Osijek

After our house visit in Vukovar, we traveled about a half hour down the road to the town of Osijek (pronounced oysik). We first went to Holy Cross Church. The church is run by the Franciscans. There are four Franciscan monks still active here. In addition to the main church, there are six side altars, the most popular of which is the St. Anthony altar. We were treated to a piano concert in the church that lasted about 15 minutes.

After the concert, we went outside into a small courtyard. In this courtyard there was a crucifix, not an unusual thing for a Catholic church. What was unusual, however, was the materials the corpse was composed of: machine gun clips, shellcases, shrapnel, grenades, and barbed wire. Marko told us that the message here is "Forgive, but don't forget."

After leaving the church courtyard, we continued our walk through the town. We eventually came to the town square, called Holy Trinity square, which contains another monument of the Holy Trinity in the middle of the square that I previously mentioned. Also, just around the corner was another church. This church has bells that ring only on Friday. No one could remember why this tradition started, so at one point they decided to explain it by saying that it was a reminder to Catholics that since it was Friday, that shouldn't be eating meat. I guess pasta was commonly eaten instead of meat dishes on Fridays, so they started calling it the "noodle bell."

Holy Trinity square is also called Wine square. Apparently, those who made wine were only allowed to sell it here, and only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The officials closely monitored the sales and took out their taxes from the profits. Also, any wine that was left and not sold had to be brought to the government building across the street and left with the authorities.