TzsCHARDAK
Find a connection outside of virtual reality.
 

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Tzschardak is an enterprise run by Kaja Ocvirek-Krušić, a sociologist born in 1980.

Before becoming a Croatian teacher Kaja worked for NGOs, political foundations and at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. She also received education in body-oriented psychotherapy, anatomy, medical and thai massage.

 

She started teaching Croatian language to foreigners in 2013.

She can use English, German, French and Mandarin to help you with your Croatian.

She lived abroad in Europe and in Asia, and had been struggling herself to become fluent in different foreign languages.

 

Kaja did not study to become a Croatian teacher. Instead, she spent years studying foreign languages, from attending a bilingual German-Croatian class at high school specialising in languages (which also provided intensive Latin classes) to learning French and studying Mandarin at the later age.

This way she became familiar with a variety of language teaching methods, from traditional ones that focus on grammar and textbooks to those like Berlitz method that make you absorb the language from context and communication.

 

Just as other Slavic languages, Croatian is a fairly difficult language to aquire and mastering it requires a lot of patience and a skilled teacher.

Croatian teachers were traditionally only trained to teach Croatian to Croatian kids or to explore it as linguistic experts. They were not trained to teach it as a foreign language.

Since Croatia is a small country that has, for most of its history, been a part of larger empires, it was always Croatians who had to learn other languages. Never before had there been many people interested in learning Croatian. This has changed only recently, in 2010's, with more tourists starting to explore the Croatian capital and expats starting to move in the country.

 

The purpose of Tzschardak is to help you become familiar with this part of the world, its customs and culture and get you to communicate smoothly with all locals.

 

Tzschardak is a German-style spelling for a Turkish word Çardak that can be found throughout the whole area of the former Ottoman empire, in each country with a slightly different meaning. In Croatia the word čardak is best known for a traditional fairytale where it refers to a storey erected halfway between heaven and earth: „Čardak ni na nebu ni na zemlji”. There, it is a structure that belongs to both and none of these worlds at the same time. Depending on how you choose to look at it, it is a fortress at the border or a connection point between different worlds.

This is exactly the role a local language has for a foreigner trying to find his/her place in a new environment.