SUMMER DAYS IN MY HOMETOWN

All the photographs in this post were taken in summer. But not during one single summer. The pictures were accumulated over the last ten years or so.

In this opening shot, you can take a good look at the main square of Medulin, my hometown. The small Church of Our Lady of Health from the 15th century is the most iconic building on that square in the center of the old town. The photograph was taken in July of 2020.

A minute later, a tourist on the quad bike passed across the scene and continued downhill to the beach.

There was a restaurant in my neighborhood, just across the crossroad from my house. There was always some action around its entrance. The billboard man was trying to persuade the rambling tourists to enter the place.

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Here he caught a group of strangers.

This group was able to resist his charm.

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In this small town triptych, you can see the billboard man with his colleague, the waiter.

Many streets of the old town are pretty narrow. They aren't made for buses. But sometimes the bus driver gets confused by the road signs and ends up in this hellish labyrinth. This scene happened in front of the same restaurant, and I was photographing from my yard. The year was 2015.

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The waiter was helping the bus crew. With a bit of help, they soon found their way out of the town's center.

Nowadays each house has its own garbage cans, but back then in 2015, the cans were communal, for the whole neighborhood. And most of the time you could find all kinds of stuff in them.

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Some less fortunate people were regularly searching for plastic bottles and similar treasures that can be turned into money in the local supermarkets.

Once, in August of 2014, some members of the ancient Roman nobility appeared on the square.

They stayed there for an hour or so ...

... while the town's mayor was busy delivering some boring speech at the opening of the exhibition that brought some Roman artifacts from the archeological museum of the nearby city of Pula. Those artifacts were excavated in Medulin but are kept in Pula.

Edi Verk is my neibhoor. I mean, he was. Edi died last year. He was an ambiguous character. Sometimes funny. Sometimes, especially in his younger days, not so funny. And prone to petty criminal activities. We were kinda friends during the period from 2007 to 2014 when I liked to take me some drugs from time to time, and he was a relatively reliable source. More relatively than reliable.

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On this occasion, someone put a laurel garland on his head, so for a moment, old Edi looked like the Emperor of Medulin.

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Here you can take one last look at the Romans provided by the local Tourist Board office.

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Here you can see another garbage can scene from 2015.

Sometimes, especially on Saturday nights when people can get a bit wild, the cans can get overturned, and their interior can embellish the gray asphalt. Here you can see a bit of that colorful garbage scattered in front of my bare feet.

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These portraits were taken in 2021 ...

... on the terrace of the bar situated somewhere in between my neighborhood and the beach.

Here you can see the fountain near the harbor...

... and two local dudes that were doing some repairs or maintenance around it. I know them very well, of course. They also live near the center, only two houses from me.

This photograph was taken in the harbor. On one of the fishing boats there. The year was 2021.

My friend @denisdenis was working on that boat in 2021. You can see him waving to you in this photograph.

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This and the following photograph were taken near the pond at the edge of town.

Here you can see my friend Mladen with his nephew. The year was 2016.

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Here you can take a look at some excavating work that was going on in the area not far from the aforementioned pond.

In this photograph, I'm on the main square again. In the center of the old Medulin.

This is a detail from the gallery in the town's loggia.

Here you can take a look at the interior of the church that started this post. Our Lady of Health.

It's a lovely little temple that provides a nice, refreshing shelter for the body and soul on a hot summer day.

Here you can see the little figurine that someone brought from Medzugorie in Herzegovina and put on the window sill.

These are the remains of some old obituaries on the board attached to the church's facade.

In this photograph from 2021, you can see two ladies that are ready to enter ...

... the municipal building.

Very soon after this shot, they were in.

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Here you can see a bunch of people that were waiting in front of the post office. The year was 2018.

In this photograph, you can see some books ...

... inside the minuscule public library near the main square. Behind the church.

In this wider shot, you can take a better look at the stuff around that thing that looks like a birdhouse for books.

I was walking back home when this photograph was taken.

Here I zoomed in on the cool building that can be seen only partially in the previous photograph. It's a small hotel with a pretty good restaurant on the ground floor.

I'm almost home here. This is the old abandoned homestead across the road from where I live.

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Here you can see it reflected in the traffic mirror on the corner.

AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.