Walks along Kosirina

Winter in Tisno wasn't all about snow, sub-zero temperatures (although it was painfully chilly at times) and crazy winter parties. As you can see from the following photos, we had some amazingly beautiful sunny days, which were perfect to explore the island of Murter. I adored the northern winter sunlight - it had this incredible warm, golden hue to it, which reflected magically on the crystal clear Adriatic Sea. And being winter, I had the opportunity to completely appreciated the natural beauty of the island of Murter without the hoards of tourist from all over Croatia, Europe and beyond, who flock en masse to the coast to inhale the delights of a Dalmatian summer. 

When the weather was clear, and the mercury was at a reasonably level, I could think of nothing better to do but to be outdoors. After being cooped-up indoors, almost physically attached to the heater and unable to move due to feeling like an ice-block, the warm sunshine was unbelievably alluring. 

On a number of occasions we'd spend the afternoon walking around the Bay of Kosirina, which is located on the western side of the island of Murter. Kosirina is one of a number of bays on the island, which house auto-camps, camping grounds, restaurants and night clubs during the summer months, as their natural beauty and coastal location attracts a great number of tourist. The owners of these bays, residents of Jezera and Murter, have obviously been very successful in capitalising on their 'prime' real estate, which was once, before to the great wave of tourism, consider worthless due to its tough soil, which made it extremely difficult to earn any decent living from agriculture on these rocky, barren outcrops.

The bay of Kosirina has a labyrinth of paths, which allow you to walk either along the water's edge, or over the masses of rock and shrubbery. Many of these paths connect Kosirina with neighbouring bays and onto the towns of Murter and Jezera. Presumably, these rocky paths were once used by locals on their daily journey to and from their fields. Walking around Kosirina, you can image sun-kissed peasants walking in their dirt encrusted trousers on an autumn afternoon with their olive-laden donkeys, exhasted from a hard days work and keen to get home. Even today, the stone walls erected by the Jezerani and Murterini, which enabled them to distinguish their plot of land to that of their neighbour's are still there, as if for them time had stood still. Unfortunately however, the majority of these small plots of land are now overgrown, as most people have turned away from the toil of agriculture in favour of tourist dollars.

There's something about the island of Murter, and other areas of the Dalmatian coast, that I feel a strange connection with - the rocky landscape, the salty sea. I think many Dalmatians, and children of Dalmatians, feel the same way. Walking around Kosirina, breathing in that crisp sea air, even just looking at these photos again, I feel this affinity to the sea and the land, as generations and generations before me were inextricably connected to it - they lived on it, lived from it, they loved it, they despised it. But without it, they wouldn't have existed. It formed their identity.

Christmas in Tisno

Christmas. What a wonderful time of the year! Up until this year most of my Christmas celebrations have been more or less the same - Christmas Eve is spent with my father's family, Christmas Day with my mother's and Christmas evening out on the town with my cousins. Christmas in Australia is always associated with summer holidays, basking in the sun and jumping into the ocean. But I anticipated this Christmas to be somewhat different. And it surely was...

A few days before Christmas my neighbour Teo and I went to pick-up my grandmother from Sibenik bus station. She had been in Belgrade with my aunt for a sorrowful occasion (and my aunt was to join us in Tisno a week or so later). Upon arriving, she looked extremely exhausted and disheveled. Teo and I were both very keen to get her home. I had prepared dinner for us earlier that day, but Teo and his wife insisted that we dine with them that evening (no Tišnjanin would ever allow you to refuse an invitation to dinner, or lunch, or any other occasion involving food).

The following day, I was expecting my grandmother to take it easy - she'd just spent over 12 hours in a cramped bus, which isn't too much fun when you're 24, let alone 76. I've done the Tisno-Belgrade and Belgrade-Tisno bus trip one too many times, visiting family there and although the buses are reasonably comfortable, the trip is overwhelmingly monotonous (freeways aren't the most exciting of routes to take - although the new highways have shortened the trip considerably, they have also made is considerable more boring - it was much more interesting when you had to go through all the small towns on the way), especially when you complete it on your own. Being in her old kitchen, my Baba (grandmother) set about making sarma for our lunch. Sarma is made from pickled cabbage leaves, stuffed with a mixture of minced beef, port, ham and rice. This rissole-like mixture is wrapped in individual cabbage leaves. These 'parcels' are then placed into a pot with extra sauerkraut and smoked port ribs which is then covered in a thin tomato-based 'soup' and put to simmer for an hour or so. It is usually served with mashed potatoes or kaša (cooked polenta). Leftover kaša is fantastic served with warm milk the following morning for breakfast - it's a Dalmatian thing. As usual, she cooked enough sarma to feed an army, so we planned to eat is for the following few days. Although this plan was disregarded after our 'Christmas gift' the following day.

