from Le Bourget du Lac: why here, why now...

I’m riding the train again – my second day of train travel. I feel myself to be completely immersed in the rail system of Europe. I paused only for an hour in Milan. I would have said that it was 59 minutes too long, it being Milan, but I did pull my suitcase around until I found a bakery and so yes, it was worth it, just for this:





I have a four hour segment now on a rapid train (TGV) through the Alps over to France. Why there? I am waiting for my apartment to become available (a three week rental, beginning Saturday) and I have three days to kill. Somewhere. I need peace and quiet – to take brisk walks and to get a huge amount of work done. A restaurant in a beautiful country setting, where the proprietor rents out a couple of rooms for people who eat too much and can’t move afterwards seems perfect.

The problem is I arrive on a day the restaurant is closed. Who knew. In anticipation of this, I used my pause in Milan not only to pig out on pastries, but to do shopping for dinner foods. Yes, this detour into Milan's food network did cause me to almost miss the train. Still, I had to carefully consider all my choices : bread and cheese, veggies, fruits and wine. It all added to a little under 5 Euros. You can imagine the quality of the wine – it comes in a box. The last time I drank boxed wine I was 22, a grad student and didn’t know any better. But popping a cork given that I misplaced my handy travel corkscrew seemed daunting and so I opted for a milk carton (with a nice and secure screw top) only without the milk. I’ll report on the quality of the wine later.

Or, I may not report anything. The restauranteur’s wife, with the promising name of Delphine (so French, no?) promised that there is Internet at their place, but I have heard that before and it is hardly ever true. Big hotels have Internet. Little restaurants in the middle of nowhere by a lake near the Alps do not.

UPDATE: Sure enough, the Internet here has been down for days. I am borrowing the restaurant phone line to dial up. Meaning, I am keeping the reservations from pouring in. I am such a difficult guest. But the setting, oh, the setting! Out on my little terrace, before me, the lake (France’s largest natural lake, I am told – but what does that even mean? I know they’re into organic everything here, but a lake?). If I turn sideways, I see this:



into the morning sun


The challenge will be not only to continue to raid their phone line for Internet access, but to get any work done given the sunny skies and countless opportunities for hikes.

Fortified by a breakfast of warm cakes and fresh berries, I think I'll start with a hike. To get my mind primed for work. Yeah, I need to get into the work groove. I'll find my groove up in the mountains. Off I go.

from Venice–Mestre: with guilt

I am a seven minute train ride away from Venice proper, I have a morning to kill before my train to Milan and yet I am avoiding Venice, as if she were some horrible irritant, someone you wish would not show up for a dinner date.

So what’s wrong with Venice? Or is it me?

It’s me. I adore Venice. I forgive her the crowds, the pigeons (and that’s saying a lot), I forgive her the junk stores. I just find her demanding and I am not willing at this moment to give all that she would demand of me: patience, money, attention – I haven’t any to spare.

I had stayed in Mestre once before. I was thirteen and my parents had wanted to see Venice. They thought, correctly, that it would be cheaper to stay in this industrial suburb. Our little hotel turned out to be mainly a house of ill-repute and we all got terrible rashes from what appeared to be an infestation of bedbugs. Three years later, still poor and still wanting to see Venice, we returned, this time to sleep in a tent on the beaches of the Lido. After that, my mother proclaimed that Venice wasn’t worth it. As usual, I disagreed.

And yet, here I am, minutes away and turning my back to her. The guilt, oh the guilt.

True, it is raining…

*****************

The train pulled in late from Zagreb last night. Mestre was, of course, somber and gloomy. It is to be expected. My hotel is decent – I chose it because it has a small garden. Really, no other reason. If you are going to stay in an inexpensive place in Mestre, you may as well look out on greenery.

One notable thing about it is that it is not especially close to the commercial hub of the city and so I settle on eating at the hotel restaurant. There aren’t many places in this country that will serve a bad bowl of pasta.

I enter the dining room and it is loud! No wonder – at one end some two dozen men are seated at a long table. They are not drunk, but they are happy. Boisterous. Animated.

