Croatio: A Land of Contrasts

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Cursed Lumberjack: Nov 14, 2006; A rather unfortunate logger indeed.

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

Here are some pics I snapped today. I went out to find me a ciggy and decided to bring my camera along because goons seem to have a boner for bomb shelters.

I don't think you can really appreciate how massive this airlock is - you could easily drop a tiny car through it, and the entrance is probably accessible from what looks to me like a large underground parking facility - hell I ain't going down, it's a good place to get robbed. The whole meadow is fake, it's hollowed out entirely, and the surrounding buildings are strategically placed to take the worst of the bomb shock wave, protecting the vulnerable entrance and the airlocks.

Estates completed during the 1960s generally don't have fancy shelters, but when the Cold War started picking up again during the 1970s, all newly built estates came with at least some form of fortification. Josip Broz Tito thought that, considering the seriously bad track record the Balkans have with ethnic wars, that it's not outlandish to think that these places could see war again and that it may even be nuclear. Another good idea by Tito was how he never equipped Yugoslav Air Force with large carpet-bombing aircraft which could be used to bomb enemy cities - though I reckon that this was probably done not to upset eastern-bloc Hungary, it came as a real blessing during the Yugoslav wars since this absence of bombers kept Zagreb and a lot of other places out of harm's way for the most part.

Another airlock, it's located nearby but I don't think the two facilities are connected. I love the mushroom domes, this is obviously a fallout shelter (large battery-powered motors pull air through the mushroom intakes and run it through a filter to provide fresh air for the bunker.)

God I love the 1970s. Lots of concrete and crazy planning:

Yes, this is a mind-boggling viaduct over the parking lot. 1970s brutalism mandated that lots of concrete should be used in one way or another, and I can only come up with a conclusion that this monstrosity was built "for the hell of it."

***

I am reluctant to call these buildings "commieblocks" or "the projects". Both of those terms are used in a perjorative sense to denote "quick and dirty" fixes for housing shortages. In Yugoslavia, new estates were built as a part of the drive for urbanisation and construction wasn't nasty and rushed as it was common in eastern bloc countries.
I am not going to go on a long tirade about the wonders of Yugoblocks because I'm tired and hungry - suffice is to say that our modern buildings wouldn't look out of place in, say, Japan. It's true that we've had a fair share of architectural misses, but the majority of the buildings erected after 1964 in Zagreb were really, really good.

lmao he got so high that he went and made a fully coherent, informative and interesting post with zero side anecdotes about how he is ruining his own life

hes really gonna regret that one when he wakes up in the morning

# ? Jul 7, 2015 07:35

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 06:44

zgrowler2: Oct 29, 2011; HOW DOES THE IPHONE APP WORK?? I WILL SPAM ENDLESSLY EVERYWHERE AND DISREGARD ANY REPLIES

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

Here are some pics I snapped today. I went out to find me a ciggy and decided to bring my camera along because goons seem to have a boner for bomb shelters.

I don't think you can really appreciate how massive this airlock is - you could easily drop a tiny car through it, and the entrance is probably accessible from what looks to me like a large underground parking facility - hell I ain't going down, it's a good place to get robbed. The whole meadow is fake, it's hollowed out entirely, and the surrounding buildings are strategically placed to take the worst of the bomb shock wave, protecting the vulnerable entrance and the airlocks.

Estates completed during the 1960s generally don't have fancy shelters, but when the Cold War started picking up again during the 1970s, all newly built estates came with at least some form of fortification. Josip Broz Tito thought that, considering the seriously bad track record the Balkans have with ethnic wars, that it's not outlandish to think that these places could see war again and that it may even be nuclear. Another good idea by Tito was how he never equipped Yugoslav Air Force with large carpet-bombing aircraft which could be used to bomb enemy cities - though I reckon that this was probably done not to upset eastern-bloc Hungary, it came as a real blessing during the Yugoslav wars since this absence of bombers kept Zagreb and a lot of other places out of harm's way for the most part.

Another airlock, it's located nearby but I don't think the two facilities are connected. I love the mushroom domes, this is obviously a fallout shelter (large battery-powered motors pull air through the mushroom intakes and run it through a filter to provide fresh air for the bunker.)

God I love the 1970s. Lots of concrete and crazy planning:

Yes, this is a mind-boggling viaduct over the parking lot. 1970s brutalism mandated that lots of concrete should be used in one way or another, and I can only come up with a conclusion that this monstrosity was built "for the hell of it."

***

I am reluctant to call these buildings "commieblocks" or "the projects". Both of those terms are used in a perjorative sense to denote "quick and dirty" fixes for housing shortages. In Yugoslavia, new estates were built as a part of the drive for urbanisation and construction wasn't nasty and rushed as it was common in eastern bloc countries.
I am not going to go on a long tirade about the wonders of Yugoblocks because I'm tired and hungry - suffice is to say that our modern buildings wouldn't look out of place in, say, Japan. It's true that we've had a fair share of architectural misses, but the majority of the buildings erected after 1964 in Zagreb were really, really good.

more of this please

# ? Jul 8, 2015 16:58

Trans Ferdinand: Oct 24, 2005; Take Me Out Of Gear

this is literally my favorite thread on the forums. I felt this way when it was just about you abusing parkinson drugs, now it's taking on a whole new dimension of awesome

# ? Jul 9, 2015 02:18

Old Man Pants: Nov 22, 2010; Strippers are people too!

Can I see what a 2 liter of beer looks like?

# ? Jul 9, 2015 13:06

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

2L plastic beer bottles are really common in most of Europe, cheap too!

# ? Jul 9, 2015 13:23

serious norman: Dec 13, 2007; im pickle rick!!!!

Saros posted:

2L plastic beer bottles are really common in most of Europe, cheap too!

Want.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 14:20

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

Sigma-X posted:

How the gently caress are they foreclosing on a property you sold?

That's not how property transfers work. Did you not actually sell the property?

I missed two payments by accident while the apartment was still in my possession and frankly I had no clue about this up until a few days ago. They are foreclosing on my bank account (which is empty anyway), not on any real estate properties. Now I'll have to romp around with lawyers and public notaries over loving $110. :ughh:

Colonel J posted:

Screw the bunkers, I want to hear that story

This is a story about the best job I ever had. From around 2007 to 2010, I used to work in a large food warehouse as a forklift truck driver and a general purpose worker. We were unloading trucks, organized the boxes of merchandise into palletized "commissions" before shipping them out to stores and generally did a million little things to keep the stuff flowing in and out. This job was physically ardous and the salaries were insultingly low: I was breaking my back seven days a week for mere $450 a month in total - which was just a tiny little bit over the minimum wage in Croatia at the time. I was constantly thinking whether bloody $450 a month was worth grinding my (already wrecked) spine, the option of just quitting the job was something that crossed my mind every time I had to pick up a wet pallet and stack it onto a 7ft tall stack of pallets, or when I had to load up eleven 50kg bags of sugar onto my pallet for example - anyway, it was one of those jobs which chews you and spits you out. Hardly anyone could survive working there for more than a few years, and none of the senior employees were generic, physical "box throwers" - they all found tiny niches for themselves, away from the "pressure cooker" atmosphere in the warehouse. It became clear to me early on that I'll have to step aside a bit or that I'm not gonna stick around for long - for one reason or another.

I got my big break around 2009. One worker from a janitorial work unit went into retirement and the warehouse was looking for someone to take his place. The manager of our warehouse asked around if anyone is willing to volunteer for the transfer, and I was the only one willing to go through with this - mostly because I already knew what I would be getting myself into. Other workers thought I was nuts for demoting myself into a janitor, but time has proven me right: the new position entailed only a fraction of physical labor compared to what I was doing before, and there were other benefits too (free beer, candybars; assorted edible trash.)

My coworkers in the janitorial unit were complete cartoon characters: some were drunk, some retarded, some hands-down crazy, some all of the above. What's most ironic is that I fit in there like a glove.

Now, your warehouse produces incredible amounts of waste: nylon sheets, cardboard, paper, and a wide variety of biological, non-recyclable trash. We had three garbage compactors: cardboard, plastic and "everything else", they were all connected to truck-sized, large 20m3 dumpsters. Our job was to sort the trash in order to weed out as much recyclables as it was possible: our company had to pay to have the trash trucked out, but a recycling company would take away our plastic and cardboard with no charge - and there was so much trash that paying someone to sort the crap out actually made economic sense.

All warehouses have one persistent problem with merchandise: if transport packaging gets damaged, the actual products and their (much less sturdier) packaging won't "survive" the bumpy ride from the warehouse to the store. Bottles get crushed and cardboard boxes get squashed and munched up - would you buy a box of cereal that was filthy and looked like someone stomped it out? Yeah, you bet. Another common occurence that say, a few cans of tuna get ripped open when a reach truck operator accidentally snags the pylon while moving the pallet around - the contents of damaged cans will poo poo up whatever else there is in the box, and we frequently tossed out entire 48-can boxes of tuna cans because the maggots will eat anything that gets soaked by the meat juice, including the paper labels on the can.

As you can see, we used to toss out a lot of stuff that was completely safe to eat - but otherwise unsellable.

The 2L bottles of beer came in sixpacks, wrapped in sturdy plastic shrinkwrap. Insane amounts of cheap, store-brand beer would get sold every day, and this stuff was so cheap - it's understood that a 2L bottle cost less than 25 cents to make - that it was not economical to try and repair the damaged packaging, so it was routinely written off every Tuesday morning. The beer could become "defective" in a number of ways - a single bottle in a sixpack is not filled all the way in, the label is torn or badly printed, or simply the packaging got scratched and filthy. More expensive stuff, such as chocolate, would get shipped back to the manufacturer for repackaging, but beer was so cheap that it was more economical just to toss a couple of sixpacks every day and get it over with.

Every Tuesday was a "writeoff day." We'd get an enormous hamper full of moldy, disgusting crap from the warehouse and it was our job to shovel all of that into the garbage compactor. This was an hour of hard work, but the upside was that what was to happen with the contents of the crate was completely under our discretion and we'd set some stuff aside, such as beer and candy. Better yet, we had a sink with running water available so we'd rinse our bottles before drinking them.

We used to have a table with a few chairs, hidden behind the dumpsters so the bosses couldn't see that we're spending most of the day slacking off, reading newspapers and drinking trash beer. Hell, I upped the game by falling asleep several times, only to be woken up by a coworker who tickled me with a straw until I started sneezing.

It was the sweetest loving job I ever had, and I have so much stories about the people working there. I'll save that for another post, I had to slowly introduce you to what was happening there because if I went bluntly into this, you wouldn't believe the sheer craziness.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:39

Cursed Lumberjack: Nov 14, 2006; A rather unfortunate logger indeed.

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

My coworkers in the janitorial unit were complete cartoon characters: some were drunk, some retarded, some hands-down crazy, some all of the above. What's most ironic is that I fit in there like a glove.

you dont know what irony means lol

# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:51

Puppy Galaxy: Aug 1, 2004

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

I missed two payments by accident while the apartment was still in my possession and frankly I had no clue about this up until a few days ago. They are foreclosing on my bank account (which is empty anyway), not on any real estate properties. Now I'll have to romp around with lawyers and public notaries over loving $110.

This is a story about the best job I ever had. From around 2007 to 2010, I used to work in a large food warehouse as a forklift truck driver and a general purpose worker. We were unloading trucks, organized the boxes of merchandise into palletized "commissions" before shipping them out to stores and generally did a million little things to keep the stuff flowing in and out. This job was physically ardous and the salaries were insultingly low: I was breaking my back seven days a week for mere $450 a month in total - which was just a tiny little bit over the minimum wage in Croatia at the time. I was constantly thinking whether bloody $450 a month was worth grinding my (already wrecked) spine, the option of just quitting the job was something that crossed my mind every time I had to pick up a wet pallet and stack it onto a 7ft tall stack of pallets, or when I had to load up eleven 50kg bags of sugar onto my pallet for example - anyway, it was one of those jobs which chews you and spits you out. Hardly anyone could survive working there for more than a few years, and none of the senior employees were generic, physical "box throwers" - they all found tiny niches for themselves, away from the "pressure cooker" atmosphere in the warehouse. It became clear to me early on that I'll have to step aside a bit or that I'm not gonna stick around for long - for one reason or another.

I got my big break around 2009. One worker from a janitorial work unit went into retirement and the warehouse was looking for someone to take his place. The manager of our warehouse asked around if anyone is willing to volunteer for the transfer, and I was the only one willing to go through with this - mostly because I already knew what I would be getting myself into. Other workers thought I was nuts for demoting myself into a janitor, but time has proven me right: the new position entailed only a fraction of physical labor compared to what I was doing before, and there were other benefits too (free beer, candybars; assorted edible trash.)

