h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or, to be more formal, Welcome, Bienvenue, Wilkommen
I am an ACE and am here to help you around h2g2. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, and I will do my very best to help you out. If you want, click on this , and it will take you to a very helpful little site.

Ask away!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I needed some time to find my way around this, er, place so now I do have several things to say and questions to ask.

I would like if I could write something that would eventually become an Edited Entry. Especially about my country which doesn't seem to be very richly described, and, even worse, a part of that already small amount of information is either misconclusively incomplete, or just plain wrong.

I don't take it as offense (I'm pretty much used to it ), I'm just looking for a chance to make it a bit better, if possible...

Regarding that, what I saw this Guide has in common with the late Mr. Adams' Guide is that it's 'wildly inaccurate' . Now, before I start writing, I'd like to know, whether this is really acceptable - that is - is there no policy of data accuracy validation, or it was just accidental that I bumped into several such examples on my first three visits here?

Even though this may sound as a complaint, I assure you it isn't. I just want to know wheter it is essential to check all the factography that I include with some reference sources, or is it normal to take a more relaxed approach to relaying facts here.

Another question is about the language - I've read the guidelines and the question is - how strict they are? English is not my native language and, although I may think I'm good at it and besides use all the available spell- and grammar-checkers, it still may not be good enough. Can I expect some help about this when and if it may be needed?

Finally, I got lost in the miles of explaining the copyrights, security issues, and all the other reasons why something was possible before, but isn't any more, or something wasn't possible before, but now it is, etc. I understood that I can't put in my (own, personal, I made them, or I took the photos) graphics. But I'm not quite clear can I (or how) put in links to external web pages (my own pages with the pictures that I can't put in the article, for example).

That's it? Is it too much?

All part of the business!

If you really want to get to know the site, just sit at a computer for a couple of hours and play around with all the things there are here. It works a treat!

You are encouraged to write about anything you want to, so feel free to write about Croatia, backward crawling weevils or metallic pens, the choice is yours!

I think it is hoped that the edited guide will be quite accurate, but as yet there is no particular checking process to ensure that everything is correct. It is up to the writer to check, validate and, if necessary, update their work. If you think there is incorrect information somewhere, it would be a good idea to talk to the author of the work, they'd probably be more than happy to discuss it with you, and very willing to listen (read?) to what you have to say. (I'm sure you know this, but the author of guide entries are shown in the top right hand column of the entry, and if you click on this it will take you to their space, where you can start a conversation with the "discuss" button under their introduction. Alternately you could start a conversation on the entry page).

You certainly are pretty good at english! If you feel you will need help with english when you are writing your guide entry, why not check out the 'peer review' system. You can find this at the http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A464195
Of course, you could also ask any of the other english speaking researchers (I'm from Australia, and I'll proof-read anything you want me to )

I think the best person to speak to about that would be Peta, or at least she will be able to refer you to someone else who will know exactly what you can and can't do. You can find her space at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/U24

So you've travelled to Australia? When, and where?

N-Q-E,-B-R P

Thanks for the information, you've been more than helpful!

Yes, I've travelled to Australia, in July 1999. It was a visit to my wife's family. Well, not exactly family, my wife was their youngest daughter's god-mother at her baptism and was invited again for the holy confirmation. And, she wasn't my wife at the time, just a fiancee. We got married a few months after our return so we sort of used the occasion and proclaimed the trip to be our honeymoon as well, although we married afterwards.

Kind of complicated, huh?

Anyway, we stayed for four weeks, mostly in Melbourne, but we travelled around most of Victoria as well. The original idea was to see the whole lot (Uluru, Cooper Pedy, Sydney, Darwin, all the rest, except maybe the Surfer's Paradise - we have that kind of tourism here in Croatia), but that was because we weren't thinking much.

