I love this story that Beau Berman forwarded to me. Splicani (residents of Split) are WAY to nosy to ever let this happen. Zagrepcani (residents of Zagreb) must not get into each others business so much.
Governments have changed. War erupted and ended. Neighbors had children, and then grandchildren. But Hedviga Golik never left her tiny apartment in Croatia’s capital — until her mummified body was carried out this week, 35 years after she died.
I love this stuff. As a high-strung American living in Croatia, I thought most Dalmatians were incredibly lazy. However, Dalmatians looked down their noses at Bosnians because they thought Bosnians were lazy. I guess this AP story is an example of what they are talking about:
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — A would-be thief took a nap while burgling a house in Bosnia - and the owner found him sound asleep on the couch, police said Thursday.
The man, identified only as Edin M., 21, managed to snatch two bracelets and an earring before falling asleep, police in the central Bosnian town of Maglaj said.
He confessed to breaking into the house. “He saw the couch and just sat to down to rest for a while and fell asleep,” police said in a statement.
“Oh, this is a nice necklace. Aha, diamonds. That couch looks comfy. I didn’t have my 10th cup of coffee today. Feeling sleepy.”
Here is a picture of me in front of the Iranian Cultural Center and Embassy in Sarajevo. While I find Hugo Chavez wildly entertaining, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just not funny. I’m leaving a “gift” to show my disapproval of his act.
We’ve been into Bosnia a few times over past four years. We’ve been to Kupres to go play in the snow, and we’ve been to Neum to have lunch. You have to drive through Neum and about a 10km stip of Bosnia on your way from Split to Dubrovnik. But I had never been to the inner part of Bosnia. The parts we had been in were still the Roman Catholic religiously and Mediterranean climatically and looked similar to Croatia.
Last week I took a trip with my friend Boris (the engineer, not the player) to his hometown of VareÅ¡. He and his mom were going to see how their apartment renovation was coming along. Several EU groups had banded together to provide funding for a lot of the refugees in that town to repair their homes so that they could return. Boris’ family had left their home 10 years ago after fighting in the town had gotten really bad. Their apartment was set on fire by Croatians not wanting to leave anything nice for the Muslims or Serbs to enjoy.
Our plan was to go to Vareš on Monday, go up in the mountains on Tuesday, then head back to Split via Sarajeva and Mostar on Wednesday.
We took off on the normal route that we’ve taken to Kupres before. Then we kept going into uncharted territory. Our first stop was Bugojno, where we ate some sandwiches that Boris’ mom had brought and had coffee. We walked through the town just to see what was there.
The high school in Bugojno
The view from downtown with one of the minarets
Bugojno was an interesting place. I could tell we were entering an area with a more colorful cultural mix. You could see some churches in town, but mainly there were mosques. We ate our sandwiches and got drinks at the “Croatian House,” which I guess is for people of Croatian ethnicity only.
From Bugojno we drown on farther into the mountains. The road just kept going up. As you can see on my map above, I just had to draw a red line across from Bugojno to highway E73. What we were driving on after we left Bugojno was only a road in the technical sense. We hit a few places that weren’t even paved, and there were a few spots where the chunks of the road had slid down the side of the mountain. I would have liked to stop to take some pictures along that part of the highway, but there was really no place to stop. This road made the “Pig Trail” (AR Hwy 23) look like the Autobahn.
When we got to E73 it was under construction. The EU is building a road from Budapest to Sarajevo to help integrate Bosnia into the European economy and solve some of the bad economic problems in Bosnia. In the meantime, 20km/h is about as fast as you can go for a long stretch. Finally we made to Breza, and turned off onto an even worse road than the one from Bugojno. Again, I had to just mark the route with a red line because this road doesn’t show up on maps. It follows a beautiful stream up into the mountains where the road ends at VareÅ¡. Boris’ aunt had found an empty apartment for Boris and me to stay in. We dropped off our stuff, and then went to his aunt’s for dinner.
The apartments near Boris’ apartment in VareÅ¡
On Tuesday, I could see the town itself was like a lot of other small towns in Bosnia and Croatia. Buildings are old looking, but not from age, but lack of maintenance. I think the apartments buildings there looked nicer than most just because they had tile roofs and wooden balconies. Most communist-built apartment complexes were high-rise lego-like block buildings. There they had at least taken the time to pay (or threaten) an architect. Some repairs to the town (sidewalks, roads, paint on the buildings, etc.), and it would look really nice. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
This video is from the spot where the people from VareÅ¡ drew their livelihood. The iron mine filled with water during the 90’s Balkan War because the workers stopped working the mine because they were just trying to survive. The water filling the mine has destabilized the sides of the mine, so the safest thing to do is to leave it full of water.
After looking at the mine, we went up into the mountains for lunch.
This restaurant (notice the little blue pools over to the right side of the building) serves trout. You can pick your side dishes, but you’re there to eat trout. I had two pan-seared trout, potatoes, and cabbage. After lunch, we kept going higher into the mountains to buy cheese.
The cows from this farm eat the flowers from these alpine meadows and drink from the springs that come up all around. The cheese that the farmer makes is really tasty and very light. I bought two whole cheeses to take back to Split.
Back in town, you could still see the agriculture that has remained even as the mine and industrialism has left this town.
What is strange about Bosnia is that I can’t tell the difference between a Croatian, a Serb, and Muslim just by looking at them - but they can. All three groups are represented in VareÅ¡, and it’s interesting to see how closely they live to each other.
The yellow building is the Roman Catholic church and the church across the street is the Serbian Orthodox church. If I had a just a bit of a wider angle lens, I could have included the minaret from the mosque in this same picture. This area really is an intersection of several different cultures. It makes it a really interesting place to visit.
I was Krakow, Poland last week for our Eastern European Leadership Conference. We had a great time, heard some great teaching, and got very encouraging reports from many of the churches all over eastern Europe, especially the churches in Ukraine. Any of the churches that are led by nationals seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. Of course, that makes a lot of sense.
We were able to save several hundred Euros by staying in Krakow for an extra day after the conference was finished, so my friend Brandon and I took the opportunity to take a tour of Aushwitz. Aushwitz is located in southern Poland, about an hour’s drive from Krakow, and was the site of the largest Nazi concentration camp during WWII. The weather was very fitting on that day - rain with low clouds, and very windy and cold.
If you’ve ever seen Schindler’s List or read Elie Wiesel’s Night or Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (or studied history), you know some of the details of what happened at Aushwitz. But nothing could have prepared me for the how hard the massive scale of murder that was committed at the Aushwitz complex hits you. In one room they showed us a mountain of 2-1/2 tons of human hair. They started shaving the prisoners before they gassed them, and used the hair to fuel a new industry in textiles. They also had examples of the blankets, pillows, and mattresses that had been made out of the hair. Mountains of suitcases, literally tons of children’s shoes, piles of baby baskets — all reminders of the scale of death in that place. We were led through the barracks, prisons, and high-voltage fences. We saw the wall where “bad” prisoners were shot. We saw the gestapo court. Finally, we saw the gas chambers and the crematoriums.
Brandon asked our guide the question of how many people escaped the camp. At least two hundred escaped Aushwitz, but when you consider that over 3 million prisoners were “processed” there, 200 is hardly worth mentioning. It’s been five days since we took the tour, and I feel like I’m still processing what I saw.
Over the past few years, many Americans have been rethinking how we use and consume energy resources. The gasoline price spike after Hurricane Katrina seems to have begun a revival of hybrid and high-MPG cars. Europeans have been gouged with high-road taxes and confiscatory fuel prices for a long time, so they are accustomed to being more resourceful. Usually this just means buying a smaller car (some cars here are tiny).
Another factor is purchasing a car here is that Eurodiesel usually runs 15-20% cheaper than EuroSuper95 (normal unleaded gasoline). So most of the popular car models have a diesel option. The diesel engines in these small to medium-sized autos have eye-popping fuel economy. Two of the most popular here in Croatia are the Volkswagen Golf and the Renault Clio.
The Volkswagen Golf is a full-sized car for the Croatian market (Americans would probably consider it an economy car). The most popular option for this model is the 1.9-liter TDI turbo diesel engine. I have ridden in several of these, and they have a lot of get-up-and-go. But the main reason for their popularity is that you can fit the whole family into a Golf, but it can still get up to 49 MPG! This is not a hybrid car. It’s just a well-designed diesel engine. And the Volkswagen diesel engines have unusual long life.
Another popular model is the Renault Clio. The Clio is definitely an economy car, but you can still get four 6′5″ basketball players into one fairly comfortably (I know because I’ve done it - and I was the shortest of the four). The 1.5-liter dCi diesel engine that the French give as an option on this car definitely does not have the pep of the VW TDI, but it does give you 66 MPG! I was floored when my friend told me the fuel economy of his Clio (of course he told me in liters used per 100 kilometers). Once again this is not a hybrid. It’s a common rail diesel.
Surprisingly, Ford also offers a diesel option on its Ford Focus models. There are 1.6-, 1.8-, and 2.0-liter options on the TDCi engine. The 1.6-liter gets 60 MPG. The 2.0-liter gets “only” 50 MPG, but will be more acceptable to American taste since it can hit a top speed of 125 MPH. The biggest problem I have with the Ford diesel is that is only available in Europe. You can’t buy any of these fuel-efficient Ford models in the US. The only one of these cars that’s available in the US is the VW Golf TDi. Ford like all the other US car manufacturers have painted themselves into a corner by limiting consumer options to flexible-fuel cars and huge diesel engines in full-size trucks. Maybe there’s a problem with using the TDCi in the US since it was developed in conjunction with Puegot and Citroen, but I can’t see what the problem would be.
Croatia has some of the last remaining wilderness areas within west or central Europe. Many Germans and Italians come to the remote parts of Croatia to commune with nature. Mount Velebit, just an 1-1/2 north of Split, is home to the largest population of bears in this part of the continent. Some of the locals run a shelter for orphaned bears and other wild animals. They have a lot of visitors who come to see bears up close but not in a cage like a zoo. The video below shows a German woman who was told by the locals that bears enjoy music.
