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I got an interesting series of emails just recently that illustrated differing points of view and gross, rampant capitalist greed so well, that I had to share.       A couple from a large city in America came to Croatia with what I gathered to be the sole intention of real estate development on speculation. They set out to buy an old stone house, with a secluded chunk of land in Hvar (one of the larger and lovely islands in Croatia) so that they could renovate the home. I would be completely remiss if I didn't state that this is one of my dreams as well, albeit on the mainland and not an island. The key difference is that at no point did I ever see owning such a home as an investment. It would be somewhere that I´d live and probably see out the end of my days in the hope my kids would keep it. This couple thought they were being incredibly cagey and buy in an area where the property values could potentially grow 500% whenever Croatia joins the EU, which is currently set to be around 2009, but that has been shown to be a bit shaky over the years.       Let me not mince words in saying that I simply hate this kind of thinking. This kind of thinking brings in development that is out of control and doesn't give a damn about the people who live there. This kind of thinking doesn't do anything for the country where it happens because people like this buy, build, then sell to another foreigner once the price is right, thus not giving anything to the country that they're in except maybe some tax revenue and sometimes even that is cleverly avoided. This kind of thinking is greedy and is so often done with the guise from the people doing it that they´re helping the local peoples´ economy or having an exotic adventure in another land and "trying" things.       It appears that the Croatian government agrees with my opinions to some degree. This couple hit no end of dead ends and red tape when trying to create their, "dream". They found that locals were given preference over them, even though they had filed everything correctly. They thought there were bribes going on that had blocked them out of doing what it is that they had wanted to do now, now, now in a typical petulant American fashion. Their impatience was screeching and they were simply astounded that their wanting to develop should have been welcomed by the local and federal governments alike, but these stupid people couldn't see that and only once they join the EU, then they´ll see their mistake.       I only hope that given some time to think about it, these people will learn their mistake. I mean, let's think about it. You move in to a country out of the blue. Okay, that's fine, this happens all the time. But, if you just hang out with fellow expats who are also attempting development, make next to no attempt to learn the local language or customs, and are really just seeing the place you've moved to as a stepping stone to some great wad of cash that you feel is yours just because you´re from a "developed" nation, then why on earth would it come as a surprise that no one would want to help you? Tie in to that fact you bitch and moan about everything that's not like your country because you're unwilling to change and you will always be an outsider. These types of people who come to the US always ultimately find themselves incredibly bitter and ostracized.       The moral of the story is to really only go where you want to live and be part of the people and the place where you're moving. There is always good and bad in any place you can live. You just have to see if it's the good you like and the bad you can tolerate. If you think you can never find a place that meets these two requirements, then it's time to grow up and realize that you are… well, actively stupid.

The door lock where we stayed was problematic. From the outside, you had to turn the key just right and press the handle at the same time to get in. I'm sure it stopped many a would be thief.       Getting out was a bit easier. You just pulled that bit on the left and then opened. It's pure Croat genius in that, because I mean, really, why pay a proper locksmith to fix the thing, when you can wrap an old coat hanger with a bit of electrical wire for a handle to pull out the lock mechanism? I'd bet good money there were a pair of needle nose pliers stick in there for years before this came about though.

For years, I grew up with the impression that my father was sloppy at repairs around the house or on the car. You always knew when he had "fixed" something because it worked, but did so in a rather funky way. For instance, the choke on our old van's carburetor stopped working. Solution? Run a piece of fishing line up by the steering column that you pulled on until the vehicle got to operating temperature. Another one was that power outlets and light switches would be flipped upside down at irregular intervals. While living at home, you would get used to this and remember that the light for the kitchen was backwards to the the one from the living room. When you visited, it was amazing how quickly you'd forget these idiosyncrasies.       It was my first trip to Croatia in 2004, that I discovered that it was not my father's fault he couldn't repair things properly; it was a Croatian genetic predisposition that caused this. In the first apartment I stayed at in Croatia, there were ten light switches at the door. Only six turned anything on and of those, two were wired in upside down. I felt like I was at home and over the course of subsequent stays, I've noticed more and more of these. I think the most famous one is having the hot and cold faucets switched on sinks and showers. I'm sure this has caught more than one tourist off guard.       So, it's with this, that I'd like to introduce the term, "praving". This is taken from the Croatian (and as far as I know, Montenegrin, Bosnian, and Serbian) word for "to fix" or "to repair" which is "popraviti". That "ing" ending is something I picked up in Spain where they take a Spanish word and toss that on the end for ease of speech. For instance the airline Vueling picks up on this as a mashup of "vuelo" for a flight or "footing" which Spaniards say for "jogging".       I invite any and all submissions on this topic and I suspect that it is not something limited to Croats or the Balkans, but might be common amongst all Slavs (or maybe the Mediterranean?) I don't know, but I'll be happy to see if it does and post any pictures of truly great "fixes" that people do. I will leave you with the first in a long line of these examples below, which I feel is the most classic. Note that the faucet is full left. In standard installations, that is hot. In this case, it is cold. Hajdemo Hrvatska! Hajdemo!

Here I am in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the "Jewel of the Adriatic" as it has been called. It's a lovely old city, but this is not my first trip here. I visited in 2004 and 2005. The first trip was enchanting. The second was great, but I could tell that tourism was ramping up in the country. During the middle of the day, the streets would get packed with people who got dumped off their cruise ship and then picked up to return to their floating havens just offshore. It was very similar to what goes on in Venice, Italy. The Italians haven't really figured out a way to deal with this issue and they've had a great number of years to figure it out. So, you can only imagine what the possibilities were for Dubrovnik given that the number of hordes were increasing exponentially each year, especially as western tourists from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the USA have all decided that this area is finally a "safe" destination to go to on a package tour.       As it is two years since my last visit, it would seem natural that a great many things have changed, but there are really only two things that stick out as the biggest changes: the cost of things and the number of people. The city is still beautiful. The water is still wonderful. The weather is still lovely through the warm months. The people are still very friendly. These are all constants that I don't see changing, but the things that are, will create big, big problems over the coming years, if not months.       The costs are a big issue. One my first trip, I stayed in a very nice flat for 30 Euros a night. A great deal considering the dollar was much stronger then. This year, the same flat was fetching 50 Euros a night. We ended up having to stay at a much smaller place that we managed to get for 30 Euros, but that was only because we haggled a great deal due to staying for a week. But, the cost of small things has gone up as well. For instance a beer is now about 3USD at a restaurant where it was a dollar before. I suppose that two extra dollars has bought the average tourist a server who speaks perfect English. Personally, I was quite happy trying to speak the native language as it made me feel more like I was traveling and not putting my Imperialist American foot down in someone else's country without regard to the people living there. This cost also hurts the locals because while these prices are not that outrageous for Americans or British, they are very hard to maintain for the people who live in this area where around $600 a month is considered a good salary. There are many who are doing well by this influx of tourists, but overall, the trickle-down economics that Reagan so "brillianted" pioneered works about as badly here as it did in the 1980's in America.       The other enormous and truly problematic issue with Dubrovnik is that the tour operators are just pushing more and more people in to the old city. This is a finite space and I believe that it has reached its critical mass of people that it can hold. And let me add that I'm writing this at the beginning of June. Traditionally, this the slower time of the year. July and August are going to end up with stampedes and casualties at this pace. I was caught in one of these yesterday as multiple tour groups were trying to go in and out of the old city at the same time. There is no management system for this. It is not like parts of Italy where they sell a maximum number of tickets to the Sistine Chapel for a day and then cut people off. No, the local authorities and the greedy tour operations are just shoving as many people through as they can. While quite unpleasant, it was hilarious to hear the various stereotypes of people come through in this trashing wave of people in Pile Gate. The British were trying to be polite and form a queue. The Americans were just out for themselves and trying to shove their way through, yelling loudly, even though half the crowd probably didn't understand them. The Aussies seemed somewhat drunk and went with the flow. The Italians and French seemed to just mass in to this pushy, snobby group who tried to work their way through. In a word, it was a mess. The really funny part was that all the locals came up, took one look, and then went off up the hill to one of the other streets that avoids Pile Gate to come in through the southern gate which was problem free.       In conclusion, I write this all as a warning. Dubrovnik is getting crazy and not in a good way. It's still a beautiful place and worth a visit. Just stay the hell away from May 15 to September 15. It will make your holiday a much better one.

I am very sad. I had to drop my Croatian class. I suppose that after the first semester, I was doing pretty well. Then toss in a couple of classes this semester and things were doing even better, but still, it just seems like I've failed. I hate not seeing things through to completion and well, May would have been completion for this class. It feels like I've ended a relationship or something.       I suppose it's not the end of the world as long as I can make a trip over there this summer. And of course, that was part of the reason for leaving the class, since it was $1800 to take it through Berkeley Extension, plus the fact it's $500 in Bart tickets for a semester to get over there! So that's two and almost three plane flights to the region. Which brings up a point in that I don't know if you've looked at the cost of plane tickets to Europe for this summer, but they've gotten mightily expensive!

