Two weekends ago we joined a group of nine other expats (from Canada, Mexico, France, Russia, South Africa, United States, and Croatia) and headed out of Split for a horseback riding excursion. We drove 45 minutes to what felt like the middle of nowhere in the hills behind Split to a horse farm with over 70 horses. Ivica, the owner, and several other farm hands were there to greet us.

Family and friends regularly ask me what it’s like to work here in Croatia, and I usually just say, “It’s different.” I often find myself lacking the right words to explain how it is different, thinking, “You just have to live in this crazy place to understand.” Sometimes I tell the story about how I was flipping through photos of a client’s vehicle fleet that I was designing graphics for and I noticed one truck