Cranes

The Melonakos's (or is it Melonaki?) wanted to have all the senior missionaries in Zagreb over to the Mission Home for Sunday dinner.  Liz volunteered to cook, so I did too.  We are a pretty good-looking group of dedicated folks, IMHO.

Left to right:  Sister Edwards, Sister Fuhriman, Sister Melonakos, Brother Melonakos, Sister Johansen, Brother Johansen, Sister Ashurst, and a silent e = me taking the picture.
Items on the table include:  my famous oriental chicken, a Greek salad, Waldorf salad, brazed spiced potatoes, and pogacha.
  We had a lovely time together,

Next, we retired to another room for dessert, which just happened to be birthday cake Liz baked for herself, because it was her birthday.

We had planned to have a birthday date at a fancy restaurant in Osijek.  We scoped it out one day while out for a P-Day stroll.  They had a guy at the door whose job was to look dignified and welcome anyone coming inside.  He politely invited us in when we stopped to check out the menu posted in the window.  The menu looked fabulous, and that was our grand plan - until the COVID-19 changed it and isolated us in Zagreb.

Monday morning we drove to the church office in downtown Zagreb and this site greeted us:

The church office is just beyond the yellow part of the building, and the crane is working on the end building in the same block - the one I posted a photo of the back side with the roof caved in.  They worked on the roof of that building all day, and filled up the big white truck with broken brick, tile, and concrete.  It seems like the entire tile roof collapsed.

At first they were bringing down big, white bags of rubble, but it looks like they ran out of bags and started just dumping the rubble into the back of the truck.

  Sunday, one of the things we talked about was, "What happened to all the mission sewing machines?"  One of them was supposed to be at the church office, but nobody remembered it being there.  Liz and I promised to search for it.  Liz gave up at about the time I decided to look behind a bunch of useful but unused stuff piled in a corner of the vault room.  And there it was!  We wanted the sewing machines because we are all supposed to wear masks when outdoors, and you can't buy one for love nor money.
  Just beyond the vault room is the only area in the office the building inspector told us was not safe.  On a whim I went back there again.  The problem area is a doorway with a big chevron of cracks above it.  From the office side it doesn't look too bad, so I went through it and looked at the other side.

When I looked back at it and saw the bricks separated from the mortar, and the shifting already taking place it gave me some serious willies!  The door is held up by a concrete base and it is clearly broken in half on the right side, and maybe on the left.  I had to take a deep breath before walking back under it.
  Today is Tuesday, and the crane is back at the office removing more rubble from the top of that end building.  There is another identical crane working on a roof in the next block to the east.  The church is paying the city of Zagreb for the use of two cranes until everything is put right, but I don't think this is them.

And finally, yesterday I took our mission car to the Hyundai dealership in Zagreb (I can't take it anywhere farther due to city and police orders) for an oil change.  They also rebuilt the brakes and changed wiper blades.  I wasn't sure that could be done while the city is under lockdown, but it was no problem.  I called and made an appointment, and they wouldn't have done it without that, because they want no more than two people in the room at a time.  But once I had the appointment it was smooth sailing.  Sales are closed by gov't. decree, but vehicle service is considered an essential service.

A good week.

We spent the week going to the mission office every day, where Liz works hard and I do whatever little jobs need doing.  The normal drill is we park in an underground parking garage, which costs us ten kuna (about $1.50) per hour.  But the earthquake made everybody nervous about parking along the streets, so they've found other solutions like parking in the city parks.  But after a couple of days and the aftershocks were mild, we started parking there.  We don't have a permit to park there, but we figure nobody is checking parking.  Besides, the parking ticket is 60 kuna, and the parking garage is 80 kuna if we only work 8 hours.  So it's win-win.  In fact, we haven't gotten any tickets.  Yippee!
  We got a treat on Thursday.  The fire department brought in some huge ladder trucks to check chimneys and rubble on the big buildings downtown.  It was fun seeing the big ladders going up and the firemen walking over the rooftops, but the treat was the spectacular helmets they wear.

The chiefs have silver helmets.  The next level down wear golden helmets.  They look like a cross between Darth Vader's and a Roman Centurion's.   It's very snappy when they salute each other.
  And then the drivers and crane operators wear ordinary plastic/fiberglass helmets.

Friday the office seemed in pretty good shape.  The bills were paid and all the fires were out.  So we all decided to take Saturday off.
  Liz and I decided to go up the mountain and see Medvedgrad castle.  We can see it from the Mission Home, but it's not even clear it's a castle from here.  So we grabbed some water and walking sticks and headed up the mountain.

This was the view as we got close.  Still just looks like a square tower.  But the drive through the trees was great.  The air was clean, the sun was shining, birds were singing.  And there was one surprising thing.  Lots of people were parking down the mountain and walking up to the castle through the woods.  In town nobody will meet your eyes or speak to you.  But hikers all say hello and engage.  Oh, happy day!  I loved that.

  We parked fairly close to the castle and walked up the hill.  

This bit of wall is the outer wall, and there are only a few traces of it left.  Just beyond Liz is a huge ditch, which is also part of the fortification.  And she is looking up the hill we have to walk up.

   The castle is being renovated, so the gates were closed, but we could walk around it.    Below is a sign by the locked gate.

So, it's 700 years old, and some parts of it look it.  But the renovation of the big tower is modern bricks and doesn't even pretend to be the old castle.

  

Here Liz is looking at the second wall.  Then the inner wall is the newer looking wall above that.  And then the tower, or "keep" is the last line of defence.   The place is too big to get a good single photo that shows it all, but I used the iphone to take a "pano" shot.  The wall is probably more than 300 yards long and fairly straight, but the pano shot made it look curved.

The original Keep is at the end on the right, but that is a ruin.  The church is the one with the conical roof. And the big tower we can see from town is the newest part of the castle.

  We found a hole in the fence and Liz surprised me by slipping right in to take a look around.  So I HAD to follow her.  It was cool.

This is inside the castle, looking up the street towards the church.  We had to take this photo through the bars of a big gate/

This one if from the same spot, but showing the other side of the street, including some bifurcated windows.  I think the Catholic church has built this, because those bricks look newer than 14th century.  The old Keep is the ruin just beyond the red bricks.

And finally, as we walked back down the hill, we stopped to rest for a bit and I noticed that some of the trees have very unusual branches.

They have clubs, sometimes along a branch and some of them at the end of a branch.  The trees look like an ash or something similar, based only on the bark.  Only a few of this kind of tree were there and they all had clubs.  It's hard to see, but some of the clubbed branches are very short.  Kind of weird.

  So we had a nice, relaxing afternoon.

Back to normal

I am impressed that when we arrived at the mission office Monday morning, the rubble from the earthquake had been swept up into piles, and safety tape was out to mark off areas where it wouldn't be wise to walk close to the building.  The tape is important because the sidewalks are mostly right next to the buildings.
  It might be good to show you what the buildings here in downtown Zagreb look like.  This is a satellite view of the block with the mission office, but it is typical here.  Large, 2 and 3 and 4 story buildings arranged in a rectangular shape.  The Mission Office is mistakenly labeled as the Mission Officer,  but at least it has a heart.

   I went to the back of the mission office suite and looked out the window towards the top-left of the Sat photo, and looked at the building in the corner.
I saw this:

We have nothing to do with that building in the corner, but it is distressing to see such damage.

  Below is the building a couple down to the right:

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The chimneys fell over, which is not unusual, but there is a shade above the blue balcony.  It is just corrugated sheet, and look at what is sitting on top of it!  That is a lot of concrete being held up by a piece of rusty sheet metal.  That piece fell there sometime during the day Monday, because I looked at that balcony in the morning and there were only a couple of bricks on it then.

  All around the inside of the building block, there is fallen bricks and roof tiles.  There are some smaller buildings and some of them had nasty surprises.

This is looking down from one of our suite windows to the little shed (of which we have half) we use for storing paper products and books.  Fortunately, we have the half away from the main building, so those holes in the roof are not our problem, either.  The building is 4 stories, and the ceilings are high - 12 or even 13 feet high - so the debris would have been going fast and obviously had no trouble punching through that roof.

  The street side of the buildings have little adventures, too.   This car is just down from our office.

That chimney is pretty much intact, because a Toyota caught it.  Nice catch, Toyota!

  Zagreb is very lucky this earthquake happened early in the day, before people were out and about.  6:24 am.  Almost all the buildings have some rubble in front of them on the sidewalk.

  The newer buildings have been built with the newer design bricks with lots of holes for insulation and re-bar.  That chimney luxuriating in the back seat of Toyota was built with older bricks that are a single piece.  There is a nice shot of one in the foreground of the photo.  The concrete of the chimney looks like it is in good shape, so maybe they built it fairly recently, but used old brick.  

  The facades of these buildings is stucco or concrete, but it is crumbling on the older ones.  Acid rain is my guess.

Today, things have settled down to something almost normal.  We haven't had any earth-shattering announcements for two days.  It is confirmed that we can stay here.  We had a fun little after-shock this morning.  This one really amazed me, but for the same reason as I've mentioned before.  I heard the boom, then the windows rattled, then I heard the roar, and then ... and then it shook.  It was about 2 seconds between the first sound and feeling the shake.  Weird.

A very exciting Sabbath day

Let me back up a little.  Yesterday was Saturday and I woke up thinking about how our plan had been to come to Zagreb for just a couple of days, and now we've been here for a week, and the end is uncertain.  Friday evening President M. mentioned to me that Croatia may stop city-to-city traffic like Italy did.  Not that he knows anything, but he's suspicious they might.

Saturday morning I woke up and was laying in bed thinking about how all our things are in Osijek, so maybe I should drive over there and get a few things so we'd be prepared for a longer stay.  Among other things, I'm missing my Immodium, and we left our cash in the apartment.
  When I came down to breakfast, Sister M. was there and she said that things are getting shut down by the government and maybe I should make a mad dash to Osijek to get our things.  She meant all of them!  Then President M. came in and told us we should go get our things and move into the Mission Home until things settle down.  He also said we should take the big van the mission has, because we should bring our food supplies, and we might also be bringing the young elders from Osijek.
  I talked it over with Liz and we decided to make the mad dash together.  Meanwhile President M. confirmed that we should bring the young elders back with us.

