Translations

Before I continue with the Spanish adventures I want to share a few fun things I learned about the Croatian language. First the common salutation for hello/good bye is ´bok´and at times I felt a bit like chicken greeting people. Since I was mostly with Spanish people they didn´t really notice. What was funny with them was the word ´okay´ in Spanish which is ´vale´ pronounced a little like ballet and is frequently used in conversation and then we learned ´vale´ in Croatian means snot. For the most part I think it went unnoticed because when people are speaking a language you don´t understand I find I don´t really listen to it. However when you can´t speak a foreign language you tend to respond with your own, so you can imagine a breakfast conversation where the grandmother asks ´would you like some jam´ which can be understood through gestures and you respond ´okay´ and she understands ´snot´. I also found it interesting to learn the word for grandmother in Croatian is ´vaca´ which is cow in Spanish, the word for ´slowly´ in Croatian is ´pollacko´ which in Spanish is a person from Poland and then the word for hope in croatian is ´nada´ which in Spanish is ´nothing´. I enjoyed that water was ´voda´, missing the ´k´ for another type of drink and it is also pronounced the same as the word for wedding in Spanish (boda). I was very lucky most people spoke English, but I had studied a few key words on the train ride to be prepared - yes (da), no (ne), sorry (oprostite), please (molin vas), thank you (hvala) and hello/goodbye (bok).

Back in Spain I find it quite funny when people casually tell me they are ´constipada´ even though they are only telling me their nose is stuffed up I can´t help but smile.