My coworkers in the janitorial unit were complete cartoon characters: some were drunk, some retarded, some hands-down crazy, some all of the above. What's most ironic is that I fit in there like a glove.

Now, your warehouse produces incredible amounts of waste: nylon sheets, cardboard, paper, and a wide variety of biological, non-recyclable trash. We had three garbage compactors: cardboard, plastic and "everything else", they were all connected to truck-sized, large 20m3 dumpsters. Our job was to sort the trash in order to weed out as much recyclables as it was possible: our company had to pay to have the trash trucked out, but a recycling company would take away our plastic and cardboard with no charge - and there was so much trash that paying someone to sort the crap out actually made economic sense.

All warehouses have one persistent problem with merchandise: if transport packaging gets damaged, the actual products and their (much less sturdier) packaging won't "survive" the bumpy ride from the warehouse to the store. Bottles get crushed and cardboard boxes get squashed and munched up - would you buy a box of cereal that was filthy and looked like someone stomped it out? Yeah, you bet. Another common occurence that say, a few cans of tuna get ripped open when a reach truck operator accidentally snags the pylon while moving the pallet around - the contents of damaged cans will poo poo up whatever else there is in the box, and we frequently tossed out entire 48-can boxes of tuna cans because the maggots will eat anything that gets soaked by the meat juice, including the paper labels on the can.

As you can see, we used to toss out a lot of stuff that was completely safe to eat - but otherwise unsellable.

The 2L bottles of beer came in sixpacks, wrapped in sturdy plastic shrinkwrap. Insane amounts of cheap, store-brand beer would get sold every day, and this stuff was so cheap - it's understood that a 2L bottle cost less than 25 cents to make - that it was not economical to try and repair the damaged packaging, so it was routinely written off every Tuesday morning. The beer could become "defective" in a number of ways - a single bottle in a sixpack is not filled all the way in, the label is torn or badly printed, or simply the packaging got scratched and filthy. More expensive stuff, such as chocolate, would get shipped back to the manufacturer for repackaging, but beer was so cheap that it was more economical just to toss a couple of sixpacks every day and get it over with.

Every Tuesday was a "writeoff day." We'd get an enormous hamper full of moldy, disgusting crap from the warehouse and it was our job to shovel all of that into the garbage compactor. This was an hour of hard work, but the upside was that what was to happen with the contents of the crate was completely under our discretion and we'd set some stuff aside, such as beer and candy. Better yet, we had a sink with running water available so we'd rinse our bottles before drinking them.

We used to have a table with a few chairs, hidden behind the dumpsters so the bosses couldn't see that we're spending most of the day slacking off, reading newspapers and drinking trash beer. Hell, I upped the game by falling asleep several times, only to be woken up by a coworker who tickled me with a straw until I started sneezing.

It was the sweetest loving job I ever had, and I have so much stories about the people working there. I'll save that for another post, I had to slowly introduce you to what was happening there because if I went bluntly into this, you wouldn't believe the sheer craziness.

I mean it doesn't really sound that crazy. If I had to guess one thing about you based on your posts, I would probably guess that you ate a lot of garbage.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:53

artichoke: Sep 29, 2003; delirium tremens and caffeine; Gravy Boat 2k

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

This is a story about the best job I ever had.

You're one of my favorite posters, for so many reasons.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:29

Cursed Lumberjack: Nov 14, 2006; A rather unfortunate logger indeed.

artichoke posted:

You're one of my favorite posters, for so many reasons.

yeah when he dies im gonna snort my neighbor's stool softeners and set my mattress on fire in his honor

so just like every other day but itll mean something

# ? Jul 10, 2015 01:06

vyst: Aug 25, 2009

Saros posted:

2L plastic beer bottles are really common in most of Europe, cheap too!

Would chug

# ? Jul 10, 2015 02:30

false flag post-op: May 13, 2009; Enjoy Every Sandvich

You had me at forklift, I stayed for the gross tobacco and delirient drama.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:15

Burt Sexual: Jan 26, 2006; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Switchblade Switcharoo

I missed two payments by ACcident , oops.

Your a scum bag

# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:22

Cursed Lumberjack: Nov 14, 2006; A rather unfortunate logger indeed.

Darth123123 posted:

I missed two payments by ACcident , oops.

