This year’s Miss Croatia Diaspora will take place in the Austrian capital of Vienna.

In organization of the Austrian-Croatian Community for Culture and Sport based in Vienna, the popular beauty pageant Miss Croatia Diaspora 2018 will be held at the 27th Traditional Ball in the Austrian capital on the 3rd of February 2018.

It is interesting to note that the top four finalists will represent the Croatian Diaspora at the Miss Supranational Croatia contest, which is to be held in Croatia later this year in June.

Based on the collected data it is estimated that there are more than 100,000 Croats living in Austria, most of them living in Vienna (35,000), followed by Styria (14,000), Upper Austria (12,000), Lower Austria (6,000), Salzburg (6,000), Tirol (5,600), Vorarlberg (5,000), Carinthia (5.000), and Burgenland (1.000).

With temperatures a "balmy" 15 °C in the last couple of days, it's hard to imagine that exactly a year ago Dubrovnik woke up covered with snow. January 11th 2017 turned out to be a true winter fairytale.

Snow is unusual sight around here so everybody were enchanted with the famous red roofs being completely white. It felt like the whole city stopped for one day, slowed down and turned into the magical place. Children were sledging all around – even on baking trays!

Before last year the last time that snow fell in Dubrovnik was in 2009 and the coldest recorded temperature in Dubrovnik was in January 1968 when thermometers dropped to – 6.6 degrees.

Check out photos and video made exactly a year ago.

Photos by - Tonci Plazibat / Hanza Media 

The Croatian passport is ranked the weakest in the European Union. According to a survey of the world’s passports by Henley & Partners the Croatian passport is ranked the least useful in the EU due to the number of countries that Croatians can travel to without a visa.

However, on a world ranking it fairs much better, out of the all of the countries in the survey Croatia came in at a respectable 21st position. There are a total of 155 countries that Croatia can travel to without having to obtain a visa.

The most useful passport in the world is a German one, which allows entry into 177 countries visa-free, followed by a Singapore passport that opens the door to 176 countries. France, Great Britain, Norway, Japan, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are all ranked in third place with 175 visa-free countries.

Bulgaria and Romania share 29th place on the list, a place in front of Croatia, and the last on the rankings is Afghanistan, which allows visa-free travel into a mere 24 countries.

In front of us are Bulgaria and Romania, which share 20th place. On the last, 104th place is Afghanistan (24 countries).
In fact, the Croatian passport has increased its value, as in 2016 visa-free travel was possible to 149 countries.

Just to keep your warm through the winter days the Dubrovnik Summer Festival have released a rather fab roundup video of last year’s festivities.

From the 10th of July until the 25th of August the Dubrovnik Summer Festival entertained thousands of guests with 80 performances with over 2,000 artists on 20 special stages located throughout the city. With the comment “The cure for post-holiday blues? Summer reminiscences!” the organisers posted this recap on their social media sites.
And once again Dubrovnik will play host to a thousand stars as the 69th Dubrovnik Summer Festival this year.

Check out the stunning video.

Dubrovnik museums participate in a large international project that resulted in an exhibition "In the sea of intimacy. Underwater archeology witnesses the story of the Adriatic ", set up in the former fish market in Trieste - Salon of Miracles (Salone degli Incanti) thanks to the joint contribution of over 60 Italian, Croatian, Slovenian and Montenegrin institutions.

The exhibition presents relics, artworks, everyday useful items, goods for sale and security equipment found on ships sunk in the Adriatic for the first time and at over 2 thousand square meters of exhibition space. Among the almost thousand findings from underwater locations presented at the exhibition, 304 were borrowed from Croatian institutions - 59 items of them are from the collection of underwater findings of the Dubrovnik Maritime Museum.

With rich accompanying programs, such as lectures and educational workshops for different school ages, the exhibition will stay opened until May 1st this year.

Slowly but surely Croatia is becoming an all-year-round destination for tourism and this is highlighted by official figures just in for November 2017.

According to the Croatian Statistical Office there were an impressive 304,000 passengers travelling through Croatia’s airports in November last year, which is an increase of 15.6 percent when compared to the same month form 2016.

The capital led the way with 222,000 passengers in November passing through Zagreb Airport. But the coastal airports also recorded encouraging results, Split saw 37,000 passengers, an increase of 22 percent, and Dubrovnik Airport had the highest percentage increase with 34,000 passengers a massive 40 percent jump.

The most significant international traffic was realised with German airports, 79 thousand passengers, which was an increase of 24.8% compared to the same period from the previous year.

In the latest Global Economic Prospects for 2018, the World Bank expects growth of the Croatian economy by 2,6 percent.

Confirming its updated estimates from October last year, the World Bank estimates that Croatia will achieve economic growth by 2,6 percent. However, it will be a slowdown in comparison to 2017, but in 2019, the World Bank expects a slight re-acceleration of the Croatian economic growth to 2,8 percent.

The World Bank’s latest estimate for Croatia is slightly lower than the prognosis of other institutions. In its recent prognosis, the European Commission announced that in 2018 it expects the Croatian economy to rise by 2,8 percent, whilst the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects it to rise by 2,7 percent.

The Croatian National Bank (HNB) is somewhat more optimistic and expects growth of the country’s economy by 2,9 percent. The Croatian Government based its budget for 2018 on this estimate.

Throughout 2017 there were 863 road traffic accidents in the Dubrovnik – Neretva County, which when compared with 2016, is a reduction of 5 percent, announced the Dubrovnik Police Administration.

However, the number of fatalities rose in Dubrovnik last year, there were 11 accidents that resulted in fatalities, which is an increase of 57 percent on 2016. The number of road traffic accidents which involved injuries was 396, which was a decrease of 3 percent, whilst accidents with material damage fell by 7 percent.

During the month of January, the Dubrovnik police will carry out a number of measures to control drivers, such as speed checks and alcohol tests. The Dubrovnik Police have also announced that on the 11th of January an action will be carried out on drivers not wearing seat belts or improper use of mobile phones whilst driving.