Summer in the city

July 1st marks the true start of the summer in the city of Zagreb. It's as if overnight everything changes and only on September 1st everything returns back to normal. July 1st marks the beginning of mass vacations. Literally! The city loses a large number of its some 1 million inhabitants who all migrate elsewhere for a while; primarily the beach. By Croatian law (and in many other European countries) 4 weeks (20 business days) of vacation is guaranteed. Most people choose to take most or all of their vacation during the summer. As you might imagine, that doesn't necessarily leave enough people to keep the businesses open. For example, at my bank, they will work from 8:00am to 2:00pm only during these two months. Other months of the year they have two shifts and are open till 8:00pm I believe. Many other businesses will follow suit and close their doors for the part of the day they are typically open.

It's not just businesses that are affected so significantly. I was very annoyed to find out that our daycare will be combining their groups for the summer. The kids and teachers get reshuffled as most of the kids and teachers appear not to be around for large chunks of time. As I got properly Americanized and workaholicazied, such behaviors are strange and hard to comprehend. Maybe some day in the future, we'll be able to do the same thing. Yours truly will be working hard all summer trying to make a buck. As things look right now, my July will stay quite busy as American calendars don't quite realize its summer. Maybe its the air conditioning in the US (not quite common around here) that made everyone forget about the summer.

I understand that Italians do the "gone for the summer" thing to an even greater extent and some companies will flat shut down completely for a month for vacations. Can you imagine that?No wonder Italians seem to be so laid back.