What would Julia do?

I really enjoyed the movie Julie and Julia, about a New York blogger working her way through every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don't know anything about Julia Child's life except what was in the movie, but the scenes of her  triumphing over the chauvenists at her cooking school by determindly chopping PILES of onions were really memorable.  If you haven't seen the movie and you have any interest in blogging, cooking, or adjusting to a foreign country--which you must, or you wouldn't be here!--go watch it.

My own experiences of cooking in a foreign country have not yet achieved any measure of success. Last night I made a disgustingly runny, salty stir-fry.  It's too bad, too, because stir-fry is a favorite dish for me. I dug in as soon as I slapped it onto the table, only to be quite disappointed. 

Part of the problem IS that I'm a measurer: I know the basics of cooking, but I've never had that feel for it that lets people add a little of this and a little of that and produce something delicious.  True, I can probably count on both hands the number of meals I've ever cooked, so I'm expecting to some day make up in skill what I lack in instinct. But, in the process, my lack of measuring cups and spoons has made for some disatrous meals! You might ask, why don't you just go buy some? Because we don't have measuring cups and teaspoons in, well, cups and teaspoons.  Convert, you say? Unfortunately, cups and teaspoons are a volumne measurement and grams are a weight, so the conversion process is not foolproof. And believe me, at this point I need something foolproof.  The saltiness of my failed stir-fry was a direct result of a person who's craving east Asian food adding soy sauce ˝to taste.˝ I'm surprised we didn't both have isntant strokes from the sodium!

The translation process isn't foolproof, either.  To make the stir-fry sauce, I needed cornstarch.  I asked Kristian what cornstarch is called here, and he said škrob.  Before I went to the store, I checked the online dictionary for alternate translations, which has saved me at the grocery store in the past, like when I was shopping for chicken broth and couldn't find any in the can. One alternate for škrob was kukuruzno brašno.  So I went to the store, inspected the baking aisles closely, and no škrob.  But Huzzah! There was kukuruzno brašno, which translates literally into corn flour.  On the same aisle they had polenta and cornmeal, though (Croatians love their corn), so I figured that kukuruzno brašno must actually be different from those things. When I got it home, it was yellowish, which did not seem right, but hey, americans overprocess and overrefine everything, so I tested some in water, and it thickened into a kind of paste, so I figured it does work as a thickener, but I had used too much.

When I made the stir-fry, though, it wouldn't thicken.  So I mixed a bit more of the brašno in a little cold water and added it.  I did that twice.  No dice.  Evidently kukuruzno brašno can be used for making a grit-like paste, but not to thicken stir-fry sauce.  Oh well, live and learn.  There's got to be some store in this town that has škrob.

But tonight I'm going to just buy a jar of pasta sauce.  Which, incidentally,  is called ˝Salsa˝ here.

Beware of old men riding bikes!

Today is such a beautiful day that I decided to walk to Kristian's job at lunchtime so we could have coffee. There's this nice wide sidewalk, and, like a good American, I was keeping to the right-hand side when some old guy on a bike rode by, turned his head and gave me a death look, and said something grouchily to me.

Unfortunately, there's no chance my Croatian is good enough for me to understand what a Croatian-speaker says as he rides by me on a bike with his head half-turned and lunchtime traffic going by.  So, over coffee, I asked Kristian about the situation.

He said, "You were probably walking in the bike lane."

I said, "Bike lane?"

The sidewalk IS divided into lanes with a solid yellow line between them.  Without even considering what that might mean in Croatia, I just automatically behaved as though the sidewalk was a two-way street and you should walk on the right-hand lane.  

Incidentally, here two-way streets have solid WHITE lines dividing the lanes. It's funny how the meaning of something as abstract as a painted yellow line would be so deeply ingrained in my understanding of how the world functions that even in a foreign country I didn't really question if it meant something different here.  But at the same time, it's hard to be constantly alert to the implications of every little detail of your surroundings.  If you think about it, you learn how to function in your home country so gradually as you grow up.  You grocery-shop with your mom when you're small, you wash your first load of clothes probably as an adolescent, you take driver's ed as a teenager, you learn how much of a tip to leave at a restaurant somewhere along the way.  Then you move to another country, and all at once all of those things are carried out a little bit differently, but you're already an adult, so you're just supposed to know.