Your a scum bag

to be fair i totally believe that theres a 50/50 shot that he wasnt trying to scam the owner and he was just way too loving high to have any idea what year it was, let alone which day he was supposed to pay up on

# ? Jul 10, 2015 04:44

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

Cursed Lumberjack posted:

to be fair i totally believe that theres a 50/50 shot that he wasnt trying to scam the owner and he was just way too loving high to have any idea what year it was, let alone which day he was supposed to pay up on

You're on to something. Back when I was selling the apartment, I was distracted with ongoing chemo and I was going through terrible withdrawals since I was cold-turkeying my longtime opiate habit at the same time. Hell, either one of those would pretty much excuse me from not paying attention to details and misplacing the bills. I never had an intention to defraud the buyer of my apartment. The damage is done, though, I now have to pay around $30 in court fees, as well as the heating bill I forgot to pay over a year ago.

fake edit: jesus christ the grammar in my penultimate post.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 07:25

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Can't you just pay them instead of going all crazy with the lawyering?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 13:11

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

Saros posted:

Can't you just pay them instead of going all crazy with the lawyering?

The utility company hired a lawyer (a public notary to be more precise) to extract money from me, I lost the case by default and now I get to pay the processing fee. Good thing that the case was extremely simple, the notary simply went "eeyop he owes $110" and put a rubber stamp on the notice of foreclosure. That's why the court fees are $30 and not $300 or $3000.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 13:52

Keep Autism Wired: Feb 22, 2009; Kristen Schaal Lub Club

OP I have a lot of sympathy and concern for you but I must ask how does someone so irresponsible and driven by their immediate desires with such reckless distain for the future become a landlord?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 22:36

defectivemonkey: Jun 5, 2012

Does everyone in Croatia write/speak such perfect English? If not, I'm shocked you haven't somehow figure out how to monetize your strong English skills.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 22:47

Darude - Adam Sandstorm: Aug 16, 2012

detectivemonkey posted:

Does everyone in Croatia write/speak such perfect English? If not, I'm shocked you haven't somehow figure out how to monetize your strong English skills.

Being a junkie gets in the way of things.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 23:15

Drunk Nerds: Jan 25, 2011; Just close your eyes; Fun Shoe

Keep Autism Wired posted:

OP I have a lot of sympathy and concern for you but I must ask how does someone so irresponsible and driven by their immediate desires with such reckless distain for the future become a landlord?

Heh, in California it's practically a prerequisite

# ? Jul 11, 2015 00:34

Cursed Lumberjack: Nov 14, 2006; A rather unfortunate logger indeed.

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

You're on to something. Back when I was selling the apartment, I was distracted with ongoing chemo and I was going through terrible withdrawals since I was cold-turkeying my longtime opiate habit at the same time. Hell, either one of those would pretty much excuse me from not paying attention to details and misplacing the bills. I never had an intention to defraud the buyer of my apartment. The damage is done, though, I now have to pay around $30 in court fees, as well as the heating bill I forgot to pay over a year ago.

fake edit: jesus christ the grammar in my penultimate post.

Do you really, seriously believe this? Having poo poo happening in your life doesn't excuse you not paying the people you owe money to. You might find your life becomes slightly less full of absurdly crazy poo poo if you started owning up to your responsibilities like an adult.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 04:03

A Typical Goon: Feb 25, 2011

Cursed Lumberjack posted:

Do you really, seriously believe this? Having poo poo happening in your life doesn't excuse you not paying the people you owe money to. You might find your life becomes slightly less full of absurdly crazy poo poo if you started owning up to your responsibilities like an adult.

Ya but then this thread wouldn't be as good so I don't think we want that

# ? Jul 11, 2015 05:08

mcbagpipes: Apr 17, 2010

A Typical Goon posted:

Ya but then this thread wouldn't be as good so I don't think we want that

A Sweaty FatBeard is secretly living out the life that I would aspire to if I said gently caress ALL OF THIS and just became random in my decisions.

I like my house and my job. I have not hit the point of gently caress ALL OF THIS yet.

Oh and my drug consumption is pitiful in comparison.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 05:19

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

Cursed Lumberjack posted:

Do you really, seriously believe this? Having poo poo happening in your life doesn't excuse you not paying the people you owe money to. You might find your life becomes slightly less full of absurdly crazy poo poo if you started owning up to your responsibilities like an adult.

