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I took my first language test today. It was mostly a written test to judge how much I know of the language before they build a course for me. Apparently I know quite a bit. I have to cover a few things in level one before moving on to level two. I had some problems with cases, particularly the genetive case, and i didn’t know some words. But all in all I can read and understand very well for never being instructed. Eight years of listening to the language off and on and a few self-learning books helped me with that, ha ha ha.

I started my classes on Friday and will continue them twice a week for 8 weeks. Soon I’ll be fluent–yeah right!

Today I went for a nice long walk. I walked to the main square in Zagreb to stop by the tourist center in hopes of finding a pamphlet on walking tours in English. The last one I picked up on Sljeme was in German. Unfortunately they didn’t have any so I’ll have to go back to Sljeme for the English one.

Walking in the city is dangerous. Sidewalks are not for walking. They are for cars to park on and dogs to shit on. If you squeeze by the cars, your likely to step in dog shit. If you walk in the street, you’re likely to get hit. Ah. Se la vie!

I’m so frustrated with the cars on the sidewalk. I don’t understand why people are allowed to park like that. You see old ladies walking home in the middle of the road on a busy street, because they can’t get by on the sidewalk. I did a little search online about “cars on the sidewalk” thinking this was a European thing and I’d find a lot more people from Europe frustrated. But I was wrong. The second and fourth results were articles in Philly sources bitching about parking on the sidewalk. Heh. Imagine that.

Cars parked on sidewalk in NL – PhillyBlog

Get your damn car off the sidewalk – Citypaper

I don’t know why Philly is complaining. They ain’t seen real sidewalk parking yet. Picture to come soon…

At once the Croatia capital, Varazdin, is a cool small town. Our friends Tihana and Marko were nice enough to take us to Varazdin this past Sunday. We had a great time, visited an old castle, ate some nice lunch…

And when we got back, we played Bela all night. And we play to 1001! Bela is the craziest, most backwards and complicated card game I’ve ever had to play. Once you get the hang of it, it can be real fun. But it will take years of practice before I’m any good at it, hehehe.

Paying bills in Croatia is a strange process to me. The bills come in the mail each month, which is standard, but paying them is weird. Many families, including us, take the bills to the post office, or other bill paying location, and pay each bill in cash.

Renting apartments is another strange process. You are expected to pay the rent, apartment or house fees (similar to condo fees), and all utilities. All of the bills come in the name of the owner of the property and you have to pay them in the same manner as other bills. You can’t put utilities in your name, including telephone.

So when there’s a problem with a utility, because it’s not in your name, it can make it that much harder to get fixed when broken :)

This week the homesickness really hit. Aside from working, I didn’t really feel like doing anything. All I really did was make sure I watched American TV sitcoms that are on every morning. There are 4 of them, and 2 of them I don’t like, but watched anyway. I suppose I’m trying to connect with anything from home.

But, I realize I have to snap out of this at some point. The weather is starting to get much nicer, reaching highs of 40F rather than 20F. Hopefully with the nice weather, I will get out and seem more. I’ve got free time :)

This weekend we will be heading to Varazdin for the day with some friends. I’m excited about it.