Magic in the Park: Plitvice Lakes

This last week had very full days with almost all of us out in the field. We got a ton of work done, the stone walls are almost finished but are proving to be more persnickety than I had thought they would be, we poured two concrete slabs and a third for the water feature on Friday. The deal was we wouldn't be able to leave for Plitvice Lakes until we got the whole piece done, so we worked extra fast on it.

We were finished by 11:00, ran up to the apartments, changed, finished packing and met Marco, the same driver who drove us to Zadar and his father-in-law Marino. Back on the ferry we made the short crossing to the mainland and took off again down the devil road, this time in the opposite direction. Luckily we didn't stay on it very long, but climbed up the cliffs and foothills by the sea and straight into the heart of the country.

The landscape changed abruptly once we were further away from the coast. On the island very little of the vegetation has changed through October, a lot of it is conifers, palms and other plants that mostly stay green; a lot of the surrounding islands and mountains are bare with white rock and no vegetation. But once we up into the mountains with the coast behind us the scenery blasted into fall color. Croatia has many beech forests and the beech trees are in full colors of oranges and yellows with the occasional red mixed in the bunch.

I was ecstatic to see all the colors and the forests. I hadn't seen anything like it in Croatia so far and I'm sorely missing all the fun fall things going on at home. This weekend everyone is celebrating Halloween and I'm loving all the pictures of the costumes and parties! I miss driving up Highway 2 for a tour of the color in the mountains with a bison burger in Marblemount at the end, picking pumpkins and apples, making pies and cider and watching scary movies when it storms. I miss all of it, and driving up through the mountains here gave me a taste of home that was very needed.

We stopped at a little village outpost about two hours into the journey to a makeshift shop by the road selling honey, cheese wheels and homemade Rakia.  I finally found a Rakia I like, most of it tasting more or less like fingernail polish remover to me. But this one is honey flavored, a little thicker and very sweet; too sweet for mostly everyone else but perfect for sipping. Between the 20 of us we bought a large chunk of their stock and continued on our way.

When straight roads changed again into twisting and switch-backing mountain roads we were almost to our destination. Plitvice is mountainous with deep ravines, and all the mountains are covered in fall brightness. Our homes for the weekend were three apartment houses that reminded me of the chalets I stayed in in the Alps. Small, comfortable, and terribly cute. We were thrilled to see that we not only could stand up straight in the large bathroom but the shower head was actually attached to the wall!

After settling in we went for a walk and spent a long time taking pictures of the scenery. We came to an outlook that overlooked what we found out later was the largest waterfall in the park, falling hundreds of feet to the river below. It was the first taste of Plitvice and what was to come.

Saturday morning we were up early and at the gates of Plitvice National Park by 8:30am bundled and ready for our day of adventure and discovery.

Plitvice is just like all the pictures, a natural phenomenon of rock, water and plants I'm amazed that a place so magical still exists in the world. The water system is essentially a river in a twisting canyon with beech forests on either side. In certain places the river widens creating slower moving lakes. Then cascades down into another lake below. Through the entire park miles and miles of boardwalk lead people through, around and over the water to caves, higher walkways and the upper lakes. The way the boardwalks were built one can see the water below, and often times a stairway will go over a small waterfall so you can experience the water as you move over it. You are engaged in your surroundings by default.

The water is absolutely perfectly clear except for where it is a turquoise or in the deepest places a rich royal blue. Spotted fish are within arm's reach and you can see all the vegetation in the shallower pools.

 Reeds, grasses and Lilly pads the jut up out of the water create barriers and borders for the walkways. If Rivendell were to be built, it would be here.

We spent the day wandering through, taking pictures and being amazed. The upper lakes area isn't so much in a ravine and has more forest along side. The walk along those leaf covered paths was magical, there is no other word to describe it.

The trees and water feel alive, not just in a "it's a tree, it's alive" kind of way but in a "It's a tree, it's moving and it's going to get up and dance any second now." I felt like I could really breathe there and take it all in, but there is also a vibrancy to every element involved. The constant rippling, dripping and cascading of the water to the quaking leaves in the trees and at this time of year the occasional rain of yellow leaves falling to the ground to be swept up again by a gust of wind through the canyon. The life of the place moves about, around and through you as a connected part of it. One of our number couldn't resist the waterfalls and hopped off the boardwalk to briefly bathe in one. An action we found out later was extremely illegal but I have a feeling it was worth it.

At the end of the day Marino drove us home to a lovely home cooked dinner by our hostess. The meal was festive to say the least, at the end of it no one was ready to go to bed. Marco knew of a bowling alley nearby and without any hesitation we were off, back on the bus.

We arrived fifteen minutes later to the abandoned except for two employees, four lane alley, but we definitely brought the party. The game itself wasn't normal bowling, it was done with smaller orange balls with no finger holes, rolled down the lane to hit 10 pins in a diamond shape that had strings like puppets to pull them back up. The counters on the lanes kept track of how many had been knocked down and how many turns had been taken, but none of us knew the rules and the owner didn't feel like explaining. We just did our best and had as much fun as possible, which was a lot.

The Wolf Team and one photo-bomber

This morning I woke up an hour early because of the daylight savings time switch but had time to take a long walk in the snow. Yes snow. It turned from a beautiful crisp fall day to the dead of winter in 12 hours flat. At the beginning of my walk the snow was mostly just freezing rain that I thought would let up, but no, by breakfast time big fluffy flakes flitted to the ground and began piling up fast.

After breakfast a few people took it upon themselves to be snowball mercenaries and pelt anyone emerging from breakfast. This lead to a fairly intense retaliation and with red cheeks and cold hands we got back into the vans to drive home.

