Addendum to laundry & more Catholic Mass musings

The time spent in the laundromat was the most hilarious two hours spent on this trip. I am totally convinced that Gary and I will be featured on Croatia's funniest home videos as the two totally stupid Americans who do laundry on a Saturday afternoon at the hottest time of the day in sauna like conditions. I've never sweated that much in my life and while I had to wait for the laundry to wash and dry MOSTLY BY MYSELF I polished off 60 liters of water and needed to get back to the hotel ASAP. One other noteworthy event during our time in Split was my request to go to Mass in Croatian. Again my travelling companions were not thrilled but agreed to go. We went to 7 pm mass at church around the corner - I Svetiste Gospe Od Pojisana U Splitu. Again we found the church to be filled, but significantly warmer than the Mass in Prague (nowhere near laundromat conditions.) A couple of Mass highlights: the alter was filled with servers like Prague, the service lasted a quick 35 minutes and communion was again a free for all but without the musical chairs ending. The most significant happening was talking with one of the alter boys who met Madelyn, Charlie and Ben out in the ocean and on the rocks earlier that afternoon.  After Mass we spoke with him and his English was perfect. He explained to us the story behind the church. A man found a beautiful picture of Mary on the spot where the church stands and he took it home. When he woke the next day the picture was gone. He went back to where he found it and it was in the same spot. So he took it again and brought it home. Again he awoke the second day and the picture was again gone and he found it in the same spot. He took it as a spiritual sign and he had a small sanctuary was built in that spot. The sanctuary was later rebuilt into a huge church known in English as Our Lady of Posjan. The church has special significance to Mary and St. Nicholas (the saint associated with sailors) and at the back of the church up in the choir loft are beautiful model ships honoring the sailors who frequented the church. When the pastor heard our beach, alter boy friend tell us the story he brought out a book that told the entire history of the church as a gift. We wanted to pay him but our friend said he wouldn't take payment and he wouldn't want it returned. In the end, we added our new alter boy friend to our ongoing list of Facebook friends and invited him to San Francisco anytime.