IT WAS A GREAT DAY WITH DYNAMIC WEATHER

When I stepped out of the house on the 2nd of August 2021 ...

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... I was greeted by a small, relatively tame tornado. Although it looked that the whirlwind is traveling across my neighborhood, this was fortunately only an illusion. The thing was generated at sea, above the shallow water of the bay, in its most usual natural habitat.

I was ready to go buy some groceries in the local supermarket, so I sat in my car and drove away. Meanwhile, the whirlwind dissolved living no trace, and the sky was rapidly changing. It was getting heavy and gray, covered with a thick layer of clouds. When I bought all I have planned to buy ...

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... the rain entered the scene ...

... so, on my way back ...

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... I was driving and shooting through the windshield, with one hand on the wheel while the other was busy holding the camera.

The rain was pretty strong and sudden, so relatively deep pools of rainwater were quickly created on some stretches of the road ...

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... that goes through the old town ...

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... passes across the main square ...

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... and from my perspective ...

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... ends in front of the gate that leads to my yard.

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The rain was slowing down, and I was slowing down as well while approaching the end of the line. Some tourist lady with a lovely pink umbrella was waiting for someone at the crossroad. Soon I opened the gate and drove into my yard. A few of the last sparse raindrops fell on my head when I got out of the car. When I entered the house, the rain was over.

An hour later the sky was almost completely clear.

A friend called me saying that she had to bring her camera to a repair shop in the small village called Jadreshki, about five kilometers from the city, and about the same distance from my hometown. She never visited that repair shop, and I was there only once, more than a decade ago. So she had no idea how to find it, and I had only a vague, foggy recollection at my disposal.

Fortunately, once in Jadreshki, we found a guide there. We met a local kid on the main square. He knew the place, so we continued driving behind his bicycle ...

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... until we reached some condominiums about a half kilometer from the old village. Now I remembered the place well. While my friend was arranging the deal with the repairman and kids were talking and joking in front of the building, I was walking up and down that relatively new neighborhood.

It was a short up & down walk and I took only two photographs. They both depict the same little wooden house ...

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...surrounded by lush vegetation.

When the arrangement in the repair shop was done, we drove away.

But we didn't drive far. Only a little less than a kilometer. About seven hundred meters or so ...

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... until we reached this building. The old, abandoned school at the edge of the village.

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The school was closed ...

... but I was able to take a couple of shots through the bars.

With all those bars around, the place looked more like a prison or an old-school mental asylum.

In front o the building, there is a World War II memorial with names of local partisans that died in that war.

Here you can see one of the neighboring houses. The photograph was taken ...

... from the school's backyard.

Here you can take a peek through the bars of one of the lower windows on the back of the building.

This empty shell of a snail was laying on the recently trimmed grass, there in the backyard.

When this photograph was taken ...

... we were in front of the building again, ready to enter the car. This is a look through the upper windows which have no bars.

I shot two pigeons on the rooftop, and then ...

... we left the abandoned elementary school and drove to the center of Jadreshki. Here you can see the main square.

We parked there.

Here you can see the remains of some old graffiti written in the late 40' when the World War experience was still fresh in people's memory.

This is the lower part of that graffiti - house.

The house number it's twenty - three and the old rusted plate looks great on the rich textures of the facade.

Here you can see another cool detail from the small yard of that house.

The pigeon was photographed on the rooftop of the neighboring house.

At one point ...

... an old man with the bicycle entered the scene.

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He was dressed as an old-fashioned fisherman from the old Croatian movies, TV shows, and adverts for more or less authentic local restaurants.

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Not the most common clothing combination nowadays. He was also holding a washed-out Croatian flag. We watched him disappear in one of the streets that lead in the area behind the main square, and then ...

... continued exploring the village.

Here you can see the only homestead in the old center that still has some cows.

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It's kind of strange to find a place like this so close to the main square, but some decades ago it was quite usual even in my tourism-oriented hometown.

We passed by the homestead ...

... and continued towards the edge of the village.

The first thing that I photographed in that area was this yard with quite a few camping trailers stashed behind its gate.

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On the rooftop of the relatively small building that looked like some kind of repair shop, there was a nice collection of car doors.

I took this and the previous three photographs while standing on the crossroad ...

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... or more precisely, by the only bus stop in Jadreshki. There is a notice board near the place with the word BUS written in big yellow letters on the asphalt ...

... and on that board, there was this little COVID thing back then. A public call to vaccination.

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Here you can take a look at the white lion on the garden wall of the house on the other side of the crossroad.

In this photograph, we are on the way back to the car ...

... which means back to the main square.

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Here, we are passing by the same homestead that you saw a bit earlier in this post.

We noticed a new cat there ...

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... so we stopped to take a photograph or two. Or four. Or ten. Or who knows how many more.

Another young cat was waiting in ambush on the wall across the street ...

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... but soon got curious ...

... and came to see what's up on our side of the street.

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After taking plenty of photographs ...

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... we said bye-bye to the cats, and soon, when we reached the main square ...

... it was time to enter the car and say bye-bye to Jadreshki as well. This photograph was taken at the edge of the city called Pula.

In the suburban neighborhood where the friend with the broken camera lives.

We spent an hour there ...

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... in her house. We ate some cookies and drank herbal tea.

When it was time to go ...

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... I noticed a sleepy cat under one of the cars parked in the small street in front of my friend's house.

It looked like a nice way to close the day, the journey, and this post. Good night. 🐈

AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.