The only thing to be done, really, is to be able to laugh at yourself.  Frequently.

The smell of tomato vines is one of the best things ever

One of the big challenges of cooking in Croatia is also one of its biggest virtues: produce is available based on the season. Now, at the end of June, asparagus can't be had for love or money, and strawberries disappeared from the stores about a week and a half ago.  Of course, a few things are imported, but you do have to plan your menus around what produce is in season, which for a n00b cook is challenging.

Obviously, though, that means that what you do find in the store is FRESH, not some waxy item picked in a greenhouse three weeks ago.  I bought grape tomatoes at the supermarket today, and the vines left that peppery, pungent smell on my hands.  When I sliced into the tomatoes a little while ago, I just chomped into one of the slices, and it actually tasted like tomato. I am pretty much a snob about tomatoes--one of my favorite foods--but I can't remember the last time I had a good tomato from a supermarket in the States.  Not even from Earth Fare.  They're usually pale, bland, and mushy.

So I made this Tomato zucchini salad (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Tomato-and-Zucchini-Salad/Detail.aspx), but when Kristian got home from work, he wasn't hungry, so I ate it ALL.

Home-cookin'

Last night I was innocently watching a scene from the first season of Mad Men  (a show I've become addicted to since I moved here) showing Rachel and a friend dining out, when I was suddenly overcome by an uncontrollable desire for something that is entirely beyond my reach:

Sweet 'n sour shrimp  (I think that picture is actually chicken, but it really doesn't matter).

Look at that glossy shine, those whimsically sliced carrots.   Imagine the won-ton soup, the chopsticks, the spring roll, the lemoned-cardboard tang of a fortune cookie.  I WANT CHINESE FOOD!!!!!!

There are a few Chinese restaurants in Croatia--although I don't think Varazdin has one--but they're run by Chinese immigrants who for some crazy reason have never heard of a fortune cookie!***  Imagine!!

I doubt Croatian-Chinese food is any more authentic than American-Chinese food, but it is very different: less saucy, different flavors, not deep-fried (at least that's true of the two places I've been).  I wonder how much of the difference is simply because of the availability of ingredients and how much stems from what version of "Chinese" cuisine would appeal to the host culture.  Or maybe the differences arise from the region of China that the restaurateurs are from.   I'd be interested to read something about how a restaurant owner tailors her or his home cuisine to suit the predilections of the host culture.  Like most people, I'm aware that the "Italian," "Mexican," and "Chinese" foods that we get in the United States are not what you would get in those countries, but who masterminds those changes, and why? Who invented fortune cookies?

Mostly, however, I just want a plate of steamed rice and sweet 'n sour shrimp.

***  this website assures us that, "Unequivocally not Chinese, the fortune cookie may in fact not even be Chinese American." Nobody knows for sure who invented the little delicacies, though.

Summertime, and the living is.....Freezing!

I've always hated cold weather, but there's just something about cold weather in Croatia....it seems appropriate.  Today is June 21st, and the high temperature is 57 F.  For the past three or four days, it's been windy, rainy, and in the 50's.  Of course, for about ten days before that it was around 90  without a cloud in the sky.

This isn't a fluke, either: last year when I left Croatia on August 4th, it was raining and I had to wear a fleece jacket.  Last June, when First Baptist's youth group came here, I had planned for us to spend a charming sunny afternoon wandering around Varazdin's town center eating ice cream, shopping, looking at the castle, etc.  I was such a n00b.  It rained, and it was cold.  Instead of having a delightful outing soaking up the Old World surroundings, those poor kids soaked up cold rain water.  We went to McDonald's for consolation.

