Tue 20.Apr.2010
Ptuj, Slovenia
Zadar - the ancient capital of Croatia.
Still reporting on Zadar, even though I'm really in Slovenia now.
Just for the record, the whole town is
not picturesque. In fact, most of it is your basic tacky modern
city, as you can see from this view from in front of the train
station. At least all the parts I saw were clean and safe enough.
I think I have mentioned the glagolitic alphabet before. The first
attempt at an alphabet for slavic languages.
It only really caught on among Croatians, so the inventors went back to
the drawing board and came up with the cyrillic alphabet, which did
catch on among the Orthodox christian peoples.
Anyway, this rune-based alphabet is still used for symbolic occasions
in Croatia. I think it is fascinating, even though I do not understand
stroke one of it. This sample is painted on a wall in the new part of
town. Your guess is as good as mine what it is about.
Speaking of "go figure"s, how about this poster in a toy store window
in a shopping mall?
Gross? Expansively compassionate? Stealth Grateful Dead?
Ya pays yr money and ya takes yr choice.
Here is the very mall in question.
Attached is an area with coffee for grown-ups and
playground stuff for kids.
This waterway separates the old city on its little peninsula, from the
modern city on the "mainland". That bridge is pedestrians only, thank
you.
On the busiest tourist square, at least one cafe
enforces its customers only policy on the rest rooms!
The punchline is that the code is the one from Spaceballs: 12345!
You couldn't make this stuff up.
"Hey, that's the same code I've got on my luggage!"
Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf