Shopping in Yugoslavia #2of2

In one open market in an old building in Split, I tried, without success, to get Emmy to buy some rather inexpensive jewelry, made of lambs skin, decorated with brass. The white necklace they had wasn’t as long as Emmy wanted, so no sale. Later, much too late, she changed her mind and wished she had bought some, so we looked and looked in other towns, but the store in Split was the only place we saw this kind of jewelry.

About half way between Split and Dubrovnik, there were at least 50 fruit stands at the side of the road and each had bottles of wine, and watermelons, setting under a cascade of cold water from a hose or pipe.

At the Nama Department Store in Zagreb, I bought a very nice cane for my walking stick collection, and it cost only $2.50. I should have bought a dozen, they would have made nice gifts. The Center Court in the Nama Department Store, with a stained glass ceiling, reminds us of the Galleries Lafayette on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, and the City of Paris Department Store next to Union Square in San Francisco.

From our campsite we walked a mile or so up the hill to a small food market in the little town of Tsterno. Makes us wonder how these people survive. Not enough food in the grocery store for a large family, let alone a small village.

At the campsite at Trstenik, on the Peljesac Peninsula, there were two large freezers filled with meat — just meat, no wrapping. Looked like they gave a bunch of Yugoslavian kids a bunch of meat cleavers and a bunch of cows. There were large bones with hunks of meat on them, and maybe just big hunks of meat. The freezers were loaded with frost, and people just raised the freezer door and pawed around among the frost-covered clumps of meat, until they found one they liked.

After being in Yugoslavia for several days, one of the sports’ reporters at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, wrote, “What do they do with the good part of the cow?” We haven’t found a butcher shop yet where we would recognize any cut of meat, other than hamburger. At one little restaurant they sold French fries for take-out. They were the oddest, French fries we have ever seen anywhere. We wonder what Yugoslavians do with the good part of the potatoes.