Alright, well welcome back to the All Things Croatia podcast everyone.
Today we have Katica Nikic and Caroline Spivak representing Team Canada in the Croatian World
Games or Cro-Olympics, which is an Olympic style competition for the Croatian Diaspora.
The goal of the games is connecting young Croats from all over the world through sports
and cultural gatherings and to encourage them to cultivate their Croatian identity.
Caroline is the coordinator for Team Canada and Katica participated on the basketball
team.
The competition just happened so I'm really excited to hear about it.
Thanks for coming on the podcast you guys.
The pleasure.
Lawrence, thank you for having us.
Of course.
You know, can you guys start us off by sort of introducing yourselves and where you're
from and telling us about your Croatian background?
Caroline Spivak, currently living in Toronto.
I grew up in Croatia, Germany and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
I've spent my youth in folklore, tambura, Croatian school, teaching Croatian school,
being involved in the community with our church in Hamilton, our church in Toronto, working
with the Mississauga group on our Christian Park.
And I'm really excited to now have been the coordinator for the second Team Canada at
the Croatian World Games.
We had our first big entry in 2017 and then again this year we had 53 athletes in 2017
and 153 this time.
And it is interesting to note that Canadians have been part of the Croatian World Games
since the very first games.
So that's kind of exciting.
Our team has significantly grown and our participation has definitely intensified.
That's awesome to hear.
Thank you, Caroline.
And Katica, can you tell us a little about yourself and your Croatian background as well?
I'm Katica Nikic.
I grew up in Ottawa.
I've always lived in Ottawa.
My parents on both sides are from Croatia.
Well, they're parents, so my grandparents from both sides are from Croatia.
And that's where my background comes from.
I grew up in folklore, tambura.
I did all of that.
I went to Croatian school and this was my first World Games.
I heard about it, well, my dad heard about it through Instagram.
There was a little ad that he saw and he's like, hey, you want to go play?
Of course I do.
So I joined this and I really, I had a great time.
What was your, so you played on the basketball team, right?
I did, yes.
What was your experience?
I mean, were you playing basketball in college, high school, you know, sort of recreational?
Yeah, so I started playing basketball.
I want to say I was 10.
I was fairly young and it started off as just a little camp that my dad signed me up for.
And since then I just fell in love with the game.
I started playing house league and then for like maybe a year or two after that, I just
took off in competitive.
The previous two teams I've been on, they've both been in the top five in all of Ontario,
like one of the provinces in Canada.
And it's been an amazing run for me playing for such a high level of basketball.
I took a year off for university, like from playing basketball just to get my studies
going and I'm hoping that maybe this year I'm going to try out and do something for
university ball.
That's awesome.
You know, Caroline, I want to ask you since, you know, Kathita mentioned, she saw it on
an Instagram ad, where did you hear about, you know, these Croatian World Games and how
did you first get involved?
You mentioned this was your second Croatian World Games.
That's right.
In 2014, I was in Croatia as I was a member representing Canada, one of three members
representing Canada on the Council for the Government of Croatia, for Croats living outside
of the homeland and was a guest at the opening ceremonies of those games in 2014, which was
phenomenal.
And as part of the opening ceremonies, all the participating countries had the opportunity
to walk across the stage.
And all of a sudden I hear Canada and I got so excited and I thought, how come I don't
know about this?
And as I watched the team walk across, it was this wonderful group of seniors from Vancouver,
which is lovely.
And they have participated in all of the games and they usually win a medal in bocce for
sure.
But I was disappointed because I thought Canada has so much youth, so much Croatian youth,
we have to do something about this.
And that's when I got involved, not only in coordinating Team Canada, also on the Executive
Organizing Committee for the Games, because I needed to understand exactly what the games
were, how they're put together so that we could put together a team from Canada and
have some really strong participation.
In 2017, as I say, we got together 53 athletes, primarily from Vancouver and Ontario, and
we brought home 10 medals.
And this time we again, primarily from Vancouver, Ontario, some Edmonton, Calgary folks, we
brought over 150 athletes and we took home nine medals.
So we're keeping it consistent.
