Page 23 - Dispatches - Winter 2022

How a small farming
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village in Croatia can
teach us about living
By Damir Horvat,
O.A.T. Trip Experience Leader
t’s tempting to call Karanac, a village in Croatia,
“simple.” But that word doesn’t do this place
Ijustice in the least. “Simple” is a word people
use when they think there’s no depth to a place.
It’s a word people use when they take a quick look.
Karanac village is not simple—it’s rich. Rich in life,
in tradition, in history, and in personality. There’s no
better way to learn that fact than by spending some
time here, meeting the locals, and seeing just how life
works in a rural Croatian village.
Karanac is a tiny village, by all accounts. Its popula-
tion is about 1,000 residents, and it’s emblematic
of the Baranja region in many ways. This is the
“breadbasket” of Croatia, the agricultural heart that
feeds much of the country. Built on the rich soils of
the Drava and Danube rivers, you’ll find farmsteads
here dotting the flat, open landscape. Among these
is Karanac. The village might not initially be the
traveler’s immediate idea of a place to journey to, but
that’s the best part about it. The people that come here
feel that they’ve discovered something themselves,
something that has been overlooked by the fast-paced
and hectic outside world.
As soon as you arrive in Karanac, you’re immersed in
the local life. Villages go about their day, working in
their gardens, painting the facades of their houses,
fixing their roofs, feeding their chickens, picking
fruits and vegetables, and going about the thousands
of small tasks that need to be done when you’re a rural
village. You can often catch the scent of rich tilled
earth and of farm animals–life here is inexorably
linked to the land and to the animals used to cultivate
that land. Roosters crow, dog bark, and tractors
rumble by on the street. In the background, you can
sometimes make out the sounds of children playing
games with their friends.
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