You know, your sense of distance gets confused when you travel constantly for 35 hours to get half way around the world - looking at it on the World map it seemed that everything in Australia would be so close. After arriving and having a peek on some larger-scale maps, we've realised that even Sydney that seems almost 'next door' is about 1000 km away (approximately like travelling from our home in Rijeka to Hamburg in Germany, which is half way across Europe) and that it would take four days only to travel to and from Uluru. Even if we could get that much vacation and money, the visas would expire sooner, so we limited ourselves to Victoria.

Anyway, what we saw there was really amazingly beautiful. The nature and the people, that is. The architecture is pretty much dull, I'm afraid, but that was of no interest to us in the first place.

We've been to the Philip Island, saw the penguins in the natural habitat for the first time, drove down the Great Ocean Road, saw the whales in Warnambool, also for the first time, hiked in the Grampians, drove along the Murray, visited several Aboriginal pre-historic sites and many other places along these ways whose names I unfortunately don't remember any longer.

Looking from a point of view of a man living on an overcrowded continent, what I saw down there is the closest thing to Paradise. I presume you're not aware of how good is it that only 20 million people live in such a huge country - good for the nature, and good for the people as well.

And about the people - they are good and bad, every single individual a bit of both, all around the world, but in average, we were very pleasantly surprised to discover an open-minded, humouros, hospitable and frendly nation (or maybe 'a mixture of nations and cultures' would be more closer).

We had such a good time that we certainly hope to repeat it one day, perhaps when I wouldn't be obliged to proove that I'm not a war criminal to obtain a tourist visa.

It is sad that you had to prove you weren't a war criminal. How did you do that, by the way? Thinking about it, I guess it wouldn't be all that easy.

I'm so glad I could help you, firstly because you are such a nice person to help and secondly because as the Ace population grows on h2g2, it is harder and harder to find someone who hasn't got an ace of their own

Interesting you thought everything in Australia would be close - living here for all of thirteen years (that's my entire life), I've always felt that everything is very spread out. But I love it.

Can you tell me more about your home country, as I know a big fat zilch about it, or should I wait till you write your guide entry? I would offer to tell you about Australia, but I figure you know a fair bit about it already.

Me!

Well, precisely because it isn't very easy to proove innocence, all civilised legislatures of the world accept the doctrine "innocent until prooved guilty". Basically, I signed a statement that I didn't do any war crimes and explained how I managed that . And probably the fact that my name was on no 'known war criminals' list helped as well.

I'm glad that you're glad, and so on... However, I wasn't aware that I'm even supposed to have an ace of my own. It is nice to hear that, though.

About the relativity of grandure - as I said, Australia really is a BIG country, but still, compared to this big wide world is just a speck somewhere on the bottom of the globe, and this big wide world compared to this infinite Universe is ever so much smaller... Actually, the flight from Vienna to Sydney alone took 22 hours. 22 hours of sitting in an airplane economy-class seat is infinitely long. Infinitely longer than even a rainy Monday in the office. Somehow, one's brain can't cope with the idea of travelling so long in comparison with everyday exepriences so the whole scale gets resized and suddenly you start to think about a whole continent as being a small place.

You shouldn't wait for my guide entry (entries) as it may take some time before I'm satisfied with it (them). I can tell you something about my country, but far less than you can find on [URL removed by moderator]

So, just some general factography maybe, and then you could ask about stuff that interest you in particular. Croatia is situated is southern-central Europe, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic sea, across from Italy. It also borders Slovenia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bosnia-and-Herzegovina. Today it has a bit less than 5 million citizens. I don't know the exact area in sq.km but I'd say about 1/3 of Victoria or less. However, it is not compact in area, but has a sort of a 'horse shoe' shape which makes it about 1500 km to travel around from Dubrovnik (southernmost town on the coast), to Rijeka (northernmost town on the coast), then to Zagreb (the capital, in the northwestern continental part), then to Osijek (in Slavonia, the eastern continental region). The country that fills the horse-shoe gap is Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Today's indenpendent republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, FR Yugoslavia (a federal republic consisting of states of Serbia and Montenegro) and Macedonia (upon greek insistance, the official name is Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) were a single federal republic, named SFR Yugoslavia (Socialist Federal Republic) until 1991. In may 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independency. This resulted in a series of wars - first a ten day war for Slovenian independance in June 1991, then a 4 year war for Croatian independance (or against Croatian nationalism as they called it in Serbia) that started in July 1991 and officially ended in August 1995. At the same time, there was a war in B-and-H as well. It started in 1992 and ended with a mutual offensive in August 1995.

