Next Up....

OK I fixed the settings so everyone should now be able to post comments. Sorry if anyone has been inconvenienced.

Now on to breakfast.

I love my breakfast. I love the way butter melts into my warm golden brown toast. The yoke of the egg as it spreads over the buttery surface. I generally prefer fresh bread cut from a loaf as apposed to that pre-sliced stuff. But let me explain for a moment. When we as Americans think of toast we think of this…

Now here in Croatia they think of this….

Yeah I know. What’s inside are pieces of bread that look like toast; except that they’re not toasted, have a sponge cake like texture and have nothing to do with toast at all!!

Have you ever had a sandwich where the bread was spongy? Americans are used to that soft pre-sliced stuff that makes the perfect PB&J or BLT. Here Toast is only good for toasting. Now this wouldn’t be  a problem except we don’t have a toaster. “No problem” you think “I’ll just put it in the oven.” That would work, if we had gas.

A gas oven needs gas, makes sense. But gas comes in those tanks people hook up to their grill and we have no idea how to get or install one. So I’ve been living for almost a month with no working oven, and no baking (but that’s a whole new post so never mind). Luckily as I was typing our landlord came by to measure the windows (don’t ask me why). He said he will get gas for us so I can bake again!!! We also pointed out the wasp nest on our patio. This was very comical because Zack was making buzzing noises and pretending to sting his arm. Our landlord doesn’t speak English and we don’t know how to say wasp in Croatian. He got the message though and I’m guessing will return to kill them at some point.

Not that I’ve gone way off topic we return to breakfast. Here the eggs are not as pasteurized and are fresh because there are no large chicken farms. Some of the eggs you get from the store still have a feather stuck to them. The eggs come in 12 packs but those have a tare here middle. By late afternoon all of the 12 pack eggs are gone or left in groups of 6. The only other large group of eggs you can get is a set of 10. Here is a picture of the 10 pack and you can see how bright the yoke is in the picture of the pan. Here is also my solution to not having a toaster or working oven when it comes to toasting my ‘toast’.

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.