9.08.2007

We spent the morning taking Baka to the huge cash and carry supermarket in Slavonski Brod and then visited Neda’s Teta Nada with her. We then left to meet our friend Jasenka in the main square of the city for lunch. Jasenka was visiting her parents in their holiday house in Vojvodina and was able to meet us in Slavonski Brod. It was good to catch up with her, it felt like no time had past since we last saw her in Sweden 3 years ago.

The next day is a special day in the village of Topolje. Every year, each village celebrates it’s own specific saints day known as Kirvaj and tomorrow is the Kirvaj for Staro Topolje. Teta Nada and Tetak Miro were over at Dida and Baka’s to help prepare for the lunch the next day. This included collecting the cooked pig and cutting it up into manageable pieces. There is never any shortage of help in this task as everyone is keen to break off a piece here and a piece there for a preview of tomorrows meal.

Neda and I walked 2 doors down to visit neighbours who have been very good friends of Neda’s family for a long time. It was a fun and interesting evening because the conversations were always made up of several languages. Davor (who speaks Croatian, Italian, French and English) is married to an Italian girl, Stefie (who speaks all of those languages too), Davor’s sister Ana (Croatian and French) and her Swiss husband and 2 sons (French and a little Croatian) and Davors mum Danica (Croatian). It all felt very international.