Lessons from Strays

I am continually surprised, excited and happy to see that whatever you want to call it, the Universe, God or the random occurrences of events that is Life has a way of sending exactly what is needed when it's needed, even if you don't understand it at the moment.

The other day we had a free day and everyone went to Rab, hiking, biking, swimming or a mix of them all, it was a day off but I know I over did it a bit. I was already exhausted and should have taken more time to do nothing and recover. But the way things played out I found myself alone in Rab, separated from my friends without a cell phone on a Sunday so I had no way to buy a card to use one of the few payphones in town. I wandered through the now familiar streets, enjoying the scenery but progressively getting more and more tired and downtrodden. A little down in the dumps spurred on by physical tiredness and situational frustration.
I was about to give up trying to find my friends and start the long walk home by myself when a familiar little black cat ran up to me from a side alley.

Urchin is a kitten originally "adopted" by a woman in my program who gave him enough food to keep going when he had a hurt paw and an eye infection preventing him from hunting. When she first helped him he was emaciated and probably only a few days from starving. We checked on him a few weeks later and he was doing much better with his paw and eye healing. And here he appeared again.

He came right up to me, rubbing on my legs and mewing familiar greeting. I gave him a pet and continued my walk, him trotting along beside me all the way across town. When I stopped to take pictures he would lay down and roll in the dust or sit and patiently wait. When he was weaving in and out of my feet too much I picked him up and cuddled the little skinny body, feeling him relax against my chest.

I walked him back to his regular stomping grounds, the little park and church at the far end of the peninsula. I sat down cross legged and set him down on my lap as the sun started to go down. He immediately cuddled next to me and fell asleep.

In truth, I cannot bring Urchin home with me. Nor can I feed him for much longer, get him shots, take him to the vet, or guarantee him a long and healthy life. But on that Sunday I could hold him and give him a safe place to nap for a few minutes in the sunshine. In all the roughness that is and is going to be his life he got a moment of warmth and security. He kept me company when I couldn't find mine, my little five minute friend; he reminded me of the importance of finding beauty in unfortunate situations. A lesson I needed a little nudging with at that moment.

Soon

Urchin woke up, yawned, stretched and hopped off my lap. The sleek little cat lead me to the door of the church, mewed at me a few times and went inside. Instead of following, I turned and started the walk back along the water at a dawning dusk. Where I found my friends.

Hell Week: Starting Construction plus Adventures in Trespassing

Dead week, hell week, the week of eternal doom. This is an event of many names. The frustrations and sleeplessness are legendary among students and those working on deadlines everywhere. And it seems it has also followed us to Croatia.

After our review on Friday, Vesna and her team looked over all the designs, weighed pros and cons and picked the base design to build the final from - and it was my group's! There were a few parts she didn't like, and parts from other designs that she wanted added but it was nice to know we had been on the right track in our vision for the site.

After our lovely weekend dancing and hiking in Zadar, the groups were re-configured for the next part of the process - details. There is a group for stonework, the water feature, boardwalk, shelter structure and design synthesis which is my group. Our job was to re-design the area that will be built to better match what Vesna wants  in the final, work everyone else's designs into the final and eventually produce a master plan.

The first day or so the some of the other groups didn't all have a lot to do while we were figuring out the final, while we were designing and problem solving as fast as possible. Now that we were down to detail level decisions seemed so much more important and impacting that we really had to do it right. EXACTLY where the entrance will be, how the boardwalk curves into the plaza and how the water feature works into all of that without having awkward dead space. Then the other groups got into full swing and had to furiously get the detail work down on paper or CAD so we can transcribe them into the real world.

But because of the nature of the time limit of design/ build projects we were under a crazy time crunch. For example the arborist came on Tuesday and we had to know exactly which trees needed to go so the maintenance guys could cut them on Wednesday. Then Thursday the excavator started cutting the foundations and leveling our seating area. We had to get the footings for the structure poured and the crushed rock ready for the rock walls on Friday because the stone masons were coming to teach us to do walls on Saturday.

We had to work as fast as we could to even have measurements to have locations to tell the guy with the machine where to put the dirt. In some cases we were still designing the next area while the excavator finished up the previous area. It was, in a word, exhausting. Fun, challenging, certainly enlightening and also extremely exhausting.

I really enjoyed being out working on the site trying to pick up as much knowledge about actual construction as possible. Luka, our amazing artist, consultant, landscape architect and translator let me come along when he met with the arborist so I could learn to tell which trees should be taken down and why. Then the next day I was there to see how they took the trees down while damaging the standing ones as little as possible. When the trunks were crashing down to the earth it struck me that this is real, this design is no longer theoretical and it's coming true one way or another. We are severely altering the landscape for our design because the hospital believes in us. And it's a little intimidating.

Friday and Saturday I was out at the site all day, first moving dirt from point A to point B then setting in the casings for the footings and putting a lot of the dirt from point B back to point A. A lot of the construction process as far I as I can tell seems to be moving material around and changing the form. Turn a pile of rocks into a stone wall, a hole into a casing into a hole full of concrete. More than anything its a lot of shoveling, shoveling a wide variety of things, dirt, crushed rock, gravel, in a variety of different combinations.

Friday evening the stonemasons came, had dinner with us and we had an impromptu party out on the decks of one of the apartments. Most of them were really nice and excited to talk about their art but one who managed to keep pulling me into his conversation only wanted to talk about how the US has ruined the world, how all of our systems are f-ed up, our people are lazy and medicated and expected us to explain or try to defend things that the U.S. did before we were even born. And he also managed to casually explain to me that I'm fat and should work out more. He considered himself an intellectual. I considered him a sociopath.
I was torn here, because I should have told him to go to hell and push him off the balcony. But the greater us needed him and his friends for the good of the program. If they left angry because I beat up/screamed at/murdered their friend everyone would suffer and the consequences probably would have been worse than I wanted to deal with.
So, anticlimactically I kept more or less a cool head, said "Fuck you. I'm beautiful." and left.

