Croatia

We began this weekend transplanting walnut trees in a small, southern Hungarian town, which is only a single street. A neighbor woman fed us warm cheesy biscuits so we sat outside, enjoyed the sunshine, and drank hot tea for a digging break. This work was very enjoyable. However, I did ditch my rake at one point to screw around with the rooster that kept shouting from the farm next door. He actually got piazzedt at me for getting too close.

Our stickly lil tree:

Roots!

Across the street from where we planted was a two-room, ethnographic muzeum kept up by a woman in the community. It mostly held daily utensils, simple machines, folk art, bedding etc. that she collected over the years and cares for. It was quite wonderful.

We crossed the Croatian border on Saturday morning.  After a small hike up a medium hill, we had a fine view of the region. We walked through the vineyards and snacked on grapes still on the vines and walnuts from the trees. 

Later on Saturday, we visited a Soviet monument high atop a hill that overlooked the Danube, much of the region, and one of the few bridges that wasn't destroyed during the war. We had paprika fish soup for lunch, complete with floating fish heads and egg noodles. Not my favorite.

One of my favorite bits of the trip was the ethnographic museum we saw in Croatia. The museum once belonged to the church, but under communism it fell under state control. It was kept well and cared for under communist control to foster a sort of national pride. Now, after the fall of communism, the building and its artifacts belong to no one, are no one's responsibility as they have not been given back to the church. Because of this, the museum has been looted, destroyed, robbed, abandoned, and is now sad and rotting. Sorry for the pile of pictures. I found it fascinating, startling.

On our way home, we visited this partially-restored church before picking up a couple jugs of wine for the evening's food and games. 

Sunday morning we walked along the Danube across from the Serbian border where we saw the heavy war damage that still exists in the town. We also stopped by bombed water tower that looked like it might topple over as soon as I walked under it.  It was incredible to walk around the village, full of houses sprayed with bullet holes or completely in ruins with crumbling bits of walls and roofs remaining.  The history is so present. This region, these villages, are still very much broken. 

Our last stop for the weekend was one of the larger Hungarian Reformed churches in Croatia. The building has been partially restored with money from the state, but the interior remains battered and unused after the war. We sang and snacked with the elderly congregation next to the temple. The women made us mass amounts of traditional pastries and salty croissants that we ate as we answered questions and recited our fruits and veggies in Hungarian. Their hospitality overwhelmed us. 

You can see bullet holes around the window, quite different from the pastel exterior: