We're not home-grown Croats

This week has been culture-fuelled for me.

We went to the house of the artist/sculptor Ivan Meštrović (now dead), whose work I liked very much, albeit being somewhat dark and a little twisted in nature. Perhaps though, that's what attracted me. He would have been an interesting man to speak to, I think. I can't help wondering about the substance of a mind that would produce such images as those he created in bronze, marble and stone.

We also went to see two live bands: Lado and Cinkuši. My Mama adored the first (we managed to smuggle her in) and she tapped her size sevens and bobbed her little head along to the music - she looked like a little girl losing herself in the music, her eyes shining. That, more than anything, made me happy. It reminded me of when I was small and my Mama would play old Croatian songs on the piano while my sister and I danced around the living room, flinging off various items of clothing as we got hotter and hotter with our manic contortions. My heart was stolen by Cinkuši though, who somehow got into my heart, soul and feet with their beautiful beats and melodies. They had a very gypsy/Romany sound to them, I thought, slightly French, though I note they describe themselves as 'ethno-punk world music', whatever that might be...

Anyway, last night was Cinkuši and it was entirely and wholly my fault that I went out afterwards and did not get home until getting on for 2am. I have just one week left here and it was good to spend a little more time with those people to whom I have started to get attached, taking some time to get to know them a teensy bit more until we go back to the ways from which we came three weeks ago. It's strange, but for me there is something special about the folks on this course - they feel part of something I have not been able to define since childhood, that I now know is my part-Croatian-ness. Those people that I have connected with fit into my life and into my being in ways that home-grown Croats and other English people do not. In an odd way some of them seem to come from my planet more than most that I know. I am not sure how they'd feel knowing that I feel they come from my planet, but I love it. I need it.

Today is study and family time. Clearly I am procrastinating and putting off study until I update this, but that's the way it goes. It appears my time is up, sadly, but I really ought to get on with the deeply organised yet hideous grammar and vocab plan I have in mind for this evening, before settling down to watch a good Croatian film with Mama.