Shop, play, and learn English (or Greek, or Latin...)

Zagreb has enjoyed a shopping center boom during the past 2-3 years. Names of all of the places are in English so should you come to visit, it really won't be a stretch for you to remember whether you've visited King Cross, Avenue Mall or City Center One (implying that City Center Two will come to existence at some point). I really can't say that I understand or agree with the English labels. English is not the native language here so why push it? Say my mom goes shopping to a mall... She doesn't really know how to spell the name of the place because it is not Croatian. Then at the store, it'll say "sale" in English, German or Italian. Since she doesn't speak those languages, she might as well just walk by and not bother spending her money at that store because clearly Croatian customers aren't targeted to begin with. I suppose good old Croatian apparently isn't good enough or fancy enough to advertise a sale. My job is marketing and in my opinion, this is not good marketing.

I am also curious as to who approved those names. I've been looking into potentially starting up a little business. Do you know where I've been stuck for three months? Company name. I know, you'd think it would be easy, but Croatian law seems to exist to complicate things and contradict itself. Let's see..., potential business names must be submitted and are then reviewed by a judge who then approves (or in my case not) a name. So I thought, OK, makes sense, they want to make sure nobody uses a vulgar or otherwise inappropriate name. Well, here is a little discussion on the rules... The company name can be a Croatian word but can't use Croatia in it. That is reserved for special folks and I am not a part of the club. Denied! OK, I'll forgive them that one even though there are millions of combinations of web site names with word Croatia in it. In a country with 4.5 million people we're not likely to run out of good names soon. The word has to be in Croatian, Latin or Greek. Hmmmm... I need to have a name that'll work for English speaking customers. I don't think any of them speak Latin or Greek. I see a potential problem there. So I come up with a really good one with a Latin word and a number. Denied! Can't use a number unless it's spelled out. Why is it OK spelled out but not OK when it's a number? See the problem here? It's called micromanagement. I am wasting their time and they are wasting mine. Nobody wins, no revenue, no new jobs created. Once I finally figure out a name I have to get a business license and do all the paperwork so I can go waste a day waiting in line to ask them if I could please, please have that web site domain name because someone was kind enough to finally approve a suitable company name. I'd rather sit at my computer at 2 in the morning and go online to purchase a domain name but that's not possible for .hr domains. I came up with another one but I am afraid to send it to them because they will likely deny it again. I am not bitter! I'll let you know how it goes.

Let's get back to more fun topics. Like shopping! :) There is one, well two, extremely good things about those new shopping centers that are popping up. Each one has one or more playrooms as a part of the facility and yes, believe it or not, it's free, supervised and in a confined area so you can just drop the kids off and do a little shopping and come pick them up in 1-2 hours. Not bad! Sure, usually those are in conjunction with a toy store (but not always) and kids have talents when it comes to talking you into parting with your money to buy necessities like all important stickers, toys and candy. But it's fun and useful and we like to go visit different playrooms. Especially now that it is chilly outside. We approve of their variety and equipment which ranges from slides and climbing gear to one recently discovered place that actually has dress up toys, and legos and such. Actually, the plan is to head there Saturday for some fun.

Second nice thing about malls is a grocery store. Each mall has a large grocery store (think Bruno's times three or more) as one of it's anchor stores. So kids go to play and I go get groceries. Everyone wins. Good thing. Today we did just that at King Cross after getting the kids from daycare. Strangely the pavement was fenced off right by the entrance. I thought that maybe they were fixing something. Then I realized that they turned it into an ice skating rink for customers and it's... yes, free! Ice skates included. How cool is that! We'll try to make it there this weekend or next weekend. Hopefully it'll still be there. If not then we'll just have to settle for a moonwalk inside.

I've heard that a new, biggest yet, shopping center will be built right in our neighborhood. Don't know it's name yet but I bet it'll be in English. I am thinking that it'll be some two miles away. Perhaps less. I am not that good at guessing distances. I don't know why we need more shopping centers as it seems to me that there certainly are plenty around. But, I like the idea that it will be supremely close and convenient so bring it on! We're in a dead end street so traffic won't change but the convenience factor will go way up. Hooray for city living! Maybe, if I manage to supress my American "love-my-car" instincts, I'll even dare to sit on a bike to get there. I give it 5-10% chance. What do you think?