Julia Molden, our faithful Croatian Language and Culture Course diarist and blogger (and more!), closes the curtain on a wonderful week on Brač and Šolta islands, Croatia. A week in which, yet again, our students and teachers found new ways of celebrating and exploring Croatian’s culture and language, and cemented bonds of friendship and camaraderie in the common, sometimes elusive, purpose of mastering the Croatian language.

***

Ciao, Ciao for Another Year

Why is it that each year the time seems to speed by ever more quickly?  It only seems five minutes ago that we were all assembling for the welcome party and now sadly it is time to say goodbye for another year.  Our final lessons for this year included attempting to play Croatian Scrabble for some of us, while others carried on steadfastly with learning the finer points of Croatian grammar.  Either way there was plenty of laughter – or maybe it was hysteria setting in at the end of a challenging week.

In the evening we all gathered at the Bonito restaurant for our farewell dinner with lots of good food and happy chatter.  When it was time to leave, many of us set off walking home along the waterfront and en route encountering a performance by a klapa group which warranted a stop to listen to the traditional music.  And then it was time for bed, to get a good night’s sleep before our early departure in the morning to catch the ferry back to Split for the start of our long journey home to Zagreb or London.  Some others were returning to Hvar in their own boat while still others were bound for Dubrovnik by ferry.  Wherever we are bound, we depart with our heads full of memories of another wonderful week full of laughter and fascinating excursions, of good food and fine wines and another step in our attempts to try and master the intricacies of Croatian.  Zoran told us in one of our lessons that in school examinations Croats tend to receive their worst marks in their own language and do far better in maths and foreign languages than in Croatian.   So if even the native speakers struggle with all the intricacies of their own mother tongue, maybe we should take encouragement from that and not worry too much when we happily mangle their language as we constantly try to improve.

Once again we owe a big thank you to Linda for all her efforts throughout the year in planning all aspects of this highly successful and fascinating summer course.  Work will soon be starting on next year’s trip to the island of Korčula’ and hopefully also Lastovo’ and some of this year’s students have already indicated that they will be participating. So it’s only ciao for now and we look forward to seeing many of you again next year, together with the new faces that always blend in so well and so quickly.