CROATIA - what you need to know for your next trip

Croatian flag.

Here it is flying.


The advantage of sitting at home to much during Covid19 is you have plenty of time to sort out which country is where and what to visit next.

Today I am looking at Croatia. Why? Because I was in an online Toastmasters International meeting and during Table Topics (impromptu speaking contest at every club meeting worldwide) I was asked to pick a country starting with the letter C which I would like to visit.

Before I could start, a member of the audience interrupted, "The country is pronounced 'CROw-asia' - I should know, I'm from there!"

I said, "The country I must visit next is Croatia, because I now have a friend I can contact for advice. First I would like to know the capital. What is it?

"Zagreb."

"And what is the language?"

"Croatian."

Years ago I visited the picturesque walled harbour town of Dubrovnik, which has always been a popular cruise stop. Now it's time to see the new and old, the city culture and the countryside.

I continued:"I shall find at least three landmarks in the capital, three elsewhere in the country, and a food and drink to try, and ten words of the language which I will list: English-Croatian and Croatian-English."

I won the meeting's award for best table topic. Now I have to fulfil my promise and write the blog post. I shall deal with landmarks, tourist attractions, food and drink and finally language to order your food and drink.

I looked back to see if I had mentioned Croatia in any of my previous blogs and found I already had two phrase books.

GEOGRAPHY AND LAYOUT
The Republic of Croatia is a former part of Yugoslavia, and now a member of the European Union.






Top centres
Zagreb, capital

Zagreb cathedral, Croatia. Photo from Wiki. Photo by Palauenc05 .

Split, second city, on the sea


Roman Diocletian Palace. More a walled fortress city than a palace.
Seaside Split, Croatia. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.


Dubrovnik, Croatia, Old walled harbour. Photo by Furjaka in Wikipedia on Dubrovnik. You can walk along the tops of the walls.

LANDMARKS & TOURIST ATTRACTIONS in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb

RELIGIOUS LANDMARKS & AREAS
Croatians are mainly Catholics.

LANDMARKS & TOURIST ATTRACTIONS in the country of Croatia

FOOD AND DRINK
Look for taverns. Try truffles, and desserts such as chocolate filled donuts.
The country has white wines in the cooler north and red wines in the warmer south. Also some sweet wines.

LANGUAGE, Croatian

CROATIAN PHRASE BOOKS
The Ebay second hand copy of  the Thomas Cook book did not arrive in time.

The Lonely Planet book was small and bulky, so most of the time I left it behind in the hotel bedroom, because my backpack was already heavy with a bottle of water and an umbrella, and food for the day.

When I arrived home in London the small thick postal package was on the mat. Was it a duplicate phrasebook. No. A different publisher, different languages, and different layout and information and size.

Now that I have both I can compare them.

LANGUAGES
Both books, from Lonely Planet and Thomas Cook, cover these languages:

Bulgarian
Croatian
Czech
Hungarian
Polish
Romanian
Russian
Slovenian

The Eastern Europe book by Lonely Planet also covers
Albanian
Macedonian
Slovak

The Thomas Cook book also covered
Estonian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Ukrainian

Wikivoyage includes a phrasebook which I have copied here for convenience.

GRAMMAR
Croatian is like Latin and Italian in that it uses endings instead of extra words. So in Latin the word amo means I love. Similar constructions are used in Croatian.

Pronunciation
I read through it and noticed that the sign or diacritic over the letter c turns it into Ch. The sign over the s turns it into Sh.  A j could be a y sound.

Similar Words
Similar words for a quick start are the equivalents of taxi, TV, telephone, doctor, pardon. The word for night looks like the start of nocturnal but the sign over the c tells you the sound is more like Notch. Tri pronounced tree is three. Doktor is doctor. Taxi bus, bicycle and motorcycle are also similar. Police, minutes and million are others.

Toalet is toilets. The word for men starts with an m.

Ne is no. Da, a bit like ya, or yeah, is yes.

So here's my simple list

CROATIAN - ENGLISH
auto - car
autobus - bus
da -yes
doktor - doctor
engleski - English
hotel - hotel
me - me
ne - no / I don't
noć - night
nula - nil/zero
pardon - pardon/excuse me
prije (PREE-yeh) like the English word prior - before
taksi - taxi
telefonom - telephone/phone
toalet - toilet
tri - three

ENGLISH -  CROATIAN

before - prije (PREE-yeh) (like the English word prior)

bus - autobus
car - auto
doctor - doktor
English - engleski
hotel - hotel
me - me
night - noć (pronounced notch)
nil/zero - nula
no - ne
pardon - pardon
taxi - taksi
telephone - telefonom
three - tri
toilet - toalet
yes - da

Useful Websites
Wikipedia - for a comprehensive overview of history and geography, and out of copyright photos which may require no payment but only mention of the photographer's name
Wikimedia - for more photos
Wikipedia on the language
Simple wikipedia for a quicker, easier read
Wikivoyage - for travel info and handy links to ads
wikitravel - for travel info without the ads
tripadvisor - for customer reviews, ads, and lots of customer photos

About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author of 20 books, and a speaker and speech trainer.
Her books include:
Wedding Speeches & Toasts
Quick Quotations

Writing Poetry For Fun
Angela's Alarming Animal Poems

For more phrases in Croatian see next post. Please share links to your favourite posts.