WEEKEND IN DRAGUCH AND SOVINJAK

Some friends from the northeastern part of Croatia are staying in my area these days, for the holidays. I brought them on a short afternoon excursion today.

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We visited two picturesque villages in the northern part of the peninsula ...

... and I took plenty of photographs for this post.

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It all started with chickens and turkeys ...

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... in the small farm on the outskirts of Liznjan, the village situated a couple of kilometers from where I live. I went there to pick up those friends from Slavonia. They weren't ready to go immediately ...

... so I took a couple of photographs while waiting in the yard. Ten or fifteen minutes later we drove away ...

... and didn't stop until the village of Cerovlje, about seventy kilometers further north. Here you can see my travel companions in front of the old, abandoned villa in the center of Cerovlje.

I parked the car across the road, in the parking lot of the small train station that rarely sees any traffic.

Here I zoomed in to see the rails and poles just before the bend that makes the rest of the railway invisible.

This photograph was taken at the bus stop near the train station.

The simple plexiglass booth and the line of connected waiting chairs looked kinda cool from a certain angle and in a certain light.

We were in Draguch when this photograph was taken.

In the hills about fifteen or twenty kilometers from Cerovlje.

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Draguchl was a small medieval town with a beautiful, compact urban layout on the crest of the hill, back then in medieval times. Nowadays is more like a village. Many old buildings are abandoned and only about a hundred people live there.

Since the settlement is situated on the top of the hill, you can see a good chunk of the central Istra from Draguch.

Here you can see a fragment of Butoniga, the only lake on the peninsula. It's an artificial reservoir lake created in the early 80'.

The weather was changing when we arrived, the storm was slowly forming, so the sky and the ambient light looked great for landscape photography.

This is yet another photograph in which you can see the gang of four travel companions walking toward the center of Draguch.

I stopped quite a few times on my walk to the main square ...

... to photograph the interesting details along the way. Details like this lamp, ad example.

Or these bull horns.

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Or this other lamp, which also looked pretty cool.

One short and narrow sideway street led me to the neighborhood shown in this photograph.

When I arrived at the main square ...

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... the clouds and the light were changing more rapidly than before ...

... creating some nice effects on the landscape below.

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There is a viewpoint in the center of the settlement, a place from which you can observe the atmospheric spectacles above the surrounding hills and valleys.

Here you can take a look at the direction I came from. I noticed some interesting figures in the distance ...

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... so I zoomed in.

I took two more shots ...

... from the viewpoint, and then ...

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... continued through the passage across the square.

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I found some beautiful vintage stuff in that gloomy corridor. There was an old wooden wagon ...

... and this other thing made of solid wood that I wasn't able to identify. It looks like some old machine that was used in agriculture, but I'm not sure about that.

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... was taken from the other side of the tunnel.

While rambling around that part of Draguch ...

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... I passed through two considerably shorter passages ...

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... and I photographed one more old wagon. This one had some old stuff that can be considered garbage on it.

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I photographed also a pile of logs before returning to the car because I like the patterns created by the mostly circular cross-sections of the wood. In the following photograph ...

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... you can take a look at the graveyard at the entrance of Draguch, about a hundred meters from the first houses, and the Church of St. Elisha, built in the last decades of the 12th century. My car was parked near the cemetery.

I took one last look at the beautiful colors on the western horizon, and then we drove away.

We didn't have any specific destination in mind when we left Draguch ...

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... but along the way it was decided that visiting the place called Sovinjak wouldn't be a bad idea.

So we drove about twenty kilometers northwest ...

... and reached the small village that goes by the name of Sovinjak.

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Here you can see the Parish Church of St George on the main square. It was built in 1557.

At this point, the sky was mostly overcast.

The layer of clouds wasn't thick but the overall atmosphere was darker and the night wasn't very far.

I came across this statue in the small park behind the Church. It represents some composer that I wasn't aware of.

Just like Draguch, Sovinjak is situated on the top of the hill. The park behind the church is also a viewpoint.

Here you can see the entrance of the only restaurant in the village.

Some people were enjoying dinner in the backyard with a nice view of the surrounding hills.

Some other people were talking by the side of the road.

When we were all ready to go, I noticed these conifer cones on the tree under which the car was parked.

These are the cones of the Cedrus deodara tree.

This plant is native to the Himalayas but can be also seen in parks and gardens all around the world as an ornamental tree.

About a kilometer from the village we stopped again ...

... to photograph the colors of the sunset.

We passed through Motovun on our way back home and stopped a couple of kilometers from that old town to take a couple of scenic photographs before the night reaches this part of the world.

The street lamps of Motovun were shining like little stars and with every shot, the sky was getting darker. It was time to drive directly home.

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