So my involvement has increased and will continue to increase.
And I hope that we will put together an equally strong team in four years when we host the
sixth annual game, or not annuals, the sixth games rather.
That's awesome.
Katica, I want to hear from you about sort of how this week went down.
It was, I believe, last week, correct, that these Croatian World Games happened.
Can you sort of tell us the whole week, what happened, sort of from the journey over to
Croatia to that week of games to flying back?
How did that go?
Well, I'm actually still in Croatia right now.
I'm in Dubrovnik.
I'm enjoying the coasts right in front of me right now.
But flying up, it was a long flight.
It was nine hours for me.
And once I arrived to the Studenski Dom, it was a lot more than I expected.
I had this room and it had no AC.
But at first I was like, this is not going to work out.
And then after the first night, I was like, this is amazing.
I don't know what it was about it.
But it just felt kind of nice.
It was different.
So the first night I went out, I knew some people who were at the games from Ottawa as
well.
And we all went out for dinner.
The next day, oh boy, this was a whole week ago.
We went to Sjemen.
Yes, yes, we did.
We went up there.
That was lots of people.
I know they got motion sickness from going all the way up and around and around.
But once everyone got up there, including I, it was gorgeous.
The view from up there was amazing.
Danko, we went to the 360 Tower that recently opened on Sjemen.
I haven't been there yet.
Is it nice?
Oh, it's beautiful.
I really recommend it.
It's gorgeous.
You can see all of Croatia from up there.
Basically, it's all and the people who work there, you'd point somewhere and you're like,
so what's down there?
They tell you exactly what it is.
It's amazing.
Tuesday was the opening ceremonies.
And those were just that was a beautiful ceremony.
It was roughly, I want to say two hours long, I think, something like that.
And there were just performance after performance after performance.
Each one had me just lost for words.
They were so beautiful.
It was all folklore from mainly from Croatia.
I think there was some from other regions.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It was the main dress.
They did some oriental and some Egyptian performances.
Yes.
Yeah.
I knew it wasn't all Croatian folklore.
But yeah, no, after the first Kolo dance, I leaned over to my dad and I said, I'm joining
Kolo again this year.
Like it just it blew me away.
It really did.
And after that, we went, you know, we went down.
There was a there was another concert going on down there.
I always forget the boys names.
They say yes, them.
So they had their own little concert downstairs.
We went to that Wednesday with my games.
I played three games total for Canada.
And then I Germany, sorry, Macedonia needed another player.
So me and this other girl from France, we decided, hey, like we can help you guys out.
And I found that that's really what this is all about.
You know, it's not just the games.
It's really meeting other people, finding out where they're from and how to connect.
And helping each other, really.
So it's more than just the games is what I'm trying to get at.
But the games, they were a lot of fun.
They were really fun.
Now, are you guys placed bronze at the end?
We did.
Yes, we did.
And there's a little story behind the bronze cup.
We brought it out to celebrate that night.
And I gave it to one of my teammates.
And she ended up putting it at the bar saying, here, you keep it.
I text her around one in the morning.
Hey, do you know where the cup is?
I thought you took it from the bar.
I don't have it.
So I go back to the bar at 1 a.m. and the bar is closed.
So the next night, my dad, who was also the coach, we go down to the bar again.
My dad goes up and he's like, hey, we left a cup here.
They're like, yes, it's in the back.
So they go to the back.
They have our trophy.
They give it back to us.
We go, I find all my teammates.
I say, look what I found.
And from there, so that was the highlight of Thursday.
And then Friday, we had a friendly match against France.
So the Team Canada team for basketball made really good friends with the France team.
We came together and played this really friendly little game of five on five.
And that was Friday.
What was the closing ceremony?
Yes, sorry.
Thank you.
Closing ceremonies as well.
And that really that was just introducing everyone like this is what this country did.
This is what this country did and how many medals they got, which is really interesting
to see all the other sports there were.
Like I knew there was basketball, soccer, volleyball, bocce, but there were plenty of
other like judo, tennis.
There were just several sports.
It really amazed me.
And so, yeah, that was Friday.
And then Saturday, lots of people went home.
You also had the cross country walk run.
Yes, I didn't go to that.
But one of my friends, brothers participated in that.
Many Team Canada members did the walk run.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, lots of people did that.
Yeah.
And some of our friends from France, one of my friends from France actually came first
in that.
And I think it was like a 3.5 kilometer.
3.2.
3.2, yes.
And it was really nice.
It was really nice.
I went to Zagreb as well.
And then afterwards, had dinner again with the group from Ottawa from their parted ways.
Yeah, that was really that was really the whole week.
It was a lot of fun.
Sounds like an awesome week.
So you met, I'm guessing you met a lot of people there from all over the world, a lot
of different Croatians.
Yes, a lot of people.
I met people from Macedonia, Germany, France, Australia, the United States even.
Moral of the story, everywhere around the world.
Yeah.
Well, Caroline, let me direct this towards you.
Can you tell us sort of a little bit more about the competition, the World Games as
a whole, how many countries were involved, what kind of sports were there, and how do
you know, how did most people really get involved and signed up?
Do you have to know other people?
Do you have to be on a team, for example, if you want to play basketball or do you just
sort of sign up solo and you're joined by the rest of your the people from your country
and sort of walk us through that process and how the games work as a whole?
Sure.
This year, we hosted 800 athletes from 26 countries of the Croatian diaspora.
So you can imagine the logistics involved with that.
Each country has a country coordinator and that individual is responsible for promoting
the games, for pulling the team together and making sure that Croatians in their country
are aware that this is happening.
You can appreciate in countries such as Canada, the US, Australia, that's no small task because
of the vastness of our countries.
But we spend a couple of years promoting the games, whether it's writing to all the church
communities, all the sports clubs, all the folklore groups, letting people know that
this is an opportunity to visit Croatia.
And I'm really proud of the fact that more than half of our Team Canada athletes this
year came to Croatia for the very first time.
And what happened for Katica is what we hope for.
The games are about connecting amateur sports athletes, in particular youth.
I mean, our youngest athlete was 16, our most senior athlete was 89.
So the spread is wide.
That sweet spot is 16 to about 25 that we're after.
They get to come to Croatia for the first time to experience the country in a really
different way.
Most importantly, they get the opportunity to meet youth from around the world in Croatian
communities, create friendships, sometimes romances, sometimes marriages.
Sometimes people decide to come back to Croatia.
After the 2017 games, we had a couple of families that moved back to Croatia.
We have several of our university students who chose to come to study their programs
in Croatian English, which is phenomenal.
We want them to come to Croatia to fall in love and to come back time and time again.
Now there are countries such as Bolivia, maybe Peru, Chile, where there are only a few athletes.
They don't have the large contingents that we do.
So what we do is, as Katica mentioned earlier, is we add them to a team.
So perhaps Team Canada's female soccer players needed, our team needed one or two players.
So we borrowed some from Bolivia.
We were able to farm out some of our athletes to France, Peru, Argentina as well.
So that just increases those opportunities for getting to know each other, but then having
a whole lot of fun together.
And it's beautiful to watch this manifestation of friendships, of interactions, of sports
competition, of helping each other out.
And really, language is no barrier.
It's a ton of fun and it's really a special, special experience for our athletes.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
I have to say I'm really jealous.
When I first found out only a few weeks ago that I heard about this, Paul over at Grow
Each Week magazine reached out to me, said that you guys reached out to him.
And I saw this, I was like, oh man, I wish I knew about this four years ago, even last
week, right before this one happened, but before the last one happened.
We'll get you on a team for next time.
I would love that.
Yeah, I know it's far in advance.
It's in four years.
Because when you think about the countries, we say the precozianské države, so North
America, South America, Australia, we have to buy our tickets a year in advance.
And that means we have to organize our teams two years in advance, which means now there's
only two years left for organizing.
So when you look at the timeline, it contracts very quickly.
There's a lot of work that has to happen in a very short amount of time so that when I
go, for example, to organize the team, I have information and I'm not just saying, hey,
we're doing this thing.