You would think I'd be miserable in these temperatures, but I don't really mind that much.  Of course, in Texas, it was pretty much hot for nine months.  You didn't really have seasons, and even at Christmastime my fireside laziness ran the risk of being interrupted by 80-degree days.  Here, though, we have four seasons, and even summer has some weeks of relief.  Having one or two weeks a month with cold rain really makes the hot sunshine a pleasure instead of the long, protracted unpleasantness it is in the South.

The Ballad of Kristian and Elaine

Today we went and registered for our official wedding! I say "official" because, in Croatia, a foreigner cannot be legally married in a church; the couple must go to the county seat, which in Varaždin
  is this violently pink Baroque palace.  (I got this picture from http://www.twip.org/image-europe-croatia-varazdin-downtown-zgrada-zupanije-en-17321-16260.html, where there are some really nice pictures of Varaždin's wonderful town center).  So, we will have the official wedding in the Pink Palace, and then, on August 23rd, the church  (or possibly beach) wedding on the island.

For someone who fears official paperwork (like me), an international marriage looms in the imagination like a nightmare of Boschian proportions.  The paper trail began in Knoxville, where I got a criminal history report (JUST so you know, there's nothing on it!!  :D)  that it turns out I don't actually need to get married but I WILL need for my visa.  Then Austin, where I had to get a new copy of my birth certificate from the state records office (on 44th street or something) and then get an apostille on that document at the Texas Secretary of State downtown.  And I admit without shame that I shed an expatriate tear as I walked past our capitol building flying the Lone Star!

The fun paper was the one I had to get at the American Embassy, though.  This was one of those cases when not having a car WAS a bit inconvenient. I took the early train to Zagreb, which is a two-hour trip but put me there early enough to do a little strolling around and window shopping.  Then I boarded the bus to the embassy and asked the driver in halting Croatian (but correct, consarn it!) which stop I needed, and he answered, "Do you want to know in English or Croatian?" Turns out he used to live in Canada, singing in a klapa group--traditional Dalmatian music, Of which I THINK this is an example: .  He even met his Croatian wife in Canada: they grew up ten minutes apart but had to go to another continent to meet....which just goes to show that there are a lot of crazy "how we met" stories out there.

So anyway, I got to the embassy, signed a paper saying I was single, got it notarized....and discovered that I had to register that paper at the Croatian Ministry of Foreign affairs, located at a square in the center of Zagreb, but no one really knew where that square was!  So I boarded the bus, rode back to the center, phoned the Ministry, discovered they closed at three, hung up and checked the time on my phone: 2:30!!!!!  I rushed out of the station, hailed a taxi, was told by the taxi driver that HE didn't know where that square is, got another taxi.....and got there just in time (the kind people at the ministry stayed 15 minutes late to finish registering me).  It's interesting: in Croatia you pay for official documents by buying a certain kind of stamp (looks like a postage stamp) at a newspaper kiosk.

So, papers in order.....except that my birth certificate is obviously in English, so we went to the official county translator's office.  $200!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That really hurt!  Then we had to schedule a time with the interpretor to come to the marriage office when we register ($30 an hour for her).  Croatia has a law that when a foreigner is married an official state interpreter must be present for everything to be sure that the foreigner knows exactly what's happening (or, more likely, in the event of any later breakup of the marriage, to prevent the foreigner from trying to claim that s/he didn't understand what s/he was doing).  Anyway, we got to state that we were getting married voluntarily and that we are not related (that got a good laugh from everyone in the office).

All in all, the whole thing was pretty painless, except for the bleeding of kuna and the panicky few minutes in Zagreb. You never know in Croatia if you're going to show up and need "one more paper," but happily this time everything was in order. So, our official wedding is scheduled for July 17th (a Saturday, for which we must pay a weekend wage to the interpreter: $60 an hour!!!)

Kristian's mom thinks there's something wrong with me for not getting excited about the ceremonies.  ^_^  For me, the real, public, before-God commitment to Kristian really happened when I said goodbye to my friends and family and boarded a plane in Austin.

