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The Pack
"I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack." - Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
I am wired all the time here. I'd asked Iris as we pushed Jakov's stroller past tiki bars in Opatija whether Croatians drink alcohol or coffee in the afternoon. "Coffee," she'd responded, without even thinking about it. "Only tourists and alcoholics drink cocktails." I wasn't sure which I would rather be labelled as. It wasn't long before I began to experience first-hand just how much Croatians like their coffee, even moreso than Italians - cappuccino, macchiato, latte, espresso, thick-as-mud Turkish coffee...all of it strong and expected at regular intervals throughout the day. When you visit someone's house, whether at 9AM or 6PM, you are sure to be offered coffee, and it's rude to decline. Also, decaf is virtually unheard-of.
My daily necessities have evolved from green tea and an apple back home to red wine and gelato in Italy to coffee and bread in Croatia. Another major staple, Croatians like their bread almost as much as they like their coffee, and mass-produced and pre-sliced are as unheard-of as decaf. The aroma of fresh-baked loaves wafts from the open doors of the pekaras on every corner, and a basket of two or three kinds is served with every meal. Bread, honey and butter is a typical Croatian breakfast, usually followed by bread, soup and some kind of meat entree for lunch. Lunch is the main meal of the day, often a sit-down family affair lasting two to three hours with multiple courses and maybe a glass of wine, but more likely coffee. Dinner, if they have it at all, is typically a light snack around 8 or 9PM and might consist of bread, cheese and maybe some meat.
"So what are your plans for today?" Alan asked me over a breakfast of bread, honey and butter and fresh cheese with olive oil.
I responded with a shrug. If the weather was good, I thought maybe I would walk along the beach to the city centre in the afternoon, but beyond that I had no real ambitions. I was hoping to maybe use the opportunity to catch up on some writing. Alan and Iris and their family had been keeping me so busy with day-trips and outings, a quiet morning in to reorganize would be a welcome break.
"If you want," Iris said, "my mother is going into city centre this morning. You can go with her."
I looked out the window. It had been raining on and off since I'd gotten to Croatia, but the sun was shining now. Since there was no way to be sure what the afternoon would bring, I thought I might as well take advantage of it. If we left now, I would still have time to write before lunch.
Perhaps worried about me getting bored in this small town after the excitement of Rome and Florence, my host family was going to great lengths to plan elaborate excursions to medieval castles and national parks. I don't think they realized what a wonder a simple grocery run was for me. I accompanied Iris' mother to the town market to get ingredients for lunch, and I think startled her with my unwarranted excitement over everything in sight. Several times she had to stop what she was doing to answer my interminable inquiries of "What's that? And what's that?" I'm sure the shopping trip took her twice as long as it normally would with her turning around to find I'd wandered off for the thousandth time like a small child easily distracted by shiny objects ("It was your turn to watch her!"). To her credit, Snjezana was inordinately patient and generous with my curiosity.
"This is lepinja," she explained when I pointed to a leavened, naan-like pita in the display case of the market's pekara, or bakery. "It's Yugoslavian flatbread." She bought two large rounds for me to try.
Once the pantry necessities were taken care of, we hit the outdoor produce stands - rows upon rows of the brightest red heirloom tomatoes I'd ever seen, along with several varieties of lettuce, apples, bananas, plums and green onions the size of your forearm. Croatia's climate and fertile soil, I realized, were comparable to Costa Rica's in their ability to cultivate virtually every crop imaginable, from tropical fruit to tobacco and soybeans. Before we headed home, I marvelled at the fresh whole octopus and bonito staring clear-eyed back at me from their ice beds in the fish stall.
I was just getting settled in my apartment with my iPad and portable keyboard when Iris knocked on my door and said they were taking the kids to the beach. Would I like to come? Well, I figured, I had all afternoon to write. So I repacked my handbag and made my way down to the driveway where the family was gathering - parents, kids, aunts, uncles and cousins. David and Silvija's older son, Vito were chasing each other in circles in the garden. Silvija asked if I wouldn't mind keeping an eye on them while she packed up Ivano's stroller. "Just make sure he doesn't go on the street," she nodded toward Vito, "even if he cries."
I was lifting David down from his precarious perch on the garden wall when Vito made a break for it. I reached for his hand but, suspicious of the stranger in their family who talked funny, he wrenched it away and bolted in the other direction. I caught him trying to open the iron gate at the top of the driveway and carried him back, kicking and screaming, only to find David pushing Jakov's stroller toward the garden steps. It was like wrangling kittens.
We wound down the switchback streets to the waterfront and walked to a little cafe on the beach next to a sandy playground. We ordered coffee while the children hunted crabs and dug motes for their sandcastles, and I learned another fundamental rule of Croatian life. When you go out to eat, whether for a big expensive meal or just coffee or ice cream, there are no separate bills. Whoever pays pays for everyone. Then the next time you go out, someone else picks up the check, and so on. Apparently I'd been committing another faux pas in my repeated attempts to contribute, thinking I was being diplomatic.
By the time we got back to the house it was time for lunch. Snjezana had taken over the cooking duties, giving Jozica a much-needed break since it was Saturday and she didn't have to work. "Would you like to go with Branimir and I this afternoon to see the castle?" She asked me when the plates were being cleared.
"Oh," I said, discreetly glancing at the clock. It was after three. "Um...sure. That sounds nice."
Branimir beamed. "We will call you when David wakes up."
Half an hour later I was craned over my keyboard, typing furiously, when Snjezana's voice echoed up the stairs. "Alex!" Then I was on the road to Senj. It's a beautiful road to say the least, winding through canyoned coves peppered with wildflowers.