The next day I of course was put in a group with him to build a wall and I did my best to ignore him and only say something when I absolutely had to. In this manner most of the day passed focusing intently on the slow-mo tetris, and with 26 people building we got a lot of the walls almost finished by four or so.

----

If we were a spectacle before when we were just walking around and taking notes we certainly are more of one now. The site is completely ripped up, mostly dirt with a dump truck arriving a few times a day leaving us giant piles of stone, gravel, and crushed rock. Some of us are making walls, others are shoveling, and still others who are getting their details finished are moving around us finding tangents of curves to figure out where their team's features go.

A lot of patients are coming to check out the construction, they usually just stand at the nearby road in their pajamas and stare. Every so often one will wander into the site and we awkwardly wheelbarrow around them. Sometimes they try to help and shovel a few scoops then go away. They are harmless, at least none of them have caused any problems. The only continually annoying thing is at least once a day a guy will wander over to where I'm shoveling or hauling or digging and tell me to "-Stop. That is a job for a man." Again, ignoring is the best way to deal with it, most of them don't know enough English to understand a half hour long rant on why I'm capable of work, and can do it just as well or as fast as most men. There is also the whole cultural difference of gender roles argument blah blah blah. It doesn't make me feel any better about it.

Sunday was our first completely free day, several people rented bikes to explore the island, others went to an optional drawing class in town. I took the opportunity to sleep in (8:00 yay!) and try to go for a hike. A friend came with me to explore where our road goes. Turns out it's through a valley with a mansion on the hill then into an oak forest up to a house with olive terraces. Apparently the road goes further but it looked like it just ended so we went back. Along the way we followed what was either a path or a drainage ditch along a terrace field until it got too grown over and we hopped up the wall into the field. I think it was a vineyard at one time, tiny grape plants were losing against stronger bushes and grasses taking back the land. We hopped another ditch, then a stone fence then a barbed wire fence into a narrow valley until our path truly ended at a wall with forest on the other side.

Our adventure was fun, in part because we were probably not supposed to be there, but we kept our ears perked and eyes up in case any angry farmers showed up. None did, but in one field without much cover I smelled cigarette smoke on the breeze. With no one else in sight that was enough to make me high-tail it back to the road before we disappeared into the Croatian wilderness never to be heard from again.

The rest of the day we spent in Rab, intending on doing some errands, but everything closes on Sunday except for one gelato place and the tourist shops. So I walked around and stumbled across most romantic spot in Rab.

Panorama views of the city and several islands was a nice way to end a stressful week. Now another few days of construction and it's off to Plitvice Lakes we go!

The Sea Organ and the Electric Viola: Zadar

Saturday marked the first of our field trip weekends. This one not too far, to the city of Zadar, Croatia. It's in northern Dalmatia on the mainland which required us to get a ferry at 6:30am. 6:00 found us yawning in the dark with breakfast food in hand waiting for our bus to the dock.

The sky started to get light while we were on the ferry, only about a 15 minute journey. Ferries always take me back to family trips to Port Townsend  when I was a kid. The wind in your hair and salt on your face, it's an invigorating feeling. Unless you get seasick.

The sunrise only caught its momentum once we were on the other side of the water and from there we got going on the road to Zadar. 

The plan was simple, arrive at the hostel, get settled in, walk downtown to meet with an architect/ landscape architect for a lecture, then we'd have a free afternoon. But the bus ride, however comfortable was not something I wanted to repeat. Most of the of the journey was along lovely coastline that didn't have a straight line in many miles. It twisted in and out of cove after cove after cove. Compared to even famous carsick roads like the Highway to Hana, this one takes the cake. I spent most of the trip trying to sleep and hold still.

We turned off the devil road into Zadar about 10:00 and had some time to explore the area around the hostel before we took off for our lecture. I found a beach nearby that's a part of a vacation resort; it had courts for every different sport, lawns, sand beach, playgrounds, a water slide, a giant sandbox for kids with sprayers and it was completely empty. Being the only person in a place designed for hundreds feels very creepy; like I was strolling through a post-apocalyptic beach resort just waiting for the zombies to attack. Also, parts of Zadar had flooded due to heavy rain and parts of the courts were broken or flooded out.

After getting settled at our extremely nice hostel we walked as a group along the water downtown. Many of the houses along the water got downright mansiony, with big gardens behind big wrought-iron fences.

The lecture we heard was from architect Nicola Basic who has designed some amazing and monumental pieces in Croatia. He's probably most well known for the Sea Organ on Zadar's waterfront and the light circle nearby it. But more on that later.

After the lecture we dispersed to make the most of our free afternoon. Most of us needed to find food, water and gelato as fast as possible after the lecture and crossed the bridge into the older part of town to find it.

Zadar is a bit like Rab on steroids. The tiny winding alleys and streets are still tiny and winding only much much longer. The main plazas are greater and less intimate, with ruins of old foundations still in place near the churches, but there are still little gems to be found around corners and at the end of alleys. Also, it's dirtier and has many more people than Rab, I'm guessing it doesn't completely shut down at the end of the summer.

After eating, a group of us went down to the water front, taking pictures of the sailboats going by and the wide crushed stone walkways leading in either direction. Soon, most of us made our way to the Sea Organ we had heard so much about.

