Saturday, October 26, 2013

Living in the midst of History

My husband and I recently spent a month in Osijek volunteering at the Evangelical Theological Seminary. See previous blogs for pictures of the school, the synagogue turned into a church, and the Cathedral in the town center. Todays pictures feature the old part of town, called the Tvrda (the fort) by locals.
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Osijek, Croatia, on the Drava River, has changed hands many times over the past few millennia. The Austro-Hungarians razed the city when they forced the Ottomans out, so what you see is late seventeenth to nineteenth century.
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The Austro-Hungarian city was surrounded by a wall entered by this gate facing the river.
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I bought a water color of the square from this vendor the morning of the monthly antique fair. One side of the square was a series of open-air coffee shops. Croatians LOVE their caffeine.
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The music school is in this yellow building
facing the square. I love the sound of students practicing.
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One evening we attended a free saxophone concert in the music school. The guy was awesome!
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Tunnels run under the surviving fortress walls on the opposite side of the river. I found them very photogenic, i.e. I got carried away taking pictures.
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Here's another attempt at a stitched panorama. I stood in the middle of the street to take this. (Left and right are really one continuous line.) I had to edit the pictures before stitching to make the corners line up properly. I think it works better with distant shots.
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I'm partial to shooting through arches and doorways, so here is the Tvrda from the ruined walls on the other side of the river.
Tomorrow we'll see a few more pictures of life in this fascinating city, before moving to Split on the Adriatic.

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