Read my post again. I would have paid the bills had I known that there are bills out there that need to be paid. For example, I paid the monthly building maintenance in full, but these are issued in advance so I probably had these bills physically kicking around. Heating bills are issued retroactively and I was very much gone from the apartment when the mailman brought the letter. Once again, I must point out that I never said that being in chemo excused me from not paying the bills, I said that being in chemo excused me from not knowing that there are unpaid bills.

The following week imma check if the power and water have been paid, other utilities have long since gone ad acta.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 16:13

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

Cursed Lumberjack posted:

mattress on fire in his honor

My mattress is doing just fine but I did manage to set my pubes on fire several times when I nodded away on trams and dropped a lit ciggy butt into my lap. Most of my slavsuits now have cigarette burn holes in the crotch area.

Keep Autism Wired posted:

OP I have a lot of sympathy and concern for you but I must ask how does someone so irresponsible and driven by their immediate desires with such reckless distain for the future become a landlord?

I inherited a lot of stuff and furthermore, I was in a good position for money saving since I lived at home for free: everything I earned went into a savings account and was subsequently invested into real estate. I was constantly working night shifts in order to earn a few extra pennies.

detectivemonkey posted:

Does everyone in Croatia write/speak such perfect English? If not, I'm shocked you haven't somehow figure out how to monetize your strong English skills.

English-speaking people really are a dime a dozen in Croatia. Foreign languages are one of the very few things I'm really good at. I have surprisingly little formal education: just four years of high school and that's pretty much it. I found it hard to find motivation for studying things I don't care about, so I've given up on college in general since I (correctly) saw that it would've been a massive waste of time and money.
The funny thing is that studying is one of my favorite pastimes: I crack a beer and read random articles on wikipedia, then reread the same article in several other languages I know (Russian, Japanese, Slovenian and others to a lesser extent) to get a more complete picture of the subject discussed. Unfortunately, the lack of formal education means that, in terms of employment, I can do very little with my knowledge.

A few hours ago I got a new shipment of baccy: my hippie neighbor stumbled into my apartment with two noticeably inebriated girls whom I've never seen before and handed me a huge bag of tobacco. Man I'm happy as a little pig!

# ? Jul 11, 2015 20:19

Old Man Pants: Nov 22, 2010; Strippers are people too!

You speak 5+ languages and cant make $300 a week? I as well as probably the majority of posters on here do , speak only English and make significantly more. You need to move.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 11:13

StrangersInTheNight: Dec 31, 2007; ABSOLUTE FUCKING GUDGEON

In the US, there are exams you can take to become a licensed translator, I wonder if such exists in Croatia? Have you ever looked into it?

# ? Jul 12, 2015 16:37

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

StrangersInTheNight posted:

In the US, there are exams you can take to become a licensed translator, I wonder if such exists in Croatia? Have you ever looked into it?

Yeah, there is such a thing. It's not cheap though.

To be honest, my only aspieration is to become a janitor again. I've worked a wide variety of both white and blue collar jobs over the years, and the only time I was truly happy was when I was sweeping the warehouse with my trusty old broom.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 17:46

steady: Feb 28, 2011; Pillbug

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

Here are some pics I snapped today. I went out to find me a ciggy and decided to bring my camera along because goons seem to have a boner for bomb shelters.

Yes, we need more pics to educate ignorant goons on the charms of Lijepa Nasa!

And don't tell me "ciggy" meant a discarded cigarette butt in this case.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 19:07

sea of losers: Jun 6, 2007; miy mwoiultlh tbreaptpreude ifno srteavtiecr more

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

Yeah, there is such a thing. It's not cheap though.

To be honest, my only aspieration is to become a janitor again. I've worked a wide variety of both white and blue collar jobs over the years, and the only time I was truly happy was when I was sweeping the warehouse with my trusty old broom.

this is very endearing to me for some reason

# ? Jul 12, 2015 22:49

opus111: Jul 6, 2014

A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:

To be honest, my only aspieration is to become a janitor again. I've worked a wide variety of both white and blue collar jobs over the years, and the only time I was truly happy was when I was sweeping the warehouse with my trusty old broom.

owns.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 07:54

A SWEATY FATBEARD: Oct 6, 2012; GAY 4 ORGANS

I'm playing the waiting game - I'm broke as gently caress at the moment but in about a week or so I'm going to get some cash and things will be moving again.

I was bored this morning so I picked up my camera and went out at 5AM to take a few pictures for the forums.

First, here is a picture of a road intersection. Wait, where did the road go?

And here's another intersection:

Wilderness.

