Why Croatia is easier than Western Europe... and more fun.

Plitvice National Park in Croatia

We had no trouble navigating, shopping and seeing the sites in Czech Republic or Hungary, however we have surprisingly had the most American style speaking experience in Croatia and I think the reason will surprise you.

First, it is important to understand our Prague and Budapest drivers, guides and service staff were wonderful, especially our Prague guide that escorted us on our two excursions to Cesky Krumov and Kutna Hora. We had wonderful conversations about business, family life, and cultural differences. However, he would still switch the basic sentence structure. I felt that when speaking to him, I needed to be direct without use of sarcasm, or colloquialisms to aid our conversational flow and reduce confusion. Again, not hard just not the same flow as chatting with your friend.

Sidebar -pet peeve moment. Many Americans speak to foreigners of any kind and especially service people in other countries as if they are ignorant because “he is just a driver with poor sentence structure or hesitation thinking of a simple word.” Ruslan, our driver/guide had his own travel business and was contracted to take us on this trip by the small travel agency we used. He speaks 3 languages, has traveled all over the world while working on being the first in his area to use only Tesla cars for his company - the guy is NOT dumb. He is well a well-educated entrepreneur, but clearly English, especially American English is not his first, or second language. So treat him that way and tip him well.

Now, I’m not saying all cultures should strive to speak and understand all of America, they have their own lives and the entire point and half the fun of traveling should be to meet new people and experience how they express themselves and what THEIR local colloquialism are.

Because of the war in Croatia around 25 years ago, many Americans still think of Bosnia and Croatia as war-torn countries with poor people ready to take your money, so be careful. We encountered a lot of confusion when my daughter and I announced this would be one of our stops. I don’t judge or blame anyone for this, after all, I had to check a map when my dear friend (whom I now owe forever!) insisted I visit here. It's across the Adriatic Sea from Italy for those of you as Geographically challenged as me.

Enough build up, why are Croatians easier conversationalists than many other countries? They, like those other countries, watch American television and movies with one big difference. They don’t dub their movies! When people in France watch The Avengers for example, they are hearing French voice-overs read the parts for the English speaking actors. They don’t experience the lovely unique character voices of Thor, Loki and Ironman the way we do. Sometimes they even hire the same guy to do many of the male parts – not sure how that works when people speak off screen?

Croatians watch American movies and TV as they are with Croatian subtitles that most end up not needing. Ivan, our fantastic Croatian driver/tour guide and new friend explained it best like this, the popular TV show Friends has a character Joey, known for his phrase “How you doin?” (You totally just said that in Joey’s style and voice didn’t you?) Ivan pointed out the obvious, Joey’s “How you doing” just doesn’t translate well in Polish or German!

His son grew up with English Disney and Nickelodeon and speaks English better than anyone in the family, although Ivan had it down pretty darn well. In fact,its not just Croatia, all the countries that were once a part of the Yugoslavia Republic do this.

Ironically, he’s annoyed that lately Nickelodeon and Disney are now dubbed. His daughter sings Frozen in Croatian and this makes him sad. They are a proud people and it is CLEAR he loves his country. He has no intent of trying to make his kid more American than Croatian, but it is a given she will be fluent in her own language and he wanted it to be easier and fun to learn English like it was for his son.

Ivan got our jokes, made his own and used sayings that we hear everyday that fit so smoothly into our conversations that now one day later, I can’t remember what they were. The point is, traveling in Europe will be easier than you think with the language barriers, but the Croatians will not only understand you, they’ll get you.