Actually, I particulary dislike speaking about this as it brought nothing but misery and sorrow to everyone involved. The only reason why I did it is because I know that it's rather confusing to everybody not from here.

There are a lot of nice things in and about Croatia, though, and so much more interesting than the war: the history, the architecture, the nature, the sea, the people (that is - those that aren't war criminals which is the majority). There are a lot of historical remains from the Roman (pre-Croatian) times (the oldest one that is well-preserved is a roman arena in Pula, in Istria, on the norhtern part of the coast - about 2000 years old), and a lot of them from Croatian times (after 6th century AD). The oldest known written document that uses Croatian language and scripts (called Glagolica) and mentions Croatians is a stone plate from 9th century, called Bascanska ploca.

THE HISTORY:

In the year 925 AD the Roman Pope recognized Croatia as a United kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia - the so-called Threesome Kingdom of Croats - Croatia being what is now called 'central Croatia and Croatian Seaside', that is, area around Zagreb and Rijeka, Dalmatia being the southern part of the coast, and Slavonia being the eastern continental part. The capital was in northern Dalmatia, in the cities of Nin, and later Knin.

In the year 1102 AD a so-called Personal Union between the kingdom of Hungary and the Threesome Kingdom was signed, these two kingdoms thereafter still being separate entities, but united in the person of a single king whos capital was at first in Pozun (today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia), and later in Pest (today eastern part of Budapest, capital of Hungary). The capital of Croatian part of kingdom was moved to Varazdin (in the northwestern continental part). Some time in 16th century, the Ugro-Croatian kingdom united with the Habsburgh empire, becoming the so-called K+K (Der Keiser und Koenig - german for The Tzar and King), or Austro-Hungarian empire. The emperror had capital in Vienna.

In 18th century, a great fire devastated Varazdin, and after that the Croatian capital moved to Zagreb, where it is today.

In 1848 K+K occupied and annexed Bosnia after taking it from the Turkish empire.

In 1914 the K+K heir to the Throne visited Sarajevo in Bosnia and was assassinated together with his wife. The blame was thrown on a Serbian nationalist organization and this was the direct cause of World War One (to complicate further, Bosnia and Herzegovina was and still is consisted of 3 main ethnic groups - Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian muslims, today called Bosnjaci, whos origins are basically either Serbian or Croatian, but have taken on Islam during centuries of Turkish reign and have therefore lost the sense of this ethnic belonging and created a new and different one).

After 1918, the K+K, being on the losing side, fell apart and a number of new countries re-emerged: Republic of Austria, Republic of Czechoslovakia, Republic of Hungary, and a Republic of Slovenians, Croats and Serbs. The latter one was, more or less, what today are Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, and some western parts of Serbia and Montenegro. This Republic lasted only for a few months after which it united with the Principality of Serbia (which consisted of the rest of today's Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia) and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians was founded, with the capital in Belgrade, today capital of Serbia. In 1929 the King proclaimed dictatorship, nullified the Constitution and dismissed the parliament, changed the name of the kingdom to Kingdom of Yugoslavia (a name that was made up of the common slavic words jug [yoog] - south - and Slaveni - the Slavs - a group of nations to which, besides these also belong the Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Polish, Ukrainians, Belarus, Russians) meaning - the kingdom of southern slavic countries. This was done to forcefully disregard and forbid all the national differences - officially, of all the nations (Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrians, Macedonians), none was recognized as such (even that they ever existed at all), and the doctrine was that the whole kingdom was one nation with three tribes (Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian).

