Mljet

We got in after midnight again, and stayed in a modern hotel near an anonymous outlet mall close to the ferry port.  Because we would be crossing a national border and leaving the European Union, we had to get to the terminal two hours ahead of our ferry departure.  Just like the airport, only a little more chaotic.

We checked in, went through passport control, and then climbed up some metal stairs onto our ship.  C.C., Milo and I found some seats while Alec drove the car onto the ship.  We got a row of four together, and made ourselves at home for the four hour ride ahead.  It is a large, comfortable boat; the day is clear and the sea is calm.  I was pooped, so I took the fleece blankets we had brought from the car and found an upholstered bench to lie down on.  I plugged myself into a relaxation application on my iPad and drifted off for about an hour, feeling the gentle rolling of the sea below me.

I woke up and we all went to get some lunch—roasted vegetables, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella.  I read to C.C. and to Milo while Alec worked, and then I slept some more. 

We landed in Split, Croatia, just after 4 pm, and had a 3 hour drive.  We took the road that hugged the coast—a gorgeous, winding road through tiny beachfront towns with names like Dugi Rat and XXX.  Men sitting in lawn chairs held signs with the word “Apartment” on them, all vying for the tourist business.  

We had read in our guidebook that a town about halfway to our destination had a decent thai restaurant.  You would think that I am a seasoned enough traveler to be wary of food in one place that is not at all like the food in the actual place, particularly knowing that there has been no influx of Thai immigrants to the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.  But we took the bait, and I ended up with some of the nastiest pad thai I have ever eaten—spaghetti laced with all forms of unfamiliar shellfish, and covered in an over-spiced, gloopy mountain of sauce.  Oh well.  The guidebook had listed it, and Alec and I once spent several days in Cuenca, Ecuador eating all of our meals at the local Mexican restaurant, which was fantastic. 

We bought honey and apricot jam from one of the many roadside stands that lined the nearly deserted road on our way to our night’s lodging.  The stand also sold figs, squash, plums, peaches, tomatoes.  I figured if produce was so abundant, it should be easy to find on Mljet as well.

Bosnia Herzegovina has a tiny finger of land splitting Croatia that gives it access to the sea, and from here we would be taking the ferry to Mljet.  We stayed in a new but cheaply renovated hotel with views of the water.  We woke up on July 4, then, in Bosnia.  C.C. went to breakfast first, as she woke up hungry, and happily reported to us that there were hotdogs for breakfast!  Hotdogs, and several other kinds of meat, scrambled eggs with meat, and some cheese and white bread.  I asked the waiter if he had any yogurt and he produced some for me.  No fruit, nothing green.

Our ferry left at 1 pm, which gave us time to nip down to the beach for a swim.  Although it was early, the narrow beach was packed with eastern Europeans who had an air of desperation about them.  Unlike the Barcelonans who have year round access to the beach, these folks seemed to have a need to get the sun on their ample white skins.

It was a short drive to the ferry, and a short ferry ride to Mljet, a small Croatian island.  We got some lunch and headed to our house, driving on narrow roads high above the coast.  It is a gorgeous place.

Our friends Margo and Gregory, and their son Ben, arrived ahead of us and had the house open and waiting for us.  The three kids immediately ran off to play and we all sat on the terrace overlooking the sea to catch up.  The house itself is simple but functional, but the site is breathtaking. The village—if you could call it that—is tiny.  One small inn, one café.  No store, no restaurant.  There is no internet on the entire island, and the loudest sounds are of the buzzing insects and the waves lapping the rocky shore.  Just what the doctor ordered.

Alec, Margo and I headed out to the small market about a 15 minute drive away to pick up provisions.  The pickings were slim, but we got enough to cook ourselves some good food.  From what both of us had experienced thus far—Margo and Gregory had already spent a few days in Dubrovnik—eating out was expensive and not that good.

We made a Spanish tortilla, and a tomato, cucumber and fresh cheese salad for dinner and dined al fresco on our terrace. The kids are in seventh heaven, running around in a pack, and hunting for beetles.  C.C. came in at one point with one on each of her fingers. We put them to sleep together in one bed.  They took awhile to settle down, of course, but loved it. 

The tiny slice of moon kept the sky dark, dark, dark, and the sky was thick with stars.  I can’t remember when I’ve seen so many.  Alec and I sat out there in the quiet—it was his birthday—and drank it all in.

* * *

We decided to spend the whole of Tuesday at our little compound, without getting into the car.  We woke up to rain and had begun to plan rainy day activities—a double feature!  Decorating the walls!  But then the sun came out around noon, and after a lazy morning of reading and lying around, we had some lunch and walked down to our rocky little beach.  The water is a gorgeous azure, a blue I associate with the Caribbean.  And it is the perfect temperature, cool but not cold, perfectly refreshing.  And calm.  The kids flapped around, the adults swam.  There are black sea urchins lurking in the rocks, but it seems someone has cleared most of them out, so it’s safe.

We had bought a large hunk of pork at the market—we don’t know which part of the pig it came from—which we had thawed overnight and which Alec cooked on the outdoor stone grill.  It came out perfectly.  We fed the kids and then ate outside, all of us with a view of our little cove below.  A woman wearing a billowy skirt and a babushka tied over her head came into view piloting a small boat.  She seemed to be fishing for something.  She went back and forth a few times, working her nets, and then disappeared for the night.

We sat in our living room, talked about education policy, played scrabble, and had an all around enjoyable time.

* * *

One of the great things about traveling is the stuff that happens that you were not expecting.  I certainly thought about the fact that Croatia was in eastern Europe before we came here, but I thought about it more from the perspective of what the food would be like, whether the culture would seem really different; it is my first time in this part of the world.  I had not thought about the direct connection between this place and me.

My paternal grandparents, Joseph and Cecilia Serwon (the “w” was changed to a “v” informally, decades later), came to South River, New Jersey from Poland in the 1930s. They worked factory jobs, had two children—my father and his sister Joan.  Then my father’s mother died of some kind of cancer when he was two.  After a tough couple of years during which my father and his sister nearly became wards of the state, my grandfather remarried Mary, a widow with two children of her own.  I grew up in the same town with Joseph and Mary.  We went to their house on Sundays after church—we went to the Methodist one and they went to one of the Catholic ones.  My grandmother would make a big dinner—a roast, or stuffed cabbage, a salad made from iceberg lettuce and cucumbers and dressed with a thin, milky dressing, chicken soup with homemade noodles.  Everyone drank coffee made with lots of milk and sugar mixed in a big pitcher.

My grandparents spoke English well enough, but they spoke Polish to each other, and to my father.  So the sound of the language lives in my brain.  Shopping that first day at the little market, I recognized so many words—beer, pivo; milk, mjileko.  Of course, I thought, the languages must have the same roots.  I love hearing the people here speak—it’s like a comfort trigger for me.  The rhythm of the words is lulling—it brings me right back to my grandmother’s simple kitchen.  The big white enamel stove, the formica table, my grandfather’s jar of homemade pickles brining next to the door.  It always smelled like good, hearty food, and it was always spotless.

They were some of the best, most nonjudgmental, loving people I knew.  And, although I sometimes resented the fact that we had to spend our Sundays there, what remains is nothing but good memories.

* * *

Thursday was a “compound” day, too.  It is so perfect in our little spot that it’s hard to come up with a good reason to leave.  It’s rare for us to be able to afford a place to stay that’s right on the beach.  In truth we are a couple of flights of stairs above the beach, but we could not be any closer.  Why get in the car when it’s all right there?

I woke up early and crept out to do some yoga on the lower terrace, then meditated on the beach before anyone else arrived.  I had brought my bathing suit down with me, so I slipped into it and jumped in the water for a refreshing swim.  All before breakfast.  I felt like I could conquer the world. 

Given that we had traveled from Bosnia to here on Alec’s birthday and that it had come at the end of a long and draining trip, we had not really done right by him. So we decided to do it right and have a dance party.  Ben made invitations, and C.C. and Milo decorated the walls. 

After hanging out on the beach for a few hours, we came up to the house to start fixing dinner.  We had bought a cake mix at the market and, although we could not read the directions, Margo and I figured if we added some eggs and milk, and maybe a little oil, it couldn’t turn out too badly.  But Alec decided to go down to the beach and see if he could find anyone who could translate the back of the box.  He came back a half hour later and told us that the entire beach population—which is, admittedly, very small, had gathered around him to try to sort it out.  The consensus?  We had bought a box of cornstarch with a picture of a lovely cake on the front of it.

We thought we had spotted a bakery the day before in Polace, about a 20 minute drive away, so Margo and I decided to jump in the car and see what we could find.  Have I mentioned yet that the road into and out of here is terrifying?  A thin ribbon of asphalt cut into the side of a mountain wide enough for only one car.  But it is a two way street, and occasionally a car comes toward you and one of you has to back up, along this very high and very bendy road, until you reach a spot wide enough—barely wide enough—for  the other to pass.  I don’t like it one bit.  But I was determined to have a cake at the party, so I got behind the wheel.

