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!