In 1939 the King Alexander was assasinated during his visit to Marseille, France. The assassination was organized mutually, by radical nationalist organizations of Macedonians - VMRO - and Croats - The Ustase. The king's teenage son Peter was coronated for king, under Regency.

In the beginning of 1941, the Regency signed a treaty with nazi-fascist regime of Hitler and Mussolini after which the illegal Communist Party organized riots and demonstrations in Belgrade. Following, a military coup d'etat took place, overthrowing the Regency and nullifying the treaty. This triggered German and Italian attack on Yugoslavia.

During WW2, there were much more than just two sides fighting each other, and it would be far too complicated to explain. The bottom line is that the Communist resistance prevailed in the end and in 1943 the FPR Yugoslavia (Federal People's Republic) was declared. After the war ended in 1945, the Government was established in Belgrade, with the leader of the Communist party, Josip Broz Tito (a Croatian) as president. In 1954 FPRY changed the name to SFRY. In 1970 a political movement for more democratic and economic freedom had rised in Croatia - Hrvatsko proljece (Croatian Spring - spring as a season, not as an ellastic metal object ). The movement was crushed by a series of political trials implying nationalistic motives after which most of the leaders ended in prisons. In 1981 Tito died and this was, by many people's opinion, the beginning of the end of something that could have never worked. A few years later, Slobodan Milosevic emerged as a political leader in Serbia, unleashing the demons that, again by many opinions Tito had successfully kept under control. National initiatives arised in reaction, in all the states. Finally, in 1990, democratic elections took place in Slovenia and Croatia. After a turbulent year of war foreplay, you can now scroll back to the top of this post.

I'm sure that any serious historian that would accidently stumble upon this 'historical summary of a country in less than 10 kB written between lunch and tea' couldn't resist not to flame me, but what the heck...

THE ARCHITECTURE:

Many, rich, diverse, interesting, fascinating, terrifying, just like the history. From 2000 years old roman arenas, pallaces and basillics, through medieval castles and fortresses, rennaisance churches and academies, baroque facades of Varazdin, secessionist and neo-classic academic and cultural mansions, always spiced with the traditional homes different in every region. Just a few especially interesting sites: Dubrovnik (listed in the UNICEF's register of the world cultural heritage), Split, Trogir, Zadar, Pula, Varazdin, the castles in the northwestern continental part...

THE NATURE:

Considering the size of the country, quite rich and well preserved (well, not in comparison to Australia, but in comparison with west-European countries, most certainly). Among all the national parks, and protected areas, to mention only those - in my opinion - most beautiful: Plitvice lakes (listed in the UNICEF's register of the world natural heritage), Krka falls, Kornati islands, Risnjak mountain. Not to stop at the places officially recognized as beautiful, one can spend months seeing everything - the coast and thousands of islands, together with the underwater world, the Velebit and Biokovo mountains dividing the coast from the inland, the inland of Istrian peninsula, the mountains of Gorski kotar, the clear and wild rapids of the rivers Dobra, Kupa, Korana and Mreznica, the hills of Hrvatsko zagorje in the northwest, the deep centuries-old oak woods of Slavonia...

THE JOYS of LIFE:

Again, many and diverse. Very fine wines, by many connoiseurs recognized as worthy oponents to french ones, both indigenous sorts like Malvazija, Zlahtina, Dingac, Babic, Grasevina (just to mention some of them), and wider-spread ones like Chardonnay, Riesling, Burgundy, Tocai...

Many, many, gourmet specialities (YUM! ), again different in every region - slavonian kulen, istrian soup, istrian stew with noodles, dalmatian pasticada, strukli from Zagorje, the black squid risotto...

Women (or men) - see PEOPLE.