The city of Zagreb experienced a massive expansion southwards during the 1960s and 1970s. There were plans to build several new estates south of the Sopot and Siget estates which were completed in the early 70's, but something obviously happened that put an end to those plans.
It turned out that there was a massive reserve of fresh potable water hidden below the surface, and the city council correctly saw that fresh water is too important for the city to risk it getting shat up by human activity. All construction plans were abandoned, the vast areas of untamed land were put under protection and the only thing that was built there was a water pumping station.
The water is being pumped from a great depth - 240m to be precise - and the ground is composed of sand and gravel which acts as a natural filter. The water is chlorinated (albeit very lightly), just to be on the safe side - though it's not really necessary. Water gradually melts gravel as it seeps down through the layers, so the pumped water is actually very rich in minerals. The flip side to this is that we have a lot of trouble keeping bathroom/kitchen limescale in check.

When I visited Spain in 1995, the tour guide actually had to warn us not to drink Spanish tap water under any circumstances - that we should BUY bottled water instead. This was a culture shock to us wacky yugos, but the guide was right: Spanish tap water was disconcertingly yellow.

The untamed land is not wasted though:

People who live in nearby commietowers have their tiny DIY farms over here, where they are growing organic food for themselves. Not because they're inherently poor, but because growing stuff is fun and relaxing. Your vegetable garden is a great place to unwind after a day of hard work, a place of refuge to hang out with your friends and play cards:

The "mammoth" is one of the biggest apartment buildings in Europe. It was completed in 1974 at the height of the brutalism craze, and although it's showing its age, the block is kept surprisingly posh. There are in fact TWO of these fuckers standing parallel to each other, and a large plateau with shops and stores is sandwiched between them. Let's go there.

Not a single ciggy butt or even a gum wrapper on the floor!

CONCRETE!!!!
Notice the folding plastic blinds on every window: these became really popular in Croatia during the 1930s - every window is slightly different, and I feel that these foldable blinds kinda put a "human face" onto what would have otherwise been a forbidding, soviet commieblock that reeks of poverty and depression.

Why this? Because gently caress You that's why.

The sun is coming up, someone's alarm clock just went off as I was taking this picture. There is a cafe, a post office and a grocery store to the right. Most people are still asleep though.

The bakery is already open! It's hard to believe from these pictures, but the place is bustling with life during the day, and especially, during the evening. Maybe I should come back later today and snap more pictures.

Parting portrait of the Mammoth. As evidenced by the clock, I took this picture at 6:02AM.

Now it's almost 8AM and I'm crabby and incredibly farty because I must have ate something that was three and a half seconds away from going bad. Dayum. :ughh:

# ? Jul 14, 2015 07:00

shovelbum: Oct 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

I love wandering around early in the mornings like that, it's relaxing. Cool buildings and stuff.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 07:58

fuck off Batman: Oct 14, 2013; Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!

Sweaty, you are my favorite poster on these forums and you should definitely take more pictures and talk about anything really.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:37

szary: Mar 12, 2014

Hey fellow Eastern bloc buddy, we got the same kind of mammoth apartment buildings in my country, except uglier:

(the other side looks even worse).

Also I'm insanely jealous of your English skills, initially I thought you were an expat living in Croatia but instead you're a junkie high-school dropout who learned the language by reading Wikipedia articles :negative:

# ? Jul 14, 2015 21:45

Redrum and Coke: Feb 25, 2006; wAstIng 10 bUcks ON an aVaTar iS StUpid

szary posted:

Hey fellow Eastern bloc buddy, we got the same kind of mammoth apartment buildings in my country, except uglier:

(the other side looks even worse).

Also I'm insanely jealous of your English skills, initially I thought you were an expat living in Croatia but instead you're a junkie high-school dropout who learned the language by reading Wikipedia articles

If it makes you feel any better, it didn't make him any good.

# ? Jul 15, 2015 02:31

DJ Fuckboy Supreme: Feb 10, 2011; And when you stare long into the abyss, you become aggressively, terminally chill

OP are you the last man in Serbia?

# ? Jul 15, 2015 02:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 20, 2024 06:44

Professor Bananas: Feb 16, 2011

Thank you for the view into another way of life, I think you're probably an interesting person to know underneath all the drug/manky tobacco abuse and I hope you don't manage to die young

# ? Jul 15, 2015 18:33

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Croatio: A Land of Contrasts

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