Vacations in Croatia :)

Hi all!

It’s been long 20 days since my last post, and if you are following my Blog’s Facebook page you already know that we were back home in Croatia. It was our first longer visit since we moved to Ireland. We were back for a day and a half in March, but that is not something that you can count for real, I guess? 🙂

This time we were home properly for 10 days full, five in Domaslovec (near Samobor, Zagreb) and five in Umag.

We were lucky as during the whole stay we had gorgeous weather. It seems that summer waited for us, since we heard complaints that there was Irish weather throughout whole summer. 🙂

Well, we told everyone, we always take the weather with us. That’s why it’s warmer than usual in Ireland for the past 365 days. 🙂

While we were around Zagreb we were with friends on a fantastic Bosnian food lunch where we ate and drank a lot, then we were guests on a gorgeous wedding, where we were again eating and drinking a lot. Day after that we hosted a picnic-pizza party at home in Domaslovec where we tried to gather most of our friends and Dina’s relatives, and we were eating and drinking a lot. In remaining two days we were guests on three different lunches and dinners, and guess what… Yeah, it was hard life those first five days.

Hoping that we won’t have to eat and drink again we travelled to Umag to visit my family. We had a great time, sunny days and of course more food and drinks.

OK, I guess you got an idea that eating and drinking with friends and family is most important cultural thing in Croatia and on the Balkans in general, so if you can’t eat and drink a lot, you might have a problem living there. 🙂

Weather in Umag was still so good that I had some time for sports, so I went swimming every single day. Sea temperature was around 21 degrees, which is usually a good temperature for adventurous swimmers, but comparing it with Irish 16-17 degrees, it’s like being in jacuzzi or in spa. 😀

Luckily, I am one of the advanced adventurous swimmers, so everything above 16 degrees is “swimmable”.

Besides swimming, we enjoyed good coffee with friends in the town centre.

Even though coffee might sound wrong when you check the following two photos. 🙂

Well, finally, just a few months before we moved to one of the top 5 beer countries, some known locals started producing first craft beer in Istra. In case you plan to visit Umag or Istra, remember these two words – “San Servolo”.

It is available on some fancy places in Zagreb too. Excellent work from a local brewery and I’ve planned to bring some to Porterhouse in Dublin but I forgot. I’ll do it next time! 🙂

Of course, while in Umag, there is a little secret place called Marina and not so secret restaurant “Lido” where we love to eat. The best monk fish with octopus can be served here…

So you eat outside in the shadows of olive trees, and you watch the masts swaying.

If you still don’t feel “Croatiasick”, and you don’t feel the need to visit Istra, I missed something writing this post! 🙂
Great food, great wine, great weather and great people. What are you waiting for?

My Irish friends, just contact me, we can arrange something as I know all the local agencies, and since you all have problems with extreme heat September, October and November are the best months for you to visit us. 🙂

Many colleagues asked me what it feels like to be home after a year?

Well, I think that one year is not enough to feel homesick, but when you get home, you can’t be a tourist, and you certainly have mixed feelings. Happy to see your family, sad that you left, happy that you live a regular life in Ireland, sad that you can’t live a regular life in Croatia, feeling home in Ireland, feeling home in Croatia.

Some 17 years back I’ve visited my cousin in Belgrade and I fell in love with the city. I returned a few years later, and I was even more crazy about it. My cousin told me back then “Cousin, you are young and inexperienced, you are fooled by the big city lights, but the truth is nothing happens here, time has stalled, the only thing that grows are the kids.”

I guess that’s how everyone feels in places where they live.

A year after there are some visible and some invisible changes in Croatia. People are sadder as crisis is still torturing everyone, businesses are bankrupt and more people are unemployed. Similar to us, more people left or think about leaving.
Visually, there are a couple of roundabouts built, not a single traffic light in the town any more, some hotels and touristy areas enhanced, and first mural or graffiti of this kind ever in my home town.

Right now, as I’m writing this I got an idea that this might be a riddle or a rebus of a kind, but I still don’t understand it. 🙂

For the first time in my life I’ve noticed a huge frog in the grass, just in front of my home. It is really ugly. 🙂

Ten days went by in a blink, and before we figured out that we are on vacations we were already in Munich for a couple of hours on our way back home to Dublin.

Since my wife is a great Schweinsteiger fan (and because of him a Bayern Munchen fan), we agreed we are on a special mission. We were there only to find Schewiny.

We searched everywhere around the city centre, we asked the famous statues…

We searched among thousands of athletes (who were running on Munich marathon that day)…

We looked for him around the Michael Jackson’s tribute area in the city centre.

Unfortunately, Schweiny was well hidden and we got tired and hungry. So, while in Munich act like a Bavarian! 🙂

Yes we ate and drank again… 😀

But then we continued our crazy pursuit. We even risked being eaten by a huge catfish. 🙂

Running around Munich city centre we noticed some weird sports too. 🙂

In the end, we found him!

And then we had to pack our things and catch the train back to Munich airport. We found a few more minutes for another Angry Birds photo. 🙂

We got home safe and sound, happy and tired with a few more kilos. 🙂

Now, relaxed we are back in the work mode, and we are planing our future adventures.

Till my next post… 🙂

Love Y’all,

Balky