The mission van has a bad rep here, because it is big.  OTOH, it has adaptive cruise control, a good back up camera, great side mirrors, and a diesel engine that purrs like a kitten.  To my surprise, Liz wanted to drive it, and she ended driving all the way to Osijek.  I told her in no uncertain terms that it would be MY turn to drive it back.  Later she admitted that she insisted on driving because I was too tense.  I was a bit stressed over the sudden decision to dash to Osijek, moving semi-permanently to Zagreb, and the thought that we'd have to hunker down for an extended time.
  The drive went well enough.  Traffic is very light because people are trying to isolate.  We have to drive across half of Zagreb before we can get on the tollway that zooms all the way to Osijek, but to our surprise police had blocked the entrance to it!  We had no choice other than wait because it is already a restricted access road leading up to it.  Meanwhile a line of trucks was passing, and passing, and passing.  Hundreds of semis going along in a row.  Finally the police got in their car, and as the last truck passed they fell in alongside the last semi.  So we drove along at 80 kmh, which is not very fast.  We couldn't figure out why the police were blocking the passing lane.
  Finally we got to the toll booth and all the trucks went through a special lane and didn't have to stop.  There were a bunch of police cars there, making the sure the trucks all went through the special lane and only through the special lane.  But the good news is that they let us pass as we went through the toll station.  An hour or so later we stopped for some more diesel fuel and to buy a luke-cold refreshing beverage, and a guy in the station told us the trucks were driving through Croatia and didn't have any business to stop here.  With the travel restrictions at the border, they get a police escort from border to border.  Later we saw lots of police cars guarding exits, and then a rest stop that was entirely closed to ordinary humans, but allowed the convoy trucks.  So, they are serious about the decision to close Croatia's borders.

By the way, trucks here have strict speed limits.  Here is a closeup of the back of one of the trucks:

Notice in the dark under above the bumper there are two white circles with numbers in them:  70 and 80.  That means its speed limit is 70 kmh, but it can go up to 80 kmh when passing another truck.  This being Europe, they are not allowed to block the passing lane, so mostly they don't pass each other.  I like it.  It must be cruel for the drivers to have to drag along, but for driving a car it is wonderful.

We got to Osijek, where we threw all our stuff into suitcases and bags and loaded the van.  The young elders walked over and helped us load it, which was very helpful, because we weren't packing nicely and we had a couple of big suitcases that weighed a ton!  Then we went to the elders' apartment and loaded their stuff, and headed for home.
  Driving the van was pleasant, but it does feel more like a truck than a car.  I drove all the way to the Mission Home, our new home, where a herd of young elders were waiting to help us unload and to take our elders to a missionary apartment down in town.  I was a little stressed about it because the young elders have not self-isolated until a couple of days ago, so they were out meeting, greeting, and exposing themselves to virii.  But I was glad of the help getting the suitcases up the stairs.
  We now have a bedroom on the 3rd floor of the Mission Home, next to President and Sister M., and a storage bedroom and office on the top floor.

An Unexpected Surprise:
  This morning it was just getting light and Liz and I were both awake.  We were laying snuggled together side by side having a nice relaxing chat.  Suddenly a tremendously loud roaring hit us and the whole room started whipping back and forth.  It lasted about 30 seconds, but seemed ever so much longer.  We recognized the earthquake - we've seen them before.  We held each other tight and just hoped the house would hold up.  There was a loud bang somewhere in the middle of it.  We got up and threw on some clothes and went out.  Our bedroom was a mess from stuff that had been neatly stacked around the edges and was now thrown all over in piles, but it was intact.  As we went out into the hall we saw plaster all over the floor, and various things that had fallen.  Downstairs it was even worse.  Kitchen stuff was all over the floor.  Lamps had fallen over and broken.  The piano fell over, so that was the bang we heard during the quake.  It bent up the stool on the way down, but I think it's repairable.
  The worst place in all the house is the 18" thick bearing wall that runs across the center of the house.  It is brick, of course.

It is interesting how it broke in diamond shapes.  I think the bricks broke loose so they could tilt back and forth, but the rocking motion of the bricks separated the plaster in diamonds.  The big triangle crack by the door goes right through the entire wall, so I think it will need some serious reconstruction.  I looked at it and just prayed we wouldn't get another really big shake.
   A bit later we did get another serious shake, but it wasn't as strong as that first one.  We've had aftershocks all day, but nothing as strong as those first two.  Lots of them we hear, but can only feel if it is quiet and we are sitting.  It's strange that we hear them before we feel them.
  When I went outside people in the neighborhood were going outside to look around.  One woman came over crying that it was just too much to have the C-virus and have an earthquake too.  I tried to calm her down, and told her to expect aftershocks all day, but they'd probably be smaller.  I wondered how she'd take that, but it actually seemed to calm her down.
   This is what most of the houses showed from the outside:

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The chimneys fell over and slid down the roof, often taking tiles with them.  The guy next door had bricks in his front yard from his chimney, but ours appears to be more or less intact.  Relatively.  It's like the house is intact.

This corner of the house rained little bits of stucco all day.   But it is intact enough that we are staying in it again.   Right after I took this photo, it started to snow.

We actually got off very easy.  Downtown Osijek is full of 19th Century buildings built in the ornate Austro-Hungarian style, and not so well maintained since Croatia was severely tried during the civil war 20+ years ago.

I don't actually know where this was - somewhere in Zagreb.  Bad day for the owner of that car.

This cathedral lost the tip of its spire, which puts them on an equal footing with us, since the Angel Moroni lost his trumpet in the Salt Lake City earthquake a few days ago.
  A gargoyle fell off a building downtown and fell on another car, and I hear a 15 year old boy was killed by falling bricks.

So, today we have been very lucky, although it was a stressful day with aftershocks coming randomly all day long.  It is strange because the waves of the earthquakes are slow rolling, and they move slower than the speed of sound.  For example, this afternoon we were all relaxing in the sun room.  We heard a bang, the windows rattled, and then we felt the earthquake.  All in quick succesion, but definitely in that order.
  Well, we are ready for the day to end.  Tomorrow will bring new challenges, and we have work to do.

Still in Zagreb

I don't know if I've said anything about this already, but we love the canned beans here.  Grah s Hamburgerom is lima beans in a tomato sauce with lots of chunks of ham in it.  Wonderful, though gassy.

We are still here in Zagreb.  The new couple did arrive on schedule.  They have had a worse case of jet-lag than we did, and they are a bit shell-shocked about doing the financial stuff in the mission office.  Liz is used to that kind of accounting, so she picked it up pretty quick, but the new senior elder is a retired dentist and he used to handle it by telling his office staff to do it.  So, it's going slow.  President Melonakos asked us to stay until he's comfortable doing it.  Meanwhile more restrictions are going into effect.  It is now illegal to have more than 5 people together in a public place.  All restaurants were closed last Saturday (effective Tuesday), except for take-out.  Bakeries are exempt, though.

Well, it is Friday night and we are still here in Zagreb, with no definite plans to go home to Osijek.  We learned today that the government is discussing banning all inter-city traffic except for truck transport.  We don't want to get confined here, because all our stuff is in Osijek except for a few clothes, so we'll be watching things closely on that score!

This is a selfie of us from last Monday.  For lunch, Liz and I walked a few blocks to a Birkenstocks store where I bought some boots.

On the way back to the office, we sat down at this little outdoor caffe shop and bought some soft drinks.  This was the last day we could have done this.  All this kind of business is now prohibited.
   Also, the weather has been gorgeous for the past week, but tomorrow it will rain and then temps will plummet below freezing all next week.  All the flowers are out now and trees are blooming, but winter is kicking back at us and they are doomed. 

This may not be a very interesting photo.  It is the notice in the window of our favorite lunch spot, saying that they have to close.  HOWEVER, they will offer take-out.  They put a cardboard box outside their door where they will put your phoned in order.  When you come to pick it up, you put exact cash into a little tin box next to the cardboard box and Do Vedgenja!  (Good bye).  BTW, I didn't spell it correctly because the word has a crossed D.  It has a cross like on our t, but it's on the d and it changes the sound from regular D to a DJ sound like in adjust.
  This tiny little husband and wife place has fantastic food, and cheap, so we have continued to order from them.  The two boxes work fairly well, but in fact, she watches the boxes so closely she always comes to the door to thank us, and sometimes hand us our order - at arm's length, of course.  Each meal is 45 kuna  ($7.00) and it's enough for lunch and later on for dinner, with left-overs after that.
  We are happy they've figured out a way to stay in business, and they are very happy to have us as regular customers, although they usually sell all their food each day, and have to turn late-comers away.

Hold your horses!

Sunday morning we had a video conference with 32+ connections to homes all over the Bosnia District, in order to hold a Sacrament meeting without meeting at the churches.  It was a wee bit cumbersome, but it worked.  Singing a song was a disaster because so many people's microphones were active.  We were getting their voices in addition to their speakers playing other people's voices and their own voices.  The meeting was held in two languages so that everybody could understand reasonably well, but of course that meant we spent a lot of time waiting.  But there was a spiritual message and tone.  Now everybody is more or less free to hold their own Sacrament service at home.
  We also planned to hold a similar meeting with our own children and grandchildren.  We had planned to hold it later in the afternoon so everybody in California could be up and about.
  I was working on the program for the family meeting as I started contemplating on the news we had received during the morning Sacrament video call that Brother and Sister Christenson are leaving to go home on Tuesday.  They had planned to stay until their children begged them to come home.
  As I contemplated what that meant for everybody I got thinking about what an impact their daprture would mean for President and Sister Melonakos.   Sister has been doing all the finances for the mission, while Brother C. does the cars, housing, and technology, as well as run various and sundry errands for the President.  The mission can't run without somebody filling those two roles.
  So Liz and I talked it over and called Sister M. to tell her we would be willing to come over and try to get a handle on those things until somebody arrived to take over.  We thought we could just go for a while, and if it came to a longer stint we could bring the files and things home and do it from Osijek.
  Well, Sister M. was ecstatic and said, "Yes!  Please come over right now.  You can stay with us in the Mission Home, and if the new senior couple can't come, you can have the Christenson's apartment."
  We dumped some clothes in our bags and headed for Zagreb in less than half an hour.  Of course that affected the family conference, so we had to enlist Mark's help to schedule that for later when we'd be in Zagreb.  We drove into the setting sun and arrived at the Mission Home just in time for our video conference.  The meeting went much smoother with only 4 connections and we had a lovely We worked in the office all day with a break for lunch where we went to the Birkenstock store.  I got a pair of fashionable boots (combat boots are all the rage here), and Liz got some cute shoes too.
  Liz is working hard to do the finances and not get behind for the new couple who are apparently still coming.  We are waiting on the final word, but we think they are probably here.
  We had a discussion this after noon with Sister Melonakos about the logistics of receiving anew couple in today's environment.  Formerly, they escorted newbies to the office for some administrivia, and then fed them a big dinner before putting them in the Mission Home.  Liz, I, and the final remaining office sister all agreed the best plan today would be to let them go to the C. apartment and settle in, shower, put on clean clothes, and get some rest.    Tomorrow, they will be semi-rested but jet-lagged.  Thursday we will train them and let them run.  Then we can go home on Friday.
  And that's the news for now.