The human activity around the organ gives away its position before its music is audible. People flock to it.
The organ, as Nicola explained to us is a system by which sound is created by the waves crashing into the sea wall. The water enters a different chamber for each note a few feet below the water line, gets pushed up a pipe into a reverberating chamber and the sound comes up through another pipe to a hole in the walkway. There are wide steps down from the walk to the wall that serve as seating as well as a way to get down to the water to put your feet in.
Soon we were close enough to distinguish the soft sounds coming from the Sea Organ.

I can't quite describe the way that the sea organ sounds or feels, I have a video below that was the best one I can find, but I think it might be another one of those things that you just have to be there. The best way I can describe it is that the ocean has a language of roaring foam and waves. We can understand that it is language but can't comprehend the words, we feel the connection to the sea but can't converse with it. The organ translates the words into music, a language we do understand. Though we still don't know the words we can feel the meaning more easily. Laying back on the steps, feeling the vibrations of the organ, hearing its song as well as the raw waves crashing alongside is a phenomenal experience.

I came back to the organ several times during the day, feeling how it felt through different parts of the afternoon. And though I could have spent an entire afternoon laying there I knew the rest of Zadar awaited, and I would only have this one chance to see as much as I could.

Most of the afternoon I spent doing some really high quality wandering, I entered the church and monastery of St. Francis and made friends with a very nice old nun. The church is also a museum of some religious art, and though generally it doesn't float my boat there was one very large painting in the back chapel that I found moving and was glad I got to see it. 

Later I stumbled across one of my classmates and we had a coffee together, then another church, another twisting alley and that's how it went till sundown when we all met again at the organ as the best place to watch the day end.

When it gets dark enough the light circle (also designed by Nicola Basic) comes on, lighting up large patterns of flickering, flowing and alternating light. We moved over to it and somehow, I'm not exactly sure we started an improptu salsa lesson on the light circle. Everyone present from our class participated and also a few other visitors nearby. A lot of people in the program have been very interested in learning at least a few ballroom dances, a near miracle in itself, but the fact that they have actually wanted to practice and get better after the first lesson is nearly unheard of. I'm so proud of my classmates!

After learning almost an entire salsa line dance a wedding party showed up for pictures on the light circle and we left to go find dinner at a plaza on the other side of the peninsula.

I had a hard time sitting still through dinner. We had had our first little dance session at the apartments a few days before until the land lady came up and asked us to quiet down. Then with this little taste of salsa the crave had gotten going and the only way to sate it is to dance; and dance as much as possible for as long as possible. By the end of dinner I was practically vibrating with anticipation.

A few of us had been talking about going out that night and we asked the restaurant owner after dinner where he would suggest. He gave us the address of a club on the other side of the water but warned us that it was only 9:30, no one would be there. We should wait till midnight, or better yet 1:00 to go out. 

I had forgotten about this part. Blog posts from my friends recounted how they had to wait to go out until at least 11:30 and even then was too early to have fun. To spend some time we went to a bar for a couple of hours and were surprised by the crappy service and rude staff, but at 11:45 we set off into the night for the club. 

I should also mention that in the time between the end of dinner and leaving the bar it had started raining impossibly hard. Water was streaming from every roof down into the alleys. We walked back across the bridge passing girls in short skirts and platform heels teetering their way through the river that had once been the sidewalk to the old town. I had to admire their commitment but was still astounded by the lack of practicality. 

The club we went to "Marischino" was not good. The club itself was cool, laser lights, interesting chandeliers, an ok DJ, but the place was sparsely populated by (no offense) older couples sipping drinks on the outskirts of a completely empty dance floor. Normally I'll be the first one on there, but I held back at this place, feeling the atmosphere was poignantly judgy and not inviting. Maybe it was just too early, but the waitstaff was very rude to us and we wanted to leave asap. 

Two of our group scouted out another club nearby and soon we made our way over there. I admit I was disappointed and a little angry because of the other place. But by the time we reached the second club our scouts were out front saying it was a bunch of kids under 18 (again, no offense). But the bouncer there told them about a further club, this one well known for awesome dancing and occasional live music. 

With this one last hope in our hearts our crew slogged the last of the way to the third club. I'm still not exactly sure where it was - pretty out of the way near a beach somewhere but when we walked in I knew we were in the right place. People around our age were milling about, still an empty dance floor, but crowds were pouring in, especially when the clock hit that magic 1:00 number. 

There were flat screen tvs playing the same five music videos over the bar and we realized they were all of the same guy playing a viola. One of our number said she had seen him on a poster outside the club with Saturday's date, so maybe he was playing? 

After waiting a few minutes we made our way out to the edge of the now full, but almost completely stationary dance floor and started moving. A few minutes later, a very tall person and a very sparkly person got up on the small stage and there he was. The God of Electric Viola. 

His name is Mario Rucner, he plays the electric viola. Nuff said. He also has a very long braid out just the back of his head but we can forgive that for his violas shredding skills. He, accompanied by a DJ and an extremely sparkly GoGo dancer got on stage and performed one of the best live shows I've ever seen. He did some covers of pop songs with beats and other instruments from the sound boards and also some original songs I've never heard. The performance was awesome and we were right up at the stage for dancing. It was also a little weird, like when they played an LMFAO song the dancer would put a box with eye holes cut out over her head and dance with it on. 

Toward the end of their set she pulled me up and I danced with her and The God of Electric Viola for a part of a song before jumping off back to my friends. 

Speaking of, we made a few friends on the dance floor, especially after everyone there had had a few drinks and were inclined to be more friendly. I don't know what the stingy attitude can be, maybe it's the whole competing for mates theory so everyone has to be stoic and perfect. I don't know, but luckily for us that broke down pretty quickly and all that was left were people having a good time.

Dancing felt so good. expelling some of the stress from the previous week, getting some endorphins going, and having a silly and fun time with friends was just what I needed.  

