In article , Dave D
says...
OK, this was rather offtopic, but you (or someone else) may find it
interesting.



I do indeed find it interesting. I am fascinated by Eastern Europe and the
Balkan countries. I intend to take a driving holiday one day and tour all of
eastern Europe and the Balkans, perhaps even Ukraine, Belarus, and the
Baltic countries.

I actually had a holiday in Croatia when it was still part of Yugoslavia and
under communist rule. It was a real experience for a 15 year old and no-one
else I knew had been to an Eastern European country back then.

We stayed at Porec on the Istrian peninsula, and had an interesting day trip
to Trieste, which meant we crossed through Slovenia and crossed the 'Iron
Curtain' by road into Italy.

You didn't cross the Iron Curtain', believe me :-)) The truth is,
former Yugoslavia WAS a communist country, but our system was FAR FAR
away from what people have in mind when they say 'communist country'.
As you may know, we were one of the 'Independent' (I don't know what
term is used for those countries that were out of Eastern/Western
block). We've belonged neither to the eastern nor to the western
associations. In fact, I would say, both of us were all the time on the
same side of the Iron Curtain :-))

Exciting stuff for a kid! I have to say though
that Porec was disappointing and I believe it to be too heavily geared
towards tourism to give a taste of the real Croatia. If it had been my
choice, I'd have preferred to have gone inland and seen the real Croatia,
I'm not into resorts and much prefer seeing what countries are really about.
The scenery on the journey from Pula airport to Porec was very nice though.


As you have said, Istra is nice (BTW, Pula is my born place, although I
am from NW of the country) but you should see the other parts also,
never is too late.

I know what you mean about Hungarian. It's distantly related to Finnish
which is also rated as one of the most difficult languages to master, at
least for English speakers.

That may be true, I was reading about Finnish beeing related to
Hungarian (and some Siberian languages also), they both are part of the
Ugric-Finnish (I am not sure if I've written correctly) group of the
languages.

The pronunciation alone is extremely difficult
for Western Europeans.

It is extremely difficult for most of the Croatians also. But not for
the ones who live on the NW (yes, that's me :-) ) because dialects used
around here have very complex pronunciation impossible to write using
Croatian alphabet.

And to be ontopic again :-))
I can now listen to the FM for about an hour before station fades out.
And it seems every day FM works for a slightly longer period, really
weird.

--
Chupo