A few words on Croatians, merging skills, and long weekends

Croatia

By Mihaela Naletilić

If there is one thing that Croatians, in general, really love and are very passionate about, it’s, by all means, football. And our national football team. And anything connected to football. Or our national football team. 

An average Croat can talk passionately about football, our players, praise Luka Modrić, or recount all the goals Croatians scored in the last twenty years or so since we became, more or less, unbeatable in the football Universe.

There are some other things Croatians are passionate about and can talk about for hours – like food, barbecue, seaside, their summer vacation, barbecues on their summer vacation… oh, and of course – their long weekends.

You see, other than possessing the super gene for football, in this beautiful country, we are all more or less born with a gene of – super mergers. 

Oh no, we are not good at merging companies, if that’s what you were thinking. We are good, better yet, unbeatable – in merging and connecting public holidays with our weekends.

At the beginning of the year, when the new calendars get published – an average working Croat will take his or her red marker pen and carefully circle all the public holidays in the upcoming year. 

We are rich with a few things in Croatia – such as stunning nature, clean water, nice weather, and – public holidays. Let’s stop for a second and take a peek at the Croatian holiday situation throughout the year: First of all, we are blessed with a whole palette of religious holidays from summer to spring. We have our Independence Day in October, then we remember Vukovar in November, our Statehood Day is in May… or is it June? – I’m not sure, it moves around a lot!

Then there is, of course, the Labour Day and our Anti-fascist Struggle Day, which sometimes blends beautifully with the religious holiday of Corpus Christi in June – to form a nice extended weekend for a mini seaside vacation!

Ideally, public holidays should be placed on Friday or Monday. A perfect example of that is Easter Monday, which will most certainly appear on Monday, and by doing so, never spoil a long weekend merging combination! 

But, in real Croatian life, things are not always idyllic… So, if on some cold January day you see an agitated Croatian with a red marker pen and a calendar swearing his head off and hearing a lot of j…/f…words dropping out from his mouth – you can conclude that a lot of public holidays are not falling on Monday or Friday this year, and some of them are even, can you imagine – scheduled for the weekend! 

Everybody knows that there is no decent long weekend if you don’t have a public holiday around the corner.

Sometimes it happens that public holidays occur on Thursdays. And here is where that super-connecting gene starts functioning and our average working Croat gets a little bulb light over his head.

It looks something like this:

Let’s see… Labour Day is on Thursday…hmmm… if I start coughing on Wednesday and tell them I’m catching a cold, I call in sick on Friday – and then report food poisoning on Monday – I have a solid five days off! Honey, we are going to spend a few days with my teta and tetak at their beach house in Makarska!

Croatians like their long weekends, but only under one condition: if the weather is good outside! If there is one thing Croatians don’t understand and really dislike, that is – bad weather.

My friend Mike says, and he has traveled the world, so he would know, that Croatians seem to be very happy, joyful, friendly, and talkative people.

However, if you mention weather to them, suddenly a dark shadow crosses their faces and they just say: Oh please, don’t get me started! The weather is a complete disaster! In general, Croatians believe that their destiny is determined by good or bad weather.

Yes, yes, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing… just take your umbrella and wear a raincoat, bla bla… 

This doesn’t work in Croatia. In this part of the world, anything less than a big yellow Sun on a clear blue sky and anything more than three white clouds – is considered to be bad weather! Don’t even get me started on the rain and snow! Just stay inside and keep quiet until the grey sky turns into azure blue again!

The weather forecast for this weekend is not looking good. There will be some seriously bad weather outside! And it’s a regular weekend, on top of that. 

Nothing to merge or connect. So if you were planning on spending the weekend making a barbecue in your backyard, taking a short trip to the seaside, or just chilling on some sunny spot with huge sunglasses – you might want to rethink that! In fact, take your raincoat from the closet and dust off your winter boots – apparently it will be raining and snowing these days!

Be that as it may – let’s take out our raincoats, put aside our barbecues – and sunglasses and enjoy the – regular weekend. June is close and some really nice long weekend holidays are just around the corner!

As a conclusion, I must say that in CRO to go we now a few things about weather forecasts and public holidays, but know a lot about the Croatian language. So if you want to join us and learn Croatian with us, check us out on www.crotogo.hr

CRO to go is an educational center specialized in learning the Croatian language ONLINE. CRO to go online courses such as CROkids for children from age 6 to 15, CROstart – courses for beginners, CROplus – intermediate level, and CROtalk – conversational courses, are recognized as a simple and fun way of learning Croatian by our students all over the world. 

Join us and learn Croatian with CRO to go! For more information, please check us out on www.crotogo.hr or join us on our FB site CRO to go.