Tue 23 Sep- another PT/INR adventure

Tue 23 Sep- after a quick breakfast, Stan took a taxi to the private clinic 'Poliklinica Medico' at Mestroviceva 2 in Rijeka to have the PT/INR test done. They knew exactly what was required (they called the test PV), and taking only name, date of birth, fax number for results, the $13 fee, and a blood sample, were finished quickly and efficiently. I didn't even get a chance to open the book I brought in case there was a long wait. From the time leaving Kastav to return was less than 1 hour (and it's a 15-minute cab ride at $12 each way, plus a 5-10 minute wait for the taxi). Once again I'm impressed with the European health care system. Next challenge will be the Italian system, in the Lake Como region away from the cities.
Kiyomi worked on her article while Stan wrote a few postcards. We got some interesting postcards during our travels, but haven't had an opportunity to send them yet. We rely mainly on email. It is much easier to type one message to many friends and relatives than hand-write individual messages. We've also found that snail mail from overseas takes a long time, and sometimes never arrives. The Croatian keyboard is very similar to the US layout; just the letters z and y are swapped; and many of the punctuation and special characters are not where expected. The easiest work-around is to create documents on our computer, save as text or Word, and copy or attach to Gmail from a memory stick.
For lunch Kiyomi fixed the sausage and pork, plus some more of the vegetables we got at the Farmers Market. It's really nice to have the ability to cook the local foods we like the way we like them. The sausage was delicious with a nice piquancy; the pork was like a nicely smoked ham, with no fat - just delicious meat. To burn off some of the calories, we took hour-long walk in the woods behind Kastav. We got lots of exercise and fresh air on the cool 17 C partly cloudy day. It seems Fall arrived a week or so before the official change of seasons yesterday at the equinox.
We tuned in to CNN and CNBC to follow the financial crisis, wondering what the unintended consequences will be, and who will benefit or suffer.