Put your lives in our hands and plan to go to Croatia next in two years time.
So it's a little bit of a different organizing challenge here for Europe because most of
the time they can get in a car and be here in six to 12 hours.
So they don't necessarily share our urgency of information sharing and organization, but
we're teaching them slowly that this is really important, otherwise we can't get here in
time.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's an awesome program.
I love the goal as well.
I was in a similar situation, not athletics related, but I came over to Croatia to do
this language learning program for the Diaspora.
And I met other Croatian Diaspora from all over the world.
And then I ended up, now I'm here two and a half years.
It was a three month program.
So yeah, that's what we want.
We want people to decide to come back to Croatia, decide to come for the first time to create
opportunities to come for school, whether it's a semester or a four year degree or a
master's program.
Croatia has done a really good job with the universities of creating programs that are
in English so that they are accessible.
They guarantee enrollment spots for youth out of the Diaspora.
So they are extending an olive branch to us.
We just need youth to take it and it's happening.
And that's really exciting.
That's awesome.
Well, like we said, it's not as far in advance as I thought.
It should be all, I guess, in two years.
You sort of have it mapped out.
How would someone that's interested in participating in the next games go about, both in Canada
and in their own respective countries, go about getting in contact with someone?
So if you don't know who your country coordinator is, the best thing to do is to go to the Hrvatský
Světský Kongres website or the Hrvatský Světský Igor, in this case, HSI 2023.
But in Canada, I'm the coordinator.
I'll be the coordinator again.
And we publish on our Facebook page, our Team Canada Croatian World Games Facebook page.
We announce that tryouts are happening and when the games will be scheduled as soon as
we know that.
Also our webs are, excuse me, our email is cwg.teamcanada.gmail.com.
Drop us a line.
We'll put you on the list for our email distributions.
And again, in our case, when we define when the games will be and what city they're going
to be held in, I send out notices to all the churches, all the local communities, so that
we make sure that we're trying to reach all corners of our Croatian communities across
Canada.
So whether it's from Windsor to Detroit or Vancouver to Nova Scotia, we want to cover
the country and have an even bigger team and an even broader representation of our country.
There's a lot of Croatian Canadian youth and we want them to be really excited about coming
to Croatia and we want to extend that warm welcome to give them a wonderful experience
here.
That's awesome.
Many, many members of our team continue to stay on to visit either the home villages
of their ancestors and their families or their grandparents for the very first time.
They're getting to visit family and friends and others are just exploring the country
sort of from the coast all the way up, which is exactly what we want.
Yeah, well, yeah, the summer is a great time to explore Croatia and the coast specifically.
I can tell you right now, the coast is gorgeous right now.
I just got back from a boat cruise.
So I'm here, I was in Zagreb and my mom, brother and my brother's girlfriend was here for the
first time.
She's never been to Croatia.
So she already loved it as soon as she stepped off the plane, but they came to come watch
me play and my brother, he asked like, you know, this seems pretty cool.
You know, why didn't I join it?
Like, do they have a hockey team?
I said, I really don't know about hockey, but you know, I know you like to run.
And he's like, yeah, join the running team.
I go for a nice three kilometer run.
Like, oh yeah, I'll do that next next time.
Excellent.
So we already just so you know, we got another one.
There you go.
What's interesting too, is we had a contingent of about 15 young siblings of our teams, team
members and our families.
We called them our official cheerleaders because they were under the 16 year of age mark for
participation, but come the next games, they're fully eligible.
And we've seen that now for the second time where families have younger children who aren't
quite ready, but they come and they see what it's about and they get excited and they can't
wait to join for the next games.
So we're building the pipeline of our future team, Canada.
Yeah, that's all.
I mean, I was already making a mental note to tell my younger sister to look into this
for the next game.
Exactly.
Oh, that's awesome.
Caroline, I want to sort of ask you, it's semi-related.
You know, you also have a podcast, you know, related to Croatia and I want to give you
a chance to promote that a little bit and talk about that and where people can find
that.
So I, in Pandemic Years, we confer the Croatian Women of Influence Award and we have over
120 winners from around the world, again, from all of our diaspora communities.