I was ready to dance till the club closed at 6am but a few of my more practical friends wanted to leave around 4:30. We caught a cab back to the hostel and slept for two or so hours before getting up to start the second day in Zadar. 

Pushing the Design, Croatia Ball, and the Big Review.

Life is getting to normal here. We have hit the ground running with a regular albeit fast paced schedule. Most of us get up between 6:00 - 7:00, eat, shower, skype with loved ones and gather up all of our materials for the day. Then we head down to the gate of the Lavender Palace to meet Carl at 8:00 to start the work day.

The Palace is in a separate part of the hospital from the main campus, it's to the south and blocked off by a gate that needs to be kept locked at all times even when people are there.

View to the Lavender Palace from the lavender fields.

We design, get critiques, design some more, visit the site, make more changes, decide the new thing sucks, change it, love it, find out it won't work either, change it again, find a stronger concept, get a critique, have the concept change - all before lunch. Lunch time is questionable but it happens some time in the early afternoon. Then we design, edit change, critique, problem solve, and problem cause our way to dinner. Most days so far we've been able to finish working before 9:00pm or so.

laying out flour to understand the scale of our structures

We presented our concept designs on Tuesday to our fellow students, advisers, some of the staff and to our surprise Vesna! Suddenly our big ideas seemed small and unworthy in front of our client and it added an extra layer of nervousness, but we got through it. All the comments we received were useful for our final plans and we have been incorporating them since.

After the review the advisers went around critiquing our projects and we were excused to go outside while they made notes. Someone brought down one of the orange stress balls given to us at orientation and started throwing it around to play catch. More people wanted to join, someone else found a branch on the ground and voila! Croatia Ball!

A much more fun version of baseball, two teams of dubious loyalty and unsure numbers get on the field that is partially gravel and the rest is lavender.. Anyone can get up to bat and try to make it to the bases marked by things found in studio like a coffee cup or a sketchbook. And an extra challenge added because the stray cats wandering on and off the field. When the batter hits the ball they run in the general direction of first base; stopping wherever they feel like it, sometimes skipping third all together and running across the diamond home.
This game is very fun. I suggest you try it out next time you're stressed or feel like being particularly cool.

Firmly in the grasp of the big push, on Wednesday my team worked into the night until we could barely function enough to draw out boardwalks, stages and gardens anymore. At 11:30pm we packed up and left the Lavender Palace for home. But you see, walking through a psychiatric hospital in the dead of night with a thunder and lightning storm rolling in from the east isn't as soothing as you would expect.
On edge, my group stayed close together and marched as quietly as possible the length of the grounds up to the main gate.
Of course nothing happened except for getting a bit wet when the heavens opened and a warm rain fell down on  us.

Thursday was the same story, we got up early worked out the kinks in our final design, got one last critique and started producing. 
Producing is the part of the process where you're not designing anymore, all of the important decisions are made with very little room for change, here you produce a large plan, sections, section elevations, vignettes and explanatory diagrams. Everything with titles, north arrows etc. Producing always seems like it should go quickly but is some of the most intensive work in the process, somehow pen just can't go to paper as fast as it should. Unless you're Winterbottom who can create a gorgeous plan in about 8.6 seconds.

Our cat at the Lavender Palace, she has 4 adorable babies that she sometimes brings around.

Thursday night we were at the Palace till 2:30am producing producing producing. 

Friday morning started off wet and hasn't let up since. My group slogged down to the Palace and rendered till the very last minute. Drinking copious amounts of caffeine as fast as possible and trying not to let our hands shake too much while drawing out fine ink lines and thick marker washes. Carl called us at 11:30 to ask where we were, then again at 11:33 and again at 11:36. At 11:38 we rolled up our drawings and covered them as best we could to protect them from the rain, ready to present at noon.

The work space just before the presentation

The review went well. At the last minute I had to sprint back down to the Lavender Palace to look for a base map that had disappeared and sprint back up to the presentation space. When it comes to public speaking I have a nervousness cycle that's exhausting. I feel fine up until I walk into the space where I have to talk, then get extremely nervous to the point of feeling faint. Then see my cue, stumble up, am scared about starting to talk then once words come out I'm usually fine. It's a ridiculous and unnecessary emotional roller coaster. 

Now it's all stressed memory haze but I think it went ok.

Now we rest and recoup, but get going again soon. We head to Zadar in the morning!

The Adriatic and the Lavender Palace.

The view from our balcony

Thursday we got down to business. My group met in the morning and talked about our site analysis so far, where we are and where we want to get to by the end of the day. There is a major conference happening at the hospital and we were invited to come to as many of the talks as we wanted. Only a few said they would be in English so we went to those in the morning.
Unfortunately I am really running low on clean clothes, the only unsoiled pieces I could wear to this conference of very respectable psychiatrists were my work Carhartts and my last clean tank top. Luckily a nice scarf can dress up almost any outfit enough to sit in the back of an auditorium. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get much out of the talks, they were all in Croatian, some with English powerpoints going on in the background, and once they got into cognitive connections I got pretty lost.

After the talks my group walked through the site again, trying to pick up on anything we'd missed the last time. It's amazing how much one can miss the first time through. After we had a day to process and come back we saw twice as much as the first time, made more notes and corrections and figured out the direction we want to go in for the site analysis

Kisses from the neighbors

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That afternoon we decided to take advantage of the beautiful afternoon and took a break for swimming. We walked in the opposite direction from Rab down to the other bay nearby. It's a big sandy beach, with boats tied to docks on one side. We walked around to the docks so we could jump in the water. 

we went swimming off that dock in the distance.