I had planned to have dinner with Darko and some friends, and my grandmother had decided to have dinner with her 'adoptive' family (my grandmother grew up in a hamlet in the Dalmatian hinterland. She was orphan during the Second World War, sent to a Red Cross orphanage in Alexandria, Egypt and then placed in Tisno as a servant girl in the then wealthy Kaleb household, but basically became an extra member of their family). My grandmother had already left for the evening and I was just stepping out of the front gate in the evening darkness when I perceive my neighbour Teo bounding up the street (Teo is always bounding - he has this insatiable energy and happiness about him) with a large parcel in his hands. As he comes towards me, he asks me to go ahead of him and open the front door. I do so and let him in. He walks into our kitchen and plonks the parcel onto the table. He slowly unravels the butcher's paper to reveal a whole turkey - all cleaned and plucked and ready to prepare. He on goes to tell me that he was at his ranch (his little 'farm' just outside of Tisno which houses his menagerie of turkeys, chickens, rabbits and pigeons, as well as a selection of various fruits and vegetables - I remember going there one year to pick sour cherries) that day and brought us back a turkey for Christmas dinner. I told him we'd already made plans to go out that evening and I didn't know what the two of us would do with an entire turkey, so I told him to take it back for his own family. Refusing to listen to my answer, he left and went on his merry way. The following day my grandma even attempted to give it back to him, but we ended up eating this turkey for the following week. And were rather creative with it - we boiled parts for soup, we poached it, we prepared a fantastic roast on Christmas day, we made turkey sandwiches...although the turkey was the most amazing I had ever tasted, lets just say I didn't touch turkey for a while after that.

Christmas Eve dinner at Darko's was roasted octopus! The Dalmatian adore their seafood, but unfortunately most stores do not sell quality goods, even though we are right on the coast. The fish market in Tisno typically has a depressingly poor selection of fish, unless you're eager enough to be there are 6am as the fishing boats pull in and manage to strike a bargain with the skipper. But for the regular Tišnjanin, finding decent fish is usually the result of a few precise telephone calls. A number of men in town are known for their fishing talent, so you call a number of them and ask if they've caught the thing that you're particularly after, in this case octopus, in the last few days. If they say no, you continue on to the next person on the phone list, and when you finally obtain a positive response, you offer them a price for the octopus in kuna (the official Croatian currency), through a favour - painting a room in their house, helping with some tiling, etc, or through a barter exchange for wine, spirits, beer, olive oil, vegetables, etc.

After our delicious dinner and dessert of fritule (little round deep-fried doughnut-like delicacies, about the size of a golf ball, made from a light and fluffy batter with raisins and sprinkled with icing sugar), we and almost the entire town attended midnight mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit. The church was literally overflowing with Tišnjani - all the seats were taken with people standing at the rear of the church, in the doorway and also outside. Unlike the weeks prior, and the weeks following Christmas and New Year, Tisno was teaming with people, as many Tišnjani living in other parts of Croatia and Europe return home for the holidays. After mass everyone wished each other a Merry Christmas in the courtyard of the church building. As all the 'oldies' went home to their warm beds, the youth packed into Kaseopeja (the tiny, two room caffe-bar in Uska Ulica) and the younger teenagers into their second home, Crni's Caffe Bar (located at the opposite end of the town centre). Being freezing cold outside, about fifty of us squeezed into Kaseopeja and somehow managed to close the doors shut - you could barely take a step without bumping into someone, that's how packed it was. The evening continued until dawn with people signing well-know Croatian rock songs from the 80s and 90s, somehow attempting to dance in any small opening between the crowd they could find, as well as general drunken, but reasonably orderly behaviour from a number of the boys, and a few of the girls too. It was better than any summer party, as it consisted only of true Tišnjani, and Tišnjani know how to party. (I'll refrain from post photos, saving many people a great deal of embarrassment).