The woman tourist was fine. She escaped with a few scrapes and bruises. The man who runs the bear shelter jumped in and got the bear off of her, but then it got him. His assistant then tried to run the bear off using a chainsaw. Luckily, another guy from the village happened to be walking by and had a pistol on him. He finally had to shoot the bear to get it off the bear shelter owner.
Everyone here has been sad this week because the heavily-favored Croatian handball team lost in their first match in the elimination round of the World Championship of Handball in Germany. After cruising through the round-robin portion of the competition undefeated, Croatia was unable to sustain their level of offense once they started playing the tougher competition… wait… you mean… you don’t know what handball is?
Well, the best way to describe handball is… just imagine playing soccer with your hands… and you have to shoot from outside the three point line all of the time, and you have to dribble the ball and then shoot it past the goal-keeper. Sound familiar at all? I’m convinced some Europeans got together for some recreation and disagreed on what they should do. Some wanted to play basketball, but others wanted to play soccer. So in a very “United Nations” type of way, they invented a sport that is a kludge, albeit all inclusive. I’m still not clear on all the rules, and it has the feel of a game that is being made up as they go along.
BUT, I find it ten times more entertaining than soccer. The scores are typically in the 20’s or 30’s, and the referees enforce a semi-shot clock. There’s no actual clock, but if the referee thinks the team is not being aggressive enough, he’ll just give the ball to the other team.
Enjoy the Croatian music with these example video clips of handball.
I’ve often been told that as a believer I should always “believe the best”. This sounds very nice and very Christian. It also sounds incredibly naive. Like I’ve said before, one of Europeans’ biggest criticisms of Americans is that we are very naive. We, in turn, think Europeans are too pessimistic. Living in Europe, I am constantly told how stupid I am for believing anything the media or the US government tells me. I try telling them that I am not like other Americans. Nevertheless, we’re all the same to them. So like it or not, I am a naive American.
So I set out to try to find biblical basis for “believing the best” (BTW, starting out with a concept and going to look for it in the scriptures is shabby way of studying the Bible). Lo and behold, just as I start my informal study on this topic, the allegations about Ted Haggard start coming out. During the first 24 hours of the scandal frenzy, evangelical “leaders” like James Dobson come out and unequivocally deny the allegations and say that this a “political stunt” by wicked Democrats. Others made similar statements. My newly adopted tinge of Euro-cynicism cringed at the naivetẻ of these Christian leaders. This religious/media/political scandal was becoming a case study for Christan naivetẻ.
As more news came out, it became obvious that Haggard was not credible. Worse yet, because men like Dobson blindly “believed the best”, they have now lost credibility as well - at least with me. I know he was just defending a personal friend, but did Dobson ask Haggard point-blank questions about this? Did he even ask him if the allegations were true before jumping to his defense? Continue Reading »
Our life in Croatia has become more and more “green” over the years. Here are some of the ways we have lessened our environmental footprint just by living here:
Passive solar heated water - our aparment is equipped with a solar hot water heating system on the roof which I supplement on cold and cloudy days with a…
Tankless hot water heater - with tankless hot water heater, you only heat the water you use
Propane-fueled car - while propane is not a renewable energy source, it does burn much cleaner than gasoline, and happens to be about 45% the cost of gasoline here in Croatia. Plus, I can run my camp stove off of my fuel tank.
Cycling and walking - I spend a lot more time using human-powered modes of transportation because we only have one car and there is no where to park it even if I did drive it to my destination. Walking gives you a lot of quiet time to think about things.
Limited A/C usage - we sweat a lot more, but our apartment only has a small window unit. I’m used to the heat now, and don’t really miss the A/C that much (OK sometimes)
Front-loading washing machine - front-loading washing machines are more energy efficient and use less water than top-loading machines. Caleb really enjoys watching the clothes spin around.
Clothes-line - until we bought a condensation dryer last Christmas, we line-dried everything. We still hang some drying intensive items like towels out on the line. Hanging your underwear out for everyone to see is just something you have to get used to.
All fluorescent lighting - every bulb in our house has been changed over to flourescents (mainly because the incandescent bulbs here are such low quality)
Recycling - stores in Croatia give you 15 cents per plastic or glass bottle. Garrett started our home recycling program so he can get the money and buy more marbles
Buying local - we buy a lot of locally-grown produce. That cuts down on energy expended in transporting food to our community, supports local farmers, and the neighborhood market is a great place to practice speaking Croatian
Most of these things are recommended by environmental activist, but I’m doing them just because it’s the natural thing to do where I live. It doesn’t feel like I’m making any big changes to my lifestyle to do these things. These are the types of changes that everyone could make it, and it not affect our standard of living that much in America.
Our life in Croatia has become more and more “green” over the years. Here are some of the ways we have lessened our environmental footprint just by living here:
