VEGETABLES RIDE TO ZAGREB ON HEADS OF

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6918, 25 May 1929, Page 3

VEGETABLES RIDE TO ZAGREB ON HEADS OF

ZAGREB (Jugoslavia), April 27.

Every morning Croat women of Zagreb bring tons of fruit, vegetables, butter and eggs into town on their heads.

Every morning, if you got up early enough, you may sit in auy of the leisurely cafes here on the main street, and watch long lines of gayly dressed women as they carry 1 heir produce from the station or frum the neighbouring villages to the central market plac”. And the large baskets on their heads neither totter nor shake. On their broad feet are loose leather moccasins and short hand-knitted socks tied up with red ribbons which are barely visible beneath a number of very full skirls which swisli rhythmically from side to side ns Ike girls step along. Bright, jackets cover light waist's and braids of blond hair extend below red of blue kerchiefs. On their heads the girls wear thick rings ot padding, much resembling enlarge.i doughnuts. Open these humble crowns calmly sit, the baskets. Those bindonbearing women stand up very straight, with their shoulders thrown back, but they walk along without any strain, talking and chatting with one another, and give no more attention to their high perched baskets (ban they would if carrying them in their bauds. The working girls put wooden buckets or little tubs on their heads and in them carry brick and mortor up runways on rough stairs to the masons who arc building walls. These working girls are well dressed, [ though in village style. At the opposite end of the scale arc the gipsy girls of Rumania, who also carry brick and mortor, but who arc less tidy. They make you thing of mischievous children as they work about a building; while the sedate Croatian girls with I their tubs on their heads make you thing of those patient Greek goddesses T;ho through many centuries have held

on their heads the roof of the rving of a temple sitting beside the great Parthenon.