Home Sweet Fourth-floor Walk-up

Any kind of transatlantic comparison is complicated. I've been asked a number of times how the cost of living in Croatia compares to the U.S., and I can't think of a good way to answer that question because any estimate of "the cost of living" contains some hidden assumptions about what you need to live. Living in the U. S., an average middle-class person has certain expectations: you have a spacious home, you own your own furniture, you own one car per adult and drive everywhere, you eat out frequently, you have an Ipod, an Iphone, a flatscreen TV, etc etc. Your average middle-class Croatian can't afford to live like that. The same product here usually costs much more than in the US: a tube of maybelleine mascara is about $20; a bottle of ReNu contact solution is almost that much; a base-model Mazda 3 starts out at about $23,000.

However, in Croatia it is much easier to live comfortably on less. We don't own a car,and although that is occasionally inconvenient, it isn't a hardship. Also, housing is significantly cheaper. My apartment costs 1200 kn a month, which, according to today's exchange rate, is $205. What would you get for that kind of rent in the States? In most places, nothing! My first apartment more than ten years ago cost $250 a month, and it was an unfurnished efficiency in the ghetto (a dead body was found in the street in front of my apartment while I was living there) in very-inexpensive Lubbock, Texas. So what does $205 a months get you in Croatia?

The apartment is in a large, square externally-charmless communist-era building, of which there are MANY in my neighborhood, with more going up all the time.  I took these pictures from my balcony:

To my American eyes, this looks at first glance a bit like a slum. But this is a respectable part of town near a number of parks where hoards of children play unsupervised. All kinds of people live here: students, families, elderly couples. The apartment is fully-furnished, and it's a ten-minute walk to the baroque town center, on the tentative list to become a UNESCO World Heritage site. There's a balcony and a washing machine. It has an air conditioner, which is not the norm in Croatia. Right in front of the building are recycling bins for paper, plastic, and glass, and both the balcony and bathroom have places to hang clothes to dry, so I'm living quite a bit greener. I can walk to the grocery story in five minutes, Kristian's job in seven or eight minutes, and the castle or cathedral in ten.

Of course, the apartment is still a huge adjustment. The furniture and decor are serviceable, but old and ugly (there are lace curtains, which I LOATHE), and a TV is not included, so my PS3 is sitting forlorn in the wardrobe. The apartment is on the top floor and there's no elevator, so, yes, I have to go up and down four flights of stairs when I leave the house. The kitchen is bigger than some others I've had, but there's also a kitchen table crammed in there, so your legs have about six inches of space to squeeze through on the way to the balcony (I've got a lot of thigh bruises from that table!). Several of the windows in the apartment don't open, so it's hard to get any air flow, which is especially frustrating for me because it is really cool enough here most of the time not to need the air conditioner. I prefer window air, but this apartment is stuffy.

All that I am adjusting to pretty quickly:  the weather's cool; I remember to avoid the corner on the table; I double-check that I have everything BEFORE running down the stairs.  Seriously. Two of my neighbors here on the 4th floor are elderly ladies.  They walk up and down those same stairs.

But the bathroom is the deal-breaker for me. I'm going to just have to let all my frustration out, so bear with me: there's no sink in the bathroom, which of course means that the only sink is in the kitchen. The bathroom is TINY, with the toilet wedged in between the washer and a little "table" consisting of a board sitting on the boiler's gas tank. I'm telling you, I do not have child-bearing hips, but when I sit down on that toilet one hip or the other bumps the washing machine or knocks the board off the "table." And that toilet has no flushing power, and by that I mean you're going to see even toilet paper for a second or third flush.

I'm SLOWLY getting used to the "shower." It's a tiny, cramped tub ( maybe 2.5 feet long) with a little step that you're supposed to sit on. The removable "shower" head is affixed about thigh-high if you're standing, but the mounting rotates against the wall, so if you leave the shower head attached instead of holding it in your hand, it will sooner or later twist around and squirt water off in some random direction. Imagine washing long, thick hair while you either hold the shower head in one hand or try and set it somewhere where the water won't squirt out of that tiny tub. Plus, the boiler is hanging up at one end of the tub, so, if you stand and shower, your face is three inches from it.