The biggest reason to stay

In my last post I listed reasons to go home, and reasons to stay.  I left off the biggest reason to stay - we WANT to be here.  We chose this mission so we could live in Croatia and travel around the Adriatic.  We wanted to learn about the country, meet the people who live here, and learn the language.  We haven't done any of those things, except that we have learned that the people are lovely.  Why would we want to go home now?!?  We wouldn't.
  We had a group video call with the mission president today and we all have the option to stay.  Several senior couples have elected to return home, but most are content to stay. 
  We are self-quarantining ourselves.  The young missionaries continue to tract and make street contacts, but only with six feet between themselves and their contacts.  It's hard for them, but they have remarkably good attitudes.  The difference is this.  Most healthy young people will not have any trouble shaking the COVID virus.  Seniors are another matter.  The high death rate from this virus is largely among older people.  So we seniors get to stay, but we have to maintain social distancing diligently.  We bought some more food today, so that we can stay home, but we are missing one essential item.  We didn't bring a thermometer!  So, I will have to make another foray to the drug store on Monday.
  Tomorrow, we will have a virtual sacrament meeting over video conferencing for all the branches in Croatia and Bosnia, but not with sacrament.  We are also planning to have a virtual sacrament meeting with all our kids tomorrow afternoon, because all church meetings, Worldwide, are cancelled until the pandemic has run its course.
   The amazing thing about our mission is that the kids are using Marco Polo app to talk to each other and share everything they are doing like they've never done before.  Our amazing prophets told us we need to become a family centered, church supported people, and the Coronna virus and our mission has made it true.  The virus has changed EVERYTHING!

How do I feel about COVAD-19?

Time for a little self-reflection.
The situation is that we are not quite in self-quarantine, but we have been advised to cancel all church gatherings.  The young elders are still doing street-contacting, though.  Right at this moment they have the car so they can do a member contact with a family that lives a 30 minute drive away and don't have transportation to come to church very often.  We actually have several members in that situation.  When the elders get back they are going to have lunch with us .  We are having sloppy-Joes
and pork n beans.   In our self-isolation they are probably our highest risk for catching the virus, but we are NOT going to pass on a chance to feed them, encourage them, and counsel them.
  And this leads to the big question.   We have a free pass to go home if we want to.  Should we do it?

Reasons to answer Yes:

• We are both over age 60, and are thus in the high-risk group.  Most of the COVID-19 deaths are among our age group.
• I particularly seem to catch every little cold or flu that appears.

Reasons to answer No:

• We have just as high a risk of exposure to the virus at home as we do here.  Croatia is relatively untouched at the moment, but since it is a pandemic, it will sweep to almost all cities.
• When we applied to go on a mission, we discussed the fact that we could die while gone.  We accepted the eternal viewpoint and decided that it makes no difference in the eternity whether we die now or later.  We arranged our estate to support this view.  Our children are all grown up and are prospering.
• We have settled in fairly well now, and we have learned to love these people.   They are lovely people.  Drivers let you in when you get trapped in the wrong lane.  They stop what they're doing when they see us bumbling around in confusion and offer help.  They have many, many delightful attributes.
• We LIKE living here.  It is quiet (except for one neighbor's yapping dog) and peaceful.  Everybody walks, so it is safe to go out and wander around, shopping, sightseeing, enjoying the parks, and so forth.  There are drug problems, but it isn't obvious at all.  Everybody is alert and going about their business, even if it is just holding down a chair at one of the many caffe shops along the streets.
• The food is fantastic.  We have barely scratched the surface, but we have had some amazing meals, and never a bad one.  I even got bold and had a stew-like dish with nautilus meat.  It was delicious!  It did, however, have the nautilus's ink in the stew, so I got black on my face with every bite, and soon my napkin was splashed with black smears.  But it was rich and thoroughly enjoyable.  I managed to keep the ink off my white shirt and tie, so that was miraculous.  Also, there are bakeries on every corner and the bread is great!  They have a lot of filled pastries, but seldom with fruit filling.  It is more commonly filled with meat, sweet nuts, mushroom, or cheese.  We have had these pastries for lunch several times, and even though we don't always know what we are ordering, we always enjoy it.

Corona Virus

Things have changed rapidly this past week.  On Saturday we thought the young elders were taking the car to Zagreb for a meeting.  Saturday afternoon Sister Melonakos and Liz were talking and she asked us to come along and take a relaxing tour day.  She suggested we take a walking tour of old-town Zagreb.  So we tagged along.
   Sunday there was lots of talk of Corona Virus and how it is spreading.  It has taken hold of northern Italy in a bad way, and that is not so far away.  But we are healthy and in good shape, and we are happy where we are and with what we are doing.  So we aren't worrying about it.
  Monday morning we drove to Zagreb.  As the day goes on, Sister M. and Liz plan a phone conference with the sister who has been the Mission Health Advisor.  Liz is taking her place, and needs to learn a lot about the whole process before Sister W. goes home - in about three weeks.
  We got to Zagreb just in time to drop the elders off and get down to our walking tour, which was great.  It was advertised as costing one kuna (15 kuna make one dollar), but it is really where you tip whatever you want.  The guide was a youngish lady who had the tour chatter down pat.  She told us if we have any questions to ask her as we walk - and then she took of and was way ahead of everybody before we could inhale.
  Zagreb started out as two cities on adjoining hilltops - one was the government town where everybody paid taxes to the government leader, and other was the church town where they paid taxes to the priest.  The path between them was known as the bridge of blood because when there was a dispute they'd meet there to discuss it and often end up fighting.  Each town had its own wall and fortification, but they decided to merge when Gengkis Kahn was threatening them.  They built a wall around the whole place and decided to be one town.  So she told us this as we stood at what is left of the church town wall.  Then we entered the old town through the stone gate, which is a Catholic shrine.  We got a lecture on witches and witch defense, on the old church there, and finally came out on top of the hill.

