I’m listening to and vibrating with the 8 am church bells….deep rich tones, rhythmic but not quite perfectly predictable. That wee bit of unpredictability and slight variation make the bells seem alive. Not programmed. Not powered by an app. Not a recording. Oh I will miss those sounds.
What else will I miss?
Domača kafa- everyone, and I mean everyone who takes you into their home serve this kind of coffee. But it’s not just the coffee itself I will miss. I will miss the spirit of the culture here where people take time to sit together, in no rush to get to their next engagement. People know how to be present together in the moment.
Food- true, toward the end of our trips I get a bit weary of eating so much grilled chicken and other meats, and fried potatos (in various forms and shapes), grilled veggies, and salads with no or little lettuce. But I will miss eating all these foods that are locally or personally grown and raised. The tomatoes and cucumbers taste like a different vegetable than what we buy at the store back home.oh and the breads…so many types, all homemade or locally baked.
Rakija- just like everyone offers guests coffee here, they also offer rakija, usually home made, or made by a friend or relative. I am generally not a frequent consumer of alcohol but I enjoy drinking rakija with hosts and friends when we are here. I like the ritual of it, especially looking each other in the eyes when toasting ‘živeli’. That tiny gesture supports a deep connection to each other even when people don’t share a language. Besides that, I do actually like rakija, in small amounts. I can imagine it to be ‘health water’ despite knowing the down sides of consuming alcohol.
I will miss the often spartan beds here and the European way of making beds with a bottom sheet and a duvet on top, with a wool blanket added when necessary. Oddly I like the roughness of some of the sheets.
I will miss the spring water so abundant (but declining due to mining and development) even when I am not sure if or when it was last checked for quality. It tastes so pure and fresh.
I will miss the carbonated spring water sold here that we order with every dinner. It is much more affordable here than in Seattle, and the brands here taste better.
I will miss hearing Serbian spoken all around me, and trying to understand what is being said, and trying clumsily to be understood when I speak like a young child. I will miss saying, ‘dobar dan’ as I pass by strangers. Of course I will say hello when I walk by people when we get back to Seattle, but I especially enjoy greeting others in their local language.
I will miss the flowers, butterflies, lizards, and the dogs, even though seeing so many stray dogs makes me sad.
I will miss the parks and city streets where people of all ages sit or play or walk without fear of crime or harm.
I will miss the particular beauty and landscapes here, and the orange roofs, gardens, small farms, little villages, tiny roads (for walking on through the countryside), haystacks, bakeries, cafes, small crowded markets and shops.
Most of all I will miss the people here- family, hosts, friends, as well as strangers we interact with in shops or on the street.
We ate breakfast, packed, cleaned up, then said bye to Dule who got a little teary. He hopes we will come back next year, and said Serbia is a safe good place to be. We will have no troubles here. We then said by to our host who also said to please come back.
We expected the drive to our next stop, Samobor Croatia,to take 4 hrs and 15 minutes. I figured 4.5 plus a half hour or 45 minutes at the border. Google said the wait would be 15-20 minutes. One of the border apps said it could be an hour. When we arrived there was a barely a line for exiting Serbia, but when we neared the entry to Croatia there were a couple long and chaotic lines with no signage or guidance regarding where to go for EU passport holders and everyone else. It turns out we picked the slowest lane. As we crawled toward the front my need to pee increased. And when we finally got close enough to distinguish between the EU lane (only one open) and the EES lanes (only 2 open), we noticed some drivers intentionally went in the faster moving EU lane and at the last minute cut into our EES lane. Maddening., that alone delayed us at least 15 or 20 more minutes. Jim was especially impatient and angry. After 2 hours and 15 minutes we finally reached the booth where we had to get out of the car and get scanned. No passport stamp.
Soon after entering Croatia we found a gas station with a bathroom. What a relief. Much of the drive was flat, through farmland. Jim finds it boring. I don’t mind it. We encountered numerous construction zones so the drive took longer than usual.
When we had only a half hour to go to reach our next lodging my need to pee got pretty intense, but I thought I could make it. But then, 20 minutes from our destination we took a wrong turn onto a restricted access toll road with no nearby exits, adding another 20 minutes to the drive. There was no way I could wait that long, but luckily we came upon a gas station, thank goodness! The Google map guided us to exit the highway onto a narrow curving route up and down numerous steep hills. It was beautiful but rapidly getting dark and we were eager to get off that road before it was totally dark. We arrived at our place on the edge of Samobor right before full darkness.
