salt

Our host here is into gardening. There are the roses out front. And the small veggie patch just below the house. And the massive lavender bushes. And the tiny pears. Oddly in season now.






His wife, I think, is more the food prep person. The home made jams are hers, I believe. The breakfast buffet -- again, hers. (Here's my selection.)





But I'm working with a patchwork of information. Our communications are so limited in Slovenia!

For example: we wanted to buy some nuts. On days like this, when we do not eat lunch (mostly because Ed will have eaten copious amounts at breakfast and so he isn't hungry for a long, long time), we rely on nuts to keep us happy until dinnertime. Here and at home, we are big nut eaters.

Setting out on a salt adventure (more on this is in a bit), we pass our local supermarket (in Portoroz, there are three supermarkets and they are all part of the same chain). We check the nuts there. Not too exciting. We'll come back if we can't do better.

After the salt hike, we try the bigger branch of the same supermarket. But it's closed! Why? The posted hours say 8 - 20. We're nowhere near 20 o'clock! I ask a guy leaning against his car:
Do you speak English?
Ne.
I do my gesture talk (with a lot of pointing and proper voice inflections): that store, closed?
Da.
Why? Well, I knew this is going to be a stretch. How could he possibly respond to "why"... So I give him some options: fete? holiday?
Da, dopust.

I checked all the summer festivals, celebrations ete etc -- what did I miss? What possible holiday could there be on June 25? One that closes stores, but doesn't really put people on the waterfront, like, say, Sunday did? (Later, the Internet tells me that it's Statehood Day - a celebration of Slovenia's Independence from Yugoslavia, not to be confused with Independence Day, which is in December, celebrating, well, sort of the same thing.)

Another man joins us by this first guy's car.
English? He asks.
Close enough -- yes...
He whips out a box from his pocket and opens it, revealing a very ornamented gold watch. Euro, okay?
I was so tempted to ask "how much" -- just because I wanted to know what he thought he could get from just whipping it out from his pocket like that, but our communications were so poor that I let it go.
No, I said, as Ed chuckled at the side. 


And there are times when I just want to correct Slovenians at their own language. Take ice cream flavors. I study them carefully, especially the red fruit ones as they tend to be my favorite. I see one with the label of "jagoda." Every Pole knows that jagoda means blueberry. 
 Ed, look, blueberry ice cream! (It looks a tad pink, but hey, maybe their blueberries are of a washed out variety).  But wait, what's that? There is a picture of a strawberry next to the label. I want to tell the vendor -- you've got the wrong picture on the jagoda, because you see, I happen to know what jagoda means. But that seems like far too many words for me to spill out to a guy who speaks almost no English so I say nothing. And later, when I research it all on the Internet, I see that in Slovene, jagoda means strawberry! They use borownica for blueberry, which is just too wrong, since every Pole knows that borowka, which surely sounds like an impish little version of borownica, is actually a cranberry.  Shockingly, raspberry in Slovene is malina -- exactly the same as in Polish!

So now you know how to say all the red berry fruits in Slovenian, how cool is that!


As long as I am on the topic of ice cream, let me post three pictures, taken in the afternoon, within five minutes of each other.











Perhaps an explanation is in order: if Ed and I only get one ice cream between the two of us, we pick pistachio (if available); we share a love of that. So the first two pics are the shared cone. Not satisfied with just one shared scoop, Ed gets another, at the next stand -- coconut. His favorite. (Odd, I know. I attribute his love of it to a childhood filled with Almond Joys.) And there you have it.
 

I  do have one more comment on foods in the early part of the day: we finally stopped by a bakery to see what a Slovenian might buy there. Like in France, you pick up bread and pastry in one fell swoop  (most places in Europe, Poland included, separate the sale of bread from the sale of pastry, but here, it's all under the same roof).

In the pastry display case I see the cherry and apple cakes that are oh so very much like something I would find in Poland.




I detect an Austrian influence on pastry in both countries.

And then I see that they also have mille feuille pastry (aka Napoleons)! An Ed favorite! But the portion here is huge: the sign says  200 grams -- that's nearly half a pound of pastry! We pass on it.


Alright -- enough on our early day food issues. Let's get to the salt: Historically, Slovenia was a major producer of sea salt, harvested from the salt flats just south of Portoroz (the flats actually separate Slovenia from Croatia). When, in the middle of the twentieth century, salt was produced in less labor intensive ways elsewhere, the salt fields here fell into disrepair.

Along come the foodies of this world, putting specialty salt, like the one from here, on the table again. And so the salt flats are being fixed and salt production -- the old fashioned way, with wooden rakes and drying beds -- is again returning to Slovenia. Fancy salt. Not the kind that you spill on your driveway to de-ice it, but rather, the kind you sprinkle daintily on your tuna carpaccio, maybe with arugula leaves underneath.

I see on the map that the salt flats are a good hiking distance from Portoroz. The long path along the shore can't be more than five kilometers. And my oh my is it a beautiful, sunny day! (There is absolutely no manipulation of color/tone/brightness in the photo below.)





The walk takes us past a marina and you can't get Ed to pass by big boats without a pause...





The man loves vessels and he loves his boat stories from the past and I listen to them now, on this warm, warm day, strolling (not running!) along the coast of the Adriatic.



Slovenia to the right, Croatia to the left


We actually find here, south of Prortoroz, a pretty (if small) almost-beach of big pebble rock and we vow to return to it later in the day, but it is a vow that's tossed freely and then neglected, as are so many when you travel: you fall in love with something and you can't quite let go without promising yourself, your hosts, the world, that you will return. But you don't return. Mostly, you move on.



near the salt fields -- the lesser marina.


It is ridiculously warm and the path along the coast offers no shade. By the time we reach the entrance to the salt flats, we've had it with the heat and the sun. Which is a shame, as the flats are without shade and therefore warm and sunny.

But they don't show off their true worth right now. Had this been a normal summer, we would have seen mounds of drying salt. The spring rains stalled everything. We see the set up for salt harvesting, but nothing is anywhere near the point where you can expect to walk home with freshly raked salt for the kitchen table.





There is an exhibition room out there, in the middle of all those salt fields and we watch a short documentary film on salt production. To tell you the truth, we would have watched anything,  even without the English subtitles, just to get us out of that warm warm air.

Had we come at dawn or dusk, we would have seen a great number of birds swoop down for breakfast/dinner at the marshes. As it were, I saw little of that. This one, stumbling along, looking for grub, not really being happy with what he found --- yes, I saw him.





And I saw these two humans, raking the salt beds.





And this one, navigating the marshes differently.






Then there are the bags of ready salt. Fewer this year, but still, you can find some here.












Our hike back to Portoroz is shorter and far more bucolic.

And it is here -- crossing the hill that takes us back to Portoroz, that I decide that my post-retirement life should  include plenty of rural photography. I love photographing people, but one day, someone will surely rip my camera out of my hands and bang it over my head. At that point I'll concentrate on rural photography,

I will be happy if I can just spend my days taking photos of grapes.






And lo! an accidental artichoke! So, of artichokes!





And lavender along with olive trees...






And chamomile and poppies...






And chickens, along with olive trees...






And baby olives on those olive tree branches...






And meadows with late spring flowers...






And olive trees, pure and simple.







In the meantime, I have just two more photos to post from this day: of our dinner, back at the fish place from our first night here:






And of Ed, because I caught him smiling.






And now it is so late that I'm sure to have missed typos and errors and I am so sorry if that's the case. It is, after all, the last post from the coast of the Mediterranean. I should present it with care.

Tomorrow, we head inland.

stormy skies calm sea, calm sky stormy sea

It depends. Those two words basically will answer any question you may have about this day.

