Laundry Day: Dun Dun Dun

Let me start by saying that in Croatia there is no such thing as a dryer. The only exceptions are in expat homes (those with the money and space for one), wealthy people who don’t want their clothes waving in the wind, or the Laundromat. In most peoples cases The Great Outdoors is all you got. Some washing machines have build in "supper spin cycles" that get stuff mostly dry. The idea is to then let your clothes sit there till they're "done". We are fortunate enough to have a washing machine of our own.

But it would help if we could BLOODY UNDERSTAND THE THING!!!

Having Croatian settings would be hard enough for us, but no they just have to be in…. Slovenian? The best is the difference between Vklop Izklop: Turn Off and Izklop Ozemanja: Spin off. The Turn off button is also the on button so the cycle will run, but you have to press both buttons to get the machine to drain. Otherwise you have water up to your ears and you can’t get at your clothes. This wouldn’t be a problem for some but we have a front-loading machine. Lets just say I had to do some quick mopping and Googling to find the word for drain or spin. That of cores is too easy and all I got was Pumping, Spinning Short. Well here are the settings and their translations:

Belo

Barvasto

Izpiranje

Mehcanje

Ozemanje

Oplemeniteno

Obcutljivo

Volna

Izpiranje

Mehcanje

Crpanje, Kratko Ozemanje

White

Colored

Flushing

Softening

Spinning

Synthetics

Sensitive

Wool

Flushing

Softening

Pumping, Spinning Short

Imotski

We took a day trip to Imotski for a friend’s birthday. The drive during the day was beautiful though the sunset over the mountains on the way back was amazing as well. Imotski is this little village about an hour from Split and feels like it only has 100 houses in the entire town. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imotski

There is this amazing guy that we met (and I can’t remember his name) but he started this music program in the local schools. He was some big musician in Zagreb but got tired of what he was doing and went back to Imotski. Now he composes and has gotten almost every child to play an instrument in school.

Another fun thing is what’s called and Imotski Tort. It’s made with almond flower, egg whites, sugar and a normal pastry crust. The interesting thing about it is the intricate latticework crust and almonds that are used for decoration (they stick them straight up in the dough).

The River Vrljika is a karst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) river that flows for 14.3 miles (23 km) through Imotski’s fields. We ate lunch at this restaurant that was outside right on the edge of a slower part of the river. The water is so clear that you can see the plants growing at the bottom. I’ll put up some pictures below for you to see what I mean.

They also have Blue Lake and Red Lake with better pictures on Google maps than what I took so I’ll give you the link. They are named for the colour of the rock that surrounds them. Blue lake you can swim in and actually drink out of if you go to the center when the water levels are high. The natural spring that feeds it is really clean but during the summer it can dry up almost completely.

Here is the Google maps link: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&sugexp=pfwc&cp=5&gs_id=j&xhr=t&q=imotski&qe=SW1vdHM&qesig=QBEx7jJWIH55I00Bsvrh9w&pkc=AFgZ2tlkJfRHpYghn3h1PVyEQCdDC6q-pPSc4G2mK0wZto1cwQpbzfOs05bisc66aqIwKh8OUD4UG4XREbms1sW7lXc_YWiCjg&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1061&bih=702&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x134adebc53e4ff0f:0x61c7d86de62a3859,Imotski,+Croatia&ei=ijmDTt7YOIOmhAfWjaGXDw&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=3&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQ8gEwAg

The plants in the river

Look how clear that is!!

The sunset behind the mountains.
That’s all for now as my computer is about to die (12% battery) and I’m going to the beach!

Sorry so much to do!!

Thank you all for the lovely comments. Sorry I've been gone for so long I was applying to GW and finding it difficult to do from Croatia. Let me tell you sending a fax normally drives me crazy. Add a few country codes and my head almost exploded. The amount of documentation needed to transfer schools is absurd; of cores all of it needed to be signed by me as well (hence the faxing). I think people make it to hard just to weed out the weak and the faint of heart.

To answer your question Tom, yes I am trying to learn Croatian and it has its ups and downs. It uses the Roman alphabet and is phonetic once you figure out what sounds the letters make. There are only 30 letters in the alphabet but each letter is pronounced separately and there are a few letters variations (Č Ć DŽ Đ LJ Š Ž).

Hello Dubrovnik!

We finally made it after 3 flights and a short car ride to Dubrovnik. The old city is truly beautiful with its marble-smooth streets that glisten as if wet. The high walls that surround Old Town were built in the 10^th century and were restructured slightly in the 13^th. The main gate is Pile to the West and has a stone bridge from 1538 that runs over the old mote. The mote now is a lovely garden that I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting. Ploče gate to the East is the other main gate and I live up the hill from it. It’s been a little over a week since we arrived and have now moved into our apartment. This will be a fun ‘base of operation’ as I plan to take trips (funding permitting) to Kotor in Montenegro, Prague in the Czech Republic, Budapest in Hungary and many other historic sights in Eastern Europe.

6 days left until we leave!! I'm in New York state visiting my boyfriends family and all packed up to move. We should have an apartment when we arrive so I’m excited about that. My next post will be from Dubrovnik.