Culture Shock

While I haven't been gone fishing during the last few weeks, and my absence has been for good reason, I feel I owe my regular readers something .  But yet, I will be gone doing something that is relaxing, enjoyable and vacationish - spending time with my brother and sister-in-law on the Adriatic Coast for the next 4 days while they visit.  It is their first visit to Europe after all.  So if you still frequent the Culture Shock Weblog - Thank you!  Let me recommend a past post that takes a look at some of the beauty of Croatia. 

Though not for lack of ideas, I haven't had a lot of time to blog in the last week due to our trip back to Croatia and a busy weekend with our church family and friends. But soon after I returned to the internet world I encountered the Inaugural Where's Waldo game on the Swampland Time Magazine blog. A photographer named David Bergman took a massive high quality photograph at the inauguration and although it looks like just a huge crowd, you are able to zoom in to the extent that you can see most of the faces in the crowd clearly. Amazing. So here's something to keep you busy for awhile. See if you can you find: Barack Obama Dick Cheney Sean P. Diddy Combs Bill and Hillary Clinton Beyonce Knowles Our friends Milo and Erin Wilson (who I still haven't found) Are you in the picture?

This is burek s mesom (burek with meat). We've become good friends since my first visit to Croatia. If eaten with yogurt (which they drink here in Eastern Europe) it sits better in your stomach. My Croatian friends are well aware of my cravings so I try to use it to my advantage. Over the weekend burek s mesom became a useful tool in teaching guitar. “For example,” I told my student, “Think of the G chord as burek s mesom. You can think of Gsus2 as burek s mesom from Orahovica while the G7 is from Zagreb – it’s the same basic thing, but has a different taste.” She got it. Just a day later while teaching English I encountered the problem of teaching contractions. “'I am’ can become ‘I’m’” I explained. “It’s kind of like how in Croatian you combine the ‘s’ and the ‘mesom’ of burek s mesom so when you say it it sounds like smesom.” They all nodded and smiled. And so there you have it. Burek s mesom is more than just a tasty meal – though quite tasty it is.

Sure, I've experienced Jack Frost's nip growing up in the Wisconsin winters, but chestnuts on an open fire? I had to wait until I got to Orahovica to know what that's all about. Yesterday my wife, Enoh and I enjoyed an afternoon with the pastor and his wife picking chestnuts in what has become a traditional event. Here's the "fruit" of our "labor": As for the roasting, Petra loves them - she can never get enough. It's an acquired taste for me though; even with 3 seasons under my belt I have not acquired it. Picking them is the fun/relaxing part. As pastor Slobodan said, you don't have to reap or sow, you just take what has fallen from above. Kind of like grace I suppose.

There's a new Bible at a Christian Bookstore near you. The Green Bible highlights over 1,000 Bible verses in a pleasant-to-read green shade perfect for the Christian environmentalist. It also offers a foreword by Desmond Tutu and supplementary writings from St. Francis of Assisi and Pope John Paul II among others. As a Christian whose political views sway to the left I think I'm supposed to be a fan. I'm not. I mean, give me a break. Should the publishers create a White Letter Bible for the white-supremacists or KKK who attend our American churches? How about the G ray Letter edition for the skeptic? For my part, I like the environment. I even believe we should take time to praise God’s handiwork, to admire His beautiful and profound creation and even to protect the environment. But I don’t need The Green Bible to assist me in that. So here’s my suggestion for those of you who are tempted by the attractive cover or the fact that it’s been okayed by the Forest Stewardshi...

I can remember the Good Friday service when I would hear how Peter denied Christ just a few hours after saying something like "no Jesus, I would never deny you!" "How can someone do that?" I would think to myself "He must be dumb as a...well, rock". I've got it now though. Just this morning I posted the "Relief" post which you can look through if you scroll down a little. I posted it a few hours before our 3 hour drive to Zagreb to get our son's American Passport at the Embassy. We were in a rush so even though I had some thoughts of a bathroom break I held it until the nice American bathrooms at the Embassy (yes there are differences - more on that in another post) We went out to coffee with a friend in Zagreb before leaving and I didn't have the urge until we rolled out of the tollbooth in Zagreb onto the main highway. Petra had to stop an hour later so I decided to...yes that's right...use the facilities. I had a cappuccino an...

