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| Lungomare |
Summer has arrived on the Adriatic. I've gotten tan and it's not even June. The temperatures have been in the upper 80s all week. The change in seasons from spring to summer was most evident along the lungomare yesterday. For the first few months of our stay here, it was fairly empty, businesses and restaurants were closed, and the breezes off the Adriatic were chilly. But yesterday, we noticed a sea change (pardon the pun). The actual promenade was buzzing with people (I heard German and Italian), the beaches along the coast were full of sunbathers, some topless, the restaurants were not only open, but they had people eating in them, and there were hundreds of swimmers sprinkled all along the lungomare. When we approached the end of the promenade, near a little town called Lovran, there were a group of probably high school-age boys diving into the water from a high cliff. They were obviously performing for the large group of sunbathing high school girls. Even though it wasn't for our benefit, this peacock exhibition was fun for the kids to watch too. It was only a matter of time before the girls noticed that NO ONE wears one piece swimming suits here. Old, young, fat, thin, foreign, Croat... bikinis are the only female swim attire. Mostly with the top, but sometimes without. Sometimes just without while the women get dressed after a swim. The girls seem to be ok with their bathing suits for now, but I'm sure I'm sending conflicting messages about how foreign women take nudity less seriously, they don't feel ashamed of their bodies... while telling my girls that it's appropriate to not show too much skin. Someday, I'm going to get called out on this one, but that day seems far off now.
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| Adam, Darko Stefan, and Julie |
Earlier in the week, we went to Pagliacci at the Rijeka Opera. We went with our downstairs neighbor, Darko Stefan, who works for the university and gets all the credit for finding us this wonderful apartment. The orchestra was excellent. On the way home, we stopped at Adam's favorite bar, where you can often find him working (because his office is shared and not as pleasant as this bar), and we had his favorite Croatian wine (Galic Crno). Darko has lived in our building for nearly 50 years, and he told us that when it was built, it was the fourth tallest building in Rijeka. We also learned that the kids used to play ball games in the street outside our building because it had the only streetlamp (correction: it actually had a
string of streetlights) in the area. He shared a lot of Rijeka history with us on the way home. It was like having a guided tour, and you can't help but become a little more endeared to the city after hearing about its turbulent history.
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| Last day of school |
A week before the opera, there was high school graduation. We were taking the kids to their acting class last week, and noticed huge groups of high school students, clustered in matching t-shirts. Then another cluster of kids would go by, wearing a different color matching t-shirt. They were all covered in a white substance, and a lot of them were throwing this white stuff. All the untaken outdoor coffee shop chairs were covered with a white film. The whole Corzo was powdery white. One kid with a huge water gun pounced right in front of me and aimed as though I would be his next victim, but instead of shooting me, he just laughed. His prank was successful without having to get me wet. I had to admit that it was funny, so I lightened up and laughed too.
As we later learned, we chanced upon the last day of high school, and these students have a tradition whereby they throw flour onto each other while parading down the Corzo. Ivan, the acting coach, told us that every year, the homeless advocacy groups complain to the students that instead of throwing flour, they should donate it to the homeless shelters. And while the weather was nice on this particular day, when it rains on the last day of school, the flour makes the pavement very slippery, causing people to fall, and gluey when it dries, creating a huge mess. Still, it looked like fun to me.
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| My cold-blooded swimmers |
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| George |
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| Lucy |
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| Rijeka Opera |
