't shrug their shoulders and say...ha, corruption is everywhere.

Instead of wanting a piece of rock, like the old Allstate ads, my husband always says ˝everyone wants a piece of the rot...˝

Sad but true.