Slavonia...the rain FINALLY went away!

Yet again, I’ve waited over a week to update the blog…it’s a good thing I don’t give myself deadlines, because I would disappoint myself every time!  For the past five days, I’ve been in Slavonia (another region of Croatia)—in Brod County.  Zoran &; Nina’s families are from the area in and around Slavonski Brod, and we stayed with Zoran’s parents here.

On our trip to Slavonski Brod, we made a pit-stop at Vlado’s (the one who has the bed & breakfast near Ilok) other home so that Zoran could work with his daughter on her PhD thesis.  Vlado took Nina and me on a tour around the area, visiting some of his land, seeing some cities/small towns, and the malting plant there.  In the past couple of weeks, it has rained a lot in this area, and there has been excessive flooding in the villages and fields, and the River Sava has risen to a very high level from the drainage/rain.

**AS ALWAYS, CLICK ON THE COLLAGES TO GET A LARGER, BETTER VIEW!!!**

Vlado's beautiful home...they have their own complete "biker bar" downstairs!

Vlado owns around 100 hectares (250 acres) of cultivated land in both small and bigger parcels around the area (small=1-2 hectares, big=15-40 hectares).  It is split into sugar beets (15 Ha), rape seed (15 Ha), spring barley (40 Ha), and wheat (30 Ha).  The soils around this area are very heavy, so the drainage here is very poor…imagine what happens when it rains for over a week (like it just did) with poor drainage…BUT, they do have a canal system to help with drainage into the River Sava.  For every cultivated hectare of land, the farmer must pay a fee for maintenance of the canal system (although the money isn’t always used for that).

Our next stop was in Nova Gradiska at Slavonja Slod, the only malting company in Croatia.  Vlado is the overall site manager (pretty much president), so we got a decent tour—even though they had stopped production for the month.  The plant holds a total of 75,000 metric tons of barley, 60,000 of which is malt.  Brewing companies in Croatia and other countries make requests of what they would like for their order, and the plant will mix accordingly…in the end around 45,000 metric tons stay in Croatia.  Vlado also works for a company in Hungary, and they are also working on project in India.

flooding, fields, and the malting plant

After our tour of the malting plant, we headed to Stara Kapela, which is a developing ethnovillage.  Ethnovillages give people an opportunity to see what villages really used to be like in the past, and experience culture, daily tasks and activities similar to how it used to be.  The homes and buildings are built and decorated the same as they were in the past, and the village really is its own being.  Stara Kapela is a new ethnovillage developed through a veteran’s cooperative through the government, giving veterans an opportunity to enrich the community and do something worthwhile.

Stara Kapela ethnovillage

Saturday was rather laidback for the most part.  I went with Nina and her mother to visit the cemetery (cemeteries here are very different in setup compared to what we usually see at home

...here's some pics from the cemetery...the grave sites are different, and there were some really old graves there too that you could barely see the writing on the stones...

and visit some family around the area, checked out an agriculture fair in Oriovac, and then we had a party late in the evening at Zoran’s parents’ house with a lot of relatives.  We had dried meats and cheese, salads, roasted vegetables, roasted lamb, beer, wine, gamishte (white wine and mineral water…yummm!).  Oh, I went to bed at midnight, but found out that Zoran and his friends stayed up until 4:30 a.m. playing cards!

I will be putting up a blog for the rest of my trip to Slavonia after I tour a few farms on Tuesday…hope you enjoyed!!