Some lovely words about our Croatian For Travellers Croatian language guide

Regular visitors to our site well may be aware of our Croatian For Travellers language section, which features booklets and audio files aimed at visitors to the country. We’re very pleased to have received some lovely feedback from a traveller who recently made use of our Croatian language guide.

The nice lady traveller says:

I’ve just returned from a short visit (4 days) to Istria. Before I left for Croatia, I downloaded your little booklet “Croatian for travellers”, together with the audio for MP3 player. 

It has been so very useful and I really had such fun trying out the language. Your booklet was brilliant – there was nothing I would alter. I couldn’t use very much, but I really enjoyed saying “Dober dan”, ordering “jedan bijele cava”, saying “molim” and “hvala”, and “Do videnja”. I used some of the numbers, and approached a lady to ask where the postbox was “Oprostite – posta?”

So, well done for creating this comprehensive and very useful booklet. It really was the highlight of my holiday, finding I could communicate in a very small way with people in Croatia.

She also adds that “the actual size of your booklet was also very helpful. It was easy to fold it up and quickly slip it in and out of my shoulder bag whenever I needed it.”

Thanks very much for your kind feedback, S. K., and we’re glad you found our Croatian language guide so useful. And well done for having a go at some Croatian!

We fully admit that Croatian isn’t an easy language to pick up, and that you’ll encounter many people in Croatia that speak excellent English (no to mention German, French, Italian…). However, why not check out our Croatian language guide – it might come in handy to pick up a few basic phrases, and it’s always fun to understand a few words when you hear them spoken or written!

If anyone else has any feedback on our Croatian language guide or about our site in general, do write in – we’d love to hear it! Contact us on webmaster@visit-croatia.co.uk.

Reader’s email: Experiences on visiting Croatia in December!

A few months ago, we were very happy to receive a lovely follow-up email from a traveller to Croatia (who we assisted in their travel plans via email), which told of their happy experiences whilst enjoying a summer holiday in the country.

Very recently, we were happy to receive another such email from a traveller (that we also assisted, pre-trip, via email) from Latin America who visited a number of towns and cities in Croatia. His comments are well worth reading as he provides a number of very useful tips on the places he visited, whilst it’s also interesting to note his experiences as he visited Croatia in December – and as Croatia is often considered a summer-only destination, it’s great to see an enjoyable visit during this particular month.

Zagreb’s Cathedral

So, here’s what our happy traveller had to say:

From Zagreb we flew to Dubrovnik. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen, and I have seen quite a few in Europe and America (the continent). We stayed at the Excelsior because of the location on the beach and within walking distance to the Old Town. I followed your advice and drove the airport bus to Pile Gate and then took a taxi saving some kunas. This was offset by the taxi #91 back to the airport gave us some extra turns as what was supposed to cost 30-35K ended up being 45K with little traffic… The hotel is a 5* and the buffet breakfast has an extensive variety as expected. We paid for a room with seaview which was worth it. As you indicated, we didn’t need a tour guide and just wondered around with a map. Since this is the low season, it was great not to have too many tourists around. The food we had at a Konoba to the right of St. Blaise Church was excellent even if the waitress was not too happy doing her job. Walking on the walls was one of the highlights as it gives a different perspective of the town. Even though we stayed only 1 day, we were able to wonder around all of the Old Town and took many pictures.

Thanks very much, dear traveller, for taking the time to email us after your trip and for your kind comments as well! We’re very happy to hear you enjoyed visiting Croatia, and thanks for providing us (and other travellers) with some great tips!

Season’s Greetings from Visit Croatia!

Reader’s email: A follow-up to a visit to Croatia!

We here at Visit Croatia field numerous emails every day about visiting Croatia – from places to visit, or suitable holiday destinations for particular travellers (families, older visitors, party-animals), to advice on travelling around (lots of questions about bus travel!), to reaching the country in the first place, to language queries…we’ve pretty much received and answered question about almost everything Croatia-related, over the years! (See the Travel Advice section on this blog for some more recent examples.)

Pag Town on the island of Pag

Whilst we’re very happy to help everyone that emails in regarding planning their holiday to Croatia, very rarely do we get to hear the outcome of that holiday. Did they like it? What did they see? What did they like best? How much did they explore? It all honestly, it’s perfectly understandable – and I wouldn’t expect people to write to me telling me about everything they did!  I assume, however, that most people did enjoy their holiday, and hope that they have shared their experiences with friends and family and persuaded some of them to visit Croatia in the future.

This year, however, I’ve been conversing with a traveller who was looking for a quiet place on the Croatian coast for a twelve-day holiday for this month (August). He’d looked through the Visit Croatia site, and suggested that somewhere near Zadar, Sibenik or Split would be suitable for him. I gave him a few suggestions and after he did some additional research, he settled on the island of Pag – though fully intending to do some additional exploring in the nearby area.

The traveller also kindly promised that he’d let me know how it all went – and this week, I got a very lovely email! He wrote:

My holiday is over and I am back from Croatia. I am sorry for this because it was really very nice holiday. But this is the life, as we know, everything finishes.

I have really spent wonderful and great time in Croatia, on the otok Pag (and not only). We have visited many places. Of course we have explored all the island Pag – not only Pag, Novalja, Povljana, Metajna, but also almost all small villages like Vlasici, Kosljun, Simuni, Mandre, Lun and others. Besides this we have visited the towns of Zadar, Sibenik, Split and many small villages like Nin (very nice place), Sukosan, Filip i Jakov, Biograd na moru. Every place was wonderful. We have also made three excursions by boat - 1. around all the island Pag, 2. Kornati National park (we have seen many islands) and 3. islands Olib and Silba. Really excellent, splendid, magnificent and great places. Although we have seen only little part of Croatia I could say that it is very nice country.

Of course we ate Paski sir (delicious), roasted piggy and other specialities which we liked so much.

In two words it was very nice holiday and I am very sorry that the time passed so quickly.

I thank you very much once more because it was also your merit with your help and your advices.

Thank you very much for the follow-up email, dear traveller, and it’s wonderful to hear that you had such a nice time. We hope you have the opportunity to visit Croatia again!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In case you are wondering, the sentence in Croatian isn’t quite the same as the English one – it, in fact, translates to “Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2011!”

Either way, we wish our readers both the Croatian and English sentiments! Thank you for reading in 2010.