I woke up hearing vague rumbles of thunder. The hot air is leaving with a bang.

In fact, the day has thundershowers written all over it. What to do when all your ideas involve the outdoors?

Well, you eat a leisurely breakfast.





Now what?

That depends -- how do the skies look now? Not too bad? Well now, isn't this a lovely day to walk over to the next town north of us -- Piran! Four kilometers along a shoreline that is dotted (more like flooded) with cafes and easy shelters, in case we get rained on.

So we take the (concrete) path that meanders all along the coast here. Starting in Portoroz, where, not surprisingly, the "beaches" (remember -- they're fake!) stand empty today, for all the weather/weekend etc reasons that they were so crowded yesterday.






Ed asks -- why do you have to run? Every time we go walking you speed! Don't you want to take in all that's around us?
I counter -- when did you become such a poker? Don't you want exercise benefits from a good, strong walk?
He responds -- look at all the people enjoying their leisure moments! Why are you always running?

I really do not have a good answer to that. I know he is right. You should see me at airports -- even if I haven't a connection, I am barreling ahead of everyone else, speeding as if I had to get somewhere, absolutely had to, now, be elsewhere. Going to work, leaving work, I nearly run -- moving ahead of groups of students one third my age. And on walks, I'll pick brisk over a strolling pace any day. Why?

It's not as if I don't take in the surroundings. On our walk to Piran, I notice stuff. I do! People, sharing small spaces:











I smell the flowers! You want to know where all our honey making bees have disappeared to? Slovenia!






And the coordinated families in pink! I even notice them, especially when they also happen to be passing by pink flowers! I see the world through pink!






And yet, I do it running. Or nearly that. Why?



Piran is Slovenia's 'pretty' coastal town. Here you see the Venetian influence (I can't even begin to understand the trading of boundaries that took place along this bit of shoreline, but this I do know: until World War II, Piran was Italian. Only when Italy's boundary shifted northwards, did Slovenes move here and now they are in fact the dominant demographic, even as the town's officially bi-lingual. And here's another odd factoid -- Piran (with a whopping population of about 15,000), was, in 2010, the first former "communist block" city to elect a black mayor -- a physician who moved here from Ghana. There! You know more about Piran than most people living outside its boundaries.

Here's the approach to Piran:






And here's proof of that Venetian architectural influence (the monument is of Giuseppe Tartini -- violinist, composer, born here in the XVII c.):


 



Piran has a vast square with many cafes and many wonderful opportunities for people watching. And listening. But I remain puzzled as to why I understand so little of the Slovene language, given that so many words are similar to Polish (as a commenter said -- it's like knowing Spanish and appearing in France: the words look the same but you can't understand much of what is being said).

Take this sign: Lenin Street. I knew what it meant, even without the Italian translation! [One difference between Slovenia and Poland: in my home country, most street names celebrating old communists have been neatly replaced after Poland's switch to a market economy; Slovenia has a less antagonistic view of its "communist" past, in part because President Tito, until his death in 1980, was a popular (if authoritarian) leader here and much that took place in Yugoslavia had a positive spillover effect on Slovenia. I could possibly benefit from asking more people here about their feelings on once being part of the Yugoslav Republic, but, there's the language issue all over again.]






As we sit down at one of the cafes, two little girls begin a silent but lovely dance. I don't know what the prompt was, but it is indeed delightful!





(tossing off their flip flops in mid-dance...)






From a billboard that I sort of understood but not really, it appears that there's some kind of open-air ballet festival in Piran this week. I'm guessing they're either part of it, or they've come to watch.


We don't linger at the cafe. The wind picks up and things start flying from tables and you just can't keep that do-nothing attitude going when you hear glass crashing and papers flying around you.

So we walk this medieval town from one end to the next (a short walk, to be sure) and when we cross to the shore on the north side (the town is on a piece of land that is like a snake tongue -- long and narrow), we note that the sea is much rougher here -- the asphalt coast is getting quite the beating.

