Greetings from The Mud

Here is a little trivia for you. City of Zagreb is comprised of a number of small communities. We live in one called Blato. Translation - The Mud. And it's been really trying hard to live up to its proud name. I am assuming that it was named some 50 years ago when there were just a few homes here and probably few or no streets which is a far cry from a densely populated area that it is now. In recent year, Zagreb has finally started expanding its infrastructure to its outskirts including city water, gas, sewer. I know that you feel like in the US that kind of work sometimes takes forever, gets messy and annoying. You have no idea. So for the past three year our street has been stripped of the asphalt (other streets on and off to different degrees) so the work could be done. No, its still not completed. Unbelievable, I know. At different times the project ran out of money, or construction was happening elsewhere, or it was too cold, or there was no apparent reason why nothing was being done. Now that we are several weeks away from local elections, the work has magically resumed. Do you really think these folks are worth reelecting? Me neither.

Fresh round of work means a fresh layer of mud to drive over while the street doesn't really look like a street. So Friday our dead end street was blocked by equipment as I was returning from dropping the kids off at school. So, I decided to be enterprising and take a shortcut over an unpaved empty lot, conveniently adjacent to a neighboring street. This lot was commonly used as a temporary "bridge" in situations like this by many of us. Unfortunately, it rained two days previous. You see where this is headed. An inviting meadow turned into a menacing mud pit within seconds. Yes, it was a bad decision but once you're in it there really is no turning back. To make things more interesting I was giving a lift to a couple of carless neighbors returning from a grocery run so I ended up having an audience for the adrenaline pumping ordeal. While trying to maneuver the car onto grass a number of things went through my head including reprimands from my husband and my dad's face when I called him to help me dig the car out. A few seconds later I managed to finagle my way onto the road and could breathe a sigh of relief. I trekked to our clean, paved parking lot which quickly got covered in mud dripping from the car. The car was covered top to bottom, windshield included. It was comical.

It was embarrassing to drive the car over the next two days. I was going to drive it to the car wash the same day but our regular car wash is currently closed for some reason and I didn't know of other locations. There aren't that many car washes around here. So today I finally took it in to a newly discovered location. In Croatia, a car wash is a lot more personalized experience. A prewash is done by hand so two to three guys work at each car wash. All glass is wiped by hand as well after the wash. I don't have to tell you the looks that I got when I pulled up. I just tried to keep a straight face. Cool as a cucumber I emerged on the other end with a clean, shiny car. I haven't told Chris that I washed it yet. I want him to be pleasantly surprised when he sees it in the morning.