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Hi folks,

After some post-free time it’s me again with some news.

In the meanwhile a bunch of things happened. As you might realize by the title of this post (in English: Hello, I am Florin), I’ve started to learn Croatian. Since I’ve only had one lesson so far, my knowledge is still limited to a few words, but it feels like I get along with the language better than I expected. In the end my goal isn’t being able to deliver highly complex and scientifically challenging speeches, but simply being able to communicate with people, which is why we barely focus on grammar in our lessons. That’s a different approach to learning a language, and maybe I like it more because it differs so much from learning foreign languages in school (I’m not at all intending to infer that the foreign language lessons in my school time were bad, but you know, after 8 years of that you somehow have enough). I can already express who I am, where I’m from, I can order beer (alternatives: flowers, chocolate, cheese) and kindly say ‘Thank you’. I also know what “žemlja” means although (or rather because) my Croatian teacher told me 20 times that it’s redundant for my vocab. It means something like ‘bagel’.

Last Friday I celebrated my birthday. It’s a particularly weird feeling to not have any family or the usual suspects around on that day for the first time, but the folks I spent the evening with did their best to compensate that. A book that’s now my property: “Chasing a Croatian Girl” by Cody McClain Brown. After reading the short info on the back cover I still don’t know what’s inside, but I’ll unveil that secret in the next weeks.

A few days ago I met Jakob, a 15-year-old from Esslingen in Germany who is solving an exchange school year here in Varazdin (I wasn’t even aware that people can/want to go anywhere else than the US and Canada to do such a thing) and will stay here roughly as long as I do. (Edit, 09/02/2015: He changed his family and moved to Pula in the south.) A very kind young man who I’m going to spend some more evenings and events with.

Two weeks ago I went to Gospodarska skola for the first time, which could be translated to something like an ‘economical and tourism school’. My predecessor started working there quite late, so they’re glad that I already came after a few weeks. The mentioned magazine is already going well, some texts are done and corrected, and I think this could probably work without the help and effort of a volunteer in the future because the people doing it are getting a feeling of how to do it.

One more thing that I realized in the student books they use here: ‘Floorball’ seems to be THE sport for students in Germany if you believe the authors and almost every student in the books plays it. That made me wonder in the beginning because I didn’t even know what it is; now it’s even more surprising since it turned out to be some sort of hockey if I got that right. I guess that’s simply more interesting than learning about a load of football-playing students.

I’ve been here for more than a month already. The time flew by in the first weeks, lots of new impressions, new people, new places, new circumstances.

See you

Florin.

P.S.: As I said, I will continue the riddle section.
What can run but never walks/
often murmurs but never talks/
has a mouth but never eats/
has a bed but never sleeps?