Christmas day was a quiet affair, with the majority of Tisno nursing a hangover. Although many, as was to be expected, continued the festivities in Kaseopeja the following night, despite this.

Snow? In Tisno?

View towards the selo (the town centre)

Snow! There's something magical about it, the way it falls from those foreboding grey clouds and covers the landscape in a pure white blanket, instantly altering our perception of it. Is this awe an innate human reaction, or is it a learned reaction due to growing-up watching films such as Little Women and Home Alone where a snowy landscape equates to warmth, family, fun, adventure? Or is it that I've only experienced snow a handful of times, so it remains something unusual, interesting, amazing? Whatever it is, I'm always excited to see snow. I remember living in Paris, sitting on the lounge beneath the large Hausmann styled window in the sitting room. I glanced outside, and thought, 'Is that rain? Or is that snow?' Taking a closer look I perceived it to be snow. I dropped the book I was reading, put on my ugg boots and run outside to stand amongst the floating snowflakes. I must have appeared a little odd to some passers-by, but I was so enthralled by the snow. So when I experienced a snow fall in Tisno, again I found it difficult the contain my excitement. Even more so, since I had become accustomed to visiting Tisno during the summer. So seeing the town in its winter guise was strange enough, let alone seeing it during and after a snow fall.

Gomilica

Being situated on the coast, winters in Tisno are usually quite mild (during this winter we even had sunny days, with the temperature reaching almost twenty degrees Celsius) with temperatures averaging around ten degrees and I think the coldest day we had whilst I was there was about zero degrees. Compared to inland regions who were experiencing minus twenty degree weather, I consider zero to ten degrees to be reasonably mild. And it's not every year that snow falls in Tisno, so I felt especially lucky to be there this particular winter.

Kampaneja (the bell tower)

I think we (I had began dating one of the local boys by this stage) may have been sitting in Kole's cafe (where else would we be between the hours of 11am and 2pm - I need my daily does of cocoa, newspapers, town gossip, Mr. Steve's opinions, Dijana's happy smile), or someone gave us a call, I can't remember exactly, but anyway we heard that it was snowing in Dazlina (about 10km away). So, having nothing better to do (there is hardly any work during winter in Dalmatia, so we never really had anything better to do), and also being somewhat excited, we jumped into the car and drove to Dazlina to see snow, thinking that this would probably be the only chance we'd get that winter. As we passed the Magistral (the main coastal road in Croatia, running from Istra in the north to Dubrovnik in the south) at Kapela (the intersection of the Magistral and the road that leads to Tisno), we could see the dark clouds eerily hanging over the distant landscape. As we drove through Dubrava and neared Dazlina we saw that the small hamlet was quickly being covered in snow. Within moments, that snow began falling all around the car and the once dry, rocky landscape was soon completely disguised by a powdery white blanket.

Snow in Dazlina

We drove painfully slowly back to Tisno, as the road was extremely slippery. It continued to snow the entire way and, to our amazement, it was also snowing in Tisno! How beautiful moje malo misto (my little town) looked in the cool afternoon light with its snowcapped roofs and powderwhite footpaths. So still, yet somehow so animated. To me it appear to be much more beautiful than on a warm and sunny summer's day. It posessed a magical, other-worldly atmosphere, unable to be properly felt though these photographs. It was one of those 'you had to be there' moments.

The path to Karavaj

We also walked up to Karavaj (the southern hill on the island side of the town, where the Church of the Madonna of Carravaggio is located) in the snow. Even though the dusk was drawing near, I wasn't going to miss this perhaps once in a lifetime experience - I was going to enjoy it to the full. Walking up the hill wasn't the easiest of things, as my boots constantly fell through the fresh snow. I'd say that there was a good half foot of it. But the view towards the selo, Gomilica (the mainland side of the town) and the islands of Ljutac, Borovnik, Bisaga and Mimonjak (to the south of Tisno) was truely amazing.

I'm sure that most Tisnjani and visitors to Tisno would agree with me in thinking that Tisno is absolutely beautiful during the summer months. But am I wrong in believing that its winter landscape is beyond any description of beauty...?

