Field trip

Yesterday my students and I took a field trip to Sali on the island of Dugi Otok (Long Island). An hour and a half from Zadar, this village attracts tourists from all over the world during the summer season. Now, at the end of October, Sali has been mostly returned to the people who live here year-round, except for the occasional day on which they are invaded by thirteen library school students, a research assistant, and a visiting professor from the U.S.

We had gone to Sali to see its public library, part of the Zadar library system. We were met at the dock by Ante, the unconventional librarian for the island. Completely bald, wearing a black opera t shirt (from a performance of Wagner's Ring in Amsterdam), plaid cargo shorts, and black combat boots, he took us the few steps to his library which is small in physical size but gargantuan in its aspirations and energy.

Every inch of space is filled with something interesting to look at or do -- books, of course, CDs, DVDs, a flat-screen TV, piano and telescope (!), four computers, trophies, a few ratty armchairs and a sofa. Children's books are crammed into a closet. The walls and even the ceiling are covered with a crazy collage of pictures: the cast of the Lord of the Rings, old movie stars, historical photos of Sali, astronomical charts, photos of library events and library users -- anything and everything. When the weather is fine, Ante moves the library outside and hosts all kinds of events: pancake parties (pancakes, palacinkes, are very important in this part of the world), movie showings, pot luck dinners, talent shows, rallies before Croatian soccer matches (for one of which Ante's bald head was painted with the distinctive Croatian red and white checkerboard logo).

Ante seems quite cavalier about the infamous library "standards" which emanate from the Ministry of Culture and is happy to operate on a remote island far from bureaucratic oversight. He doesn't charge fines for overdue books and just assumes that the books will come back one day. They usually do. Once a couple of Swiss backpackers missed the boat back to Zadar. Ante let them sleep in the library. He hasn't waited for funding to come for a "Bibliobus" -- that's a bookmobile for those of you who don't speak Croatian. He just rigged up a kind of shelf in the back of a station wagon and used that to take books to the farther settlements on this long, narrow island.

Ante was born and raised on the island, living still in his boyhood home, a traditional Dalmatian house made of stone with a red tile roof. The students and I had an interesting discussion about whether anybody else could have achieved what he has done on the library. Do you have to have his insider knowledge and his larger than life personality? At first they thought that those were necessary prerequisites. But as we talked, we arrived at the conclusion that all that was necessary was a conviction to make the library an essential and organic part of the community -- and with sensitivity and commitment, any of us can do that.

Dalmatians tend to romanticize their islands where life is slower and more traditional than it is on the mainland. However, the opportunities to make a living on the islands are very few. Aside from tourism, which is seasonal, and a little fishing, there is not much to keep a young person in Sali. They must even commute to Zadar to attend high school.

Two of the students had connections on Sali and were able to get one of the traditional Dalmatian restaurants, a konoba, to open just to serve us lunch. We had the classic black risotto, a cabbage salad, battered and fried calamari, and local wine. We ate upstairs in a room with stone walls, the traditional green shutters and net curtains, wood beam ceiling. We ate and talked and toasted librarians everywhere.

Ne gevorim Hvratski

No, I don't speak Croatian. Not that I really need to say that sentence in Croatian; it is instantly obvious when I try to say anything, even the simple words of politeness -- hvala (thank you), molim (please), dobar dan (good afternoon). My accent is really very bad, no matter how I try.

So this post will be a musing on getting along in another country when you really, truly don't speak the language. I was told before I arrived that "everybody speaks English." Not true. Almost everybody speaks a little English but not always enough to really facilitate a conversation. When the Croatian working at the market stall speaks as little English as I do Croatian, we need to improvise. I pick up an apple and hand it to him, smiling and silent. He weighs it and puts it in a bag. In the torrent of unintelligible language from his mouth, I think I can make out the words "dva kuna." I fish around in my wallet for the 2 kuna coin. "Da?" I ask, not being absolutely sure I heard him right. "Da," he says -- and a whole lot more. "Dobro," I say, pleased that we have conducted this transaction successfully. "Bravo!" he says, laughing at my lame effort to speak his language. But it is a kind laugh, not a mocking one.

You will probably not be surprised that my food-related vocabulary has grown the most since I have been here. The menus in most restaurants list their offerings in Croatian, Italian, German, and English -- but not always and not always in the most perfect English. Swine cutlets, anyone? Anyway, one can just point to the menu entry and count on getting approximately what you thought you were ordering. I TRY to say the name in Croatian, much to the amusement of most waiters. This is not an easy language for the English-speaking tongue to master. All those consonants! All those diacritical marks!

I have dinner every night in the hotel because it is a full board arrangement, with a self-serve breakfast buffet and dinner included in the rate. The waiters tease me and try to help me learn a few new words every night. So far I have mastered the words for ice cream (sladoled), fish (riba), water (voda), soup (juha), salad (salata -- one of the few easy ones).

I am teaching my class in Young Adult Library Services in English. All of the students knew this when they enrolled, but they vary in their competency and comfort in expressing themselves in English. Some of the other faculty warned me that they might be shy or reticent, but they do their best to participate in the discussions that I require. I can tell, however, that they are relieved when I break them into small groups and tell them to feel free to speak Croatian.

As for me, it is a challenge to remember to speak slowly and clearly and to use language that is simple and relatively jargon-free. I worry that we are all missing some of the subtlety and complexity that we could enjoy if we were all fluent in the same language. In fact, some days I worry that I am losing my fluency in English!

