Three Interesting Things I Found in Croatia

Surely, nobody wants to hear about how we had fun in the sun while they were staying at home working. So, I'll just share there small details that I found interesting.

One
The solution to my self-imposed linguistic holiday assignment came to me in the form of a commercial leaflet, promoting ties. Neckties. It said "Welcome to the Homeland of the Cravat!". At first I thought it was a weakness of translation. I knew that in many languages that is the word for tie, but who uses the word cravat in English to refer to ties nowadays? Then I read the rest of the text.
It turns out that the tie actually does originate from Croatia, from late 16th - early 17th century. Hence its name spread in so many languages. They are so proud of this, that in 2008 they even introduced the annual celebration of the Cravat Day on 18 October.
When I realized the story of the word cravat, I was surprised and ashamed that I had not known this before.

Two
Hardly any information is written in any other language but Croatian. I'm talking about names of buildings, titles of exhibits, bus schedules, highway itineraries, directions and so on. This includes places like the Zadar citadel and port, lovely places to visit, names of museums, exhibitions in the citadel and menus in most of the bars and restaurants in an area where about 70% of people are tourists and I'm sure at least half don't know more Croatian than I do (and that's not much more than saying hello and thank you). In most places, they did speak English, however, but it was often easier to get along in German. The great majority of the announcements and writings, though, were only in Croatian.
I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I do know that I would probably have visited more places if the writing outside had told me what it was in English. Or any other language I understand.

Three 
The Plitvička jezera  (Plitvice Lakes) National Park. I'll just let the pictures speak about this. Credit for the photos goes to my dear husband.

Once Upon a Time There Was a Word

I have recently rediscovered my passion for linguistics. It has a lot to do with my becoming a topic editor at the Language Study topic at Suite101. It feels like riding a bike after having slept for 20 years. Or drinking that specific syrup you were used to as a kid, because it was the only one that existed; then it disappeared and you can only remember it tasted like heaven. (Everyone in/from Romania, remember BemBem?)*
As I was browsing through a fairly big and mostly unsorted mass of articles, some outdated, some beside the point, and some very interesting and informative, I learnt to count to ten in Japanese, picked up some French vocabulary and managed to squeeze in some Spanish grammar. I didn't even try to understand the Arabic lesson.
Wandering in this land of multilingualism was like browsing through a magical phonebook which doesn't only list numbers and addresses, but particularities like "John Smith likes to fish and his wife can never understand that" or "Jane Smith had her first tooth fall out when she was five and next day she met the Tooth Fairy". Except the stories here are not about people, but about words. And words, I must admit, can sometimes be much more interesting than people. Sometimes. But the stories told by words are usually far more interesting than those told by people.
This entire experience inspired me enough to finish my article about words of Hungarian origin that have ended up in English. And, of course, the stories they tell. When I shared this article with my friend from Lithuania, he told me another such story, that I had not known before. Perhaps because I don't know the first thing about Lithuanian language or culture or history. Which is not something to brag about and I should do something about it.
Antanas told me that the Lithuanian name for the German nation is vokietis. This term was born in Medieval times when German crusaders invaded the land. Vo is an interjection like look! or hey!, and kietas means hard/solid/tough  - a reference to the the heavy armour of the knights. Now tell me if that does not make you go Wow! If it doesn't, it means you're a perfectly normal human being, not (yet?) spirited away by languages and words. If it does, you're my kind of wacko!
On a final note, I must mention that I'm leaving for Croatia tomorrow. I wonder how many Croatian words I'll manage to pick up. And how many of those will reveal their story to me. But if I find a story, I'll be sure to share it with you.
*I have no idea if the product from the Bem Bem link is the real thing or not. It may or may not be. I linked it there only in order to remind you of Bem Bem.