Vecernji List featured TCN and the launch of Total Zagreb on March 7, 2017 (thank you!) – the full interview in English.
At first, introduce yoursfelf to our readers. Who is Paul Bradbury? And what are you doing in Croatia when most Croats are running away from here? š
A fat Englishman who blogs about Croatia, and who swapped the rain of Manchester for the sun of Hvar. One of many reasons to run away from the UK to life in Croatia.
You came here 14 years ago.. How did you decide to move in Croatia and why did you choose Hvar? Most foreigners come here because they fall in love and become a “hrvatski zet” (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about)
I was working as a humanitarian aid worker in Somaliland and had just sold my house in the UK. I wanted to buy somewhere in Europe on the coast, and I saw the advert ‘Croatia, The Mediterranean as It Once Was’ on CNN, and immediately decided to buy in Croatia. Why Hvar? I knew almost nothing about Croatia, but a Canadian friend in Sarajevo knew the coast very well. She made a list of ten places, explaining a little about each. I was looking at the pretty Sarajevo girls walking past and stopped listening. When she finished, she asked me which one was the most interesting. I was embarrassed that I had not been listening, closed my eyes and put my finger on the piece of paper. Number 6 – Hvar, an island I had never heard of. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
The main reason why it was the best decision I ever made is that I met a cute assistant librarian with gorgeous blue eyes in my first week, and now I have three pairs of gorgeous blue eyes to look at each morning, including those of our two wonderful daughters. Hrvatski Zet? Haha, I am very proud to be a Brusjki Zet (from village of Brusje), although I am sure my punac wished for a son-in-law who would spend more time working in the field. The family has been very welcoming and accepting of this strange foreigner over the years.
While I was searching for more information about you, I found that for many years, you were a humanitarian aid worker and travelled around the world. What can you say about those times of your life, what you remember the most? What did you do, where have you been…
I had a glorious start to my international career as the first male chambermaid in a four-star hotel in Munich. I have been fortunate to have travelled to over 90 countries, and lived in Germany, Japan, Russia, Georgia, Rwanda, Kenya and Somalia. For much of that time, I was an aid worker, with the most memorable experiences working in emergency food distribution in the Ural Mountains in 1992 and Rwanda immediately after the genocide in 1994. I will never forget the adrenaline of running a distribution project to 600,000 returning refugees, with distributions each day in a field in the middle of Africa, just me, five local staff, trucks of food, seeds and tools, and 20,000 traumatised people just waiting in silence.
Why did you decide to launch the portal about Hvar (and Dalmatia in general) and how did the idea came to your mind? Are you satisfied with the numbers, readers statistics and so on? Who are your readers?
I had lived on Hvar for many years and heard one too many visitors complain that the world’s most beautiful island had the world’s worst information. I started by writing a 220-page guide book for Hvar sitting in my local cafe on Jelsa’s main square, which was well received.
After that I thought there might be an online opportunity, with a daily info portal in English about the island, to show potential visitors that Hvar is great to visit all year (it is!), not just the summer months. I have written more than 8,000 articles just about Hvar since I started in October 2011. I then did the similar website for Split and fabulous Inland Dalmatia, before starting our national news portal, Total Croatia News, as well as national portals for cycling and wine. And now Zagreb. Total Croatia is read in every country in the world (apart from North Korea), according to Google Analytics, roughly equally between local and international readers. Two of the biggest compliments I have had from locals was one lady from Hvar writing to say how much she had learned about her island from the site, even thought she spoke no English, and put all through Google Translate, and the chap who complained to me that it was not fair or correct that a foreigner had the best website about Hvar.
And what about Total Zagreb? What is the main idea, who is writing stories and news – Croats, foreigners, you? Who are the members of your team? What are plans for the future of project?
Zagreb is a logical extension. With more than a million tourists last year, a growing expat and business community, it will be our biggest portal yet, and also our biggest opportunity. The Total Croatia philosophy is very simple – Give People What They Want and Celebrate the Little Guy. If we give good, solid information and interesting features, people will want to return to the site for more.
One thing people complain about in Zagreb is how hard it is to find out what’s happening. So we have built an events calendar, divided into sections such as workshops, kids activities, sport, culture etc. If people have an event, no matter how small, send it to us and we will add. It has the potential very quickly to be a great resource for all people visiting and living in the city.
We also have a feature called Meet the People of Zagreb, featuring residents with interesting backgrounds and stories – this has proved very popular already. We have nutritionist Diana Gluhak contributing a column on Healthy Zagreb, living stories of Zagreb in history, articles taking visitors beyond the standard tourism sites, and we will also have a big section on day trips from Zagreb – where to go at the weekend. Croatian continental tourism has huge potetntial, and Zagreb’s recent success should be channelled to help promote it.
Medical tourism is also something we will be strongly promoting, and also we will not forget the little guy. We are VERY keen to tell the stories of old Zagreb businesses, new innovative companies and interesting obrts. We hope that the portal can become a useful window of Zagreb to the world, and we welcome cooperation with anyone. Our writers are a mix of local and internationals, most of whom are living in Croatia – we have had contibutions from over 80 writers since starting the project.