I don't hate this apartment (except for the bathroom). Except for the bathroom woes, it's comfortable, and the cheapness and "greenness" of the lifestyle make up for a lot. And yet, I'm  getting out of this kind of apartment as soon as we get married in favor of something newer and more spacious. Thanks to Kristian's job (he's a web-designer for a firm and does freelance work), and my blessed American salary (I earn what a lawyer or doctor makes here), we have a lot of choices. However, if we both earned average Croatian salaries (which we very well might at some point), we would have to make do with this kind of apartment. Well, I would have to make do....he doesn't have the same objections I do to this place.  He will object to spending money on rent that could be used to purchase Iphones and a $1000 camera, things that seem like extravagances to me but seem to him to be luxuries on par with spending 2200 Kn every month on rent when you could spend 1200.

  Anyway, in this apartment I'd survive and be happy, and I'd learn that a person doesn't HAVE to have a living space that is everything she dreams. So much of what we think we NEED to live is actually a luxury, a luxury that we've come to believe is a necessity because we've almost always had access to it.

Moralizing aside, since we can afford options--for now--I'm shopping for another place.

YOU'RE the foreigner now!

As you probably know if you're reading this blog, I recently moved to a smallish city in Northern Croatia called Varaždin. Here it is, in all its Central-European glory:

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Settling in to a new country is a challenge. Skills you take for granted--being able to read labels in the grocery store, knowing the procedure for getting your internet turned on, understanding the symbols on the buttons on the washing machine--are totally defamiliarized, which makes every day an adventure in.....well, dailiness! There are times when it's an exhilarating victory to successfully buy a loaf of bread, and times when I feel like a helpless child who can't even figure out how to ask which bus stops at the American Embassy. Don't get me wrong, my affianced is wonderful: he's worth any hardship associated with moving, and he helps me with things I can't handle on my own. But he does have a job, and even if he did have time to assist me with every little thing.....how lame would that be? I've got to learn to stand on my own two feet, and that means practicing my Croatian, using strange appliances, and going out on the town alone.

Something especially defamiliarizing happened the other day. In fact, something downright shocking. I was walking to meet Kristian for lunch, and I stopped at the street corner to wait for the light to change. Two women and a man were standing nearby, chatting quietly. It suddenly occurred to me that, for the first time in nearly two weeks, I understood every word a bystander was saying. I said, joyfully, "Yall are american!"

Right after I greeted my compatriots is when the really astonishing thing happened: the three americans weren't surprised to be greeted by a Texan on a street in the non-touristy part of what used to be Yugoslavia. They just kinda said, "Yeah." No follow-up question. No evidence in their expressions that they hadn't been greeted by five random americans that day.

As it turns out, they were there on a mission trip, but although I asked plenty of questions while we were crossing the street, when we reached the other side, they didn't seem interested in prolonging our acquaintance, so we went our separate ways. Maybe they were in a hurry, or jet-lagged. Obviously they aren't suffering from the same shortage of English-speaking friends as I am.

But the difference that stands out the most to me, after a few days of thinking about it, is that they didn't feel foreign; otherwise, wouldn't they have been surprised to meet a Texan where no Texan usually is? Had there been a Texan working at the bakery that morning? At the currency exchange office? Texans among the children they came here to teach? Had they not yet realized that most of the people around them aren't American?

I'm not sure that an American on a brief trip to another country ever feels foreign. I don't think I did. In my memories of past short-term trips--"mission" or otherwise--to Mexico, Ireland, Croatia before I had ever lived here, I seem to remember walking around within a pleasant sphere of Americanness at all times. I don't know how long I lived in Croatia the first time before the sense of my own foreignness really burst my bubble, but it was a few months.

But you know what, irritating, terrifying, or lonely as it sometimes is, I've come to the conclusion that feeling foreign is good for you. It changes you, as I think, for the better. I'm not sure yet how to elaborate on exactly what that feeling of foreignness is, but I'll leave that up to future posts.