My waiter apologizes for their noise, but I wave away his concerns. How could anyone complain about sharing a dining space with these guys – their love of the moment is so palpable! I ask what the occasion is and he tells me they are local taxi drivers. They come to his dining room once a year to eat dinner together.

It is late and the dining room is now empty except for the cab drivers, myself and, way across the room, a young family. She is calming a baby, he is making sure the son is eating properly.





The baby falls asleep and the father takes the son out for a while. I watch the mother. She is oblivious to the taxi drivers. Simply dressed, with a look of hard work about her, she is, I think, beautiful. Her dark hair spills on her back, her face has the look of shyness. She is lost, in her world, dreaming. What of?

Her husband and son come back and she visibly shakes herself loose from her thoughts. She looks at me across the room. We smile the complicit smile passed between mothers the world over. You have beautiful children, it says. I know, is the response.

She whispers something to her boy. He turns around and looks at me. He asks his parents permission to leave the table. They nod. He pushes his chair, gets up and comes over. With a grin, he leans his elbows on my table.
My Italian permits me to find out that he is Matteo. He is all of five. Yes, they are here on vacation.

Permesso, let me light your candle. He takes mine and goes to the waiter. He asks for a light. The waiter obliges, the little candle picks up the flame, but on the walk over, it goes out again. Back goes Matteo, the waiter lights it again – as if there was nothing odd about a little boy looking to light the candle of a signora, sitting alone at a table, eating her pasta con frutti di mare.

The mother comes over now. Her smile increases her loveliness tenfold. Where am I from, she wants to know. America. Matteo, she is American! Does this have special meaning to a little boy? Do they talk about it? Do they have relatives there?

And you, I ask, where are you from? Calabria. Oh, the south! I love the south! I just was in Sicily.

It is late. The father has left with the baby and she now moves her boy toward the door. Matteo takes her hand. I wave to him, he waves back. The cab drivers are still eating, still laughing. I retreat to my room, upstairs, the one that overlooks a few green trees.



Mestre dinner

from Zagreb: departures

And so my adored Croats in my family (I’m a phony – I only hold on to a Croatian name) are returning home today. They take with them their laughter, companionship, irreverence, affection. How fair is that?

I can’t even think of being here without them and so I, too, am heading out. Back on the trains today, with a quick overnight in Italy and then, more trains tomorrow, putting me (I hope) in a little village by a lake in western France.

A special bow here, on Ocean to (my) daughters. Thank you. As always, you’re the very best. Even if you do insist on scaling mountains in flip flops, eating cherry strudel after every lunch and bringing a second copy of Zadie Smith’s newest book, just to show me that you read faster than I do.



one last aperitif: campari and soda with a shot of o.j.
...to the natural wonders of croatia




daughters

From Dubrovnik: a day of rest

A day of ice cream, pretty dresses and church for some, of kicking the ball around, of conversations.



hungry for a roll?




after a wedding




the reward for sitting still




women talk, cat sleeps




a boy, a ball, a message on the wall


A Sunday here should feel different than, say, a Sunday in Marsala or Zagreb. Dubrovnik is a tourist destination. Tourism does not rest on this day, it speeds up and explodes, only to recede again at dusk, as day trippers return to their buses, their ships, their more distant hotels. The city becomes quiet only then, much to the chagrin of the restauraneurs, who survey their empty tables and wonder why, somehow, they have missed out on the madness.

We succumb to the pressure to do not much of anything on this last full day in the city. Breakfast, outside again, on a windy but dappled by sunlight terrace, lasts almost two hours. A stroll through town and it is time to think about lunch (pizza, thin crust, delicate sauce, sizzling cheese. Delicious).

Cappuccino follows and then, of course, a siesta, because one little cappuccino is not going to fight off the overwhelming desire to rest in the afternoon. Out on the terrace. With something to read.

It had been determined early on that we should scale Dubrovnik’s wall just before it closes in the evening. Empty now, against a receding sun and very very beautiful.




one last look, toward the setting sun




the main street grows quieter


Then a double and very protracted Summer Festival aperitif and a walk to the designated favorite eating place, Mediterano.



tables hugging the cathedral wall


Mario is there – our waiter from earlier in the week. He is surprised to see us again.