We made it into Polace and found the bakery, but it only sold a few kinds of Danish and some loaves of white bread. We then went to the market, where we found a box of chocolate muffin mix.  We grabbed it and then, on our way to the checkout, spotted a cake in a box that looked kind of like Italian panettone. Still facing the box translation issue with the muffins, we decided to go for the ready made option.  We found some ripe blackberries and a can of whipped cream, so we figured we were set.

There is a garden in front of our house planted with zucchini, tomatoes, and some herbs. Gregory made a fresh tomato sauce from the tomatoes and we had a delicious dinner of pasta with the sauce out on the terrace.  The kids announced that it wasn’t just any old dance party we were having—it was Alec’s birthday party!  We had made him a paper crown which we put on him, sang Happy Birthday and ate our cake, which tasted a lot like babka, a Polish sweet bread I learned to make from my Russian piano teacher—my grandmother had no recipes.  After that we came inside to dance—Parliament Funkadelic, Jackson 5, Guns ‘n Roses (C.C.’s request).  The kids promptly stripped naked and began throwing their homemade confetti.  The birthday boy felt duly feted.

* * *

Friday morning I repeated my yoga/meditation routine—what a good way to start the day.  And finally my back feels good enough to be able to benefit from the stretching. C.C. and I were sitting out on the terrace reading some Harry Potter when a smiling middle-aged woman came up to us holding a plastic bag.  Inside were a repurposed soda bottle filled with a light yellow liquid, and a round cheese wrapped in plastic.  We gestured back and forth, both of us smiling, until I was made to understand that the bottle contained homemade wine and that she had made the cheese.  And that they were gifts.  The thing is, I had no idea who she was.

I came into the house and described her to the others, but no one else recognized the description I gave.  And there are not too many people in our little town.  Margo, Gregory and I went for a coffee at the one tiny café that abuts the tiny harbor. 

We had been trying to find ourselves some fish to grill up—you think it would be easy on an island like this.  But it’s not.   Alec walked over to the harbor and asked people and after some difficult attempts to converse, found that the water is too warm close to shore here, and that the big fish have gone farther out to sea.

Sitting there at the café, an older man walked by carrying a plastic crate full of small fish, eels . . . and a nice sized lobster. I pointed at the lobster and asked him if we could buy it.  He smiled and nodded, and then walked away.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand me.  It turns out that he’s Baldo’s uncle.  Baldo is the young man who runs the coffee place, and he told us that we could buy any of the fish.  The lobster, however, cost about $35 each, and we’d need at least two of them.  Not such a bargain.  We declined. 

Luca, the young man who owns our house, was waiting for us when we returned.  He just wanted to know if we needed anything.  We asked him about the babushka lady and Luca, through his translating friend, told us that she fishes for “octopussy.” It turns out that the wine and cheese lady is Luca’s mother.  He took our dirty towels, gave us an umbrella for the beach, and offered to take us out on his boat on Sunday.  Alec had been wanting to rent a boat for us to tool around the island but that, too, had proven hard to come by.  Too small, too powerful, no life jackets for the kids…

We had decided to check out the one sandy beach at the far end of the island, in Sapunara.  Gregory stayed behind to get some work done, so the rest of us piled into our little car for the 40 minute drive.  The beach is beautiful, and the sand welcome after a few days at our rocky cove.  The kids dug holes and built castles, and C.C. spent hours snorkeling around.  It’s her first time with a mask and snorkel, and she is awestruck.  Which is amazing, because there’s simply not much to see here.  A few little fish is really all she needs to keep her busy for a good long time.  I can’t wait to get her out to a coral reef.  She’ll flip.

* * *

On Sunday, our last day on the island, Alec had not given up his fish quest.  He had been told to go into Sobra, the small town in which the ferry port is located, to find a woman who would have fish at about 9 am.  So he set off with C.C. at about 8:30.

It was nearly 10, and Alec had not returned.  Luca was due to arrive for the boat ride, and Alec was the only adult who really wanted to participate.  I called him and he said he had been asked to come back at 10 to meet the fish lady.  Luca agreed to go have a coffee and come back. 

Alec and C.C. returned, triumphant, with three small lobsters and a beautiful looking fish that the fish lady had told him was a “Saint Pierre.”  Alec figured out that there’s something funny going on with fish on the island.  It seems that it’s all sold to the restaurants, or sent to Dubrovnik.  There is simply no fish to be had in the stores, and it was pretty hard to track down our dinner.

The kids and Alec went out with Luca on his boat for a couple of hours, we hung out on our cove some more, and we ate a delicious seafood dinner as we watched the sun set.  All in all, a relaxing, magical week.