THE PEOPLE:

Like everywhere else around the world - good, bad, friendly, malicious, clever, stupid, lazy, cheap, loving, jelous, merry, envious, hospitable, xenophobic, spiteful, ignorant, passionate. Everybody a bit of everything, but always intensive. Like in every other country I've been to, we tell jokes about each other, but always, in fact, laugh at ourselves.

Everyone can be beautiful and everyone can be ugly. To others as well as to oneself. And regardless of the actual physical appearance of the individual. "The beauty is in the eye of the beholder", as a wise man once said.

Croatia sounds like a really nice place! I wasn't sure at all what it would be like, but now I think it's going on my "places I must go to" list, for the next couple of decades...

Well, I'm not sure what I can say...when you decide to write that as a guide entry it will be absolutely amazing! One of my pet interests is society. Can you tell me a bit about croatian society? (what people do, what kids do, how trends are set, etc). This psoting is so short compared to your encyclopaedia! Is there anything you really want to know about that I could tell you about? BTW, your english is fabulous! I would never have known you didn't speak it as a first language...don't worry about that!

Me!

Oh, well... You see, this is a very good example of human incapability of being objective. Basically, you now want to come here (once in the future) and visit just because you happend to stumble upon a guy that knows how to nicely present his country.

If I happened to be a dull and ineloquent person, I wouldn't be able to give you the information that would interest you so much as to wish to visit Croatia.

On the other hand, if I was what I am, but from, say, Tierra del Fuego (The Land of Fire, an island south of Cape Horn, at the end of South America, closest to, but still not Antarctica) instead of Croatia, I'd be capable of telling you such a nice story about a piece of cold and cruel, sheep-populated land at the edge of civilisation that you'd probably wish to go there too. And without any lying, mind you!

That's the art of presentation, as my boss would say.

But, don't misunderstand me - what I wrote about my country is what I truly and fully feel and believe. That's just my way of looking at things and life - always and everywhere you can witness the Beauty if you wish. Because the Beauty is in You, not your surroundings. If you learn this skill, you'll have a wonderful time wherever you go, once you start travelling, just like I do. And then, one day, you'll find out that even your home, your back yard, your neighbourhood, and all the other stuff that you ignore and take for granted every day have that Beauty as well, even more so.

Puff... What's the english word for the above? Preaching? Patronising? Well, sorry anyway... I didn't mean to.

The society? As I said, we're people, like everywhere else around the world. Although not having such a high standard as in the Western world (strangely enough, this also contains Japan and Australia ), we watch (too much) TV, ground and satellite, surf the Net (latest reasearch says - only about 8% of the population), follow all the western trends. Essentialy, when you analyse the differences between nations from a similar cultural circle (meaning, in example, the British and the French, not the Germans and the Vietnamese) you always end up stuck on details and minor interests, precisely because we're all pretty much the same. So, considering these details and marginal groups, I'd say Croatia has way too much drug-addicts among teenage population - mainly because of the bad economic situation and still fresh war wounds - dissatisfied and lost parents bring up dissatisfied and lost children. On the other hand, in culture and art, I'd say that we're a bit more open to the new and alternative, or different, or shifted - in a word, non-commercial - than the west-Europeans, or especially Americans. We like music. We like drinking. We are always extreme: eat too much or not enough, drink too much or not at all, other people are either life-long friends or sworn enemies. All in all, I'd say, the closest national profile to ours is the Irish. Of those that I met, that is.

What I'd like to know is where exactly from Australia are you, and something about that place and its surroundings (unless it's Melbourne ).

Wherever you spoke about I think I'd end up wanting to go there!
The solitude could be pleasant!

Is there a word for so elequently expressing sentiments? I don't know.

X-treme, hey! Eh, well, I s'pose it's interesting.

