The Croatian Hydro-Meteorological Institute has been quite good at forecasting the weather. They have a website I occasionally visit, and especially when I want to see what sort of weather can be expected in the next few days. Now that the weather is all over the place, I visit the site almost every day. One page on the site shows the map of Croatia with the usual symbols: the sun, the sun above clouds, clouds, clouds with rain, and clouds with snow. Each time I visit this particular page, I compare the weather in my two, as it were, homes. As it turns out, Istria is a bit ahead of Zagreb in the number of days showing either the sun or the sun above clouds. Predictably, Istria is behind Dalmatia in this regard, and by a wider margin. Anyhow, whenever I see that Istria fares somewhat better than Zagreb, I feel a bit miffed about my lot. Hey, I could be in Motovun right now! And I remember all the winter days when I sunbathed on my terrace stark naked. That would not quite work in Zagreb. It is sunny right now, for instance, but it is also freezing. Sunbathing naked is definitely out of the question.

Addendum (February 10, 2012)

I was hardly finished writing this piece when I got a call from Damir Gregorović, my next-door neighbor in Motovun, who is known to all as Greg. “It’s spring here!” he exclaimed. Although the bora was not exactly pleasant the last few weeks, there was not a trace of snow there. “When are you coming?” he asked. “Well,” I mumbled, “before Easter…” He laughed when I told him what I was writing about just before his call. “Spring’s here already!” he repeated happily. “Oh,” I moaned, “you’ll make me jealous!” One way or another, the timing of Greg’s call was miraculous, indeed.