During the night I woke up several times because I heard strange-sounding voices from outside and the train didn’t move. At dusk someone knocked heavily at our door. As a special service the conductor woke us up and returned our tickets. Despite my most secret fears, we reached Split safe and sound.
Sparsely washed and bleary eyed I looked for my co-students. I was elated to see them. We went to a café right away, because we all needed urgently a cup of hot, black and sugary liquid. It was an unpleasant surprise that nearly the whole town was a building site. Gone was our dream of sitting in a café and watching the wavy ocean in front of us.(Picture: Nadine and Ewald)
We soon overcame this disappointment and used the morning to get to know each other. Our small group consisted of Sanja, Nadine, Anita, Sabine 1, Sabine 2 und Ewald. After several cups of coffee we felt strong enough to enquire about a bus to Trogir. After we attained satisfying information, we decided to deposit our luggage and to stroll through the town.
We discovered that the old town centre of Split was very small. Actually, the Dioclecian Palace represented the entire city centre.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split
Ambling along we spotted by chance an exhibition of books. With relish we thumbed through the various kinds of literature. In the end I became the proud owner of the book: “German without trouble” (Njemački bez muke). That may sound a bit strange but I know for sure that in this book the Croatian part contains no mistakes.
At noon we picked our luggage up and searched for the right means of transport to Trogir. The tickets were very cheap. But much to our surprise we had to pay for our bags and suitcases additionally. The bus driver shocked us with the message that we were supposed to walk about three kilometres from the bus stop to our hotel. The conductor was a nice guy and was enchanted by Sanja, so he coaxed the bus driver to stop immediately in front of our hotel. It’s a real pleasure to travel with young pretty girls. (Picture: Sanja, Nadine, Ewald and Sabine 1)Manda and Željka (my Croatian teacher) arrived only at five o’ clock p.m. and with three further first year students from Graz the Austrian group was complete. In the evening the workshops for the next week were formed. A large variety of courses was at hand. We could choose among the following topics:
Singing traditional (Klapa)
Singing modern
Dancing traditional
Drama workshop
Preparing and presenting speeches
Writing newspaper articles
Writing short stories
Writing poems
I enrolled for " Writing short stories" because I didn’t only want to spend a sunny week at the sea but also to extend my vocabulary and to get some writing practice. From the approximately seventy participants altogether four chose the classes “Writing short stories” and “Writing poems”.
To put it in a nutshell, the two classes were joined. We were expected to write short stories in the morning and to compose poetry in the afternoon. Already on the train Sead had told me that the course leaders Helena Burić and Olja Savičević-Ivančević were famous writers in their mother country. Much to my dismay I realised that both couldn’t speak a word of German.
Since I was in Croatia I didn’t want to communicate in English, so I didn’t even try it. Once again the fear arose how I could handle this situation.
Well, on the one hand, I possessed a tiny Croatian pocket dictionary, the newly acquired book “German without trouble” and a one and a half year of study experience. On the other hand I started dealing with Croatian really on point zero and now I was suddenly facing two well-known authors. Would my knowledge be sufficient enough to meet their expectations?
(Is to be continued)
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