The inevitable question is asked – where are we from? This always astonishes me, because I think, to these English speaking Croats, it must be so obvious. The big A, emblazoned on our foreheads.

But there is always the registered surprise when we respond with the A word.

So far! You have traveled so far to be here?

And even greater surprise that we should choose to do the entire family vacation in Dubrovnik, that we are not boat people, here for a day or two and on to the next port and the next; that instead, we are here and only here, this is it – designated UNESCO city, designated Camic vacation spot.

Are you the owner of this place, Mario?
No, my pal Marinko is. He is the cook. You have made his day by being here again. But you know, we work together. I do not work for him, we are friends. Only we are so new and we worry about how it will turn out.




the cook and the waiter


And what reassurance can I offer? None. Mario, Marinko, you have a winner here. Your seafood is so sublime that you should not worry! I will tell everyone to come and eat here. I will make you famous!

I, of course, can say none of this. We talk about the fish of the Adriatic, about the difference between octopus, squid and calamari, we drink the Dalmatian wine, we thank them profoundly and we leave.

From Dubrovnik: opinions vary

A planned day trip to the islands morphed into a hop over the border to Bosnia, which in the end turned into not Bosnia at all, but a long trip down south to Montenegro. Or, more accurately, Serbia-Montenegro, since they are now one, at least until the referendum today, when Montenegrins are voting (one hopes with ballots only; the European press is watching for signs of violence) on whether they are to become a separate nation-state. It’s going to be a close one.

My mistake was to ask for advice. Croats have opinions and they have this tendency to not budge. Ask for a table in the sun and you will get one in the shade with an explanation of why it is better there. If you persist with your request, they will persist with theirs and in the end, guess who will outlast the other?

When the seas became rough on Saturday, we gave up on the islands idea. A village in Bosnia seemed intriguing.

Not to the hotel desk clerk, whom I asked for advice on how to get there.

Don’t take the bus. Unreliable. Don’t go there anyway. There is nothing there!

Before the conversation ended he had connected me with his friend Veljko, who drives a car and takes people places and knows Montenegro very well.

Their coast is beautiful, Veljko tells me. But they don’t like to work. The joke is, if a Montenegrin is getting up, it must be noon! Without Dubrovnik sending them a few tourists, they would have nothing. I don’t know how they will manage as a separate nation. But we get along with them. We share the sea, we speak the same language. Still, they are poor. You will see.

And we do see. You cross the complicated border and you notice the potholes. You notice other things as well: little commerce, simple homes, simple lives.









But it is better here, in Montenegro, than in Bosnia. In Bosnia, there are no street signs, no traffic lights. You come to a sign saying “Atena 900 km” and that will be it. There will not be another sign.

He takes us to Budva, halfway down the Montenegrin coast. I do not think any overseas travelers come to Budva.
But Serbs come here! It is their playground!

A walled town, washed by the waves of the Adriatic, it is, like Dubrovnik (though a miniature version of it), a UNESCO protected site.












I remind Veljko that, sadly, UNESCO’s designation did nothing to protect Dubrovnik during the siege.

Yes, my family’s house was hit seven times, but Dubrovnik houses are solid!
How did you manage all those months, without food?
My mother stocked up when she sensed that war was coming. We had some supplies reach us once a week. But it was dangerous to go get them. If you stood in line, you were a visible target for the Serbs.

Do Croats get along with the Serbs now?
Mostly. The bad guys, Slobodan Milosevic (nc: himself a Montenegrin Serb), they’re gone. It was crazy then! My brother was in the Yugoslav army when the war started. So they asked him to shoot his own people! He left for Germany and never came back.

And you stayed in Dubrovnik?
Yes, I am starting my own touring business next year.
(I am guessing he plans to put Montenegro on the tourist map.)
I have a wife, a little girl. Her name is Ira.
Is that a popular name here?
Actually, in Dubrovnik, they like to name girls Dube, short for Dubrovka and boys Vlaho, after the patron saint.
(I suppose I might feel the same fierce loyalty to my home town had it experienced all that Dubrovnik did.)
My mother worked in tourism before she retired. You know, there used to be 55 hotels in the Dubrovnik area before the war. Now 35 have reopened. It is still slow.