I gave the students the task of teaching me how to say the word for library in Croatian -- a notoriously difficult word to pronounce. It is spelled knjiznica, with a diacritical mark over the Z. And the word for librarian is knjiznicar, with a different diacritical mark over the C. I can say it almost every time now and be understood, even if the accent is still very bad.

The only English language programming on TV is CNN and BBC World News and the occasional really dumb reality show on one of the German language channels, shown here with subtitles. I have never heard of some of these programs; perhaps they are exported directly to the European market. I miss my beloved Law and Order reruns, but I will survive.

First impressions of my first public library visit in Croatia

Martina is a doctoral student at the University of Zagreb, working as an assistant at the University of Zadar. She is passionate about public libraries and how they can transform communities and has wonderful stories to tell about how they did this in Zadar. Today she and her husband and one-year-old son Luka took me to Sibenik to see this beautiful old coastal city and to visit its public library.

Like many Croatian public libraries, the Sibenik library occupies a converted army building. Unlike many, it is in the center of town. The renovation results in a modern building of glass and steel. There are some oddities due to its former use. In the basement, for example, a former bowling alley has been turned into a storage space with compact shelving. For the most part, however, its former military function is not apparent. And isn't that a nice symbolic transformation? From a military operation to a library! I like that.

I wish Jonathan Furner had been there to help me make sense of what they called their scientific collection which to me appeared to be just nonfiction (books on winemaking, origami, and many other miscellaneous subjects). It used a classification scheme that originated in some Croatian academic setting. Because of this, the public was not allowed into this room but had to have books paged from here. When I asked if this worked for them, the librarians said it did. OK. Whatever.

There was a pleasant preschool corner filled with blocks and soft cushions and picture books. There was a children's computer lab crowded with boys using the computers the same way they do everywhere -- for games in noisy packs. There was another bank of computers with special software for children under the age of 8.

The collection looked like a collection anywhere, with books written in Croatian and others translated into Croatian. Harry Potter is still very popular, and the librarian showed me a scrapbook documenting a whole series of Harry Potter programs. Lots of children in wizard hats.

More impressive to me was a program on children's rights. Children from the ages of ten to fourteen had participated in a discussion -- or maybe a series of discussions, I'm not sure -- about rights and then produced their own Bills of Rights. They translated one of them for me, and it seemed very wise and also very childlike. This child included the right to eat candy along with a child's right to know his father and to visit both parents.

This library also hires an artist to work with the children on various creative visual arts projects. While I was there, the project was creating bookmarks; and the results were lovely. In an earlier project, the children had looked at incunabula from the cathedral library that is just a block or so away and then created their own illuminated alphabets.

There was so much to admire about the library and its staff who obviously care about the library, about their patrons, and about their city. What is missing? Teen services! After the age of fourteen, young people are "sent upstairs" to the adult section. There is no teen collection or programming.

Before I had come to Croatia, I had only read travel guidebooks about the country and the nonfiction accounts written by Rebecca West (BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON) and Robert Kaplan (BALKAN GHOSTS). I wondered in my last post how my impressions of the country would differ. In 1938, Rebecca West seemed to see this part of the world through a Freudian lens in which sex and death seemed to color her experiences. Robert Kaplan was influenced by Rebecca West and by his conviction that history dominated the present.

Yes, this country has a colorful and important heritage and a history that was often terrible. (My friend Ivanka's 96-year-old mother says she has lived through three wars and doesn't want to live through another one.) But there is something quite wonderful about a country that can turn its army bases into libraries and universities and recognize that its children have rights.

When I left the Sibenik Public Library, the librarians said they had a present for me. They gave me a gift bag. Inside were a children's picture book about a wonderful inventor from Sibenek who had devised the first parachute a very long time ago, a book the library had published about its beautiful old cathedral -- and some local brandy in a bottle that had been decorated by hand by one of the librarians. There is something quite wonderful about a country that produces books, inventions, and brandy.

Changing focus

I've been in an alternate universe for the last six weeks. I've been crazed with the effort of trying to finish up a number of projects before I leave for Croatia on Sunday. I've also been strangely apprehensive about that trip, resulting in some oddly obsessive behavior. I finally declared a vacation from all things Croatian until tomorrow, when I pack and discover that I really don't have enough luggage space for a month's worth of clothing, medications, toiletries, etc. Thank heavens for the Kindle; that takes care of my leisure reading material!

I hope to blog from Zadar and Osijek and Zagreb, but it probably won't be about writing. I have as my inspiration the travel journal/political screed that Rebecca West wrote during her travels in that part of the world in the 1930s, BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON. That book is remarkable for its length (1100 pages!), its penetrating observations that are filtered through West's particular world view, and its rather florid prose. Here is a representative passage. She was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy when sh heard that the King of Yugoslavia had been assassinated. She asks the nurse to switch on the telephone so she can call her husband. "A most terrible thing has happened. The King of Yugoslavia has been assassinated."

"Oh, dear, she replied. "Did you know him?" "No," I said. "Then why," she asked, "do you think it's so terrible?"

West goes on: Her question made me remember that the word "idiot" comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: they are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

West made plans immediately to travel through what was then Yugoslavia with her husband. She was convinced that understanding that part of Europe was essential to understanding her own future as an Englishwoman. She was, of course, very much a creature of her time and place -- as we all were. It will be interesting to see how my experiences and observations differ from hers. I hope that I am neither an idiot nor a lunatic...