We host an international conference on International Women's Day, March 8th, every year in Croatia.
So here again, we have incredibly accomplished women of Croatian descent who often are coming
to Croatia for the first time to get their awards.
And so we launched a CWN Leading Ladies podcast where we feature those winners in a more in-depth
way.
They tell us what's happening, what's new.
Oftentimes we go back to our previous winners to see how winning the award has impacted
their career or their situation, what it means to them.
We catch up with them to find out what's been happening since they've received their awards
and then we intermix that with our current winners as well.
And so that's part of our offering in terms of connecting, championing, and celebrating
our Croatian women and shortly we'll be opening the nominations for the 2024 year and stay
tuned for that.
Awesome.
Well, I'll drop links so people can find that.
Also drop links to everything else we talked about, your email and other coordination,
the website you mentioned so people listening can go ahead and click on that.
Kaptica and Caroline, I want to thank you guys again so much for coming on the podcast.
I just have two more quick questions for the both of you and the first one is what is your
favorite food to eat while you're here in Croatia?
Oh, there's a lot.
I'll probably have to go with schnitzel.
Yeah, I have to go with that.
For me, if I'm in Hrnocka in summertime, Jadranske Lignie Brojeden and pistachio gelato from
Eva's place in Zadar right next to Pozdrav Sunca.
Wow, I've never tried that before.
100% you got to go.
She makes it all in house, the gelatos to die for, but pistachio is my favorite and
hers is the stradacela.
I'm in Dubrovnik right now and last night we went through the walls to have dinner.
As we're walking back home, there's this one ice cream place and I say, mom, we have to
go in, they have to have pistachio.
Sure enough, we walk in, they have pistachio.
I fell in love because that's all I get here.
Whenever I'm in Croatia, it has to be pistachio.
You also have to try the watermelon gelato.
If you can find it, it's life changing.
Okay, I had lime and pistachio last night, which is a weird combo, but it worked.
It worked, so I'm not complaining.
Well take your word for it.
Yeah, man, I'm missing out.
I always get vanilla wherever I go, so I really got to start expanding.
Give it a shot.
I've been here too many summers to keep getting vanilla, so maybe tonight.
Tonight I'm going out to the Riva.
I'm here in Makarska, so I'll get something from one of the ice cream places.
Try some lavender gelato.
Oh yeah?
Oh my gosh, very yummy.
All right, I'll take your word for it.
I won't just take your word for it.
I'll try it tonight.
I'll let you know.
And sure out.
I had some lavender.
It was lavender and lemon back in Canada, but I could only imagine how the lavender
one is here.
Everything here is just 10 times better, no matter where you go, what it is.
It's true.
Sistanko, that's why we do this.
That's the result.
Yeah, I agree 100%.
And sort of the last question on that note for you guys, and I ask all the guests who
come on the podcast, but what makes Croatia so special for you?
For me, it's the roots of my family.
We have been here for centuries.
This is home.
This is where my heart is.
This is where my roots are.
I have to go with the same.
My family is all from here, but if I have to be a little bit selfish, I want to say
the Mora is my favorite.
I love this.
I'm just staring at this view.
It's gorgeous and the islands.
The water is so blue here.
Everything has color.
It's all full of life.
That's why the slogan, Croatia full of life, that it's some kind of account somewhere.
I never really fully understood why it's always Croatia full of life until this trip when
I'm actually seeing Croatia.
I'm a lot older now since the last time I came here, but it is full of life and it's
just beautiful here.
It definitely is.
That feeling is what I wanted to capture when I started my journey back to Croatia.
That's the same feeling that I see a lot of other diaspora who come back feeling.
That's really the magic of coming back to Croatia, even if not just to live, but for
a summer or for a month, however long you can.
Yeah, that's definitely something magical about stepping foot back in Croatia.
Caroline, I want to thank you guys again so much.
Once again, I'll drop links so anyone can find your guys's information, but I really
appreciate you guys taking the time here to come on the podcast.
Thank you so much for the opportunity and best of luck to you.