As I've had a guest at my place from Hospitality Club for the last week or so who speaks French as her native language, I'm reminded of how difficult it is to learn another language. She came here specifically to spend a semester abroad and learn English, while I've been spending the last semester attempting to learn Croatian. I suppose that the good thing for her is that I can understand the building blocks that one is trying to formulate when going from English to any other language and (I hope) I've been able to explain things better because of it.       At this point, I think the for both of us, we understand the mechanics and now, it's merely the chore of learning all these new verbs and nouns of the new language, which takes forever. Luckily for her, as she is moving in to her permanent home for the semester, she'll be surrounded by people speaking English and that will have a very positive effect on her skill set. For me, I'm still going to be trying to remember which damned case I have to decline in to in order to match whatever reflexive future tense I'm trying to create. In other words, at the end of four months, Astrid will be able to say, "What's up?" with the rest of us, while I'll still be saying things like, "I wish to be spending money with great force when traveling immediately." No, that's not how it translates in to English, that's how Borat-esque my Croatian still is at this point. Perhaps that trip I hope to take to the Balkans this summer will happen and fix these things...

Now that my Croatian class at Berkeley is over, I am left to beg the question: How do people do work and school at the same time? More to the point, how do some do full time work and full time school at the same time?       I cut back to a mere 20 hours per week so I could take this class that was every day and required a two hour round trip to get to. This had the net effect of making me pretty damned tired all the time. And fuzzy. And just generally kinda out of it. I know that when the work load increased, my grade decreased and vice versa.       I gotta say that I have nothing but respect for people who are able to pull this off successfully. I guess it's the drive of bettering oneself, one's career, and one's life that keeps them going. That and maybe that there is a light at the end of tunnel in two or four years. I don't get it, but I'm glad I didn't have to the full on craziness. I'll have to see if I take this class next semester. It's going to be a lot of work again, but it might be worth it of course.

I think I finally realized why I'm sorta out of it all the time lately: I have to communicate in three languages daily.       First off, there's the grand ole English. That's not going away of course. I have to write and talk in that puppy all the time. Okay, no big big deal. Then there's the Croatian. This Slavic language is so far removed from English that trying to compare it to anything would be ridiculous. While my class is only one very intense hour of my day, I think I spend about three additional hours a day trying to wrap my head around it. Lastly there's the programming. It took me awhile to realize that while I'm not speaking this to anyone, I am communicating to the computers with it. In fact, I'm using about three different programming languages at any given point to do my work!       Tie all of this together and you end up with one muddled head. Thankfully (or unfortunately) once my class is over this week, I won't have Croatian making me dizzy and I think I'll be able to be "here" a bit more instead of trying to string together conditionals or declining something in an instrumental case to figure out what to say.

After (or while) eating all of your turkey today, you should take a moment and think about how lucky we are; give thanks as it were. How lucky we are to have food and the internet and broadband so that we can watch stuff like this video of a man and his dog. Thank you internet!       Probably not the most graceful dismount for a week of Croatia, but hey, I was writing this while still being sick. Be thankful that's as good as it was.

Continued from November 21, 2006 ...Dubrovnik welcomed us to Dubrovnik quite a long time before we actually got into Dubrovnik, with signs announcing the city and all the attractions for what seemed like an hour prior to our arrival. But we knew for sure that we had arrived when we crossed a bridge that spanned the Rijeka Dubrovačka, this peculiar fresh water river that runs underground and suddenly punches out from the earth a little ways to the east to empty in to the Adriatic.       From there on, it was a slow descent past the ancient manors of town nobles long since dead and in to the Dubrovnik suburbs of Gruz and Lapad. For many, it is bound to be something of a let down because the bus station is very far from the old city that I had come to know in getting ready for the trip. Luckily, my friend Ivana was there waiting with a big smile as she laughed about the last time we had seen each other… on the eastern tower of Notre Dame in Paris. I asked if she had been waiting long and tried to express my frustration about the delay in the bus trip which was a little over an hour at that point. She simply shrugged and I realized it was something she had come to expect or at least not care so much about.       For others who weren't lucky enough to have a friend waiting, they were flocked upon by the ladies who were waiting at the station to rent rooms. The words, "in old city" were being said in three or four languages around me. One or two of them came up to me, but walked away discouraged when Ivana told them in Croatian that we were with her.       We hopped in to her little car that made me look like a seated camel and zipped off to the old city for a meal, some fantastic Croatian wine and the start of a lengthy stay in Dubrovnik.       This concludes the series. Hope you enjoyed it!