Culture Shock

If I had a kuna for every double take I receive in the cafe I frequent, I'd have enough to finance the opening of the first Starbucks in Croatia. I've been in this country for five years now, so I know that sitting by oneself at a table with only a computer is rare. Unheard of. At least in small town Croatia. Since I started working towards a master's degree in the fall, I've been coming to this cafe at least 3 times a week while our son is in preschool. Despite the music, and the conversations around me, I find it a pleasant place to study for a couple hours. But, there is no doubt I am a fish out of water. To my right, five elderly ladies order čaj and compare medical conditions and prescriptions. On the other side, two suits discuss local politics. And here am I, reading about Pannenberg's doctrine of Christ, frequently stopping to type notes on my laptop - with no one to talk to. I've had some sympathetic coffee drinkers try to help. One elderly gent...

His name is Slobodan, which means "free". You can tell, just by spending a half-hour with him that he is constrained by nothing. One day last fall, he and I had plans to take down the bunk-beds used for camp in order to begin making a nursery in our church.  But he had changed his mind by the time I arrived at his house. "The wind blew yesterday and we have to go get the chestnuts that have fallen in the woods" he explained in a hurry.  This was after he told me to come in, sit down and eat the mushrooms sizzling in the frying pan he picked from the forest floor in the morning. So rather than working in the church, we went to pick chestnuts. Pastor Slobodan is recently retired - from his job as an agriculturalist.  Most pastors of evangelical churches in Croatia have full-time jobs besides their responsibilities as a pastor.  Now that he is no longer working his main job, he'll be able to spend more of his time doing what full-time pastors do. But his...

It started with a confession: "Jeremy, I'm a little tired, would you mind taking the wheel?" Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't object at all. I love to drive. The only thing keeping me from immediately accepting the invitation to hop in the drivers seat was the fact that there was a stick shift next to it. But I didn't have to say a thing. "Dad! You know my husband has never driven manual before, don't you?" "Well, he can learn now" my father-in-law said as we sped down the highway along the Adriatic. "He lives in Europe. He's got to learn sometime" he reasoned. Unable to argue with him, after stopping at a rest stop, I reluctantly changed seats, put on my seat belt and turned on the car - without pushing in the clutch. The car's lurch indicated how offended it was that an American driver was trying to control it. "Maybe this is good" I thought as my head whipped back to it's original position. ...