(((livestream tv=))) Turkey vs Croatia live online 28 March 2023
Not justifying the high prices in California, but people at least make more money there. Throughout five years, in Croatia, I always felt that apartments are way overpriced. Locals can’t afford them, even 90% of foreigners can’t afford them. We expanded our search to the cities of Šibenik and Makarska, both smaller than Split. But even there we could not keep up with the increasing prices. Even if we found the property that we liked, the papers were not clear. For example, an apartment of 80 m2 would only be registered as 50 m2 in books. As if someone made changes to the layout and failed to register the changes. We were getting closer to looking in Rijeka and Pula but again, prices shot up a lot during Covid (despite me thinking the opposite should happen).
Lucija was more for Istria, but I argued that Split is a bigger city and has life almost the whole year. I am a city boy, can’t imagine myself going always to same café or restaurant every day and watch the same faces. Let me rephrase that, I get bored quickly, so living in a village or small town would kill me. Lucija was never truly content with Split, but we built a nice circle of friends of all ages, shapes, and forms. Mainly in their thirties, so they make us look young. We rented three apartments throughout those 5 years, got lucky with our landlords.
My wife was increasingly getting impatient with me and my indecision. She was sick of renting and refused to continue to do so. I had to act quickly. Why Turkey? How did you come to that decision? Alanya came to the rescue. My longtime friend and neighbor from Sarajevo, Mujo, who I’ve known for almost 50 years (and who left for Canada in mid-80s), was telling me that he bought a couple of apartments there. He wanted us to come and visit to see if it is a good fit for us. At the time they were visiting Alanya as well. So we booked our hotel in mid-March and were there for 10 days and in Istanbul for one week. It was a magical experience and we fell in love immediately.
We almost bought a property right away but decided to return to Split to figure out what to do with five years of stuff one acquires under the impression they will stay in Croatia for the long-haul. We had to figure out how to move all that stuff to Sarajevo in a 13-year-old Nissan Qashqai. Our plan was to return to Alanya ASAP. In a meantime, we looked intensively online and almost pulled the trigger on a couple other apartments. Ultimately we decided that buying online was not a good idea—for buying shoes, yes, but not for the property that you plan to live in. As we were getting our apartment in Split ready to hand back to landlord, we were watching prices in Alanya also grow at an increased rate and the same scenario from California and Croatia was unfolding right in front of our eyes.
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were in the same country, so there were a lot of those so called “mixed” marriages. Then the war came. I was able to evacuate my ex and young daughter to Brač and stayed behind for what turned out to be almost three years. Long story short, I somehow survived (had a couple of close calls), and in mid ’94 I got permission to visit them in Croatia. We decided not to go back to a war zone and applied for a refugee program. Within a few months we were in California, USA. Within another three months we were separated.
Turkey vs Croatia
In summer of 2016 we were in Sarajevo in my family apartment, full of enthusiasm, with a lot of plans and unknown future. Why did you end up in Split? I assume you loved your time there? The first year we floated between Sarajevo and (mostly) Dalmatia, looked for that perfect location. We managed to renovate the apartment in Sarajevo, so at least we had a home base. In June of 2017 we spent time in Split and decided to start looking to buy an apartment.
I was a technician all my life, worked in the City Police of Sarajevo for eleven years, hired just before the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. I led a fairly boring life, like most of the Balkans. We are born, live and die within a radius of 10 miles. Sarajevo is a big city, gorgeous, but it doesn’t have the sea. From an early age I much preferred warmer climates and often in summer was spending weeks in Dalmatia, particularly Makarska Riviera, mainly Baška Voda and Brela in the late eighties. I married the first wife, now (thankfully) ex from the island Brač.
Expat Bases: Why this couple left Croatia to live in TurkeyWhy this couple left Croatia to live in Turkey Samir and Lucija have lived in many places during their lives. They thought they had found “home” when they moved to Split in Croatia. It didn’t turn out that way. Maybe Croatia changed during the 5 years they lived there? We wanted to find out the story from Samir. We, after all, had our own acrimonious split from Croatia back in 2018.
The final straw was in early March this year. We went to see a lovely two-level apartment in Makarska priced at 175K Euros. We took a couple of days contemplating if we should offer 165K or 170K (a little less is common practice), went back to check the ad and photos—and guess what—the apartment was selling for brand new price of 197K! Also, our landlord in Split was telling me that someone offered him 350K in Firule for the 95 m2 flat we were renting. An apartment that needs a lot of work and has zero insulation between floors….
We also wanted to find out why they’ve decided to make Turkey their new home. All about that in this post. Hi Samir! First of all, can you tell us about yourself? My name is Samir and my wife Lucija and I lived in Split, Croatia for five years. We just recently decided to leave it for Alanya in Turkiye. First things first, I am originally from beautiful Sarajevo, Bosnia, just turned sixty, happily self-retired. My wife Lucija is a couple of years older. I often tell her she likes them young. Bosnians are known about their self-deprecating humor, often ridiculed, but somehow always outsmart their bashers.
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