Lifestyle

December 14, 2022 - Christmas time often inspires generosity. In Croatia, like in many other places, it is the right time for dinners, receptions, parties, and events organised for charity. There are plenty of those happening all around the country, but there are also many other ways to practice helping those in need. For this holiday season, we are presenting some of the charities in Croatia which accept donations and help. You can, of course, donate and help any other time as well. The Croatian Red Cross The international Red Cross movement is one of the best-known humanitarian organisations in…

December 13, 2022 - Croatia is a largely Catholic country, and as such it has many traditions tied to saints, including various Christmas traditions. One of them is Saint Lucy's Day, which is today, on the 13th of December. The Croatian tradition for this day includes planting a little pot of Christmas wheat, which will serve as part of the decorations for the Christmas table. As Večernji wrote, although pots of wheat can be bought for almost symbolic amounts at markets and in all retail chains, the process of planting wheat is part of a tradition that takes most Croatians…

December 13, 2022 - Where is the best place to live in Europe? For this boy from Manchester, the answer is Croatia. Here are 8 reasons why. How to describe the mystery of Croatia, beautiful but maddening, chilled but flawed? In our latest book, Croatia a Survival Kit for Foreigners, which I co-wrote with TCN Editor Lauren Simmonds, I describe Croatia as a mixture of Absurdistan, with the best lifestyle in Europe, with a sprinkling of Balkan insanity on top. I can't get enough of it. Don't get me wrong, living full-time in Croatia is hard work, and as different…

December 12, 2022 - More great news for those looking for international schooling options in Split, as Harfa International School announces an expansion of its services after a very successful start.   Motivated by excellent feedback from the international audit, Harfa International School is expanding and will offer kindergarten, elementary school as well as high school education next fall! Some say we can only dream of the Finnish education system. But that is not true anymore for children in Split. The address Osmih mediteranskih igara 2 is located right in the heart of Poljud, in the city of Split. That is…

December the 12th, 2022 - Croatian sign language is the one language spoken in Croatia which of course has no sound to the words, but did you know that there's no clearly defined number of people living in Croatia who use it? We've explored many of the dialects, subdialects and indeed languages in their own right as some linguists consider them to be which are spoken across modern Croatia. From the Dubrovnik subdialect (Ragusan) in the extreme south of Dalmatia to Northwestern Kajkavian in areas like Zagorje and Medjimurje, the ways in which people speak in this country deviate from what we know as…

December 11, 2022 - Christmas baking in Croatia starts as soon as December rolls around. The goal is for the Christmas dessert table to be as bright and colourful as possible, full of cookies and cakes and everything in between. Boxes of various little treats are gifted to family, freinds, nieghbours, brought to office parties, schools and kindergartens. Sweet treats are a key component of Croatian Christmas traditions. They bring a lot of joy to both the visitors and the hosts, and the process of baking them is the perfect tool for families to come together and enjoy moments of…

December 10, 2022 - The perception of eastern Croatia is a region of emigration and economic decay. TCN visits the University of Osijek to catch the mood with students.  One of the things I like to do when I have time is to talk to the young people of Croatia to see how they see their country and their future, particularly in eastern Croatia, which is a magical land which is so misrepresented in Zagreb and treated almost like a handicapped cousin, one whose existence is acknowledged but kept firmly out of the public eye.  From the moment I first…

December 9, 2022 - A two-day international scientific conference titled Vucedol/Culture: Origin and Heritage is currently underway at the Vucedol Culture Museum in Vukovar. The primary goal of this first scientific conference is to present the results of twenty years (2001–2021) of systematic research at the prehistoric site of Vucedol, but also to remind about the history of research and evaluation of earlier research of the site and the Vucedol culture. "We are proud to host this first international scientific conference, where we discuss what Vucedol culture was in the wider area. This is also an opportunity to thank all…

December the 7th, 2022 - Being a Catholic country, there are a lot of Croatian national holidays. Religion isn’t the only reason they occur, of course, with some being related to a significant day in national history or being anniversaries of important dates during the Homeland War which saw Croatia break away from the former Yugoslavia, win a brutal war, and become an independent, sovereign state. There are fourteen Croatian national holidays in total, and it’s worth trying to make a mental note of at least a handful or so of them because many businesses put their keys in the lock…

December the 6th, 2022 - The 6th of December 1991 is a date which has burned itself into the eternal memory of the City of Dubrovnik and has become as much a part of its long history as Saint Blaise or Marin Drzic. What do you think of when you think about the 90's? Maybe you think of the then mobile phone giant Nokia and the phones that could break concrete if dropped, or Haddaway's eternal question about what love is. For many it was a happy time, a time of good music, technological advancement and anticipation of the turn…