Natalja, our host who lives above the ground floor apartment, was polite and cordial but not warm, and seemed in a rush to get back upstairs. This is how we have experienced most hosts in Croatia, so different from Serbian and Montenegrin hosts. The 2 bedroom apartment has been neatly and thoughtfully modernized and was clean, warm and well supplied. The living/kitchen/eating area was especially small. There was a view of the city below but not the forest immediately behind the house that is set against a steep hill and eroding cliff.
It was late and we were hungry. Our host suggested a good place about 12 minutes away on foot, so we set off in the dark down the hill. The food was good, some of the best chicken I’ve had on the trip. We enjoyed the fairly steep climb back up the hill to our place. We were grateful to be there even though the drive took almost 8 hours instead of the 5 we had expected.
…
I slept poorly and only for 5 hours. My neck was very sore and in the morning I began to get a headache. I wonder if it is from the smell of off gassing that has been bugging me since we arrived. It’s subtle, but being a sensitive person it bothers me. I have a taste on my tongue and my eyes feel mildly irritated. In the night I even opened the window despite it being 40 degrees, and when I got up opened more windows in the apartment which seems to be helping, at least temporarily. I also slept poorly because there is a streetlight directly outside the window about 20 feet away. The curtains are lightweight and cream colored and do little to block the light. But this morning I discovered there are shades outside that I can close tonite, hooray!
Jim cooked breakfast (next to no counter work space in this kitchen area), and we ate on the narrow bar. No table in this small living area. I’m not complaining, it’s just a small space for the amount of money we are paying- about $140 a night (2 bedrooms), more than we’ve ever paid for lodging on our trips here.
We asked our host which buttons to push on the washing machine. She had forgotten how to use this machine and obviously picked the wrong ones, because when the load was done they had not been spun and the clothes came out dripping wet. So before hanging them outside on the rack we had to squeeze and ring every item and still they were soaked. Sadly the sun went around the corner in the early afternoon so when we came home from our walk at 2:30 they all were still quite damp. We will bring the rack in tonite and take it back out in the morning.
Despite having a very sore neck and headache we set off for the old part of town shortly before noon. Temps were pleasant in the low 70s, sky clear but hazy or foggy/smoggy. We enjoyed walking on the street high on the hill where our apartment is. Most houses are newish and biggish although there were a few old ones scattered between them, including a very large villa from the Austro-Hungarian days. We angled down to the bottom of the hill into the maze of tiny streets of the old town. The architecture (orange tiled roofs are common here) is attractive. Some buildings have been renovated, many not. We found our way to a nice park next to a steam (small river?) at the base of a steep forested hill/mountain. A trail heads off steeply into the forest towards remains of an old fort atop the hill. Because I wasn’t feeling great I was not up for the steep climb. Instead we followed a pleasant path next to the stream that led us into the quaint pedestrian friendly old town ‘square’ (long and irregularly shaped, not square, lined with shops, cafes and restaurants, many colorfully painted and with lots of flower filled pots and plantings adding charm to the scene.
This little city is known for a particular custard cake layered between crisp flaky thin sheets of pastry. We found the sweet shop with the highest ratings and sat outside and drank coffee (no Serbian coffee here!) and shared a piece of the cake, Samobor kremšnita. It was indeed yummy, worth having, but not as good as the fluffy cake I love that I get in Mt Lebanon from the Korean French bakery.
We also stopped at the pekara that gets the best reviews and bought a few items for morning, then set off up another hill to the olde church whose bells I’ve been enjoying each time they ring. This church, though Catholic, has a tower that looks more Orthodox than Catholic, but I read the church has always been Catholic. This area never had many Serbs and today has only 167 out of nearly 30,000 people. We could not go in the church because it appears to be in the midst of renovation, so we continued walking steeply up the hill and enjoyed walking around a fairly large cemetery with good views. We could see Zagreb 25 km away in the distance.
My head and neck continued to bother me so we came home to rest. We walked back to town for dinner and chose Bistro Monet in an old building with a pleasant covered seating area outside. Our server was very friendly but only spoke in Croatian. We understood most of what she said except when she asked if we wanted her to bring us ice cubes for our carbonated mineral water. We nodded and then received a glass full of ice which we did not need. But no harm done. We shared a nicely grilled turkey fillet and a big pizza, and salad. All were good.
When we arrived back home most of our laundry hanging outside on the drying rack was still damp. We brought the rack in overnight and by morning all was finally dry. I slept ok and woke with no headache. Hooray!
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