And if you live in Slovenia and this is the coast you're stuck with, might you learn how to love the waves even if you can't surf them to shore? Indeed! We watch these young people scream with pleasure as the waves flatten and scatter them all over the concrete slab. (Each time a wave crashes, I count if all of them have come up afterwards. Oh, young people!)



(waiting for the big one)



(the big one)


Of course, the tamer side of the sea appeals to me more. Even as Ed stifles a yawn.






Evening. We've rested. Or, Ed has rested for the both of us. We set out for the second of the fish restaurants recommended to us by our hosts (there is "fish trattoria" in the name and a reference to Santa Lucia; all other details escape me).

On the way there we spot a rainbow. If you believe that this brings you good fortune, then perhaps you will have played this evening differently (see reference to gambling below). Me, I think of the more general good fortune -- of being here, at this time, of avoiding the rains, of seeing this pretty display of color.






So, we eat our seafood this and that at the Santa Lucia (or something) trattoria. And it is... well, just about okay. When Ed gets his gratinee scallop, I know I am not going to be writing about fresh and honest tonight. It becomes a question of muddling through fairly average food.

I was reminded of a Swedish couple we'd met the other night, at the great fish trattoria . They did our trip backwards: a few mountains first, ending with these days at the seashore. When I ask about food (in the mountains), they answer -- sometimes it was very good! And sometimes it was awful. This, coming from Swedes whom I gather are not altogether fussy about what is put before them.


After dinner, Ed drags me to a casino. Portoroz has two and he is interested in checking one out. Not to gamble, but to explore. It's only the second time in my life that I enter one of these place (first time, also with him, was in PR).

At the entrance, we are photographed, thoroughly looked over, id'd -- the whole bit. We are given an entrance pass and a coupon for free drink. That makes me squirm. There is no free drink out there in this world. Still, we proceed inside.

The casino halls are nearly empty. Many machines, tables, few people. Which makes it that much more of a sad place. Picture silent, empty slot machines, except the occasional one where a solo gambler sits alone and watches her or his money disappear.

At the Black Jack table, an older woman loses it all, then regains a whole chunk of it. I smile, pleased at her sudden success. Ed whispers -- if we stay long enough, she'll lose it all again.

This is when I knew it was time to leave.

We all gamble in one way or another. Daily. But I'm wanting to hang on to the hope, the rainbow pink hope that few of us lose in big ways. As we walk away from the casino,  the skies are clearing, the night turns beautiful. There is a faint scent of mineral springs, of lavender, of summer. Breathe deeply, exhale.

confused identity

Chamich -- she pronounces it like that, because she knows that Camic is Croatian. And Croatia is just a few kilometers south. Naturally, I must be from there.

I don't correct or explain -- that Camic is my married name and Korn is his unmarried name and BTW, we are not married and I am not Croatian, though sometimes (like when I travel through these Slavic language lands, and with Ed) I do not feel greatly removed from either.

I say none of that.

We're checking out of the sympathetic little Hotel Coppe (with an average Italian breakfast...





... but hey, I cannot be a judge of breakfasts because one of my toes is still stuck in the cafe bar on the upper square of Sorede...).

We have 90 minutes to spend freely on Trieste (we had many more, but we got stuck in a lengthy discussion of communist Yugoslavia versus communist (I use these terms loosely) Poland over breakfast -- after all, the food was average so words had to fill the void -- and time slipped away rather quickly).

But, 90 minutes is a lot of minutes in a city the size of Trieste and so we pack in what we can:

A walk up to the castle fortifications, past embedded stones memorializing souls lost to the battles of World War II.






Trieste is like Poland in that it wont let you forget about that war.  And, too, about the Italian Jews who were transported to prisons in this city, on their way to concentration camps in Poland. And the loss of life elsewhere during that war, for the good of the homeland.






