Bakar Local Customs

Ponistra comes from Italian language, its window while skura is a window shutter. Bakar has typical continental climate, hot summers and cold and windy winters. Shutters are usually made of solid and thick wooden plates, mostly from oak tree. It serve to protect the house from a summer heat or in the winter season from strong northen wind called "bura". This is area where rose of winds is in particularly strong, coming from the nearby mountain of Velebit.

This is very characteristic door all along the Adriatic coastal towns, more in Dalmatia then in the northern parts. We call it "vrata na koljeno", translation would be, on the knee. Such a door is very practicale, its doorway and window, all in one. Local people, especially women, using it as a kind of street window, they could see who is out on the street even if not stepping out of their homes, and to talk with people who passing by.

The so-called Turkish house was turned into the Art Gallery where the local artists displays their works. Since it was early afternoon, when I have visited the place, the gallery was closed but still I have enjoyed sitting under the shadow of greenery in front of it spending there half an hour in perfect tranquillity.