from Dubrovnik: a pearl

The airport is small. The flight is full. Croatians, conducting business in Zagreb, returning home. A handful of us are tourists. We take our bags and breathe in the sweetly scented air of a blooming Adriatic town.

I’m leaving in November, to go to the States, our driver tells us. He is cheerful, affable. He is also brutally realistic. I cannot make a life here. In the States, I can go out to eat four times a week. Here, we Croats cannot afford the prices that are set for you, the tourists. We can’t even afford to heat our houses.
Were you here during the war?
No, I was lucky, I happened to be in Turkey. Afterwards, there was so much hope, but now I think there is less. Privatization was a disaster. Two hundred corrupt people grabbed everything and got very rich. The rest of us have nothing. We are worse off than when we were part of Yugoslavia. Now they say we wont be ready for the Union until 2009. Me, I am against the Union. European countries, they are all so different! And that is a good thing, I think.
Beautiful views! Can we hike up into the hills?
No, there are no cleared trails and there are still land mines that are dangerous. Out on the islands, you can hike there.



approaching Dubrovnik



a close-up



and another


He waves to a little boy out on the road. Big smiles are exchanged, a shout back and forth.
You know everyone here?
I know that little boy. I chose to work in an orphanage instead of going into the army.
You’ll do well in the States. You have a winning personality!
I know I’ll do well. I already have. I worked for Marriot, they want me back!

Later:

I’d like to order the lobster and potato salad and then the buzzara (shrimp and mussels steamed in a spicy broth). Oh, and a good Croatian white wine.








The restaurant is on a street filled with outdoor eating places. As we walk to it, others ask us to come into theirs, to sample their foods. Tables tend to be empty at this time of the year.





At the close of the meal, a jug appears at the table.
What’s this?
Grappa, from us. Try some.





You speak English, right? I just wanted to tell you that friends ate here two years ago and told us we must dine here as well. I am so glad we did. You are a terrific cook.
I get many warm kisses for those words. Old, smiling eyes. What have they witnessed in the last two decades? A siege that made no sense. Destruction. Rebuilding, so that indeed, it is, to visitors at least, the pearl of the Adriatic.

The hotel where we are staying served as a shelter during the ten month siege. The roof was blasted away, but the walls remained solid. It was reopened last year, finally, and now it waits, splendid in its sunflower and orange tones. It waits for people who will be charmed by it, people like me, who will sit on the terrace and sip a drink late into the evening and then wake up the next day for a breakfast under the blue skies of a gorgeous May day.

from Zagreb: central Europe

If you have been there, you’ll recognize it instantly. The buildings, tramcars, foods, parks, people – what more can I say. Mitteleuropa: Warsaw, Vienna, Zagreb. They have more in common than anyone living there would probably want to admit.

The “other Camics” will not be arriving until late tonight and so I use the day to do some work and then to go out and get a grasp on the Zagreb Sunday. Is it more like an American Sunday or an Italian one? You tell me.



park bench, pink chestnut tree



park bench, markings on tree



watching magic performed on the square



old town, café life



for me: krustada with cheese and cherries, capuccino, lilies of the valley


They speak a butchered Polish here in Croatia. In Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia as well. They take my language, mess with some of the words and it begins to sound like Polish with a few too many beers thrown in. A Pole can listen to a Croat and understand a lot. And conversely, I can throw together some Polish-like words and a person from here will get it.

Still, Zagreb is its own place. Even though I do tend to pick up on the similarities – the flowers sold by old women (the intense smell of lilies of the valley…no lily of the valley ever gives such powerful perfume in the States; I do not know why), the cafés filled in equal proportion with beer, coke and coffee drinkers from morning onwards, the chestnut trees, the lovers, the dreamers, the smokers, the Croats the Poles the Poles the Croats. God, it feels awfully close to home.



I bought from her; they were fresh and she was honest.



at the entrance to the market



red strawberries, red bag, red umbrella, red shirt, black cloak



she sells small amounts of lettuce



old town, looking up



old town, looking down


Monday afternoon we fly down for a week in Dubrovnik. Incredibly difficult to get to by land. Minutes from Bosnia-Hercegovina, significantly damaged in the conflict some fifteen years ago, it is now in a state of recovery. I’m happy to put tourist dollars into its effort to again become a favored Adriatic destination. I want to get to it before it puts itself in the league of all the other beautiful and significantly unaffordable spots along the Mediterranean coastline.

Oh, a post script to Sunday: a perfectly beautiful Mother's Day gift is to have your daughters show up to join you for dinner. And what is a Croatian dinner all about? Mine had the taste of a country that bounces between a Mediterranean culture and central Europe.



tomatoes, mozzarella, melon



baked cheese strukli



daughters

from Zagreb: thoughts about train travel

I had only once traveled to Yugoslavia when it was, well, Yugoslavia. On my way from Poland to Italy, I stopped at Ljubljana, counting the minutes until I could set foot in my beloved Italy.

Then, when I married some thirty years ago, I took on a last name that is Croat to the core. I’ve kept it and liked it. Especially when it isn’t misspelled as “comic,” though even that forces a smile out of me.

These are good enough reasons to do a family vacation in Dubrovnik, the southern-most city of Croatia.

I had been warned about the train trip from Italy into Slovenia and Croatia: be careful. Do not travel at night. Hold on tight to your belongings. [Perhaps I should have been warned as well about train travel through Switzerland where indeed I did somehow let go of my passport.]

My first leg of the journey is in fact to Ljubljana and the train to it is spiffy. One of the few I've been on with electrical outlets for computer use.



train to Ljubljana


I had spent the entire morning shopping in Venice for food. I mean, it was for the pleasure of marketing and people watching as much as for the sustenance. I took one pause and one pause only, to eat, of course. I needed a rest after the strain of all that food viewing.



purple, green and white



arugula, porcini, parmesan



a last nod to the children of Venice


I have with me now a chunk of bread (corona al olive – with green olives throughout) from a bread store, a bunch of small tomatoes, a radicchio head and strawberries from the open-air market, a big wedge of cheese (Caciotta Travisana – typical of the Veneto), a tub of green olives, biscottini con pistachio e aranccia, a small bottle of a white Cuvee di Pinot wine and a bottle of water. The problem is with the cheese. It is starting to smell. Right now, there are only three others in the train car. How soon before the smell wafts over to where they are sitting?

Soon. At the very first stop, the seat next to me is occupied by someone. Why? The car is 99% empty! I could get up, I suppose, but I am settled in. I do not want to be rude. Besides, I am fascinated. Typically, I am the one mocked for excessive fussiness. I handwash stuff when I travel. I clean shoes in watering holes. But my seatmate really truly did take out a white linen hankie to spread on the seat before sitting down. Her cream-toned pants are safe from whatever hidden microelements are on the leather seat.

Oh, now she is wiping down the table in front of us (state of table prior to wipe-down: immaculate – see photo above) with a tissue, which she then folds and places into a clean tissue so that she does not have to contaminate her hands with the used one. I feel better about myself already. I am a slob next to her.

And so now we are conversing. My seat mate is Croatian and I am getting the usual train warnings. Watch out for the ride from Ljubljana to Zagreb. That train has Albanians and Bulgarians. Dirty drunks! If they smoke, you tell them to go outside the compartment. And the train station in Ljubljana (where we have a two hour layover… where will she sit there, I wonder…): full of drunks. Oh dear. Suddenly I am thinking that my small bottle of Pinot, to accompany the foods described above will not go over well. I have no cup. Does drinking straight up put me closer to being one of them?

Later, in Ljubljana:



the station


Perhaps my seatmate was right. Many bars, many in them looking rather down and out. Still, I do find a quiet one to sit in for a while. Oh, I need money. Fine. Is there a bankomat nearby (Europe-talk for ATM)? There is. I put card in and ask for some minimal amount. I get a thumbs up from the machine but no money. Try again. Same thing. I envision my account being drained of funds that I will never see.

Back at the station, another Bankomat. This one asks about the amount. My, those numbers look huge! 5000 is the smallest. Is that like a thousand dollars? I press it anyway. I need local cash. Wait, I don’t need local cash! This is NOT Croatia yet, it’s Slovenia. Damn! Why did I just get Slovenian money? I understand that Yugoslavia split into many smaller nations, but did they have to make up different currencies too? Here I am, holding on to $30 worth of Slovenian money. How much wine can one drink during a two hour layover anyway?

I sit and take out my computer. I need a friend.

Later, on the train:

The lady in white did not get on the Zagreb train. Was she lying about her destination? Was she a spy? A thief? Why did she sit next to me anyway? I’ve lived too long in America. I have learned to think this way about my own home regions (Poland, Croatia, we were all in this together once).

So many passport checks! Just for crossing the border from Slovenia to Croatia! Is this a good thing? Weren't they one country not too long ago? After the last check, I fall asleep. It is close to midnight and so I should be forgiven. But it is the train traveler’s nightmare to oversleep a station. And here I am, doing just that. I wake up to silence and stillness. The train is not moving.

All those warnings about not taking an overnight train because of robberies during sleeping hours and here I am, alone in the car, asleep.

Thankfully it is the final destination. I get off in Zagreb and tug my suitcase to the hotel, a place of great beauty and calm. And Internet access.

From Venice: too many of us

This isn’t the only place in the world that draws Euros or bucks from tourists by the cartload, but sometimes it seems that Venice has become overwhelmed by the numbers. Of tourists, not Euros.