Five years after my first visit to Croatia I'm still stunned at the fact that there are places that you have to pay to go to the bathroom. You heard me; you have to pay to use the restroom. In America we have our inalienable rights. The right to use the toilet without paying a cent is one of those rights I’m proud to have. It’s humiliating to get to the bathroom after 5 hours on the highway and have to go to your wallet or pocket for spare change just so you can relieve yourself. And those times when you’re not particularly in a hurry, you stand at the door and ask yourself one of two questions: 1. Is my trip inside this bathroom worth the cash? If I choose not to use this service, is my discomfort until I arrive home worth half a coffee or a newspaper, or a liter of gas? 2. Is it stealing if I’m able to get inside before the restroom cashier comes out to charge me? Is there anywhere else where getting rid of something constitutes taking something that isn’t yours? It’s sti...

I've recently discovered the impact musical chairs has had on my driving skills in Croatia. Let's take the Osijek hospital “parking lot” for example. The key is to drive slowly enough that a car owner returning to their car will be easily noticed but fast enough to avoid the wrath (and accompanying horn) of the driver behind me. It feels like those circles around the chairs where you (try to) inconspicuously speed up to the next chair and instantly slow down so you stay close to the chair for as long as possible. When the music stops and you’ve found the last chair or when you find that parking spot – pure exhilaration! You just wish you had the rest of the classroom looking on in envy when you open your driver’s side door and raise your arms in victory. Croatian cities - and most other European cities for that matter – are choked with traffic. I don’t see any relief in sight. So although more people do it here in Croatia than America I will still recommend my friend Milo’s ide...

Have you ever gotten comments about your coffee drinking habits? Have those tired, nonstimulated killjoys ever given you one of these: “Coffee isn’t good for you – you’ll get addicted” condemnations? They usually launch into how coffee will raise your blood pressure, stain your teeth, make you go to the bathroom more (even though it’s supposedly dehydrating) and didn’t a study prove that it’ll give you cancer? Well coffee lovers, it’s time to celebrate. It’s not true! None of it. The New York Times recently ran an article that combined various studies proving that there are absolutely no harmful effects of drinking coffee everyday and that it could in fact actually benefit your health. The myth about dehydration? Wrong. Even a Starbucks grande will give you as much of your daily dose of hydration as 16 oz. of water. What about heart disease? Nope. Cardiologists at University of California at San Francisco found no proof. Cancer? Uh-uh. In ’81 it was found that coffee led to pa...

My wife and I rented a movie here in Croatia a couple years back that is called Crazy House ( Luda Kuča ) when literally translated. It stars Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore and although it’s a little over the top we enjoyed it. When we visited the States we looked for it on DVD but couldn’t find it. Turns out the title was actually Duplex . Since then we’ve found that very few of the popular titles are translated literally the same when imported into Croatia. Chris Hawley wrote an entertaining piece in USA TODAY and the Arizona Republic recently about the literal translations Hollywood movies have in other countries. The following is a list of some of those movies and their titles along with the countries (or areas) in which they were renamed: Get Smart (2008) Super Agent 86 (Mexico) Confused Spy (China) Is the Spy Capable or Not? (Taiwan) Airplane! (1980) The Unbelievable Trip on a Wacky Airplane (Germany) Alien (1979) The Eighth Passenger of the Nostromo (Poland) Much A...

The observant American would notice 2 things upon their arrival to Croatia (and the same is certainly true in other eastern European countries if not the rest of the world). 1. People are generally thinner here and 2. There are far fewer McDonald’s and virtually no other fast-food joints in the country. The two are related. A year ago I came back to Croatia after an extended stay in the States. I was aware of the fact that I wouldn’t get things like Dunkin Donuts coffee or my supersize chicken McNugget meal when I got here so I stocked up before I left. I’ve never been a huge weight watcher, so I didn’t really keep track of what I gained. But I did weigh myself before leaving America and remember being surprised. Three months after being back in Croatia I weighed myself again. Due to having more free time I had been walking more, so I figured I would have lost some weight. Much to my surprise I found that I had lost 20 pounds without even trying! In fact I still ate things like chips, ...