Never learning?

FIFA fines Croatia for racist fans




Fifa has fined the Croatia Football Federation £14,920 after a section of their supporters racially abused Emile Heskey during the World Cup qualifier with England. ...

It is the second time in a matter of months Croatian fans have been found guilty of racist behaviour with Fifa issuing a small fine during Euro 2008 following chants during their quarter-final against Turkey....

Heskey has been racially abused while playing for England in Slovakia in 2002, while Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole were subjected to monkey chants in a friendly against Spain in Madrid in 2004.

"You have to let the people above deal with that and I'll carry on playing my game," Heskey said after the match. "They are ignorant people, you have to ignore it and enjoy your game. Their players weren't happy about it either."

Read the entire article here.

Also if you have time, check out this series on The Real Football Factories - The Balkans on Youtube. These are the dudes that made me scared to go to Serbia a few months back. Here's Part 1...If only they could fight the police in the name of something good.

Cruising

The Captain and I took a little jaunt down to the seaside, and nipped around the Slovenia/Croatia border. I always like going down there because it is gorgeous and reminds me of Ghana.

Tourism season hasn't started just yet so it was pretty ghostly quiet and peaceful down there.









all these people were wandering around the tall grassy areas looking for wild mushrooms and asparagus. this woman was selling asparagus

Black British Balladeer Croons to Croatia's Content

This funny little story caught my eye the other day. Opera singer Tony Henry was tapped to sing the Croatian national anthem for the England - Croatia game and apparently may have made a tiny linguistic blunder that really pleased the Croatian fans, many of whom are still singing his praises on message boards. Watch it with (a possible) translation below.

And So It Was...

Here are some pics from our trip to Vrboska on island Hvar in Croatia's Dalmatian islands. It turned out a friend of ours needed to go down and do some work on the roof at his summer house. So in exchange for The Captain agreeeing to hang out on scorching hot tile roof for hours per day we were given passage and beautiful accomodations. As usual, I got off easy by acting as the cook for the crew. Sometimes traditional gender dynamics = gooooooal!

A Rush and A Push....

Sorry for the lag but I got sucked into the big Slovene "hang up the phone, quit yo job, slap yo mama, rob the bank, and get in the car" tradition that is.... DROP EVERYTHING, WE'S GOING TO THE SEASIDE!

Pictures and anecdotes coming super soon.