In the north of Croatia, in a mountainous and hilly area of Ravna gora, Kalnik and Ivanščica, where the forests, meadows and vinyards covering their slopes gradually blend into the Pannonian plain, there lies the County of Varaždin. It is inwrought by its axis - the river Drava, and the rivulets of Bednja and Plitvica and numerous streams tumbling down the slopes of hills and mounts, and rolling and shimmering in some of their waters are pieces of agate and an occasional grain of gold.


It is the land where exuberant clouds follow the undulating landscape, where flocks of houses huddled around churches and belltowers, castles and manor houses in the sophisticated tranquility of their solitude, and lovely chappels and crucifixes of life size form, emulate the flecks of gold in the sands of the Drava river. And where the image of that place changes dramatically: a sun-bathed meadow covered with profusion of modest flowers, joined by the sumptuous irises and orchides, offers an utterly different picture come winter dusk, when the bluish snow, like a warm blanket, smooths down the landscape and tucks it in for the night.

The magic mount in the distance is the primeval source of human dreams, the hem of the world in which time and space, and everything that happens, acquire meanings more sublime than the hum-drum of daily life.


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