Driving across Zagreb

 I wasn't going to do this, but I just feel like I need to write some things about being here in Croatia.

We have been here about 8 months, and we are getting used to things as they are here.  This photo (below) is of a street we use to go and return from the office, every working day.  It reminds me of the slot canyons of Southern Utah.

This is ulica Kralja Zvonimira.  It has two lanes on each side of a double set of Tram tracks.  The Trams are blue and you can see one coming towards the camera, and farther away, another one is going away from the camera.  The sidewalks are very narrow, and the balconies overhang the sidewalks.  These buildings typically have businesses on the ground floor and apartments above.  

At the end of this street is a square round-about.with a big building in its center - the Croatian Center of Fine Arts - which is currently closed.  We hope it will open in the next 10 months so we can go see it.

   Speaking of Art, we have discovered the opera and ballet venue.

Built in the 1850s, Austro-Hungarian ornate architecture.

We saw La Traviata a few weeks ago, and last night we enjoyed a program of Baroque music played on period instruments.

We sat in a loge just 2 over from the center loge where the reigning ruler would sit.

There are statues leaning out between each loge, and carvings of various classical things everywhere you look:  cupids, shileds, horns, etc.  Paintings up on the domed ceiling.  The building is old, but it is still a very nice place to watch an opera.

The other side of the room.  The guide book says it seats about 200 people

The Baroque music last night was very fun.  There are not enough period instruments (Old, the instruments made at the time the music was written) left for everybody who wants one.  They are not made to produce loud music - they are more favored for "occasional music", meaning it was played in the background at parties and meetings.  For example the bows used to play a violin.  Bows have a wooden stick to hold the ends of a  flattened string, traditionally made of horse tail hairs.  Period bows had a slight bow up, away from the string.  That slight bow makes it so the player can bounce the bow on the strings for various effects.  Later, someone tried putting a little more distance between the string and the stick and made the stick bow down towards the string.  A subtle difference, but it made the bow bouncier.  When a violin plays notes in rapid succesion, the player is bouncing the bow on the strings.  There are other changes, many of them done to make the violin play louder.  Old - cat gut strings which give a lovely, mellow sound.  New - steel or synthetic material strings to give a louder sound, at the price of a slightly brassy sound.  Old - the tuning knobs were simple wooden, tapered posts in tapered holes.  New instruments have geared tuning mechanisms that hold the tuning for extended times.  One sign of period instruments is that they have to be tuned frequently.  Enough of that.  The bottom line is that these concerts played on period instruments have a very pleasant sound, and are fascinating to watch.  The oboes and flutes were simple instruments with only one metal key.  One of the numbers called for a recorder, aka German flute, which had no metal on it at all.   They had an oboe (again, only one metal key), and a similarly-sized sham.  The two of them sounded wonderful.  A sham is an Aarab instrument that used a double reed.  Sham is pronounced with the a like in Awesome.  The oboe and basoon are the only shams left in modern orchestras, but baroque groups used to have them in all sizes and shapes.

We also took a day away from the office recently and drove down to KRKA National Park.

This is taken while standing on a boardwalk that crosses the stream.  You can't see that we were being crowded by dozens of other people who wanted to photograph this.

And a film clip:

It is fun just watching water falls.

KRKa has been on my bucket list from before we came on our first mission.  Then we came and saw Plitvice, which is much bigger, longer, and more developed, and which lowered the urgency of seeing Krka.  But, at last, we had our chance.  We didn't get very far up Krka because of the uneven trails and our weak knees, but Krka is plenty impressive on its own.  It was a delightful place to spend a day.

Last time we came on a mission we failed to learn Croatian and then we failed to learn Slovene.  This time we've only failed at learning Croatian, so we are improving!  The fact is that while we cannot put a sentence together, we find we can often undertstand what people are saying.  It's eery!

Through a series of circumstances, it is possible that Liz and I may acquire dual citizenship in Croatia and the USA.  She qualifies because her father was born here, and I'm with her.  If we do it, it will be a European Union passport, which means we can freely pass ALL the EU borders.  Things are weird with immigration now because everybody around here is worried that with all the refugees pouring out of  Ukraine, Africa, and the Middle East, terrorists may get a free ride.  Nobody really thinks we missionaries are terrorists, but they are so very picky about things that a number of our missionaries can't travel for offenses such as failing to get a stamp on their passport when they entered Europe.  Of course, the guards are the ones who sometimes neglect to stamp the passports, but we have some who are paying the price.  A nice EU passport should help with that.