We drive further south, along the coastal road to Sventi Stefan, another tiny former fishing village, walled, jutting out into the sea.








leading up to Sveti Stefan




village close-up



Sveti Stefan close-up


We pass olive trees on steep mountain terraces.
Do you make olive oil here?
Yes and in Croatia too! My father-in-law makes olive oil. I will bring you some to the hotel before you leave.

And there lies that Croat hidden friendliness. You look at a face and you think: serious, reserved. And yet, by the time you finish the day, they are telling you about family squabbles and life’s dreams.


The trip south messed with our regular afternoon eating habits and so we targeted this evening for a great big Adriatic indulgence. You could not ask for better seafood. You really could not.



asparagus, mussels, olive oil



grilled octopus salad with warm chicory



risotto with shrimp and zucchini



crispy sea bass with capers and candied lemon



pear, calvados and amaretto souffle and rum raisin ice cream

from Dubrovnik: all in a day

There is nothing large about this city except for Mount Srd at one end and the Adriatic at the other.

The miniscule daily market has small-time growers bringing maybe several dozen eggs, a bunch of roses and a few bottles of home-infused grappa to unload. Only a couple will fill the table with mounds of fresh fruits or veggies.











I buy a very small, recycled olive jar filled now with grappa. Not because I am especially fond of the stuff, but because there is a certain home spun beauty to it: the combination of herbs, a flower, a bay leaf swimming in this reused container. So much of what I find beautiful about life in these parts is like that: simple, artful, shared, understood.



grappa and figs


It has been decided that Saturday, the day the cruise ships come in, is the day to leave Dubrovnik during daylight hours. But on Friday, we still loiter.

We visit the market.
We visit the cathedral.
We visit the Sponza Palace.
We visit Rector’s Palace.
We visit the old synagogue, the only one in Europe that remained open during the entire Second World War.
And in one of these sites, we visit the room dedicated to the memory of the several hundred who died during the ‘91-‘92 siege of Dubrovnik.

And so it is no surprise that in the afternoon, I want time out.

I want to climb the mountain that shelters Dubrovnik. Sure, I remember the warnings about landmines. But I also read the poignant accounts of mothers scaling the summit daily to pray for their sons whose lives were lost on these hills. And I hear there is a path. And if you stick to the path, you are safe.

I twist daughters’ arms and we set off.

It takes no time at all for me to get lost. One path becomes a dead end. Another leads to a seemingly deserted house with chained dogs growling the minute I come within 100 meters of them.

But if you know there is a path, you will find it. That is my new motto. Indeed, it takes only half a dozen queries and we are on it again, heading up, up through the pine forests and then above the tree line, up, up, past thirteen crosses in memory of the war heroes…




…up up past blooming brush and flowers and rocky stones, until, looking down, we have the city, wrapped by its wall, the same wall that gave magnificent views before but now looks like a little thimble, nothing more. And the sea and the islands, from the quiet of a mountaintop.



looking sout, toward the walled city



looking north, toward the islands


And then it is but a roll and a stumble back to town.

Dinner is absolutely stellar. Mushrooms stuffed with seafood, covered with melted local cheese, prawns with polenta, prepared in the Dalmatian style and of course, ice cream filled crepes.














It is late and we head to the Franciscans. A quartet is playing to a handful of visitors. The Beethoven piece brings me to tears. By the time they finish with a Schubert and a Rossini, I am one wet noodle. Small markets, large mountains, the quiet of a summit, the clear notes of a flute, all pulling at your emotions, so that it becomes about your own life, reconsidered against the drama of this little town on the coast of the Adriatic.

from Dubrovnik: city park

If you haven’t the room for a park in the city, then find room for it elsewhere. The people of Dubrovnik took that message to heart and put their park on an island, a dozen minutes away by boat.