All this history is in the hills above Trieste. I should mention that the name Trieste has always, always reminded me of the French word tristesse, which means sadness.

Still, the climb up the castle hill is not for sadness, nor for the long and complicated history of this city, not today. It is for the views.






And then we must quickly go down.  Back to the square that spills out onto the sea...


 



My, but it's hot, the hottest day of our trip so far. Near 90 degrees and sunny -- a rare blast of hot air here and I see that it will not last beyond today, which perhaps is a good thing (though on this Sunday, people are relishing the quick arrival of summer... who can blame them!).







We are at the bus station with countless others. So many others! Surely ten buses would not fit all these people. But magically, when we are all on board, everyone is sitting. Now how did that happen??

People get off, people get on, but we stay until the last stop. We pass "beaches" north of Trieste (I write it in quotations because there are no true beaches along the eastern coast of the Adriatic. None. If you see one, know that it's imported sand). A crowded coastline of souls starved for the good season, with umbrellas nimbly tied to fences or secured in stands because, well, there is no sand.

An hour later and we are at the regional airport. Here, we are to pick up our rental car. It was HARD to find something cheap for our use in Slovenia, but Ed did it! The guy is a whiz at hunting down the cheapest possible. And we are promised a small car, in the image of a Fiat 500. We are promised that.

But, sure enough, we are given something bigger. A Fiat Pig -- Ed's words. Only a few centimeters less gross than the last car we had.
People always ask for a bigger car... this is our current smallest, the agent explains lamely.
Well, good for them -- I want to say -- so give them this one and go look for a little Fiat 500 for us, because I really wanted to drive one here, like everyone else, if you just look around you. Those who are not driving the Mini Cooper, are driving the Fiat 500, so why are we stuck with the Fiat Pig??

I, of course, say none of it. We climb in and I drive us back south, along the coast and into Slovenia.

I have a trivial digression here: I am remembering a time, after returning from my father's diplomatic stint in New York, when travel to the west was no longer viable. We, like other Poles, hadn't access to western currencies. But there was one trip that my parents managed to eek out for us: we'd been vacationing in Hungary and  from there, it was just a hop and a skip (via Slovenia) to Venice. We were then so used to being back in Eastern Europe, that it was truly a shock to cross the border from Yugoslavia into Italy: the world changed before our eyes. We were suddenly in the west! Italian billboards dressed the highway, advertizing cars, pizzas, cosmetics, gas, wine, tractors, who knows what! My sister and I were delighted! Oh, the irony now of being back decades later and finding no billboard in Italy at all -- none whatsoever (and of course, none in Slovenia either). It's as if Italy acquiesced, as if it's telling us -- we were foolish to pollute our roads and our minds in this crass commercial way. Down they go. The roads are pristine clean now. As kids, we would have been disappointed.

Okay, back to the present. And here is a question for you and it's not a trick question and if you do not know the answer, well now, drop a note and I'll help you along. So: if a country is given only twenty odd kilometers of a Mediterranean coastline, and if it's sunny and unseasonably warm on this day, and it is the official start of summer, and on top of it all -- it's a Sunday afternoon, what are you likely to find along that tiny little shoreline?

Slovenia has a historically important and I understand very attractive town on that short little strip along the Adriatic. Piran. But we are not staying in Piran. It proved to be impossible to find a cheap and nice place place there. So we do as everyone else does -- we go to Portoroz, which is like Wisconsin Dells and the Jersey coast and Devil's Lake all rolled into one, squeezed onto the shore of the northern most tip of the Mediterranean Sea.

Our B&B is delightfully authentic post-Yugoslav coastal Slovenian. I cannot explain it better than that. In any case, we like it. It's very basic, but the couple who own and run it (and whose only common language with us is... French) are so earnest and they show such effort that it really is delightful to be here.


 


Alright. We want to swim. We are on the coast of the Adriatic and we prefer quiet and pristine this and that, but when push comes to shove, give us some good water and we'll swim.

