The weather was cloudy. It looked like it could start raining very soon when I left the house that morning.
The date was the 28th of February 2024, and it was time for me to do some small repairs on my old car before taking it to the MOT test station.
While waiting for the repairs to be done, I spent some time walking around the suburban neighborhood of Veli Vrh in Pula.
If you are one of my more or less regular followers here on Hive, you probably noticed that the city of Pula appears very often in my posts. That's becouse Pula is the nearest city to the place where I live.
There isn't much I can do in my small hometown besides taking a leisurely walk, buying the common supermarket stuff in one of the two local supermarkets, or going to a restaurant or a bar. For anything slightly more unusual than that, I have to drive about ten kilometers to the nearest city.
In today's post, I'm gonna show you what I photographed on a dull, rainy day in one of the most boring parts of the city that lacks any kind of historical significance or more contemporary showy attraction. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here, because...
... well, becouse there is this thing.
Officially, it is a roundabout. But it isn't round. The locals call it kikiriki, which means peanut in my language, becouse someone thought that it looks like a peanut somehow. I call it chicken bone - for obvious reasons.
It is the only chicken-bone-shaped roundabout I ever saw and probably a fairly rare piece of road infrastructure, so I think that can be qualified as a minor attraction.
In the following photograph ...
... you can see a bit of morning traffic circulating along the edges of the showy red chicken bone thrown in the middle of a large crossroad.
Here, you can see a bit of morning construction work going on under the big gray sky ready to release a bit of rain.
One of the buildings was getting a fresh new facade. The color, situated somewhere between gray and violet, was kinda hard to define.
This vivid red thing looks like a series of garbage cans connected to form some kind of tube. It's a funny piece of equipment that wouldn't look too out of place in an entertainment park for children.
Red is the color that can bring a cloudy day to a slightly more uplifting level.
I didn't see much red that morning in Veli Vrh. By the way, Veli Vrh literally means "a big top" in the local dialect. A top in the sense of the top of the hill. It's a hilly area, but the hills aren't large or high, so the tops aren't impressive. Veli Vrh is far from being big or high. That being said, I'm not an expert on hills and their tops, so I could be wrong here.
The fairly interesting round building in the above photograph belongs to a school complex.
This is the Veli Vrh Elementary School, by far the most iconic piece of modern architecture in that suburban neiberhood.
In the following photograph ...
... you can take a look at the transparent lower part of the building. The glass makes a nice contrast with the concrete above it. The thing gives an impression of somehow being light and massive at the same time.
This is a cool detail from the same elementary school compleks photographed from a distance ...
... and from a different angle. The same architecture looks more unusual and mysterious from here. It's a bit like some futuristic thing from an old SyFy movie.
The trees looked pretty good when photographed against the neat geometrical background provided by the building.
Here you can see a line of older houses in the same neiberhood. The first one, the building closest to the observer, hasn't been renovated; its facade still looks like it looked a century or so ago.
A small grocery store is situated on the ground floor. Stores like this are very rare nowadays in Pula. Supermarkets have taken over the business. Buying a loaf of bread felt a bit like stepping a few decades back in time.
This looks like an old house that has been recently renovated. I mean, the renovation was probably still in progress when the photograph was taken. I wonder if it looks the same now, in 2025.
A bit later, I noticed a lovely old house made of stone, with the stones visible on its facade. I find the texture made of many stones of different sizes quite attractive.
In the following photograph ...
... you can take a better look at the same building. I came much closer to get this shot.
The surrounding architecture is quite different, so the old house stands out, and it stands out big time, in my opinion.
Some decorative plants were in bloom in the nearby gardens. This is the Viburnum tinus, commonly known as the Laurestine.
This is the Mimosa (Acacia dealbata).
These unexpected reeds also looked kinda cool, despite being partially dried out and dishaveled.
Here, you can see a bunch of local narcissuses staring at whoever is passing by.
This photograph shows a group of small, do it yourself type of buildings that serve as tool sheds or storage places.
The wider look at the same scene reveals some old houses and a pink fragment of a new, relatively elegant villa.
The eclectic, slightly chaotic mix of styles that can be found on the outskirts of the city isn't completely devoid of a certain rugged charm.
I can't tell you why exactly this lamp caught my attention back then in 2024, but it did, so here it is. I mean, there is something kinda unique in this pretty simple design. Not necessarily beautiful, but something ... you know, that for whatever reason isn't so easy to ignore.
This partially deflated inflatable boat stranded in suburbia also looked like something worth photographing.
This mundane traffic sign near the elementary school was made special by a Punk-related sticker someone put on it.
Believe it or not, old-school punk rock is still relatively alive here in Pula. Heavy rock of all kinds, in general, is more resilient here than in many other places I know.
This house also stood out a bit from the rest.
On another building not far from there ...
... I found these mysterious symbols.
Is this a secret message left by the extraterrestrials hiding among us?
Or is it a clue that we are indeed living inside the matrix? Well, I don't know. I mean, I do have a theory, but this post isn't the right place for conspiracy theories.
This is the cutest scene I photographed that morning: a big blue owl and a sleepy cat next to it.
In this shot, you can see a friend that was there with me walking across the relatively large park behind the elementary school.
Here, you can see the public bench and the short, fat advertising column near the crossroad with the peanut roundabout in its middle.
The same scene - but from a different angle.
This shot shows a bit of everyday activity at the local gas station situated on one of the main roads that lead out of the city.
An ambulance was parked right behind the gas station. I don't often see ambulances parked in such places; that's why I took this photograph.
And that's it. In this last shot, you can see a roadside assistance truck with a van on its back driving out of the city. As always here on Hive, the photographs are my work. THE END.