You enter Piazza San Marco and it is like Disneyland on the Fourth of July. Yet the cafes there stand mostly empty. People come, people go. People buy trinkets, not expensive drinks and desserts.

And for those who serve us here, it must just seem like each day spits out a flood of never ending questions, badly asked, in broken Italian, or worse, in drawly and incomprehensible to them English.

The other night on the Vaporetto (boat bus), it was crowded and my suitcase was wedged somewhere in the back and so I asked the boatman in my tired Italian how many more stops before the Accademia (where I was to get off). He shrugged his shoulders. Two maybe – he said. I don’t really remember. In Sicily, I would have been told how many stops, how many seconds to get to it and where I can get a good coffee once I’m off.

The thing is, I could not blame him. He had done this trip a million times with a million disoriented people on board. The captain at the wheel kept knocking on his window because I kept standing up to take photos and inadvertently I would block his view. That must happen another million times each day. Tourist stands up. Bang bang bang, motion to please sit down, can’t see a thing, may run down some poor soul on the water.

There is a barge out here selling vegetables on a side canal of the Dorsoduro. It has been there since I started coming to Venice some thirty or forty years ago. I always take a picture of it. I don’t know why. Sometimes close-ups, other years with daughters in front. Same boat, same veggies. It’s a camera magnet! I’m not the only one. The guy selling the veggies is uniformly pissed at the photo taking (even though surely it must be a different guy each time). He wants to sell vegetables. Cameras block the real shoppers. He wishes we would all trip and fall into the canal, I am sure.



In the evening, we cross the Rialto bridge on our way to dinner. Rialto is sheer madness, but if you hug the perimeters, there are quite the people watching opportunities. Three American student types are sitting at the edge of the canal. The aperitifs must have been flowing that day because they are laughing excessively and even for this noisy place, are boisterous beyond the beyond. One more sip and a bottle is now empty. The one who is laughing hardest tosses the bottle into the Canal. This causes her to almost topple in along with it, she finds it that funny. Out comes the digital camera, as she takes pictures of her gift to the Canal. A taxi boat stands nearby. The driver watches these young women without any expression at all. He is no longer surprised, no longer bothered.

We are early and so we stop at an outside café–bar so that I can sip a Campari spritz and pretend for a minute I am one of them and not one of the tourists.

We eat in a tiny restaurant (five tables only) heartily recommended by the proprietor of our tiny hotel (five rooms only). There are several Italians and several Americans. We are pretty much oblivious to everyone as we sit in a corner and wolf down plate after plate of glorious food. The mamma type who serves us is straight out of the movies. Proud of what the kitchen makes, happy to be there, feeding people.



seafood salad with polenta


A woman, an American, gets up and comes over to me.

Excuse me, she says to me, I hear you speak Italian. I wonder if you can help me say something to the woman (the mamma type) who is serving us. Can you tell her that we witnessed what happened there, at that other table of Americans?
What happened?
They were joking around and someone ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu (about $100), you know, just for laughs. She brought it to them, opened it and then they said they didn’t really want it and would not pay for it. We want to offer to pay her. We are so angry and ashamed.

The mamma type would have none of it of course, but she smiled extra hard.
They hugged her good bye and left her, I am sure, a generous tip.

In the small bar around the corner of the hotel (seats no more than three, with standing room for an additional two), we stop for a Cynar. (To commenter chuck b.: I did this for you. Herby and medicinal. Grows on you.) A stunningly gorgeous young Canadian woman comes in. She is waiting for the manager to close the place – they have a date. She has been traveling around Italy alone for a month and has another month to go.

It’s been my dream to do this. I stay in hostels and eat pizza a lot, but today I blew a fortune at a restaurant these guys recommended. It was extraordinary! The Italians, they are so nice to me. Everywhere I go, they are so kind.
How long have you been in Venice?
I just got here.

I wanted to tell her – they’re more jaded here. But don’t blame them for it. We have done this to them.

Venice is a working city. It takes so much work to keep it afloat and reasonably clean. Here are some photos of those who do the work and of one (and not the only one) who appreciates the effort.


(but first, a capucci'o moment)




waiting



more waiting



working



resting



delivering



going to work



Ocean author, enjoying


Ed, my traveling companion for two weeks, left this morning to return to his work and his ambitious plans to plant a million tomato bushes.



Ed, at the farm, the one at Campofelice di Rocella


I walked him to the boat for the airport. In a few hours I’ll catch a train that many many hours later will place me in Zagreb, where I will be joined tomorrow by my family. I came to Venice by moonlight, I leave by the dazzling rays of a morning sun.



glittering in the morning sun

from Venice: by the light of the moon

It was a travel day. I'm leaving Sicily.


Sicilian memories

From car to plane to bus to train to boat. My suitcase got tagged as heavy. I saw Ed several times giving a glance to the canal then to the suitcase, then to the canal. I know what was going through his mind.

