Šandrovac

For all of you who don't have the chance to know me since I was young and are not lucky enough to live in my home village, let me tell you something about Šandrovac, the place where I grew up to be so awesome as I am. I got inspiration to write about it because I returned home for Christmas and I see that although some things have changed, a lot has still remained the same as ever.

(Welcome to Šandrovac)

So, Šandrovac is a little village situated in the middle of nothing, surrounded by hills and woods from every side. It is somewhere between Bjelovar, the closest town, and let's say Đurđevac, the next town in a different region. Oh yes, the region of Šandrovac is Bilogora, but if you ask anybody from Croatia, they would say it's Slavonija. It is not. Despite the fact that 90 percent of Croatians divide Croatia into Slavonija, Zagreb, Istra and Dalmatia, there are many other regions and subregions that do not belong to this general division. Dammit Croatians, learn some geography!

(The county Bjelovarsko-bilogorska županija)

To continue, the village is extremely populated, there is around 1500 of us proud inhabitants here. Wikipedia says a number of 2095 people, but my mum is more accurate, I believe, so I put her information first. Of course, the number is lessening every year because young people (God knows why!) try to get out of here. Many of them drive to work in the surrounding villages or towns, because there's not much to do home, and go back home every day, while the lucky ones managed to live somewhere else and come home just when visiting. I am among the second ones now, since I'm home just for holidays, and I must admit that I like my home village even more that way.

What are the main attractions of my place, you might ask yourself. Well, to bring the best at first, we have a big swimming pool with all the surrounding facilities; we are developing some sort of country tourism, let's say. They renovated the place last year or two years ago and now it looks really great. It actually attracts more people than the city pool in Bjelovar, and some people from Bjelovar come here to swim. You see how awesome we are? Next to the pool there's a playground for basketball and tennis, a sandy playground for volleyball, a mini-golf, some sort of bowling (the bowl is tied on a rope hanging from a tall column, so you have to swing it in order to knock down the ninepins) and of course, a bar with terrace. Since there's a lot of children here, there is also a children's pool. The pool was the place of my childhood and my teenage years, there I used to spend a lot of time because it was the gathering point of youth. Ah, my first swimming steps started there, along the sides of the concrete sea.

(the pool attracts a lot of people during the summer)

(volleyball playground)

(the pool looks really nice now)

Besides the pool, what is really beautiful is our church. It was proclaimed the most beautiful church in the county, oh yeah! No, seriously, it's beautiful from the outside as well as from the inside, a lot of money was invested in it. It even has floor heating, although it get's pretty cold every winter, like the heating is not working at all. One bad thing in our church is that there are always those stinky flying bugs which I hate so much, they give me the creeps and I'm seriously afraid of them. I know, I know, they can't do anything to you, they are small and just stink, it's stupid to be afraid of a little bug, I know; irational fear is still fear and can't be easily get rid of, I'm sorry.

(the front of the church of Saint Maria)

(side view)

Next, the beauty of Šandrovac is that it has everything needed to function normally as a little world of its own. The post office where you can play bingo/lottery and buy newspaper; a half-empty home for old people; primary school (only four grades); a bar reserved mostly for local alcoholic-beverage-consumers; two shops (you even have the choice because there are two) in front of which you can also find some fine people drinking beer; a pretty good hairdresser's; a playground for children (non-existing in my time, of course); a hall for all local events – weddings, gatherings, New Year's, local holidays etc.; some kind of a fire station; administration office; a football playground where the summer street tournaments are held; equestrian association; a morgue and the cemetary. Recently we got 3G internet so now we're complete. When it comes to my laptop, this 3G thing isn't of any help to me because I'm still using dial-up connection when I get back home – I cancelled my internet pre-paid 'cause I'm not home, obviously. So, to me, when I come back home, it's like going back to past.

(home for old people)

(the hall for all the events happening in our mighty village)

(my old primary school)

People here. Hm, occupied with themselves but even more with everybody else's business, judging gossipers but gossiping all the time, old ladies spending their lives at the window sills, narrowing their hawk eyes like ninja/spies and thus making sure their wrinkles around it stay permanent. Boys are riding their Tomos bikes or even some unrecognizable ones, some of them still sticking to bycicles, sometimes those ugly ones that look like a hybrid between a Harley Davidson and a bycicle. Such a bad combination, but kids love it! Oh, and when speaking of bad combinations... Fashion rarely exists here. Most of the young people are somewhere at some university, so I can't count them; the rest are middle age, old age and very young age population. The middle age still wear the clothes that was cool in their time; the old age does the same; the primary school kids wear what they think is cool but is actually lame. The best dressed ones are the 2, 3 and 4-year old's, because clothes for children is always cute and adorable. Of course, everything written so far refers to fashion when going to town or to school or wherever; what people wear at home, where apparently no one can see them, that's just hillarious. And I do the same. You know, track suit, jeans jacket, old shoes etc. Ok, I've never been wearing that but still, I'm close. Well, I guess, when it comes to fashion, Šandrovac is again stuck in time.

It could be worse, though. We could be walking around in our national costumes, which was the clothes of my ancestors not so long ago. I actually still have one, because, listen to this now, I used to dance in folklore. For 9 years or so. Since I was 7 till I was 15 or 16, I don't remember anymore. My big brother was a member of our folklore crew and I wanted to be one as well. Every year it got better and better because I was growing up, switched from child's folklore to the adult's one and started dancing in performances (shows, whatever you wanna call them) in numerous villages, towns etc. Since I was pretty young, I wasn't allowed to go out (thank you mum, you definitely knew what you were doing), so this dancing and accompanying parties were my only fun thing I could do. But the best thing was the company, my friends. We were really a great group of people, always fooling around, making the older members angry, enjoying our time like we knew that it had to end. Now, every time I talk to someone from the group, they all say they'd like to go back, that those were the great times. Somewhere when I started my highschool all fell apart. One by one, we quit the folklore and went by our own business. The folklore group still exists, but almost none of us old „cool“ members is participating. Plus, there is so many new young people now, the children that grew up and who I probably wouldn't even recognize now. When I think about it I feel like I'm old, although I'm only 22.

(folklor crew - the half-new one, let's say, just a couple of old (cool) members remained)

So, the girls had folklore to occupy their time, the pool during the summer. Boys, they got folklore, pool and football. Lucky bastards, at least they had football.

Me, I had to hit the tennis/volley/basketball against the wall of my house (which, by the way, didn't make my parents really happy). This is one of the main reasons, let's say, why I wanted to leave Šandrovac so badly. I wanted to try everything, but couldn't anything. It made me feel frustrated many times. Now when I got away, I do miss my home place, but I couldn't live there permanently again. No way. Sometimes I miss the feeling of walking down the street and saying „hello“ at least ten times because you know all those people that are in their yards; I miss the sledging down the hill above my house in the winter; I even miss watching TV with my family and my mum's complaining when I go out at night. But if I had to return here and stay forever, I would go nuts. There's so much to see and do; in Šandrovac I've been living for 18 years, which is a really long period, don't you think? ;)

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