Andrea Pisac was born in Kutina in 1975. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Croatian Language and Literature and English Language and Literature from the University of Zagreb. She spent twelve years in the UK, where she earned her master’s degree from the University of London and completed her PhD in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College. Her latest novel, Hakirana Kiti (2013) (Hacked Kiti) was short-listed for the prestigious t-Portal award for the best book of prose in Croatia. She has also written several collections of short stories, Dok nas smrt ne rastavi ili te prije toga ne ubijem (2007) (Till Death Do Us Part If I Don’t Kill You Before Then) and Odsuće (2001), as well as numerous scientific papers. Her award-winning blog, Zagreb Honestly, has been delighting foreign visitors with quirky, insider tips on what to do in Zagreb as well as cultural insights for several years now.
Read an excerpt from Pisac’s novel, Hacked Kiti, below. Translation by the author.
During my one week rest, I visited the British Library. The reading rooms there seemed conducive to serious intellectual work, but in reality, they oozed with an attractive vibration that did everything to kill my concentration. When I first entered this large space with countless desks and sturdy chairs, I was immediately transported to the ethereal world of theta waves. My mental sharpness was lost to the hypnotizing whiffs of old paper that filled the room. As soon as I sat down and propped my head against my hands, I could feel myself giving in to the pleasing hum that bubbled between my ears. Just like when bath foam fizzes and then slowly disappears from the skin. Tranced out like this, I only pretended to be reading. No, it wasn’t a waste of time – I needed this kind of decompression to enter a different reality. Once I snapped out of it, I noticed a crowd of readers around me. If that many people had besieged me on a tube, the feeling would have been unnerving. But here, in the British Library, I felt happily dazed as I spied on the throng of readers rustling with their books. First I focused on a close up of their hands: how they’d lick their index finger and catch a chipped corner of a page to leaf through, how they’d press the middle of a book with a palm of their hand while leaning their head against the other hand, and finally how they’d reach for a pencil, place it in their mouth and wait until something worth underlying cropped up. Whichever direction I looked, leafing through books fell into a synchronized rhythm. Readers transformed into a choreographed dance ensemble. I could feel a new wave of drowsiness weighing down on me, pushing me into a micro sleep. Rustling of books, chewing of pencils, tiny exhales with each new book chapter, all those sounds making my mind fizz and disappear just like bath foam.
The book I carried to the British Library was not for reading – it was a camouflage. I could have chosen any title as long as it was aligned with the content of a particular reading room. The only thing I remember from my undercover book is that I never started or finished it. Once my initial daze crackled away like foam, I floated into the next stage. My eyes lost the glazed look and turned sparkly, a sense of airiness filled both my brain and lungs bringing along a scent of sweet citrus fruit. I switched focus like a movie camera: from a close up on readers to a panorama of the whole reading room. As I squinted to zoom in the details of the ceiling, I could see dust particles dancing inside the rays of sunlight. A thought stopped me in my tracks: how wrong we are thinking that air is a transparent, neutral matter. It was a misconception we couldn’t help. Because as we narrowed our focus into the fractal nature of the world, it was impossible to also keep an eye on all those sturdy chairs, rustling books and chewed up pencils around us. Then a text message would vibrate on my phone and stop my reverie. I was back feeling my feet on the ground and my behind on the hard surface of a chair. It was time to meet Serge for coffee.
Serge revealed to me
that all those academics who spent time in the British Library would have loved if the sweat of their brow moved down to their loins. That didn’t come as a surprise to me. Even scientists are only human: or more correctly, jaded humans with a poor sex life. I always suspected that desire, erotic or any other kind, was ignited and kept aflame by outside stimuli. It was anthropologists who proved that craving rarely came from inside us, but was rather a product of various marketing strategies, both public and private. Now I know that two things are needed to fuel a yearning: associative thinking and the repetition of stimuli. People learn through multi-dimensional tagging, a non-linear formula where one plus one never equals two. Repeated enough times, these connections fire up new neural signals, which in turn carve up new neural pathways, which finally send us off to burn with desire of one kind or another.