And so when the city was feeling just a little too overrun by school grops, English pensioners and tourists speaking languages I cannot place – it was time to head for the park.



ferrying for an afternoon away from the city pace


The island of Lokrum is a quiet place. So close and yet so quiet! There is an old monastery and a small church, but you really come here for the lush vegetation, the coastal views...





...the winding trails, and the nudist beach.

Yes, that. We stumbled upon it by getting lost in the woods (I had the map and I forgot to follow it) and coming upon a sign that basically said put away your cameras and take off your clothes or stay out.

So, did I oblige or did I move on?

It turns out Croatia has a long “naturist” tradition. People expect to be able to go out on select beaches sans attire. They like the feel of water on their bodies. They’ve been commanded to do a lot of things in the past, but here, in these spots up and down the coast, they can do as they please.

They say the coastal waters got toasty warm – good enough to swim in – just this week. And the sun has been out daily, with pleasant breezes keeping the days at a perfect temperature. Why not swim and frolic and eat well at night. Why not…



a peacock watches



a boat goes by, taking it in




yet another place to swim on the island: the dead sea (cameras permitted here)




a late dinner, outside, by the sea

from Dubrovnik: about food, but not really

1. breakfast

At times I get immensely jealous of countries that have both the salty seas and the sunny spring skies. To do food well, they need only not ruin that which the season and the sea readily provide.

Dubrovnik does food well. It does not choke meats and fish with starch and cream in the central European way. It looks at a product and says – hey, it’s fine the way it is. Let’s just cut it up and put it on a plate. Like this:




…along with a good cup of coffee and some bready stuff, served early in the morning, on a sunny patio. Can’t go wrong.


2. lunch

I have a very complicated relationship to lunch. Back home I ignore it. Here, I am seduced by it.

It’s 1 in the afternoon. We have been walking the back alleys of this town.













The sun is warm, the air is still. It’s everybody’s lunch break. And so you sit down.
You are served this, with a glass of house white.



grilled veggies, octopus


The waitress hovers, fusses.
I like Americans, she tells you. Most of the time. But just now I had one take out his calculator and go over my sums. As if I can’t count! The other week, I was asked if I knew what a p.c. was. No, I count on my fingers and I come to work on horseback! Americans think we are so primitive.

Oh, that Eastern European complex. And that burning (not always untrue) image of the condescending American. They are a bad fit.
But I like your language. I studied it here, in Dubrovnik. I am an engineer in fact.
Underemployment, the problem of a country with a fledging economy

It’s 2:30, you move on to a café for a cappuccino and then an ice cream shop for a scoop of fruits of the forest ice cream. By now it’s nearing 5. One brisk walk out of the city, along the shore…





…and it’s time to think about the aperitif.


3. dinner

A new place opened up a year ago on one of the side squares of Dubrovnik. The tables are roomy, comfortably spread out over much of the square. To the side, at a jazz club, a combo plays an odd assortment of music. A boy runs past, kicking a “football.” From a doorway, you hear the sound of soccer on the screen, with occasional shouts of joy as one goal follows another. The stars are out.

The waiter brings a bottle of Croatian white, a bottle of mineral water, plates with fish pate, crusty bread.

We order. Time to try some Dalmatian favorites: risotto blackened with squid ink with chunks of seafood, a sea bass pan fried in olive oil, flavored with lemon and Dalmatian spices. A crepe with ice cream for dessert. Four people means two bottles of wine. The total tab comes to 560 Kn., which is about $100. The food at this place is so outstanding that it could survive the competition in the big capitals of the world.










I’m a failure in finding effective words of praise. They all sound so… standard. This is great. You are great. Wonderful, really wonderful. We are so glad we found you. We’ll have to return.

Maybe we will, maybe we wont. Who knows how the week will unfold. But there is always Ocean, the conveyor of important information. When next you are in Dubrovnik, eat there, at the Konoba Mediterano. And pat the guy on the back for his efforts. Or kiss him. Or leave him a big tip. Or write an effusive post.

(Being a tourist can be emotionally draining. So often you worry that you’re not doing a good job of it.)