This is the view from the top.  The big Catholic church, the smaller but more ornate Eastern Orthodox church, and an ordinary steel fence where lovebirds leave pairs of padlocks to show their love is locked up tight.  Ideally there should be a river beyond the fence so they can throw the keys into it, but here they have to settle for throwing them into the bushes.
  A lot of Zagreb architecture comes from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Ornate!
We walked along the top to a tower where there used to be bells, but for the past hundred or so years they've fired a cannon at the stroke of twelve each day so the churches will know when to ring their bells.  It was fun.
  Then we walked around a corner and saw this.

This is an otherwise ordinary church where they had to repair the roof about a hundred years ago and decided to make a statement.  On the right is the symbol of Zagreb - a castle.  On the left is the symbol of Croatia.  It has a mink on the red stripe at the bottom of the shield.  The mink used to be big business when mink coats were big business.  Mink are even found on Croatia money, the kuna literally means the mink.  Above the mink are two symbolds.  On the right is a blue field with three lion heads.  They look more like teddy bear heads, but the tiles are big and so the resolution is low.  Liz offered 100 kuna to the first of our grandchildren to make a lego model of this building with the symbols.  And the shield on the left has a checkerboard.  The story is the Italians had an army and sent it to conquer Croatia.  The Croats had their own army and sent it out to meet them and change their minds.  The battle goes for three days and they kill a lot of each other, but neither side gains an advantage, so the generals meet in the middle and agree to play chess to see who wins.  The Croatian general wins three games in a row so he wins and everybody goes home happy.  And the Croatian flag got a checkerboard on it.  Nice!

  We both have sore feet and the hill was rough on our old knees, so we dropped out of the tour after this.  

  Later, at the Mission Home, Liz had her meeting with Sister M. and Sister W. who is leaving in a few weeks.  The corona virus was the big point of discussion.  During the meeting we got some instruction.  First, senior missionaries who feel at all threatened by it are free to return home with an honorable release.  Second, all missionary apartments are to be stocked immediately with a two-week supply of non-perishable food and water in case we get quarantined.  Third, any missionary with lung impairment, or immune impairment is asked to return home with an honorable release.  The meeting lasted for a couple of hours or more and Liz got lots of good info from sister W. on how to be the Mission Health Advisor.

  We did some shopping and picked up the elders to return home.  At an intersection I noticed a man standing in the crosswalk in front of the car next to us.

He was good.  He juggled.  He talked with pedestrians.  I assume people gave him something for his effort.   Later we saw another one who was not nearly as good as this guy.

  Here is a photo of a building in the center of Zagreb.

The magnificent old, next to the modern chic.  And then this is a photo of the elders' apartment.

Lack of maintenance aside, this is a building from the socialism era.  

  After we got back home, we settled into our routine.  We taught an English Conversation class Wednesday night, which is fun.  All the elders we are assigned to watch over, have their two-week supply of food.  General Conference will be presented to an empty Conference Center as it is broadcast around the World virus-free.

Thursday morning at about 3:00 am, Brother and Sister W. got a phone call saying that President Trump is suspending all travel from Europe to the USA.  They called the church travel department, packed their bags, and caught a 6:30 flight home this morning, before it went into effect.  So Liz has the Health Advisor ball early.  Yeah!

  We've been looking forward to a conference in Sarajevo next week, but I've been expecting something to happen to it.  This afternoon we learned it has been cancelled.  Later we heard that the church is calling all senior missionaries home from Europe.  This was a miscommunication.  First, it applies to 22 missions, but not ours.  Second it is for seniors with underlying health conditions.

  And of course, this evening the news is all about sports, parks, and other events being cancelled in the states.  And to top it off, we got word tonight that if we want to, we should feel free to impose self-quarantine on ourselves for the foreseeable future.  We don't plan on doing that, because we have yet to see a single person sneeze, cough, have red eyes, or grow horns.  We still feel safe.

Go home, C.V!  We don't like you!

To the Market

Saturday:  the day we clean the church.  We walked in the door and the junior elders came right to me asking me to help with the computer.  Alas, the computer is beyond my skill level.  A lot has changed in the many years since I retired from computer work.
    In a nutshell we have two issues at the chapel.  First, we don't have internet service.  Apparently we missed paying a bill and the service provider is refusing to restore our service.  So, we've been getting along by setting up a cellphone hot spot and connecting the computer to that. 
    Which leads to the second issue:  as of today the computer will connect to our hot spot and everything looks like we are good, but no website will download.  Nothing!  So I put in a call for help to our facilities person.