Let’s take a real life example and examine a sensually stunted egghead who regularly visits the British Library. Once upon a time, this esteemed academic yearned for amorous exchange just like anyone else, but without frequent exposure to the erotic stimuli, his neural pathways became clogged up. In other words, our revered scientist turned into a wet lettuce. However, one day as Mr. Wet sweated his brow and chewed on his pencil, he caught the attention of a perky woman anthropologist. Just to make things clear: of all scientists out there, anthropologists hold on to their erotic selves the longest because they never stop hanging out with the common folk. Our academic discipline actually allows us to carry on being sensual. Which is both good and bad news. Good because, within the ivory tower, we stand the biggest chance at achieving wholeness. Bad because if we are to become purebred rigorous scientists, we must purposefully give up on being whole. And losing what you once had is far worse than never having it at all, which is the case with all other eggheads in the academia. The only way not to despair over this lost chance is to fake being wet. There is actually a secret society of anthropologists whose mission is to feign rigidity and at the same time practice wholeness. Simply put, these anthropologists have found a way to shag around as much as they like without compromising their academic credibility. Our perky anthropologist is one such newly initiated member. The day when she zoomed in on Mr. Wet in the British Library, she immediately initiated the exchange of information. Serge, who is the author of this story and a senior member of the secret society, confessed that these untamed anthropologists have devised a peculiar communication strategy. On the surface, they appear just as wet and sterile, but between the lines, there is serious dirty talk going on. For example, our anthropologist wrote on a piece of paper that she would much appreciate to pick Mr. Wet’s brain in the British Library café. She folded the note and threw it on the book Mr. Wet was hunching over. You should know that purebred scholars are not complete emotional half pints. One feeling in which they excel is vanity, and this was something that secret society members knew well. As expected, when Mr. Wet read the note, his face lit up at the thought that someone wanted to relate with him. Without a second thought, he closed his book and followed the anthropologist’s entrancing saunter.
The point of this story was not only to make me laugh, Serge reminded me, but to open my eyes to what was actually going on around me. And the British Library was a good case in point. Ever since the first exchange of information there began with a note on a book and ended with trousers down, the entire space got imbued with this particular energy. Anthropologists proved a long time ago that humans are social creatures who’d do anything to feel accepted. This is why one small note can snowball into several note-prompted fornications, which can in turn rekindle erotic desire in all readers, transforming the entire British Library into one big scholarly brothel. Serge does the same thing with me. Whenever we agree to meet, he finds me in a reading room and tosses a crumpled note on my undercover book. In our case, it’s just a joke. We don’t sleep together. We only exchange unusual stories about the secret society and our own wholeness.
By Andrea Pisac
Translated by the author
Croatia is a small, charming country known today as a prime European tourist destination. However, it has a complicated often turbulent history and is seemingly always destined to be at the crossroads of empires, religions and worldviews, with its current identity and culture incorporating elements from its former Communist, Slavic, Austrian-Hungarian, Catholic, Mediterranean, and European traditions.
Dubravka Ugrešić is one of the most internationally recognizable writers from Croatia, but she has a contentious relationship with her home country, having gone into self-exile in the early 90s. Her recently translated collection of essays, The Age of Skin, touches on topics of of exile and displacement, among others. Read a review of Ugrešić’s latest work of non-fiction, expertly translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, in the link below .
Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922) is arguably Croatia's most renowned painter. Born in the south in Cavtat, he spent some of his most impressionable teenage years in New York with his uncle and his first career was as a sailor, but he soon gave that up due to injury. He went on to receive an education in the fine arts in Paris and began his artistic career there. He lived at various times in New York, San Francisco, Peru, Paris, Cavtat, Zagreb and Prague. His painting style could be classified as Impressionism which incorporated various techniques such as pointilism.
An exhibition dedicated to the works of Vlaho Bukovac will be running in Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Gornji Grad, Zagreb through May 22nd, 2022.
Read a review of Neva Lukić's collection of short stories, Endless Endings, recently translated into English, in World Literature Today.
Zagreb has its fair share of graffiti, often startling passersby when it pops up on say a crumbling fortress wall in the historical center of the city. Along with some well-known street murals are the legendary street artists themselves. Check out the article below for a definitive guide to Zagreb's best street art.
The colorful, eclectic and much beloved Croatian children's cartoon Professor Balthazar was created by Zlatko Grgić and produced from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Now newer generations will be able to enjoy the Professor's magic, whether they speak Croatian or English.
Robert Prosinečki's long and fabled football career includes winning third place in the 1998 World Cup as part of the Croatian national team, stints in Real Madrid and FC Barcelona as well as managerial roles for the Croatian national team, Red Star Belgrade, the Azerbaijani national team and the Bosnian Hercegovinian national team.
Croatian publishing house Sandorf launched their American branch called Sandorf Passage earlier this year.
From strange tales of mysterious murders to suspected criminals hiding out to scams, duels and gambling, Opatija, a favourite seaside escape for Central Europeans at the turn of the last century, routinely filled Austrian headlines and the public's imagination in the early 20th century.
