Christmas wheat -- and holiday greetings!

The tradition of božićna pšenica (Christmas wheat) was not one I was familiar with before moving to Croatia.

But every year around mid-December I notice these curious plants for sale in supermarkets and on display at neighbours' homes – that look to me a lot like cat nip!

I did a bit of research and found out that the wheat grains are planted on December 13th, the feast of St. Lucy. According to the tradition, if by Christmas Day the shoots of wheat have grown tall, abundant and green, then its owner will have a prosperous New Year!

Now what I'm confused about is the fact that fully grown Christmas wheat plants are for sale everywhere. Wouldn't this be cheating, if you haven't planted it yourself? Does this mean that you're guaranteed to have a fantastic New Year if you buy a fully grown plant? I would love to know.

Here's wishing all my readers Happy Holidays and a prosperous 2016! May your wheat grow tall and lush!

How to send a package in Croatia

The Croatian Post is one option but not your best bet!

If you want to send a package in Croatia, you can go to the post office of course, but this is not the only option -- there are others. You can also head to your local kiosk... or to the bus station!

Unfortunately my experience of the Croatian postal service has not been very positive and it is not the most reliable or fastest way to send anything. So luckily, there are these other options.

A typical kiosk

First I'll tell you about the kiosk. Sending packages from a kiosk is a new service recently launched by Tisak Media. In case you're wondering what a kiosk is, these are the little enclosed stalls you see in Croatian towns and cities selling primarily newspapers and magazines, but also cigarettes, chocolates, chewing gum, fiscal stamps, and tram tickets, among other useful things. Thanks to the new Tisak Paket service, it costs only 10 HRK (1.30EUR / 2CAD / 95INR / 1.44USD) to send documents, and 15 HRK (1.95EUR / 3CAD / 142INR / 2.15USD) to send packages from and to any kiosk in Croatia. They also have an international service for packages sent to a foreign address. Their website even has a 'kiosk locator' where you can find out which of the over 1000 Tisak Media kiosks across Croatia is located closest to the person you want to send a package to. They claim to offer same day service within Zagreb (if you drop off your package before 12pm), and three to six days for other cities in Croatia. This option is quite cost effective for packages, costing less than the post office. Three to six days seems a bit long for national delivery, but compared to the time it takes Hrvatska Pošta to deliver mail, it is not bad at all.

Just ask the bus driver!

The other way to send a package is via the bus driver. This is definitely the fastest and most cost effective way to get a package to a friend or family member. I was reminded of this Croatian 'tradition' recently when I took the bus from Pazin to Zagreb. A lady got on with a package – something wrapped in a plastic bag. She asked the driver if he could hand it over to her niece who would be waiting at the bus station in Rijeka, where we would be stopping on our way. She also passed him some money, saying “This is for your marenda.” He took the package but refused the money, answering that he doesn't take payment from neighbours. One hour later, the package was handed over at Rijeka bus station. That's what you can call express delivery! Cost: free.

I remember seeing many similar transactions on bus trips when I used to visit as a child and we would travel all over Istria by bus visiting family. I also remember overhearing aunts saying that they would “send it with the bus driver”. At that time, there used to be many more buses travelling between cities and towns across Istria and beyond, and people used to use this cheap and very reliable way of sending things to family and friends in other cities. Drivers would also make a little bit of extra money this way, accepting 'tips' for the 'express delivery' service they were providing. It's nice to see that this tradition continues!

So, if like me, you're frustrated with the Croatian postal service, know that there are other, more reliable – and cheaper! – options.

While living in India I observed how long-distance bus drivers in India also make extra cash – much more than just tips – by transporting 'unofficial' shipments on bus routes. ...Like the time when I was travelling on a bus from Bangalore to Pondicherry and we made an unscheduled stop on the way. You can read about it here.

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A visit to the olive oil mill

Following my recent post about the olive harvest, this one is about a visit to our local oil mill. After helping our neighbour pick his olives, we headed to the mill, just a few kilometres away. Ideally, olives should be pressed within 24 hours after harvest. For this reason, the oil mills often work around the clock at this time of year (and are closed for the rest of the year!). There are about 30 olive oil mills in operation across Istria.

After being weighed the olives are loaded into the press machine

When we arrived, there were no customers ahead of us – but several showed up just a few minutes after we did. First the bags of olives were stacked onto a palette and a forklift was used to move the whole lot onto a large scale. The weight came to 245 kg. This was the weight of olives that had been picked over the previous two days, but there were many other trees still waiting to be picked.