After the church was clean, the guy who made that amazing video of Osijek suggested we all go to the old fortress.  It seems that on the first Saturday of every month they have an open air market there.  It was very interesting.  There were two gramophones like I've never seen before.

On the front of this one is the picture of a dog with its head up to the bell, and it says "His Master's Voice".  It is a gorgeous piece.  Sadly, I didn't even ask how much they wanted for it.  Things are amazingly cheap here, but even so that will be an expensive thing to have.

This one is also a wonderful piece, but it's only silver.  It says "Gramophone Grand Master" on its face.  How amazing to have two of these rare pieces here.
    Then there is the china, which is exquisite.

It's not quite a Faberge egg, but it IS beautiful, and you can see they had lots more on the table.  There were vendors all over the square with this kind of amazing antiques.  There were also lots of military cast-off equipment.
    The other thing we'd heard were there were honey vendors.  They make lots of honey in the Adriatic, and many of the small beekeepers (which are mostly gone in the US) market their honey in the local markets and it is mostly varietal (meaning varieties).  I bought a bottle of acacia honey, only to discover two more jars of that variety at our apartment.  I wish I had bought one of the other varieties, but there will be plenty of time for that.  I talked with one of the vendors.  She and her husband keep a few trucks with their hive on them.  When my brother John was in Germany he sent home photos of them, brightly colored hives held on the truck with metal braces.
    I would love to have included a photo of the market, but you can't publish photos of people without their written permission, and how could that happen in a busy marketplace?

After that we walked along the banks of the Drava River for a while.  It will be prettier after the trees and flowers come out more, so no photos yet.  However, I couldn't resist this panorama.

The river was behind me, so this is looking into town.  I liked the yellow building, the modern green building, the ancient stone wall in front of the car, and the church.

    We are liking being here in Croatia.  We have lots to do, and go to bed tired every night.  We don't feel overworked, but we don't take much lazy time.  Our mission president's wife keeps encouraging us to take more time for ourselves, so we are taking a joy-ride to Zagreb on Monday.  We'll do some sight-seeing, and visit Ikea and the "American Store".   Life is good!

Visit to the B family

Yesterday Liz was feeling under the weather, and we had an appointment to meet a family who live about 40 minutes away.  So I left her sleeping and went with the young elders.  The B family are a man and wife who don't speak a word of Engliski, while you probably know how much Croatian I speak.  So the elders translated.  Brother B., it turns out was born the same year I was.  They are long-time members who were sealed in the Frankfurt temple in the 90's.  Even though we couldn't talk to each other, Bro. B. and I hit it off very well and I can't wait to go see him again.  His wife was a beautiful woman who now has no teeth, and is still a beautiful person.  Unfortunately she recently had knee surgery, so she couldn't get around much. 
  They live in a modest home in a little farming village where all the houses are along the road. except for a very few.  We drove through many of these villages along the way.  It is north of where we live and there are a fair number of Eastern Orthodox churches, to only a few Roman Catholic, which is not surprising so close to Serbia.
Here is a photo of the Eastern Orthodox church in their village.

It looks like it is pretty new.  I wonder if the E.O. church is throwing money into buildings in these little  places to cement their claim to the area.   I thought of this because there is another of these little churches just a few miles along the road that is under construction, and it looks like the same plan - rounded at one end with the door at the other.  Here is another one:

Sorry about the poor framing - the car was moving as I took it.
  And then there was this one.

This is actually two churches with a house between.  The one behind attracted my gaze because of the gold lettering around the onion dome, but it is the same size (or maybe a bit larger, and with a clock) and shape as the others.  It is clearly older.  The church in front looks to be a very small version, but brand, shiny new.  What's up with that??  Maybe all three are connected and the small building is the third addition to the old church?  Anyway, they are pretty buildings.

Yesterday evening I left Liz behind again and went to the English language class at our church.  The young elders taught a lesson in basic English, while I took the more advanced students into another room for a Conversation class in English.  The lesson plan suggested starting out playing "two truths and a lie".  That was a flop.  These people don't lie and it embarassed them to do it in a game, so much that it was too easy.  After that we read a little story that used all their vocabulary words, and then we just talked about it.  It was fun!  I'd use a word they didn't recognize, so I'd try to explain and pantomime until one of them got it.  Then they'd all chatter in Croatian until they reached consensus and go back to English again.  It was very friendly and happy.  We are gong to hold this class every week.

Liz is feeling much better this morning. 
One of my duties as an auditor is to teach all branch presidents and branch clerks and assistant branch clerks about being responsible with finances and record keeping.  There is a set presentation to use.  We have eight junior missionaries who are newly called as branch clerks or assistants, and one new branch president.  They are all over the mission, so I set up a Zoom conference call.  We use the Zoom app a lot in this mission because we ARE so spread out.  The material is pretty boring stuff to present, but Liz and I switched off and tried to make it a little entertaining.  We'll be auditing them in a few months, so I hope they took notes.

Excellent video

There is a man in our branch who came to "game night" with a nice HD video camera with a pro handle and multiple levels.  I tried to ask why he needed levels on it, but his English is nearly as bad as my Croatian.  Finally he got one of the young missionaries to translate.  He said he likes to make semi-professional movies of things he sees.  Recently he completed one about Osijek and he showed it to me on his camera viewer.  He was very proud of it when he showed it to me, and I have to admit I was impressed.  I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.facebook.com/krunoslav.jagorinac/videos/187574842419476/

Today, Liz and I got our new sofa and bed.  Getting it in and the old stuff out was a big chore.  Afterwards we decided to take a nice walk and find a place to have lunch.  The food here is great and even the small stands make excellent fare.
  The street we live on is one-way and we always turn off before the end, but today we made a discovery.  We have noticed that there is a grand catholic Cathedral of Peter and Paul not too far away, but we've never gotten close to it.  Today we found out that it's at the end of our street as it curves to the north.

It is so big I couldn't get it all in with my cellphone camera.

So there is a lot of space around it.  All around are up-scale businesses: shops, restaurants, hotels, electronics stores, etc.  And traffic is not allowed in the square, which is why we've never driven by it.

  Liz got a phone call as we walked around it, so I had a lot of time to look at it, and as always I noticed details, which I won't go into here except for a few.

  This is what's above the pic above:

I love clocks, and it has a nice one up there.  Also the bells are in this tower.  They ring the quarter hours and ring out the hours.

  When we walked around the corner, we were surprised to see scaffolding.  They are busy cleaning the brick and stone and repairing it.

You can see cleaned brick and stone to the right, and still-dirty stone and brick to the left.  It looks amazingly better clean.  There are gargoyles at this end of the building, but nowhere else.

What is the point of gargoyles, anyway?

It seems like the main door is on the cleaned side, below an immense rose window.  I'm sure Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) would have lots to say about it.

Curiously they didn't clean the tops of some of the spikey spires, and they seemed to have missed the concrete rain caps, although the ones where we first came around are shiny bright.  Maybe they are refining their technique as they go.

Below is a closeup of the doorway so Dan can get a good look at all the secret codes.

Actually, I am enthralled by stone carving like this.  Did you know that my great, great, grandfather went to my home town to carve stone for the State Capitol?  Of course not, but he did.  He worked one year in his profession and then had to become a farmer.  Anyway, can you imagine working on a big chunk of  marble with those intricate cuts and delicate flower petals, and making a slight mistake as work is nearly done, and breaking it in two?  Doh!

And then there are the bullet holes.  I'm glad they are fixing those in the cathedral as they clean it.  But I noticed this little house at the corner of the cathedral.

It's not too surprising the army took pot shots at the cathedral - it's too tempting a target.  But why shoot up this little cottage?  Hundreds of snipers in there?  Maybe it had "Serbs go home" spray painted on it?  In any case, a lot of ammo went into that wall.

Sunday

Today, I was sustained as the Branch President's 1st Councilor, and as the Elder's Quorum President's 1st Councilor.  Then I was invited to sit at the head of the congregation, where the branch president translated everyone's testimonies for me.  He is excellent, so I can't object.
   Strange thing:  An old man nobody knew came in at the last minute and sat at the back.  After the Branch President opened the meeting to everybody, this man jumped up and came forward.  The essence of it was that he is a Catholic and has been in lots of "temples", by which he meant cathedrals.  He's been in the one in Rome, and Paris, and London and many others and they are nice.  But we don't need a temple.  Our worship of Jesus Christ is in ourselves, not in a temple.  Well, OK.  So after he sat down the members gave their testimonies and they were awesome!  Nobody challenged the old man, but a couple of them did discuss the blessing of attending the temple.
   The singing was accompanied by the elder who just joined us this past week.  He is fairly good (although he played too fast), but he made a few mistakes and lost the tempo a couple of times.  So after the closing prayer, the old man jumped up again and sat down at the piano and started to play.  He made some chord runs and then tried the hymn we'd sung.  He struggled a bit, but he was obviously sight-reading so he did fine.   He sat at the piano playing VERY loud for a while until I motioned everybody to join us in the classroom.  He seemed a little deflated that nobody challenged him.  He joined us in the classroom.  He wanted to set the topic of discussion, but the Sunday School teacher took over and led us into the lesson.  He asked a question and had everybody take turns giving our take on it.  We all did and when the old man's turn came he had something to say (I wasn't able to follow it very well).  The branch president was after him, and again, just answered the question and didn't challenge what the old man said.  How awesome!  I thought it was perfect.  I think he wanted a confrontation, but he got a Christ-like response and a lesson on being led by the Holy Ghost.  Afterwards the elders talked to him for a few minutes and then he left.  I wonder if we'll see him again?  I hope so.

Another strange thing happened this week.  I walked out of the church yesterday afternoon and as I walked up to the car I noticed that two lug nuts are missing from the right-rear wheel.  I checked all around and only those two, and they are next to each other.  Odd.  We have a Hyundai I-30, and it does not come with a spare tire.  It is equipped with a tire pump (which is also missing) and no tire, no jack, and no tools.  If I had a lug wrench I could have taken a lug nut from another wheel and had at least 4 of 5 lug nuts on each wheel, which is fairly safe.  As it is, I don't feel safe with it at all.
  Tomorrow, I'm going to an auto store down the street to get lug nuts, wrench, pump, and maybe a couple of washers we need for a chair.

I should mention that we are very happy here.  The people are wonderful once you overcome their initial reticence.  They are friendly, scrupulously honest, helpful and generally exceptional.  They are also somewhat downtrodden by memories of the war:

This church is apparently abandoned.  It has multiple medium-caliber shell holes in the roof and spire, and small caliber holes throughout.  These reminders of the civil war have to be painful for people who live here.  I think it's why people don't make eye contact when we are walking.