Exploring the neighbourhood

For those of you who might doubt that I’m working, here’s proof.

At home.

In the classroom.

It’s Sunday and I’m tired from three days of marathon teaching. I had my regular two classes on Thursday and Friday (three hours each) and then taught for four hours on Saturday to make up for the classes I missed when I went to Graz. By last evening my voice was gone. Today I’m taking it easy. Late morning coffee, scrabble games, yoga, reading, and walking.

As you know I’m living in the new part of Zagreb, which is all huge apartment buildings. They are not very pretty, but they are well serviced by shops and cafes and the like. Today I walked in a different direction and discovered a farmers’ market just a couple of blocks away. Prices were much cheaper than the market in the old town and the quality of food just the same. I had to do a lot of pointing and using my few words of Croatian, as the locals in this area tend not to speak much English (why would they?). Buying my weekly groceries today was a lot of fun. I’ve been told that the wild asparagus will be in the markets very soon, and that, for sure, is a sign of spring.

So are the flowers. Around here there’s quite a bit of green space but not many flowers. A few daffodils popped up outside my building, and the other day I saw an old woman picking them for her apartment. Lady, they’re for everyone to enjoy! Why would you take them? Are they private or public property?

Today on my walk back from the market I stopped to admire a lovely large patch of spring flowers that someone had clearly taken a lot of trouble to plant. I looked up and saw that a ground floor apartment had flower pots on the window sills and a window box full of primulas. Ah, that must be where the person who planted the flowers lives, I thought. And it was. An elegant older lady in a fuzzy purple hat was also looking at the garden plot, and she spoke to me in a very sad voice. I apologized and said that I did not speak Croatian, that I was English-speaking, and what d’ya know, but she switched into English. “Someone stole my flowers and I am very angry,” she said, “I try to make a bit of beauty, but the people ...” What’s mine is not yours. What’s ours is also mine. Is this bit of land mine to do with as I please? Complicated questions. People around here might own their apartments but they don’t own the land. In honour of that lady and her efforts to beautify a concrete environment, I post a photo of her flower garden.