The water is amazing, all the locals stopped swimming in early September and thought we were crazy for getting in this late in the year, but it was still at least 75 degrees in most places. It's crystal clear and we could see little schools of fish swimming around us. Luckily no sharks. The water is also very salty and I could float without having to try at all, just lay back in the water and drift under the sunshine.

I spent about a half hour in the water but then the breeze picked up and the sun started to get low over the hills so we got out, dried off and went to a cafe in Kampor. There I discovered the magnificence that is cappachino. At the cafe there were a few salty old Austrian vacationer/sailors, already deep into a few glasses of beer that kept us laughing until we got too cold and walked back to the apartments. 

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The next few days were much the same. Site analysis is hard work but there is only so much useful information you can glean from observation alone. We don't have blueprints or utility maps of the hospital. We created maps for sun/shade, wind, weather, soil quality, views into and out of the site, elevation change, emotive mapping and behavioral mapping of what people do in different parts of the site etc. 
But really, that doesn't usually take that long so until Saturday we were able to work and play quite a lot. Going to the beach, walking into Kampor and Rab, and hiking a bit. This part of the project was just as much about meeting our classmates as meeting the site. 

Sunday though the conference ended, which means that we have a space in the hospital to use for our studio. A place called the Lavender Palace.

This hospital is well known not only for its progressive and humane conditions, but also for how much lavender they grow here in fields on the south side of the campus. Primarily it is used for occupational therapy for the patients but everyone here is very proud of it. In the middle of the lavender fields is a building usually used for guests called the Lavender Palace. Painted a lovely light purple, the palace has a ground floor kitchen/bathrooms/ living room and an upstairs bedroom loft with about 9 beds for guests. I have a sneaking suspicion that if we hadn't been able to get our apartments we would have been residents of the Lavender Palace for the duration of our stay. 

We moved on from site analysis to conceptual designs. Where we figure out the big ideas that are the most important for informing the rest of the design. The concept is the spine or the bones of the project upon which everything else rests. It's a pretty important part and we all take it seriously. We worked through the afternoon till dinner, then most of us worked after dinner into the night. 

Now it's early the next morning and back to the Lavender Palace we go!

Starting the Project in Paradise: Rab, Croatia

When the boat pulled into the marina it was raining in Rab. Hard. We schlepped our luggage off the boat and into our awaiting...ambulances. The hospital sent them as the only cars big enough to carry all 17 of us. Because of the rain and exhaustion my scope of sensory input was pretty small. I paid attention to getting as little water on my clothing as possible as we got into the vans. The marina was misty and I didn't see much out of the foggy windows, but there were palm trees and many boats tied up to the dock. 

Even during the ride to the apartments I didn't notice much of the landscape because I was too busy being scared for my life. I was sitting in the front seat and was able to bear witness to our driver speeding the cumbersome van around blind corners on a tiny two lane road. He barely stayed in his own lane and passed other cars at every opportunity even around corners. Luckily our apartments are only three miles from the town and we arrived in a matter of minutes. With the rain still drizzling down we heafted our luggage out one last time, the boys were sent to their apartment, a random decision was made for which two girls would get the 1 bedroom apartment, and the rest of us hauled our luggage up three flights of stairs around the back of the building to the main apartment. 

The apartment is the entire top floor of a small three story apartment building, the central hallway has the highest ceiling and the bedrooms on either side have sloping ceilings which are cute and kind of fun but many of us have hit our heads already. There are three bedrooms, one with a queen and a cot, one with a queen and three twin beds and the last with just a queen bed. Without much drama we picked bedrooms, I ended up in the room with just the queen and a bathroom attached. For those of you counting we've got 9 girls using 2 bathrooms and one kitchen. Surprisingly thus far it's working out though and we're all getting along and figuring out the bumps along the way.

After we got our bedrooms and freshened up a bit we went out to visit the hospital for the first time. The rain had stopped and without my pack on my back I took the time to look around and figure out my surroundings. Our apartments are in two buildings that share a courtyard and driveway. They also have a little weird looking dog that we always give a pet when we go out. Also, there are cats absolutely everywhere, no one gets the feral cats neutered or spade so they all just have more and more kittens they wander around looking for places where people will feed them. We have one that sticks close to the apartments who will practically dance with happiness when you pet her. But I don't want to buy her food because what will she do when we leave and is used to getting fed? The people here certainly won't feed her and it will attract more stray cats to their home. For now I can only give her short pets on the head then wash my hands thoroughly. It's pretty heartbreaking.

Our area is pretty rural, we are in a small collection of buildings and houses with big gardens outside the little town of Kampor. The landscape is mostly fields with tall grasses and scrubby bushes or olive, pomegranate, persimmon or fig orchards in the back yards of the houses. Nicer houses have designated front yards and usually a big veranda with Roman columns and grape arbors above. Nearby also are a few sheep pastures, and the sheep will come right up to the fence asking for treats. And in the distance the fields slope up into the big wooded hills of the island. Some people would call them mountains. 

The hospital is literally across the street from our apartment building, the commute is less than three minutes from the door of our apartment. We got extremely lucky with this, we were almost going to live in the psychiatric hospital in 8 person dorm rooms. Not fun. Our nearby accommodations are much better.

My first impression of the hospital is that it is definitely not "Shutter Island" the first thing everyone sites once they heard I was going to a psychiatric hospital on an island in eastern Europe. The landscaping and grounds are nice, modern, well maintained and clean. Patients walk around and talk, smoke, and joke with one another. 

There we met Vesna, the director of the hospital and our host for the project. She told us a bit about the history of the hospital, when she took it over and started making improvements and some of the demographics of the hospital. Most of the patients are here for addiction rehab, there is also a hospice for the very elderly who need care. A smaller percentage have social disorders and there are smaller numbers of other problems. Most of the people there are there voluntarily and as such there are fences but not huge stone walls with watch towers.

