The Sweater Song / Croatian 101

Dobar Dan from Hvar!

On the island of Hvar in Hvar town for some tourism and dinner. We are staying in a small town called Stari Grad about 22 km away on the same island. We came to this island for an overnight trip from our stay in Split. Both villages are very quaint and quiet - every street here feels like the backbackbackstreets of Rome.

Split is an amazingly cool place. You have the main walkway on the water, the Riva, and behind it the old town, which is Emperor Diocletian's old palace. He was the first inhabitant, per se, of Split and built his retirement home there. It eventually became home to locals and to this day is still home to Croatians. It is unreal because there are stores and bars and homes built into this ancient wall. It would be as if Romans set up shop and home in Trajan's Market thousands of years ago and now they live there and have a Gucci store next door in the ruins. It's pretty surreal. During the interwars it was called the 'get' (ghetto) and was home to the city's poor and was a red light district. It has since turned around and is a desirable place to live again.

Last night we had an insane dinner at a hidden seafood place. Had an enthusiastic and patient waiter, who helped us make our dinner selections. We had fresh fish, squid, tomato salad, mushroom risotto, and a liter of house red. It was the most deluxe meal we have had so far and in keeping with Croatian prices, wasn't even unreasonable! We both agreed it was the best squid we have ever had and the fish was on par with what I have had made by my Palauan family, which meant it was really excellent! We met some New Yorkers, Melody and John, at the restaurant and chatted with them for about an hour.

Tomorrow, we take a ferry back to Split and stay for one more night. The next day we will take a 4.5 hour bus to Dubrovnik for two nights. Then on the 27th, we will fly from Dubrovnik to Zagreb before catching our final flight home on the 28th. Here's to hoping that Dubrovnik, which is farther South than Split is warmer. We have been in sweaters since arriving, save for a three hour period we were in shorts and a dress. We walked around during the time we could have been on the beach, not realizing it might have been our only chance to be in the beach. Today was windy in Split, and on the ferry over, and rainy in Hvar. Luckily, Croatia is a beautiful country regardless of the weather, but it would be nice to just get part of the beach vacation promised on the internet. All the websites said it would be at least 75 degrees but without all of the tourists!

And now for a little Croatian 101 --
Croatian is generally phonetic, save for the following letters-
c - pronounced like the ts in cats
č - pronounced like ch in chat
ć - pronounced like the c in cats
š - pronounced like the sh in share
j - pronounced as a y as in youth
r - always rolled
ž - like the s sound in pleasure

I practiced these sounds a bit before I left, which has helped some here, but it can be pretty trippy since often you will often have to juggle two types of c's in a word. Also, i have found that the j sound often replaces the ia sound in Italian and some English words, such as policia in Italy would be policija or galleria would be gallerija. Or as I saw Maria is Marija. Pretty interesting. We have been lucky that people here speak English since otherwise it would be quite difficult.

Signing off, time for dinner!
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