We walk along the packed concrete slabs that jut out into the sea and both Ed and I think -- wow. there are a lot of people here. But our hosts told me -- go left and though I wasn't sure how far left and for how long, we did just that and eventually the crowd cover became thinner and at some point it seemed that we had found a place where you could swim fairly peacefully.





Since I had my good camera (stupid me), I told Ed that we could swim only one at a time. (I refused to leave everything at the edge, among the mass of humaniy and dive in as if I didn't care if what I'd left wasn't there when I came back for it.)

Ed goes in first.
Amazingly warm!  -- he tells me as he comes out.
Now I don't get that. We are at the northernmost tip of the Mediterranean and it's toasty warm in the sea waters, whereas back in Le Racou it was, well, nippy? How can that be?

So then I go in and as I come out, Ed goes in again and I concentrate on looking around me. After, I ask him -- is it just me, or does it feel like these are my people? Like, I am really in central-eastern-post-communist-whatever you want to call it  Europe? I mean, I can tell we are not in Italy anymore... Can you?
Yes, I can.
So, what's the difference? -- I ask. Because I really don't know. I mean, I feel I am among my own, but it's not as if I fully understand the language.
Less disposable income, he says, without hesitation. 

And I think that's right. In Poland, too, I can see now the shops, the western presence of things that were missing when I was growing up there, but it's clear to me at least that a great many aren't wearing/eating/using/buying what's in the shops. That they live without the means to sample much of what the market economy has now brought to their doorstep.

As I look around me, I am especially aware of women my own age.  I watch and listen to them talk and though I do not fully understand what they are saying, I can more or less pick up on the context. And it strikes me how, in essential ways we are of the same yoke -- they, me... Yes, of course, we live in different worlds, sure, but we were born to the same historic era. They, like me, are products of post-war eastern Europe. In this way, I am closer to them than to my friends and neighbors back home.






And so ends our Sunday by the sea. Except not entirely: while in the water, Ed brushes against a stone and winds up with a thousand (I exaggerate) prickly things in his foot. Sea urchin, he tells me.






He spends the better part of the evening getting out the little prickly things from his foot.

As we stroll now toward our B&B, I remind Ed that we've stopped eating lunch somewhere along the way on this trip. Ice cream is a good substitute.






And, too, we pause at the youth hostel right next to our B&B. They have a patio where you can sip a beer or glass of wine. We order olives, too, and for the first time in my life, I cannot finish a plate of them. Neither can Ed. They are hardly brined at all -- almost as if just plucked from the tree! Is it a peculiarity of Slovenia to eat them like this, or is it that this particular bar stocks an odd assortment? I cannot tell.





In the evening, we go to Fritolin. It's a small, but insanely beloved  Ribja Cantina (our hosts recommended it). Seeeee -- if you were Polish, you would understand that! Ahhh, a fish place, you'd say! The language would not stand in the way -- the words are close enough. You'd feel connected.


Then you'd look at the menu of specials for the day and you'd say -- hell with that, I understand nothing at all, I'm on another planet. This is how it feels to be Polish in Slovenia.

But, let's focus on the essentials: out hosts were 100% correct -- the food is totally fresh and honest! It's all seafood, simply prepared. Salad, followed by sea bream and shrimp (we share one of each) grilled, with olive oil, no fuss, exquisite.





Back at the B&B Strasek, all is quiet. In the room next to us, the dog has stopped growling and on the other side, the toddler has stopped fussing. I settle in to finish Ocean posting only to find that I'm in a world where photos load at the rate of two per hour. There's a chuckle in it for me -- I'd been thinking that I should adopt the letters that I see plastered on car fenders:  SLO.  Sure, here, it stands for Slovenia, but back home, maybe it would be a reminder to go slow, to not rush things. So, the blog loads slowly, so what! It may be late in the next few days -- I know you wont mind.

Go SLO. Yes, go SLO.