After the orientation she walked us around the campus. By the entrance is the game area, they have a large size chess board, boccie ball, ping pong etc. the Main square where all the main buildings face in on is the primary social space for patients. They sit on the veranda, smoke, talk, and take walks around the garden. Our site for the design/build is at what I would call the back of the campus. It's the entire length of one side and includes a wooded grove area, an open meadow with wildflowers, then terracing left over from when the site was a vineyard who knows how many years ago. that part is now just a dirt mound with trees on it.

We ate dinner at the hospital and it was very pleasant besides my almost getting hit by a car while we were waiting for the building to open. It was coming down the main way and sped around the corner into the alley we were standing in, nearly hit us with squealing breaks then backed up and sped away. I do NOT like the way people drive here.

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Wednesday morning the sun was shining through the skylight and I was welcomed to a lovely view off the balcony of our apartment. It was deliciously warm out and not too hot and it felt wonderful to be comfortable. I met with my group for site analysis. The part of the landscape design process that is just figuring out what's there, who uses the site when, what goes on there. What are the sun patterns, where does the water go, what plants are there etc. Getting to know the site as well as we can before we start proposing how to massively change it.

My group and I walked around the site, up to the top of the mound, down the terraces through the woods and the meadow and into the grove taking notes and making sketches. When we thought we had enough information for now we walked through the grounds of the hospital to get a better sense for it. We are a bit of a spectacle an were approached several times by patients. I realized that I didn't know a single word of Croatian and quickly picked up "good afternoon" (dobar dan) "good evening" (dobra vecer) and "thank you"  (hvala). 

Vesna had told us that all of the patients who approach us would probably be friendly. They are just curious and interested in something new in their worlds. She said if they ask us for cigarettes to just say sorry, no. A very friendly older guy tried to tell us about every experience he'd ever had involving the U.S. Before we started to insistently say "ciao!" and ended the conversation. The most common question we got was "Where are you from?"



That afternoon a group of us decided to walk into town. The clouds and rain of the night before were a distant memory and a hot, sunny day beamed down on us. Unfortunately about half the way to town we had to walk on the road (that has no shoulder and certainly no sidewalk), but with a big group we were more visible and didn't have any close calls, but people still went around us at 70mph or so. 

After a mile and half we reached the beach trail. It thankfully turned away off the road and straight to the water, which is as the Adriatic tends to be, perfectly blue and clear. The walk first took us through fields of grass sparsely populated by the occasional bird yard or sheep pasture. 

The section along the water is the best part, it becomes a formal walk, with places for boats to pull up, little marinas, and stairs down into the water for bathers. In the distance we could see a tower and the gleaming white buildings of the little seaside city. I'm pretty sure Rab must have been the inspiration for "The Little Mermaid"'s seaside kingdom for all it's picturesqueness and perfection.

The walk ended at a sheer wall with a staircase up to the city. At the top was a stone courtyard overlooking the water with live tree growing in the center. The city is almost entirely stone, and since it is so small and on a hill cars can't drive up most of the tiny, twisting streets so the whole city is pedestrian friendly, most of the streets connecting by steep alleyways or small staircases lit by wrought iron lamps on sconces. The houses are behind walls with metal gates and in most cases their plants and flowers spill over the walls, draping vines and colorful star bursts of color down into the streets and alleys. 

Everywhere I looked there was evidence of some kind of loving detail, in the door knockers and hinges, to the flagstones set in the streets, to the window panes and gardens. 

Ann and I walked around together, looking into the shops remaining open after the exodus of the tourists at the end of the season. We got a gelato, walked around a bit, bought a few things, got another gelato, found more people, shopped around and generally enjoyed the day.

Rab is definitely a tourist destination, practically becoming a ghost town by this time of year. Which means we almost had the place to ourselves. Running up and down the steps to different levels and views of the city, each one a little different and special. Discovering new nooks, crannies, stairwells and courtyards at every turn made for a wonderful afternoon of exploration until the sun set. So far I'm very, very happy with our study abroad destination.

Politics and Ice Cream: Zagreb

Saturday morning I took a long shower, ate a big breakfast and prepared myself for the next few days of travel. My flight to Frankfurt wasn’t until the evening, so I spent the morning and afternoon working on the computer and figuring out school arrangements.

I left the hotel at little after three, took a bus to a bus to the airport and was sitting at my gate by 5:30. The plane was late, but other than that the whole experience was as pleasant as it could be with the exception of getting frisked at security because I forgot to take my sunglasses off my head when I went through the metal detector. Sunglasses = terrorist obviously.

I flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and the flight attendant giving the safety protocol speech had a serious case of the giggles over the speaker which set the mood for the whole flight. Everyone was giggling the whole time (especially after the cart came around with free alcohol.) I had a glass of wine, my first drink of alcohol this trip hoping it might relax me enough to get to sleep.

We landed in Frankfurt, into possibly the largest airport I’ve ever seen. The signs said “Frankfurt AirCity” and they were not lying.

In the terminal I wandered around a bit, by now it was a little after 10pm but with no windows or glass doors to the outside everything was in a perpetual noon light. The only indicators that it was nighttime were the lack of people and the fact that Starbucks was closed.

I pumped Euros into a free-standing computer long enough to get a frantic facebook message to my family to tell them I had made it to Frankfurt, everything was ok, and that I wouldn’t have much internet access. Then I found a set of three seats in a quieter corner of the terminal looped my hand through the strap in my bag and tried to go to sleep; beginning the long wait to my next flight in the morning.