The Church of the Madonna of Caravaggio

Final few photos captured just before evening fell

The view from Karavaj onto Tisno

First Impressions

I left Australia in December with a vague plan to go to my father's home town of Tisno, Croatia. I'd had an extremely tumultuous and highly stressful year and just needed to get away, far away. Somewhere quiet, I needed some solitude, a change of scenery. I was also open to the possibility of staying for an extended period, if I could find some work teaching English (I had completed the intense (when I say intense, I mean intense - the course outline actually request that future students be in good health!) month-long International Cambridge CELTA course a few months earlier, which qualified me to teach English as a second language). So I thought I may as well go and chill out in our house in Tisno, and finding some work would be a bonus. I had a Croatian passport, so working there surely wasn't going to be a problem. If I found work, I'd stay on, if not, I planned to stay for just a few months to experience a winter in Croatia at least once in my lifetime - and to tell you the truth, I think once was more than enough for me.

I had a number of friends in Tisno whom I met during my summer holiday visits and I was so fortunate as to have rent-free accommodation in our two-storey, five bedroom stone house, complete with a picturesque view of the Adriatic (so the house may sound perfect, but it's not so perfect in winter as it's extremely difficult to heat, especially when you can't utilise the wood-fired oven since it smokes the entire house out).  My aunt and grandmother were also planning to be in Tisno in January, so it presented itself as a ideal place to 'run away' to.

A winter landscape - first impressions of my street in winter

About a month before I flew out, I contacted the director of the St. Lawrence Centre of Eduction in Sibenik, hoping to find a position there as an English teacher. To my surprise, I received a positive response that they may be looking for a new English teacher, as their current teacher, a young Canadian lady, may be leaving shortly. Although there was no guarantee of work, the mere possibility of working in such a fantastic local school in an amazing location (right in the centre of the old town of Sibenik), excited me and it also greatly influenced my decision to jump onto that plane bound for Croatia.

The plan trip was incredibly tiresome and never ending. I'd flown to Europe on my own a number of times, but this time it was exhausting, to say the least. Being stuck in a pressured cabin for 24 hours, coupled with waiting the Vienna airport for another eight (the terminal is tiny, incredibly boring and extremely frustrating to be in for that many hours when you're so close to Croatia, yet so far) tested my patience greatly. I was so relieved to finally land in Zagreb airport, after over thirty hours in transit, get a transfer to the Zagreb bus station, which I know so well and love after having visited it more than a few times, and board that beautiful bus to Sibenik (the bus was truly beautiful, both figuratively, as it was the final leg of my arduous journey, and in reality - the inter-city buses in Croatia are all beautiful new air-conditioned coaches).

Our fafarinka tree with no leaves

At Sibenik bus station I bumped into my lovely neighbour Mira, who was on her way home from work. So we had a nice bus trip home together catching up on everything that had happened since we last saw each other two years earlier. Being one of the nicest and most thoughtful people that I know, she called her husband Teo (my father's closest friend) to meet us at the bus stop with the car, so that I didn't have to drag my heavy suitcase up onto Hartić (the hill where we live). Mira and Teo were so incredibly amazing with helping me settle in - they even offered me one of the spare rooms in their house, fearing that my house would be to big and cold and lonely for me. When I kindly declined their offer, they brought over a heater, a bed (a nicer one than the forty-year old beds that were in my house), blankets, carpets, etc. Anything that would in someway make the house cosier. I can imaging that we would have been hilarious to watch, the three of us pacing up and down the street in the freezing cold dusk light, carrying things from one house to the other.

I was initially shocked upon seeing Tisno for the first time under its winter disguise. I didn't have any prior expectations, but all my memories of Tisno consisted of heat, sun, and the unforgettable hustle and bustle of summer and tourists - all of which were now missing. And my poor little house. The loza (grape vine) which covers the courtyard was bare and lifeless, a far cry from the full foliage and nearly ripened grapes I'd come to love in the summer; our fafarinka tree (not sure what type of tree this is in English, I only know the Dalmatian word for it) which provides us and our neighbours with thick shade and cool relief from the blistering summer sun, looked sad and dilapidated; and worst of all was our street, usually animated with people during the summer, could have been likened to a barren wasteland.

