Went to mass today in the Zagreb Cathedral.  The music was great – but I didn’t think much of the sermon.

Though the party after was a jolly good show.  My goodness the Cunnington-Smythes can throw a party, if I do say so myself.

Merry Christmas all

Kinder
I know how much you love my riddles:
“What do you get when you pour root beer into a square glass.  Beer”

If only you signed up to follow my blog there would be jokes like this every day! And photos of your dear Father in party mode.  How good would that be?!!!!!!!

Neither Linda nor I do guided tours particularly well.  The first time we travelled together overseas it was to Singapore and the package included a tour to some attraction each day.  We lasted one day then quit the group -much to the disgust of the tour leader. 

When we returned to Auschwitz in 2009 we thought we thought we had booked a driver for the day so that we could wander around that place alone with our thoughts.  The van that was to be our transport arrived and when the door opened we we were greeted by a dozen faces – we had booked a guided tour by mistake.  It was awful.  Our tour guide – Reich Fuhrer Christina – just wanted to get the tour over and done with so she could get back in time to pick up little Adolphus from school.  A place that usually inspires the deepest of silences and thoughts was rushed and unpleasant.

Last year we made the pilgrimage to ANZAC Cove – somewhere we could only go to as part of a tour.  The guide spoke some language.  The Dutchman on the bus said it wasn’t Dutch, The Germans said it wasn’t German and the people from Normandy said it wasn’t French.  I don’t think it was English.  Most people had surrendered before we even left the beaches – they just stayed on the bus or wandered aimlessly.  One Turk had single handedly defeated a bus load of foreigners.  That same man later got a gig signing at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

There was some trepidation (for you Lindsay) therefore when we accepted the offer of a tour around Zagreb.  It was wonderful.  Ivana was a professor of English and Russian before she and her husband started their own business.  The 3 hour tour lasted around 5 hours and we loved every minute. Ivana was obviously passionate about Zagreb and that shone through.  She liked the quirky bits – for example the magnificent chandeliers in the cathedral had come from a failed Las Vegas casino – and she loved the history.  It was a wonderful way to get a feel for her Croatia.

The country has had such an unsettling recent past – the communist era, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the war with Serbia and massacres shown on TV screens to bring an end to the 20th Century -something most Europeans could not even imagine happening again after Nuremberg.  They have been forced to face some of their own demons as a condition of joining the EU – the jailing of politicians and war criminals and more recently the need to somehow manage their attitudes towards the influx of Romanians, particularly Gypsies.  But in so many ways it reminds me of Poland today.  Somewhere that is now proud to be its own country after centuries of being just a part of somewhere else

Zagreb is a gem. Ivana is a gem.  Most people just land here and head off to other parts of Croatia.  Me? I just want to come back.

I’ll let you go now Farquar

Rossjnici of Zagreb