We pulled into Venice late, just before 10. By the time we got off the Vaporetto and walked over to the little hotel on the “left bank” (Dorsoduro) of Venice, it was well after 10.

Ask someone where to get dinner as the clock ticks past 11 p.m. in Venice. Go ahead, ask. You’ll get an answer, sure. And you’ll go there, and it will be closed. I’m going to guess that Venetians are ashamed of their early closing times and so they pretend they don’t exist. But they do.

Eventually we did find a little Sardinian place where the cook did not throw down his spatula at the stroke of twelve. We sat, we ate, we drank, we took in the warm night air. Venice can change rapidly from lively to quiet. From bustling and bright, to moonlit and quiet. Just turn a corner, or move the clock forward.



from lively...




...to still

from Campofelice di Rocella: others who come here (or not)

(Thursday post, all caught up now!)

1. on the trail

We have been lucky. With the exception of the very first hike, we have had all the trails all to ourselves. It is quite possible that this is thanks to May travel. Or maybe it’s because we are the only ones who still cling to Hiking in Sicily, copyright 1998, while everyone else has moved on to something better, or at least more updated, something that has not yet reached the shelves of Madison’s Borders Bookshop.

Yesterday, though, we had company. It was a remote trail through a forest preservation area, high up among the more jagged peaks of the region.





Getting there was hard enough. Only forty kilometers from our farmhouse, but what a forty! It took two hours to drive over to the starting point. True, there was a stop at a village for a capucci’o.



a pause in Isnello



as I work the car down the tight space, others take a more relaxed approach to the day



first capucci'o break of the day


And it took many sweaty minutes to navigate the car out of the narrow alleys leading in and out of the village center. Still, we reached our hiking destination by 3 pm. Not bad for those known to start late and get lost, all in the space of one day.

It was a brilliant day – perfect for a climb up rocky paths, bordered by every shade of green. This particular area has hundreds of species of plant, some found only in here, extinct in all other parts of the globe (note fir trees below).








Eventually, we did meet up with clouds. But not for long. We climbed above their level and forgot about them.





The same cannot be said for the German couple. We came upon them early in the hike. We could not shake them.

Wanting the solitude and quiet of an empty trail, we gave them space. We paused for ten minutes. Up ahead, they paused for ten minutes. We stopped to pick the little caterpillars off our clothes. They paused to pick the little caterpillars off their clothes. I took photos. She took clothes on and off – it took the same number of seconds.

We would have passed them, but every once in a while they would get that brisk German step going, signaling in every way “we are unbeatable.” We tend to be more leisurely about things.

They were the only other souls on the mountain. We cannot complain about their presence anymore than they can about ours. But I do have a suggestion for future hikers on mountain trails: keep your voices down. Sound travels.



a photo pause at the top


At least we did not get lost on this day. We knew we had it right each time. The Germans paved the way, with the help of their sturdy leather shoes and very detailed maps. Not for them, Hiking through Sicily, copyright 1998.


2. in the restaurant

In the evening we went to our “other” village restaurant, Portico Antico. Signora Cristina (from our farm) described the place as big, noisy, family oriented, full of locals, but with exceptionally fresh and honest (or words to that effect) food.

All predictions were exactly correct. In the background, the TV was on. And so the meal was against the backdrop of some rescue movie with, Ed tells me, Sylvester Stallone, dubbed over in Italian. I, myself, could not really tell. Amazingly, all patrons were arranged around tables in such a way that the men faced the screen and the women – any place but the screen. [Five minutes into the meal I threatened to take away Ed’s glasses if he continued to direct his eyes toward the set.]

Patrons included a mamma with her two teen daughters, a couple with their one year old, a woman with her frail great grandmother, and an assortment of men and women variously related to each other.

It was the kind of place where if you ask about the fish of the day, the cook comes out to show you what he picked up this morning.





The restaurant completely won me over. But then, I am, in general, quite smitten with this little corner of the world. The village of Campofelice di Rocella is close to the mountains, the sea and fewer than a dozen kilometers up above the trendy coastal Cefalu, the town that has my Internet Point and perhaps more importantly, looks like this on the drive down to it:





Campofelice di Rocella is a laid back, unpretentious kind of place. Not many visitors seek it out. According to our server, no Americans ever set foot in her country restaurant. Such a mistake. True, no one speaks English here, but how could that possibly matter? I no longer take my ancient little dictionary anywhere. Sicilians are brilliant in getting their point across. And each explanation, each encounter ends with a handshake and a smile.

You come hungry, you leave happy and satisfied. Again, well cared for. It was our last Sicilian meal. Tomorrow we head north again. But I’m hooked on Sicily. I’ll be back, certo.



antipasto



risotto



fresh and honest