My house without its lovely green grapes and grapevine leaves

The first day ended well however, with a lovely meal of škampi na buzaru (a Dalmatian specialty of a prawn-like crustacean, cooked in a white wine and tomato sauce and usually served with spaghetti) cooked by chef Darko, and finally falling asleep in my little house on the Dalmatia coast, under a thick layer of blankets.

More Old Photographs from Tisno

Tito's visit to Tisno

Photographs taken from my grandparent's personal collection 

and from Zeljko Veldic's Flickr page 'Tisno from the Past'

Tišnjanski - The language of the people of Tisno

My university Croatian language studies didn't seem to be all that helpful when living in Tisno. Although there is a standard Croatian language, many different dialects can be found throughout the country, especially in Dalmatia. And Tisno itself has its own unique version of the Croatia language. This makes it all very confusing, especially for someone who is is not a native speaker. 

However, I find it extremely fascinating that people's language and verbal expression is subject to many differences within one nation state, or even within a few kilometres. For example, the people of Tisno speak completely differently to the people of Murter and there are only eight kilometres between the two towns. I worked in Murter for about 2 months during my stay in Tisno, and during this time I did have a few difficulties understanding the Murterini (the people of Murter), especially the elder generation who still speak the old town dialect.

Officially, the Croatian language is divided into three dialects - čakavski, štokavski and kajkavski. For example, standard Croatian is based on the štokavski dialect, so the phrase 'what are you doing' is translated to 'što radiš', but in the kajkavski dialect, which is dominant in Zagreb, the phrase is translated to 'kaj delaš' - this completely confused me when a Zagrebčan once asked me 'kaj delaš' - and my response was a completely blank expression. Tišnjanski (the language of the people of Tisno) is based on the štokavski dialect. I say based, as it is a variation of this dialect. For example, rather than utilising the word 'što' for 'what', the Tišnjani say 'šta', substituting the -o ending with -a (again, this once confused an Australian/Croatian friend of mine whose parents were from the island of Korčula where they utilise the word 'što' and he had never heard the word 'šta' - this dialectic confusion resulted into an hilarious night in Tisno of 'što je 'šta?' - literally 'what is what?').

There are a number of words that are unique to Tisno, some of which the outsider has absolutely no knowledge or comprehension of. Here is a small list of a few words that vary from the standard štokavski dialect (other towns on the Dalmatian coast my use some of these words, but I'm sure a few are indigenous to the town). I've presented them with the English version, the Tišnjanski version and the standard Croatian version. From this you can see how completely different the dialect is to standard Croatian:

Beach / Banj / Plaža                 Socks / Bičva / Čarapa

             Pen / Lapiš / Olovka                Bell tower / Kampanel / Zvonik

Slap / Triska / Pljuska                 Hole / Buža / Rupa

               Piece / Bokun / Komad            To chat / Čakulati / Razgorvarati

Another aspect of Tišnjanski which makes it unique is the replacement of the 'ije' and 'je' sounds (the letter 'j' is pronouced as an English 'y') with a 'i' sounds (this is common throught Dalmatia and it's usually this part of pronunciation that identifies an individual as originating from Dalmatia - that and their tendancy to add Italian originated words into their speech - we call tomatoes 'pomidoro' and a kitchen 'kužina' which cannot be mistaken from the Italian 'pomodoro' and 'cucina'). So words such as mlijeko (milk), bijelo (white) and ljeto (summer), we pronounce as mliko, bilo and lito. Also, in words ending in -m, the 'm' is replaced with an 'n'. For example, 'ja idem' (I'm going) is changed to 'ja iđen', 'govorim' (I'm speaking) becomes 'govorin' and mislim (I'm thinking) becomes 'mislin'.

It is unfortunate that the younger generation, being more educated and exposed to the world outside of Tisno, are slowly losing many aspects of the town dialect, favouring standard Croatian and anglicised words - such as friendica (a female friend) instead of prijatelica. Interestingly, Tišnjani who migrated to ocountries such as Australia in the 50s, 60s and 70s, are the ones who have best preserved the intricacies of the Tišnjanski language, since they have had less exposure to the evolution of the language.