Onwards And Upwards

I hope my mum will forgive me for putting a picture up of her without her express permission.  Were it not for failing eyesight, she would have mastered the internet by now (and have substituted the picture for one when she was 21!).

She’s also been extremely tolerant of my need to travel and live my own life but there comes a time when we all need to measure up to what onwards and upwards really means. Fortunately, Croatia has taught me a few life lessons.

Prince Charles delivered a lecture tonight that started off as promising but ended up as thoroughly confusing and wordy. It belonged in the reign of “library” talks - important stuff but we all know the facts of global warming and nature’s imbalances. PC, for all my rapt attention and respect as a royalist, lost me.

Ivo Sanader, the Prime Minister of Croatia resigned last week with an explanation as weak as the global  economy. It seems like Croatia is not holding him to account, any more than the world seems to be interested in it. 

I think/hope Prince Charles was saying “get real”. The fervour was probably there, as was the eloquence of the delivery, but where were the action points for us lesser mortals?.

In the meantime, if Prince Charles, or Mr Sanader, are not able to offer any “deliverance from evil” (exit strategies!) then I will continue to have to strive to work it out for myself, my friends and family, along with the rest of the newly impoverished “middle world”.

***

Veronica, pictured next to my mum, remains  greatly missed.

Croatia Online 50,000 Hits Old - Onwards & Upwards

This was going to be the picture I used for Croatia Online's 50,000th hit until I realised it deserved something better. However this picture sums up for me a lot of what I have found best about Croatia - if you look hard enough, you can find what you want, if you try hard enough it can be fun, and everything comes round if you wait long enough!

Christmas, 2006, in Lupoglav, inland Istria, is a Croatian highlight yet to be beaten - in the company of very good friends, perfect weather, generous local hospitality, and it seems that I nearly remembered how to ride horses.

We'd been looking for a log cabin style winter break for a couple of years and thought it just couldn't be found in Croatia and then a friend of ours came back from Lupoglav and that was it. Log cabins take second place to the traditional round stone Kažuns we stayed in complete with a huge open fire (and a tricky chimney!) but with the advantage of mod cons such as air conditioning/heating and modern bathroom. All surrounded by stables, fields, picture postcard villages and a great restaurant that was part of the establishment, with owners that took great care to integrate us whilst they entertained their friends and family over Christmas.

About Me, One Year On

This photo just about sums up the vagaries of life and climate very neatly - look carefully through the trees!

One moment you're basking in the warmth and freshness of a lovely spring day (in Croatia or the UK) and the next minute you're having snowball fights in early April! Wherever you may be spending your time, adaptability and flexibility have to be the watchwords of the end of the first decade of the noughties.

About Me

As a 40 something chartered accountant with a hectic job in London, the attractions of Croatia were strong. The London job, after two years of high excitement, was turning into a bit of a treadmill so I didn't take much persuasion from my partner to go with him to Croatia.

That was 4 years ago and whilst I can't say, even after all that time, that Croatia feels like home, it's certainly got plenty to offer. It is a great place to live but doing "good" business is challenging in the extreme.

You can't afford to be too rigid in your outlook and "going with the flow" and a portfolio career are the name of the game. So I've reinvented myself as a writer and journalist and done quite a few other "odd jobs" on the way. The 9 to 5 (and a lot more) work ethic is hard to lose after so many years but the whole point of a fairly fundamental change such as this is to try and redress the work/life balance. Sometimes it's easy to pack up in the afternoon and go out on our little fishing boat. On other occasions the hours seem just as long as in London without the same reward.

My advice to anyone else contemplating such a move is to stick with it for at least two years. It takes a long time to establish new roots, particularly in a non english speaking country, and it takes a while to build up good contacts. Perhaps contradictory to the "give it your best shot advice" is the cautious voice that says "don't burn your boats" in your home country until you're sure you've made the right move. If you sell a property in London for example, there's a good chance you'll never be able to afford to move back later on. I count myself very lucky, amidst all the life and logistical changes, to have been able to continue working with an enlightened organisation in the UK, over seventeen years, that has truly adopted flexible working practices. That has helped enable me to make a soft landing in Croatia. In return, I hope I have helped enable them them to make their own transition .

We've pretty well thrown our original business plan into the bin and, in doing so, have risen to a number of new challenges. Our cruising guide on the Dalmatian coast is just about ready to go to the printers after lengthy research and many, many hours of writing. Working with Time Out Publications, over the past two years, on their Visitors Guide to Croatia, has been a breath of fresh air. The magazine is insightful, forward thinking and highly informative, and the management and editorial team are a joy to work with.

Working with the locals is a bit of a roller coaster ride. We've found a few extremely straightforward, efficient and reliable contacts and a number with whom you're never quite sure where you stand. We foreigners are still not too plentiful here and it does take time to build good business relations. The legacies of the communist system are still very much evident in certain places and it will take time for the business environment to open up.

Personal relationships also take time to build and, conversely to business ones, we've almost unilaterally been received kindly and warm heartedly by our Croatian neighbours. The expat community is growing and, on the whole, they're a delightful bunch who share many of the frustrations and much of the excitement and pleasure of working and living in Croatia.