Absolutely no danger of hearing about Melbourne, as I've never been there!
I am from the national capital of my nation. That's canberra, situated in northern A.C.T. (Australian Capital Territory). A.C.T. is in turn surrounded by N.S.W. (New South Wales). A.C.T. is down the south-eastern corner of N.S.W., which is down in the south-eastern corner of Australia, which, looking from the right angle (about the middle of the Indian Ocean) is in the south-eastern corner of the world. No further experimentation has been done into Canberra's contined South-Eastiness!

Parts of Canberra are absolutely beautiful. The gap in the hills near my house on a mid-Autumn evening, when the sun blazes from behind it, creating a sunlit, volcano-like well definitely wins a prize for one of the most stunning scenes in the world. Actually, looking back on it I can remember dozens of amazing sunsets over the years near where I live. But maybe beautiful sunsets are everywhere. I love sunsets. Everywhere I go I look for sunsets, and I'm often disappointed if it isn't amazing. "I love a stormy sunset, a light of dramatic grey", to misquote a famous Australian poem. Oh, dear, you'll not know anything about Canberra if I just woffle on about sunsets!

I said that some parts of Canberra are beautiful, but the other parts are horrible. The newer parts were built around the 70's, and they don't gain anything from the nuetral tones(well...sustained tones) of the period. Also quite a bit of housing is "government housing" or low-cost housing, that is it's housing built by the government for people who may not be able to afford other housing. Unfortunately people living in this housing are sometimes more likely to be those who engage in somewhat disreputable activities, and the areas are often run-down and ugly. But I don't often visit these areas. Not because I'm a snob, but because I don't have to.

One of the things I love about Canberra is that it's in a valley, and wherever you are there are mountains encircling you, protecting you, comforting you. I've grown up with mountains all around me and I don't like flat country much.

I would love to write more, but right now I have to go, I'll get back to you on this!

You (among other) wrote:
> Is there a word for so elequently expressing sentiments? I don't know.

Is 'vivid' an adequate expression?

Canberra was also on our visit list which we so sadly given up after seeing the distances we were up against.

About government housing, I've seen it in Melbourne (and in Paris, and in Amsterdam, and in Los Angeles, and in Hamburg, and...). And I can say only one thing about this - most of the people in Croatia work heavily all their life and barely can afford a loan to (expensively) buy a flat in a building similar to what westerners call 'government housing'.

About sunsets, why don't you have a look at

[URL removed by moderator]

There are some photos of sunsets (or almost sunsets) I took around croatian coast during past few years. Mind you, if you're not amazed, that's not because the scenes were not amazing, but because photos are bad.

But seriously, I'm into hobby photography 15 years now, I've shot a lot, but this kind of lighting contrast is always tricky and impossible to get right without proffessional equipment and films. And proffessional equipment is called 'proffessional' precisely because amateurs can't afford it.

The four photos I've put on the URL are, respectively:

- late spring lazy afternoon in Cavtat, a small southernmost croatian town
- a sunset on Stradun, the main promenade in Dubrovnik, about 20 km north of Cavtat
- a stormy evening in Silo, on the Krk island, northernmost croatian island
- a sunset above the Vrana lake, on the Cres island, just west of Krk

Hope you'll like them.

Sorry I haven't replied for so long, I've been pretty busy.

Vivid...not bad. I don't think it was *quite* what I was looking for though.

I wasn't quick enough to catch that URL, maybe you'd better be a bit tricky about putting it in next time...upside down, back to front, spread out a bit more...it adds to the adventure.

I like photography, but I don't do much of it. A couple of years ago I made a pinhole camera. It's really good, I took some fantastic photos with it, albeit in black and white, but that looks really good, I think.

Yoiks, If I write any more I will be drawn and quartered!
EP

Ooops... So, even that is illegal here.

So, let's try this:

tripleW dot inet dot hr slash ~eprpic slash photos

better luck this time.

sorry I haven't written for a while.

I found your site, but I'm not sure if I found the pictures...

But they are there, I've checked!

There is no HTML, only a bunch of jpegs. The server should send you a simple clickable directory list. Clicking on each file name loads the photo.