Future plans? Total Dubovnik will go live later this month, and we are looking at Total Istria as well, if we can get the right support and interest from the local and regional tourist boards there. We are also developing a dedicated portal for dental and medical tourism for Zagreb, Kvarner and other regions of Croatia. We will also have Total Croatia Sailing live later this year. And we would LOVE to do a dedicated website for eastern Croatia – Slavonia, Baranja and Vukovar regions – a wonderful region in need of all the support it can get. If anybody is interested in helping us, please get in touch.
I guess you’ve been to Zagreb.. Do you ever think about moving to the big city and why/why not? What did you hear about people from Zagreb? Do you love Zagreb? What are your favorite places in Zagreb?
Moving to Zagreb? No. Although I have travelled the world, for the last 15 years I have been living on an island with no roundabouts, traffic lights or lifts (apart from a couple in hotels). I have become somewhat of a Dalmatian village boy. I have been coming to Zagreb for 15 years, mostly work and visiting family living here. To be honest, I used to hate Zagreb, as it was quite a boring city, but the transformation in the social scene in the last five years has been amazing. Not just Advent in Zagreb (which by the way attracts now more tourists in December than many medium sized coastal resorts in a year), but there is a real buzz and energy that was not there a few years ago. I now really like the city, and with the work I do, most of my time is spent in cafes and bars in meetings, and I have a few favourites. I am fortunate to be working with – and writing about – lots of the successful younger people in Zagreb, especially in IT, a really inspiring group of people for an old guy like me. The Upper Town is of course gorgeous, and the numerous green spaces are great to escape to.
In your opinion, what are the pros and cons living in Croatia? Do you regret anything or sometimes think of moving back to England?
Pros – amazing place to raise a family, safe, strong family values, the nature. Cons – the bureaucracy and the unwillingness of many people to look to the future instead of dwelling on the past. (Our recent article – Is It Really Necessary to Poison the Minds of the Next Generation?) While I totally understand the need to remember and respect the recent past, I find it tragic that the culture of division and hatred is being embedded in young minds of Croatia’s future – the next generation. Where will it end?
Another con is the acceptance of some of Croatia’s brightest talent that little can be achieved if you are not a part of the system. It is one reason why so many people are leaving, and why a lot of the remaining talent remains underground. Welcome to Uhljebistan was an attempt to explain to foreigners how Croatia really works. It needs to change if Croatia is to move forward.
As foreigner, were you faced with prejudices?
I think that foreigners anywhere face a level of prejudice, and Croatia is no different. And Croatians are generally very welcoming and hospitable, and any perceived prejudice is hard to spot. What changes is when a foreigner voices an opinion which is in any way critical about any aspect of Croatia. I wrote an editorial, Is a Foreigner Allowed to Have an Opinion in Croatia, one of the most popular articles on our site. One of the most fascinating things about Croatians is their love of complaining about life here in cafes all day long, but as soon as a foreigner does (and even worse, online and in English), they close ranks against the foreigner, and engage in the Great Policy of Deflecting – never reflecting on the criticism, but immediately attacking the person making the criticism and their country. Constructive criticism is a positive thing, but something not welcome in Croatia. It is one of the reasons Croatia will never move on. But in between the death threats and dozens of abusive messages we get daily, more and more cool people who like what we are doing are getting in touch with offers of help. We have a really nice network of inspirational Croatian people coming together. We welcome well-written submissions from anyone who has something interesting to say about any aspect of Croatia.
Entrepreneurial climate in Croatia… What you have to say about that topic?
As Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, I think it is an excellent idea.
What can we learn from British people and what they can learn from us? What is the main difference between Croats and Brits?
After once ruling half the world, the only things I think Britain has to offer these days are still the best sense of humour and sarcasm in the world. And Yorkshire puddings. As all my Croatian friends tell me, we Brits have a lot to learn in terms of fashion and style (me especially) and family values.
How about our language? Is it hard to you to learn Croatian? Do you speak Croatian? What were the first words/phrases which you learnt in Croatian? Tell us something in Croatian – some message for our readers maybe?
It is hard to learn, but it is actually the most logical language I have ever tried to speak, once you get over the Slavic grammar. I spoke quite fluent Russian before I came here, so that helped, but what kills me are the dialects. I used to have a Hvar real estate agency and was in Zagreb with a potential client, who asked me:
Koliko kosta ova kuca?
50 mijorih
Sto? 50 sto?
It was at that point I found out I had been learning Jelsa dialect and not Croatian… My first three words were Potpis, Hobotnica and Punomoc – the first is funny in English, and the words are a partial reflection of my reason for coming initially, buying a house.
Foreigners usually tell us that they can’t believe how we have time for sitting in a bar and drinking coffee one or two hours.. Did you get used to it?
I find it more amazing they can make a coffee last two hours, when I can get through three beers in the same time… It did used to fascinate me until I realised just how much business goes on in the cafes. Prior to this, when I needed to meet an official, I would go to his office to make an appointment, until I got smart and found out his local cafe, then sent a coffee over to him and got my request in when he thanked me. A wonderful way of conducting business.
Paul Bradbury is Editor-in-Chief of Total Croatia News (www.total-croatia-news.com/) and launched recently his latest portal, Total Zagreb (www.total-zagreb.com)