Hailed as the father of 20th century Croatian children's literature, Grigor Vitez (1911-1966) is well known and loved in his homeland. With a new English translation of one of his classic tales AntonTon (AntunTun in Croatian), children around the world can now experience the author's delightful depiction of the strong-minded and silly AntonTon. The Grigor Vitez Award is an annual prize given to the best Croatian children's book of the year.
Have an overabundance of free time, thanks to the pandemic and lockdowns? Yearning to travel but unable to do so safely? Discover the rhythm of life and thought in multiple Eastern European countries through exciting new literature translated into English. From war-torn Ukraine to tales from Gulag inmates to the search for identity by Eastern Europeans driven away from their home countries because of the economic or political situations but still drawn back to their cultural hearths, this list offers many new worlds to explore.
Explore TimeOut's gallery of fascinating and at times thought-provoking art in the great open air gallery of the streets of Zagreb.
Partied too hard last night? Drop by Zagreb's Hangover Museum to feel more normal. People share their craziest hangover stories and visitors can even try on beer goggles to experience how the world looks like through drunken eyes.
How will the futuristic world of 2060 look? How far will technology have advanced, and how will those advancements affect how we live our everyday lives? These are the questions the Zagreb-based magazine Globus asked in a series of articles in 1960, when conceptualizing what advancements society would make 40 years in the future, the then far-off year of 2000. The articles used fantastical predictions about the future to highlight the technological advancements already made by the then socialist Yugoslavia. Take a trip with guide, Jonathan Bousfield, back to the future as envisioned by journalists in 1960s Yugoslavia.
What’s the best way for an open-minded foreigner to get straight to the heart of another culture and get a feel for what makes people tick? Don’t just sample the local food and drink and see the major sights, perk up your ears and listen. There’s nothing that gives away the local flavor of a culture more than the common phrases people use, especially ones that have no direct translation.
Check out a quirky list of untranslatable Croatian phrases from Croatian cultural guide extraordinaire, Andrea Pisac, in the link below:
Just got out of a serious relationship and don't know what to do with all those keepsakes and mementos of your former loved one? The very popular and probably most unique museum in Zagreb, the Museum of Broken Relationships, dedicated to preserving keepsakes alongside the diverse stories of relationships gone wrong, will gladly take them. Find out how the museum got started and take an in-depth look at some of its quirkiest pieces in the link below.
Zagreb is Croatia’s relaxed, charming and pedestrian-friendly capital. Check out Time Out’s definitive Zagreb guide for a diverse set of options of what to explore in the city from unusual museums to legendary flea markets and everything in between.
Diocletian’s Palace is the main attraction in Split, the heart and soul of the city. Because of the palace, Split’s city center can be described as a living museum and it draws in the thousands of tourists that visit the city annually. But how much do we really know about the palace’s namesake who built it, the last ruler of a receding empire? Jonathan Bousfield contends that history only gives us a partial answer.
Cities have served as sources of inspiration, frustration, and discovery for millennia. The subject of sonnets, stories, plays, the power centers of entire cultures, hotbeds of innovation, and the cause of wars, cities are mainstays of the present and the future with millions more people flocking to them every year.
Let the poet, Zagreb native Tomica Bajsić, take you on a lyrical tour of the city. Walk the streets conjured by his graceful words and take in the gentle beauty of the Zagreb of his childhood memories and present day observation.
Dolac, the main city market, is a Zagreb institution. Selling all the fresh ingredients you need to whip up a fabulous dinner, from fruits and vegetables to fish, meat and homemade cheese and sausages, the sellers come from all over Croatia. Positioned right above the main square, the colorful market is a beacon of a simpler way of life and is just as bustling as it was a century ago.
Do you find phrases and sayings give personality and flair to a language? Have you ever pondered how the culture and history of a place shape the common phrases? Check out some common sayings in Croatian with their literal translations and actual meanings below.
Discover Croatia’s rich archaeological secrets, from the well known ancient Roman city of Salona near Split or the Neanderthal museum in Krapina to the often overlooked Andautonia Archaeological Park, just outside of Zagreb, which boasts the excavated ruins of a Roman town or the oldest continuously inhabited town in Europe, Vinkovci.
A little know fact is that Croatia, together with Spain, have the most cultural and historical heritage under the protection of UNESCO, and Croatia has the highest number of UNESCO intangible goods of any European country.
The National Theater in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is one of those things which always finds its way to every visitor’s busy schedule.
So you're visiting Zagreb and are curious about it's underground art scene? Check out this guide to Zagreb's street art and explore all the best graffiti artists' work for yourself on your next walk through the city.
Numerous festivals, shows and exhibitions are held annually in Zagreb. Search our what's on guide to arts & entertainment.