Sonntag, 18. März 2007

the American in Croatia


The first blog I've chosen to report on is http://strangernmoscow.livejournal.com/.

It is about the experiences of this 29 years old African-American guy who moved to my home country's capital (Zagreb) in October 2005. What's remarkable about it is that I started at the same time my university education in Austria. So, Croatia had lost one local, but gained an expat:)

On the left you can see Zagreb's main thoroughfare- the Ilica.



Although his posts aren't as exhaustive as the one's from Krystian (the Polish guy in Ireland), they do offer a good insight into his motives for going and into the life of an gay Afro-American graphic designer in a chatolic country.

His primary reason for trading Chicago with Zagreb was (as if I didn't suspect it)-love sweet love. He had fallen in love with a Croatian named Luka, who had worked in America until his green card had expired. Then he was forced to head back home.

The African-American guy (he doesn't feature a name on his profile) was so bessoted with Luka, and in such a precarious situation back in America (no job, credit card debt, overprotective parents etc) that he decided to follow him. Luka found him a job at a web design company in Croatia (which wasn't fix at the time he was leaving) and the usually "I'm playing safe in life" African-American decided to get a new lease of life in a country he initially knew laughably little about.

Be that as it may, I find it very praiseworthy that he almost immediately after deciding went on to learn Croatian. Believe me, though it is my mother tongue, it is an extraordinary difficult language to become proficient in. Here is a taste of it on an free online learning platform for Croatian:
http://www.101languages.net/croatian/lodging.html

If that was not enough, he also started to read Croatian newspaper reports translated into English to get a broad overview of the current situation. If you consider that throughout his schooling he never heard about Croatia, his preparation was really worth mentioning. Come to think of it, I seriously doubt that many people outside Europe possess even rudimentary knowledge about my home country. Unfortunately, this is the sad truth. If you turn the table, however, very few Europeans have chosen to inform themselves about the Asian culture as well.

We should all be more motivated to get a global aspect of life. Plus, we should also realise, like the African-American says in his blog, that there is a difference between being alive and living.


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