Trips

Sat., 6/9/18 - Overland to Karanac, Croatia

This morning we headed north along the Bosna River that flows into the Sava and then into the Danube in Belgrade. The river was swollen from last night’s rain storm. This took us out of the Bosnian Moslem region and went into the Bosnian-Serb area. Mosques have become Christian Orthodox churches and place names are written first in Cyrillic and then in Latin letters. Moslems and Croats would prefer not to have the Cyrillic spellings below their words.

We had a “technical stop” for toilets at FIS, a super-store like a large two-story Walmart, where we used up our Bosnian marks on PB, pretzels, and chocolate - totally healthy.

Cemetery	Mosque and minaret
Toll road fees	Power plant
Medieval castle on a hill in Milagrosa	Last night’s storm hit this area very hard. Many cornfields had the stalks lying sideways, wheat was flattened, and the trees were broken or uprooted. Some fields were flooded. The unusual place OAT found us for lunch had lost its electricity but they had a generator. The place is hard to describe. They have cabins to be rented but they look like part of a medieval village. The meal was good.
Love these haystacks
We crossed the border back into Croatia. The bus ahead of us was from Turkey and the passengers did not have the proper papers and were denied entry. Their story was that they were musicians going to Serbia for a festival and their GPS go them lost. Since our border crossing was so quick, we were able to stop in the town of Dakota where there is a huge 19th c. Cathedral of St. Peter. There is a large, neat bishop’s palace and seminary around the square in front of the church. The first bishop was Josip Juraj Strossmayer.
Cathedral of St. Peter	Cathedral of St. Peter
Cathedral of St. Peter	Cathedral of St. Peter
Cathedral of St. Peter	Cathedral of St. Peter
Cathedral of St. Peter - lovely rose window	Josip Juraj Strossmayer, first bishop of the church
Cute sign	Sttreet scene
We crossed the Brasa River into the Baranja region, which is mostly Austro-Hungarian because it was part of Hungary before WWI. In the villages, Hungarian houses and gates are green and Austrian gates are yellow. We arrived at the village of Karanac where we will have our OAT “Day in the Life Of.” At the host’s farmhouse, Dennis, our host, spoke enough English to explain that he and his wife farm and live a sustainable life but they decided to create small rooms with smaller bathrooms to be used only for OAT overnight visits. The plans and activities were fun.
Karnac Village	Sklepic Rural Farmstead - entry
Making raspberry jelly	Making raspberry jelly
Sklepic Rural Farmstead	Sklepic Rural Farmstead
Sklepic Rural Farmstead - garden	Sklepic Rural Farmstead - entrance
The kitchen	The kitchen
We met at 5 PM for a neighbor, Lillie, to show us how she makes cheese. Her family of three generations has 20 cows to be milked at 5 AM and 5 PM 365 days a year. They sell some milk and she makes cheese to sell at a local farmers' market. We helped to make young white cheese with chive and another with apricot and cranberries. Since Croatia is in the EU, Lillie has to be certified - educated - and her process inspected from feed for the cows to labeling of her cheese. (Is this EU over-managing?)
Lillie on cheese making	Cheese making
Cheese making	Cheese making
Cheese making	We had another home-hosted dinner. Seven of us went to Lillie’s house where her mother had prepared our meal and had it all out on the table. Everything came from their farm - from sausage to paprika. It was all very good.

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