As you can imagine sleep was less than restful. I woke up every half hour or so because my arm was numb or the intercom was particularly loud, or the guy with the ride-around floor waxer drove past my head. But it was better than nothing. At about 3:00am I gave up and read until I could go to my terminal at 8:00.

There I found John and Ann, two people from my program and very welcome familiar faces. They had just flown over from Seattle and we were on the same flight to Zagreb.

The temperature and the way the air felt were the first things that struck me about Zagreb as soon as we got off the plane. It was comfortably warm, and the air very humid. I started sweating immediately in my long underwear left over from Scotland. Not quite tropical flowers scented the air, creating a complex, spicy smell I really liked.

We took a bus from the airport to the tram station, and after a little confusion boarded the correct tram into the city center. Got off at the main square and after a bit more confusion found our hostel and our fellows.

Zagreb is definitely a town built for warm days and nights. All the shopping and café streets have large, comfortable outdoor seating areas. The alleys and streets are narrower than Edinburgh and the style is more varied. Almost all of Edinburgh that I saw was Georgian surrounding medieval with a little bit of modern thrown in here and there, it’s almost all the same color palette. Zagreb on the other hand has a multitude of colors and styles all pushed into a tight space. But you can tell that neighborhoods were built together because of the similar architectural styles.

The hostel is in a small alley on a hill that is predominantly a café through the middle. At the top of the alley is the beginning of a major market that happens every day. I was in a room with three other people in my program in a room that overlooked the alleyway. Wandering in through the front door and up the narrow steps we were greeted by Winterbottom, and finally I relaxed to know we were in the right place. Our room had a window facing the alley and with it open we could hear all the sounds of the restaurant below, clinking glasses, the ever constant American top 40, laugher, a multitude of languages and the ever present smell of cigarette smoke.

After dropping of our luggage and freshening up we went off in search of Croatian SIM cards. Since I bought my phone in Europe it will work here but needs a new SIM to not be roaming. In the oddly long line at the cellphone store I started talking with a girl wearing American flag jeans who lives in Zagreb and wanted to practice her English. By the end of the long wait in line she asked if we wanted to go to dessert with her later and we set up a time to meet.

People in Zagreb, or at least in our district seem to move a bit slower than those in Edinburgh, taking more of their time, and they also seem to put more effort into how they dress. Perhaps it’s because it’s so warm that one is less likely to have to wear a coat over their whole outfit? I’m not sure, but I felt decidedly shabby in my cargo pants and bandanna as we explored up the cobblestone streets.

Ena met us with her friends at a local dessert place with enough seating for our fairly large group that came along. They explained how the Croatian school system works and that they are 16 and have two years left of school. They are all working on getting their French, German and especially English as good as possible so they can leave Croatia as soon as possible. They weren’t sure why we would even come to visit if we didn’t have to. This kind of threw us for a loop,

“Zagreb is beautiful!” We said, “The architecture is lovely, and it’s so warm here.” They begrudgingly agreed. I’m not sure if it was just them being teenagers and wanting to leave home or if their desperation to immigrate has to do with the government and what’s going on with the economy.

“Men are lucky to have jobs here.” They said, “Any job, any one they can get. And it’s actually a pretty conservative country. We don’t like that.”

“But we will be in the EU” One interjected.

“Yeah, someday.” Said another. “I don’t want to wait for it to get good. I want to go somewhere where it is good already.”

I’m not an expert on the Croatian economy at all, but whatever is going on here certainly makes it an affordable place to visit. The currency is Kuna, and $1 is about 5 kuna. I arrived not knowing this, went to an ATM and just got 300 kuna, roughly $50. But my ice cream, a decent amount of good quality stuff was only 6 kuna. About a $1.20. A full meal later was 25 kuna, about $5, A glass of wine for 10 kuna, two dollars. One can get by pretty dang cheaply in Croatia assuming you don’t get screwed over by bus drivers and stall vendors: which happens a lot, especially to young traveling Americans.

This morning we woke up early, my bunkmates are dealing with the jetlag I’m only starting to get over, the kind that wakes you up at 4:30am. But we were the first ones into the showers this morning and even though the water was usually either scalding hot or arctic cold, it still felt marvelous to wash off all the travel I had done.

I popped up to the market to get some breakfast and found out that if you motion to a stack of carrots and say “Two?” and put up two fingers a very nice old lady will give you two kilos of carrots. Then pretend not to understand what you mean when you try to correct it and still demand two kilos worth of money. In the end, I have a lot of carrots.

I was smarter after that and was able to get exactly two nectarines, a small basket of raspberries, a pear, two buns (savory and sweet) and a sandwich for later.

At 10:00 we readied ourselves, and hefted our luggage back into the street off to the tram. The tram took us to a bus and despite the bus driver being kind of an ass and “forgetting” to give everyone their change we started off across the country to Rijeka.

Most people slept all the way but I stayed up and got to enjoy the scenery. We headed out of Zagreb and into the mountains. The woodland turning into deep forest as far as the eye could see over the rolling peaks. This is my favorite kind of view; I like to be able to imagine that the forest land goes on forever and to be reminded that some great swaths of it still exist despite our ministrations.

An hour and a half into the bus ride we started to come down out of the mountains and into the town of Rijeka. It’s smaller than Zagreb but still feels like a city, it also smelled different; less cigarette smoke, more food smells, and a briny saltiness that gained purchase the closer we walked to the marina.

Now on the ferry I have watched island after island go by for the better part of two hours. The two televisions at the front of the cabin are playing MacGyver and something with Chuck Norris in English with Croatian subtitles.

We should be on Rab soon! I’m looking forward to not carrying this pack around for a while, clean clothes and a bed I don’t have to move out of in a few days is also going to be great. I think we start sight analysis of our site for the quarter tomorrow. No easing into this project!