Tying up the day. I’d love to turn you on.
It’s time for me to get on with telling you about our arrival in Karanac and how we spent our first evening there. Another feature of many OAT trips is to provide travelers with a chance to spend “A Day in the Life.” I’d assume that, viewed through a broad lens, these days are similar from trip to trip. That is, I’d expect them to be generally in rural places where at least some number of villagers still engage in traditional activities and do so in a manner that, if it doesn’t hew exactly to the old traditions, seems like it does or is in some ways representative of those activities. (Oops! here comes that nasty old cynic again.)
We arrived at our accommodation – the Rural Homestead Sklepić where we were warmly greeted outside by the owners – Goje and her rather boisterous husband Dennis.
And this was our sight when we passed through the entryway:.
Many of the guest rooms and the dining area are on the left. Toward the back is a small farm where the owners grow peppers, squash, tomatoes, and other goodies 
some of which we will pick and which are bound to be part of our dinner. As our group will learn tomorrow, there’s also a pottery workshop on the right. Barely visible just in front of the first bush on the right in the entry picture, you can see a small box. Residing there because she was recovering from an injury was the family dog, Luna (photo downloaded from Sklepić website).
She is very sweet and hungered for every bit of our attention she could draw. Somehow, given the long narrow shape of the homestead (because of a quirk in Croatian tax laws), it seemed perfectly appropriate that Luna is a dachshund.
We had a few minutes to settle into our rooms – mine was in an adjacent building and was spare but clean and comfortable enough – before returning to the main house for our first organized local experience.
First, Goje answered a few questions about her store of winter preserves and peppers and talked about our breakfast on Monday. Then Dennis pointed out his homemade rakija or fruit brandy. Finally, we were introduced to the star of the evening, Lilly.
When she described her typical day, it prompted me to do a little economic research.
Croatia isn’t a particularly wealthy country but it’s far from poor. According to the World Bank, with a nominal gross national income of 12,690 euros per capita, Croatia is at the top of the upper middle income European states or at the bottom of the high-income states depending where you choose to place the demarcation. But this wealth isn’t divided evenly throughout all the regions of the country and, in the county of Osijek-Baranja, per capita income is more than 27 percent below the national average.
Lilly works on her parents’ dairy farm. Usually, she’s awake by 04:00 to start the process of milking the cows. She participates in at least three other activities that she might find personally fulfilling but that also must supplement the family income. We learned of the first in the main house of our rustic inn. Lilly makes artisan cheeses that she takes to fairs and markets. On this night, she was going to help us make an overnight cheese that we’d be able to eat as part of our breakfast the next morning.
Each of us would participate in one step of its creation. The first step is to strain the milk before carefully heating it:
Notice the peppers, herbs and garlic on the table. We added these to our two cheese blocks. The container on the right contains rennet – an enzyme used to separate the curds and whey. (Lilly, by the way, is a firm believer in taking two tablespoons of whey daily to maintain her complexion. Looking at her, I think it works.)
She didn’t reveal any of her truly creative secrets to us and I won’t detail each step of the process she shared. (Frankly, I don’t remember them.) However, I will say that the last two steps involve putting a weight on the cheese to drain excess liquid and help it form in the mold and then removing that weight before the cheese becomes too dry. For our cheese, that needed to be done between 03:00 and 04:00. Happily for all of us, Lilly volunteered to do that.
While in Karanac we were treated to a second home hosted dinner. As we did in Sarajevo, we split the group in half and I was in the happy six that walked a few doors up the road to have dinner with Lilly and her family. (I suspect that this is the second supplemental income source.)
Upon entering the house, Lilly’s father greeted us with an offer of his homemade rakija. I tried the cherry while Art had the more bracing plum (at least I think it was plum). I need to say that this greeting with a small taste of rakija of some other liquor, seemed to be di rigueur whenever we went someplace as a group. The abundance of fruit grown in the area means that nearly everyone brews their own rakija.
As had been the case with Sanela, Lilly was the lone Croatian English speaker at dinner. During the course of the evening, we learned that she was a divorced mother of two and, on the night of our visit, her children were staying with their father who also lives in Karanac. Of course, the war was, as it had been throughout, an ever-present topic. Lilly’s stories were not nearly as intense as those we heard in Sarajevo though there was fighting in the area. The town of Osijek is, after all, a mere 30 kilometers distant.
We also learned of Lilly’s other creative outlet. Because getting up at four in the morning to milk cows, seeing her children off to school when it’s in session, helping groups of American tourists think they’ve learned how to make cheese, then hosting them for dinner doesn’t keep her busy enough, in her spare time she designs and crafts handmade jewelry. (I’m tired simply describing her day.)
Not wanting to overstay our welcome, we tried to leave at a reasonable hour to allow her a chance to sleep even though she told us that she can usually nap for an hour or two in the middle of the day.
I found my way back to my room, uploaded what would be (though I didn’t know it at the time) my antepenultimate batch of photos from my SD card to my laptop and went into a dream wondering what Karanac held in store for us tomorrow.