Situated on a windswept hilltop overlooking the town of Senj, Nehaj Castle is a fortress built by the Uskoks in 1558 as defence against the Ottoman invasions. The name 'Nehaj' comes from the Croatian term 'ne hajati', which means 'don't care'. Before the construction of the castle, the town had been besieged three times. The fortress was built atop the remains of monasteries, churches and houses which were scrapped because they were outside the city walls and would have otherwise been looted and used by the Turks as housing. Nehaj was an assurance to the townspeople that, so long as the fortress stood between them and the sea, they shouldn't give a damn who laid siege. After its construction, Senj was never attacked again.
18 metres tall and 23 metres wide, the castle's box-shaped walls average 2-3 metres in thickness and are now home to museum displays of medieval weapons, costumes and coats of arms as well as a shameless tourist trap of a restaurant whose presence I for one could do without. It has five towers and eleven loopholes for cannon fire. The air inside has that cold, history-heavy staleness of old places, and the arched window ledges are desolate save for pigeon nests and howling wind. Ducking under the low ceiling of the cramped stone staircase to explore each of the three floors, it's hard to imagine the living conditions necessary to spend any extended period of time there.
I checked my watch when we got back in the car. We'd made good time. We would be home by six - still plenty of time to write. On the way back though, we stopped at Snjezana's sister's house for coffee. In the kitchen was a small wood-burning stove on which sat pots of wild sage steeping in water which she used to make juice. "My sister loves to cook," Snjezana explained when she set out a pitcher for us to try, along with a pot of Turkish coffee and slices of homemade apple crumble.
Two of the neighbour girls were on the couch in the living room watching cartoons, and as I watched Snjezana's sister present them with gift bags of trinkets she'd picked up, then do the same for David, I realized suddenly that I knew this woman. 'It's Aunt June!' I thought, reminded of my own great aunt who lived in Quebec.
Besides being carb-and-caffein-obsessed, Croatians are also family-oriented to the point of making me jealous. Everyone has a role that is crucial to the unit functioning as a whole. Snjezana's sister was the philanthropic aunt. Jozica, I realized, was the family matriarch.
After coffee, Snjezana suggested we all take a walk through the old village of Novi Vinodolski nearby, another Frankopan town dating back to the 13th century. We left David and Branimir at a playground by the beach, then strolled for a while through narrow cobblestone streets lined with medieval churches and houses with colourful flowerbeds. Before meeting up with Snjezana's brother-in-law who worked here, we walked along the water for a while, on another 'lungomare'. I looked out at the fishing boats and the sunset reflected in the impossibly blue, impossibly clear water of the Adriatic, and all at once I didn't care if I was up until midnight catching up on my blog posts. Given the choice here and now, I would much rather be here and now.
Sunday, thankfully, was a little slower. The most we did was take a boat back to Krk Island for lunch at a restaurant owned by someone in the family. I was beginning to understand that when Croatians used the word 'cousin', it didn't necessarily mean the child of their parent's sibling. More often it was just a convenient way to refer to someone who may or may not be related either by blood or by marriage through some distant channel of kin, but who was known well enough to be considered family.
"You are her...cousin?" The owner of the restaurant asked, shaking my hand while Alan introduced me as a relative from Canada who was staying with Jozica.
"Sure," I hitched one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Kind of."
As with Jozica, though, it didn't seem to matter to him one way or the other. We were seated at the long table out on the patio that was reserved for family, and immediately poured generous samples of homemade rakija made from wild herbs and black wine. For people who didn't like to drink, they had three shots in me before lunch. Finally, after several cigarettes, a bottle of wine and an amuse bouche of bread with local olive oil, cheese and anchovies, we were served huge family-style platters of the house specialty: homemade pasta in a tomato blush sauce with "sea fruit" (baby calamari, shrimp and whole langoustine - heads, eyes, legs and claws still intact). I don't really need to specify that it was fresh, do I? There were also plates of cevapi (grilled kabobs of minced lamb, pork or beef) and french fries for the kids. I ate until it hurt.
We lingered over coffee and a dessert of Nutella-stuffed crepes for another hour, then finally boarded the boat back to Crikvenica.
When we got there, there was an extraordinary smell coming from somewhere inside the house. Snjezana met me in the staircase as I was heading up to my room and asked how I'd enjoyed Krk. "Mama is making fritule." She waved me into their second-floor apartment. "Come!" I followed her through the kitchen to the dining room. She pointed at the table. "Sit."
"Alex come," I thought. "Alex sit. Alex stay. Alex eat."
"You are coffee drinking?" Snjezana asked, pot already in hand. I shrugged and nodded in a way that was more of a surrender than an affirmation.
When everyone else was seated at the table, Jozica appeared with a cast-iron pan lined with paper towels and filled with fritule, a Croatian fritter similar to Timbits, only hot and homemade, deep-fried and doused in icing sugar. Alongside this she served slices of spongecake filled with soft cheese, the recipe for which, Alan said, she'd gotten out of a magazine. Jozica talked nonstop while we ate, and Iris laughed and shook her head, telling me she was trying to explain to them how she was related to the owner of the restaurant where we'd had lunch. "Sometimes," Alan shrugged, "even I can't follow."
In that moment another of Iris' cousins (I couldn't remember if I'd met him yet or not) jogged through the door and dropped a hot kettle on the table. He'd just come back from a run in the woods, he said, and had picked some wild pomegranate for tea. "We drink this usually with fritule," Iris explained, pouring me a cup. I accepted my fifth fritter and felt the button on my jeans bite into my muffin-top. These people were trying to kill me, I swear.
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