Washing in progress

Next the bags were moved into the room where the huge Italian press machine was waiting. The bags were opened one by one, and the olives emptied into the machine. There are several stages to the pressing process. The first step is to wash the olives and separate the leaves and any debris. Next, the olives move into another compartment of the machine where they’re crushed into a paste. The third stage is centrifugation where the oil is extracted from the paste. The temperature at this and all stages of the process cannot be higher than 27 degrees Celsius. Sure enough, there was a temperature gauge on the machine and it indicated 27 degrees. If the temperature climbs higher than this, then the oil would not be considered to be ‘extra virgin’. This is why extra virgin olive oil is sometimes described as ‘cold pressed’ or ‘cold extracted’.

This machine could process three different batches at the same time and had three different compartments for washing, crushing and centrifugation. This ensures that one client’s olives are not mixed with another’s, and that each client takes home his or her own oil. The cost of pressing is charged per kg. At this mill the cost was 1.5 HRK (0.20EUR / 0.21USD / 0.28CAD / 14INR) per kg.

Our neighbour wanted to be in a photo -- here he is waiting for his olives to be processed

The whole pressing process took about an hour in total. When the first drops of oil finally appeared, it had the colour of pea soup. We each took a small cup and tasted this freshly pressed olive juice. It smelled of freshly cut grass and the taste was very fruity and peppery at the same time. When we tasted it again later at home (our neighbour had given us a few litres of this precious juice in exchange for our hard work!) after it had had time to settle, it was even more delightfully fruity in taste.

Liquid gold...

From 245 kg of olives, our neighbour got 37 litres of olive oil. This should be more than enough for a family’s consumption for the whole year. The price for a litre of locally pressed olive oil starts at 80 HRK (10EUR / 11USD / 15 CAD/ 740INR) and can be twice as much for an organic variety. The stuff you get at the supermarket is of course much cheaper, often half this price, but inferior in quality and often not real extra virgin olive oil at all. 

But there’s nothing like the real stuff. I feel so lucky to live in a place where I can get pure, extra virgin olive oil produced locally and know it’s the real thing.

Olive oil season in Istria

In Istria, olive-picking season starts in October and continues until late November. This is usually the time when olives are ripe and ready to be picked. Of course some varieties ripen faster than others, so those are the ones that have to be picked first. And in the south of the peninsula, picking usually starts earlier than in central or northern Istria.

This year was a very good year for olives because of the long, hot and dry summer we had. Last year, however, was terrible because of a very wet summer, conditions that were favourable for the destructive olive fly.

Some olive growers prefer to pick their olives before they’re fully ripe, and just as their colour starts to change from green to purple, because this increases the polyphenol (a type of micronutrient and anti-oxidant) content of the oil, and preserves its nutritional properties. Others prefer to wait until their olives are completely ripe and have fully purple skins because this will result in a larger quantity of oil. It’s a matter of taste, and quality over quantity.

We have a small olive tree in our courtyard and this year it produced its first olive! Of course we are far from having enough fruit to make even a thimble of oil… But this year we had the chance to experience an olive harvest when we helped a neighbour pick his olives.

His olive grove is not far from the village, situated on the side of a hill which has been terraced so that each tree gets maximum sun exposure. His trees are less than ten years old and he keeps pruning the branches so that they grow outwards rather than upwards. As a result the trees are not very tall and it was easy to hand pick the olives.

We spread a net on the ground around the tree so that it would catch all the falling olives. The olives are plucked off the branches by hand, or by using a small hand rake. I preferred to simply pluck them by hand off the branches, working one branch at a time. Those using the rakes just let them drop on the net below, and once all the olives had been removed from the tree, they’re picked up off the net. Inevitably leaves and twigs get mixed up with the olives and these have to be separated. We were a group of six working on each tree and I was surprised at how quickly we could finish one tree. Of course some trees had more olives than others, and the fruit varied according to the variety: some were fat and juicy, while others were much smaller. I enjoyed this work better than grape picking, even though grape picking is less tedious.

In Istria, food is an important part of any activity. So once we had finished picking for the day, it was time to eat. We had an improvised picnic on the hilltop and enjoyed the last warm days of Autumn.

Olives should be pressed within 24 hours of picking so that their nutritional value is preserved as much as possible. So that evening we headed to the local oil mill… the subject of my next blog post!

A village with a view

One of the highlights of our little village is the fabulous view we have. Gračišće is perched on a hilltop at an elevation of 457 metres, and one of the best spots to enjoy a panoramic view is behind St. Vitus Church, the largest church in the village.

This is the view in the summer...

And this is the same landscape painted in Autumn colours (taken today)...

From this vantage point in the churchyard, we can see the Učka, Istria’s highest mountain at 1402 metres, towards the east. We see the village of Gologorica towards the north, and the neighbouring village of Pićan towards the south-east. Further south-east we see the town of Labin, perched on its own hilltop, and the power station at Plomin – where we also see, on clear days, a sliver of the sea.

In the winter, we can see the Julian Alps in Slovenia towards the north, and the Dolomite Mountains in Italy towards the north-west. This happens on clear, sunny days, when the sun reflects off the snow-topped mountains, and the sight is breathtaking. Sorry I don't have a photo of this! But here's one of the sun rising behind the Učka:

Another great spot for spectacular views is from the village’s bell tower. Climb up and take a look.

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Autumn colours

Why are so many houses in Istria abandoned?

Gračišće’s rooftops

Why are so many houses in Istria derelict and abandoned? This is a question I get asked by lots of visitors to the village. In Gračišće, and many other villages all over the Istrian peninsula, many of the stone houses are in a bad state of disrepair and are literally falling apart. Probably more than half of the houses here in this village are abandoned and uninhabited, and slowly collapsing. It’s a sad state of affairs, that’s why so many visitors who are enchanted by this small medieval village wonder how the old houses can be allowed to just crumble away and why initiatives aren’t being taken to restore them.

Why are so many of these lovely old stone houses in a derelict state? Here are a few of the reasons:

1. Locals don’t want to live in an ‘old’ house. I would be rich if I got a kuna from every person who said to me: “Why are you renovating an old house? Why don’t you build a new one?” Unfortunately few people value these old houses made of ancient stones. Maybe this is because they represent the past, and the poverty of the past. People today want to build their own brand-new house, made of bricks and with all the modern fixings. In a region with such a low population-density like Istria, there is certainly lots of land available, and many people who can afford to build a house would much rather do this than restore an old crumbling one.

2. Their owners live abroad. Some of the houses in the village were abandoned sixty or seventy years ago when their owners emigrated to faraway lands in North America, Australia, and South America. Some of them never came back, not even for a visit. Their houses are still here and if someone wants to buy their property, they would have to first identify who the owners are and try to contact them, not an easy prospect.

A crumbling façade in Labin

3. A property often has many owners. This is a huge bureaucratic problem in Croatia and something which puts off a lot of people from buying or selling a property here. Property titles often have over a dozen co-owners listed because homes automatically get handed down from one generation to the next. Maybe some of the owners live abroad, or are deceased, and the properties keep getting passed down to their next of kin. If one of the owners wants to sell the property, he or she has to get the agreement of all the other co-owners. If one disagrees, then it’s a no go.

4. The ownership of a house is disputed. I can think of several houses in the village that have been rotting away while waiting for a decision to be taken on its ownership. The Salamon Palace is one. A decision has to be taken by a court – this takes years.

5. People are too sentimental to sell. There are many houses which are sitting empty and abandoned simply because their owners do not want to invest in their upkeep and do not want to sell either. People have strong attachments to their family homes, which often housed generations of the same family, and wouldn’t dream of selling what they consider their heirloom. They’d much rather let the family home rot rather than give it away to someone else. The old family home ends up becoming something of a museum piece, a relic of the past.

These are the main reasons why many of Istria’s villages have been derelict for years, and though things are changing, the change is slow in coming. This is part of the reason why we wanted to renovate a house in Gračišće – so that the village gets a breath of new life. And it is, but very slowly. Taking on a house renovation project here is quite the undertaking, and you have to have the motivation (and patience!) to do it.

Old stones waiting for a breath of new life

Most of the houses here in the village which have been renovated in the past ten years or so, have been converted into tourist accommodation by locals who inherited or bought a property, and hope to have a return on investment by renting to tourists during the summer. There are also a few foreigners or mixed Croatian-foreign couples and families who have done the same, and use the property as their holiday home. As a result of this trend, some Istrian villages have become virtual ‘ghost towns’, only coming alive during the summer months.

Of course Istria and other parts of Croatia are not the only places experiencing this phenomenon of ancient villages becoming derelict and abandoned. But in some villages in Italy and Spain, action is being taken to given such places a new lease on life. Have you heard of the village in central Italy where houses are on sale for €1? There’s also a 15th-century hamlet in northern Spain which is being given away for free!