The Two Hours We Had a Pet

Our Brijuni inspiration

Yesterday, the kids and I visited a park I hadn't been to before (the kids went the day before with their babysitter).  Because Rijeka is built on a hill, this park had an entire stone retaining wall, upon which, salamanders were sunning.  Salamanders, if you haven't had a chance to see them in the wild, move like lightning, and they disappear almost instantly into little crevices in the stone wall.

Jonah, having become smitten with the idea of a salamander pet during our Brijuni Island visit, decided he wanted to catch one.  But at the moment he made this decision, he had a full-blown bloody nose, and because I didn't have a single tissue on me, he was using his sister's fleece jacket in lieu of a kleenex.  He asked me to get him a plastic bag (which I did have, since we were

A proud, new pet owner

headed to the store afterwards), to which I said, "sure, Jonah, go catch yourself a little salamander. (wink, wink)"  The next thing I know, my 8 year old boy, perched on the back seat of a park bench, with one hand holding a pink fleece jacket over his nose, in a muffled voice, was yelling "I got it! Where's the bag?  Hurry!!!" with a three inch long wildly wiggling green salamander dangling by his tail from Jonah's one free hand.  He had the hugest smile on his face.

So we brought the thing home (having bought a plastic tub for it at the supermarket) and put it on our balcony.  Within a couple hours, it had escaped. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the flimsy plastic wrap that I insisted would be better for air circulation than the lid of the tupperware.  At this very moment, the kids and Adam are out trying to catch a replacement (so that I could go for a run and get in shape for the April 29 Royal Wedding), so I'd better go set the plastic wrap out.

Random Pictures

With a bloody nose (using Lucy's fleece jacket in lieu of kleenex), just caught a salamander

At the park

Recycling tetrapaks and paper (our only recycling options)

At the Rijeka Museum of Natural History

Lovran Park

Fig tree on the Lungomare (figs from last season), Rijeka in background

You Are Actually Here, or Titoland

In case you thought you were somewhere else...

Today, with Lucy's hives under control and my headache finally gone, we got an early start with our rental car and headed to the Brijuni Island National Park.  It's a 90 minute drive to Fazana (close to the bottom tip of Istria on the Italy side), then a 20 minute passenger ferry.  One isn't allowed to go to the island without either a hotel booking or an excursion ticket which includes both your ferry ride and a group tour on a bus, very convincingly made up to look like a little train.  We were on the first ferry of the day, along with several European golfers wearing very loud plaid pants and huge rolling golf club case contraptions.  There were no other tourists, however, because the tourist boat and the mandatory guided tour wouldn't leave until 11:30, and we wanted to be able to explore some of the island independently, at our own 3 kid pace.  Overall, the extra time we had turned out brilliantly.  We had the run of the island, except that we were walking all over this 2km square island with five packs of peanuts, a Milka bar, a banana with a large bruise, and two bottles of water from 9:00AM- 3PM.

On the ferry to Brijuni

Jellyfish kebab

Tito's swamp viewing hut

The most recently dead sea urchin

We were walking so much we hardly noticed we were starving to death.  That's because the island's history is fascinating.  Besides the 400 dinosaur prints (we managed only to see one well-labeled print on the pier), the island has Roman ruins, gorgeous inlets and beaches (the kids were beside themselves when they found three perfect sea urchin shells), a Josef Broz Tito museum featuring a lot of taxidermy on the first floor and on the second floor, a lot of pictures of Tito doing his work and hobnobbing with the rich, famous, or head of state.  It's got an ethnographic museum, a chapel from the 15th century, research gardens, a 1,600 year old olive tree, paths carved through limestone quarries (much of which became famous buildings in Venice), a smattering of crumbling villas and dated hotels, a sort of safari/zoo area, a parrot named Koki trained to speak by Tito himself (but he was sadly for the kids still in his winter residence), a large golf course (when it was built, it was the largest in Europe), a souvenir shop, and a coffee shop where the closest thing to food was a bowl of sugar packets.  But no restaurants.

In front of the 1,600 year old olive tree

Beside all this, Brijuni was Tito's private island residence six months of every year for about 30 years. It's where he conducted the business of the non-aligned movement, it's where he hosted rich and famous people (Sophia Lauren, Queen Elizabeth, Josephine Baker, Elizabeth Taylor, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc), it's where he had his own little disneyland/horticultural utopia with the exotic flora and fauna that world leaders brought to him when they visited.

Before Tito's era, the island was a malarial swamp.  In the late 19th century, a rich Austrian industrialist named Paul Kupelwieser recognized the beauty of the area and bought the islands with the intention to turn it into an aristocratic playground.  He hired a guy to find a cure for the malaria (that guy -- Robert Koch -- did get rid of the malaria on the island and later got the Nobel Prize for his research into tuberculosis), and Kupelwieser took out all the swamps but one so we would know what the place looked like before being gentrified.  In that one remaining swamp, we sat in an adorable thatched hut that Tito used for viewing the turtles and ducks he apparently loved, but we would have missed it had we only taken the group tour.

A small part of the Roman villa

The islands have been inhabited since prehistoric times, and we got to walk around the remains of a Roman villa (we would have only seen this from the tourist train on the group tour, so this was another benefit of going early).  While walking around the ruins, we encountered several green salamander/lizard things.  Jonah and Lucy in particular were completely in awe of these little reptiles.  They asked me if they could get a pet salamander instead of a dog.  Interesting!  Lizard.  Dog. Lizard.  Dog.  They have already named her Lizzie.  Thanks, Brijuni!  Now I don't have to get a dog and a new vacuum cleaner.

The Tour Bus Train Caboose

Lanka, a gift to Tito from Indira Ghandi

See explanatory note below

See Tito photo from same exhibit

So that's a lot about the island.  We were so exhausted by our morning perambulations that we were happy to meet up with our 11:45AM tour group at the ferry and climb into the tourist bus made up to look like a train.  It took us to a lot of the places we had walked to, but several that we hadn't.  In particular, the kids loved seeing the safari which had descendants of all the exotic animals that had been gifted to Tito, plus a lot of endangered Istrian animals like oxen and a special breed of sheep.  When the formal tour was over, we stopped for coffee and hot chocolate at the bar, probably putting in more sugar packets than we needed to, and were on the 3:00 ferry home with our tour group and a lot of windblown golfers.

Storms, Sunsets, Headache and Hives

Storm view from our balcony

Mt. Ucka sunset

It's impossible to get tired of water views, even views that are marred by industrial development zones and communist-era apartment blocks.  Because Rijeka is a bona fide, working (working less in this economy but working nonetheless) port city, we get to see passenger ferries, fishing boats, massive cargo ships, tanker ships, and even an occasional kayaker.  And we get to see a layer of nature above that, with mountains to our right, hills to our left, islands straight ahead, and from our balcony, about 180 degrees of Adriatic.  These pictures were taken just a second apart, at sunset, but the camera was aimed at a different part of the sky.  We have had rain the entire week, but this particular storm cloud didn't reach us.

Meanwhile, inside, I was under-functioning due to a stubborn and nasty headache, which today, has led to a record four tylenol with codeine tablets (brought from home).  And I still have the headache.

Lucy is in her third day of hives.  When she woke up this morning, we thought she looked better, but she had an outbreak at the grocery store tonight and we had to come home to give her Benadryl (brought from home) before driving to the brand new location of Rijeka's most famous pizzeria, Pizzeria Delfino.  The kids and I learned that there was a brand new location when we walked, while slowly starving to death, to the old location and couldn't find it.  In keeping with our terrible luck finding open restaurants, this famous pizzeria was not at its new location either.  Bygones.

We've got a potentially very fun outing planned tomorrow, so hopefully we will all be back to normal, at least as normal as we get.

American Girls in Croatian Gymnastics

Ready for gymnastics

Lucy and Georgie started gymnastics this week at a club a minute or so away from our apartment (right next to Jonah’s soccer field).   Their class meets on Monday and Thursday from 5-6pm.  They do a lot of warming up, which wears Georgie out, after which they apparently do kid gym type exercises -- which they really enjoy.   I’m not exactly sure what they do, because parents don’t stay for the class.  They are not loitering in the hallway either, so I can only assume they all going out for a pre-dinner brandy.  I waved the ignorant foreign parent flag and managed to stay for the first ten minutes of their first class, but then the isolation of being the only parent in the room got to me and I exited.  I got permission to enter the gym to take these pictures from their second class (tonight’s class), but sadly, I don’t get to see their cute little exercises firsthand.   There is even a door right next to the gymnastics entryway that says “BALCON”, but that door is locked so I’m here on a bench in the hallway.

There are probably 25 kids in the class aged 4-6, with the head teacher, and three or four twenty-something assistants, a couple of whom speak nice English and looked like they were taking good care of the girls.  Lucy told me that a blonde teacher was a real chatterbox, so one of the teachers must be a pleased to be able to exercise her English language skills.  And tonight, once, I heard all the kids counting to ten in English.  The class costs just 150 kuna a month per girl -- about $30.  I pay the bill at the post office, get the receipt, and the girls turn that in once a month and they turn in a type of attendance card each class (it gets returned to them at the end of the class).  We also paid a once-a-year gym gymnastics club membership. 

It’s taken us six weeks to get the girls signed up for this class, when it was only a block away and we’re practically here four times a week for soccer, but like they say, better late than never.  Incidentally, I left Jonah home alone for the first time ever to bring the girls here.

After class

In class

Outside the gymnastics club 

German Marketing Genius

I could get my kids to do about anything for Kinder Surprise Chocolates, long known to me, but only recently introduced to my children by their babysitter Valentina.  Kinder Surprises are egg shaped hollow chocolates (an outer layer of milk chocolate and an inner layer of white chocolate) that contain a little yellow capsule, and inside the yellow capsule is a toy.  This toy can be a stamp, a little animal that jumps, a top that zings out, an airplane...  and they appeal to my kids in so many ways.  They are just over a dollar and are therefore affordable to homeschooled children who work harder and take their schoolwork more seriously with outright financial bribes.  The bright colors of the display in stores demand a child's attention.  They appeal to a kids urge to destruct when they crack open the chocolate, but then they get to eat what they've destroyed, and make no mistake, this chocolate is DELICIOUS.  It is not a waxy rectangle of Halloween chocolate or a chocolate flavored something, it's quality stuff.   The yellow capsules hold way more anticipation than the clear plastic flimsy wrappers that you get (or used to get) in a box of Cracker Jacks, and putting together the toys gives the kids a sense of accomplishment.  When assembled, the toys can entertain for tens of minutes.  Multiplied by a week, when they are in a little mountain in their capsules, they also satisfy the juvenile urge to collect, hoard, and trade.  It's a brilliant invention, marketed with pure genius.

Cres Island

On the Jadrolinija car ferry

Waiting for the car ferry

Taking advantage of our work-a-day flexibility, we decided that since we have a hike planned for today (Saturday, gorgeous weather) with a friend and her dog, we would do our outing yesterday (Friday) since Sunday is supposed to rain.  We grabbed a rental car and headed a little into Istria to catch a car ferry to the nearby island of Cres.  Cres is famous for its gorgeous terrain, sheep (lamb and cheese), and ornithology (vultures in particular).  As it turned out, we timed the car ferry terribly and we didn't have enough time to take the 3 1/2 hour hike -- the very thing we hoped to do.  So we have to go back.

Griffons through a window

Vulture Restaurant

Whitefish

Our destination was a little hilltop coastal village called Beli.  The 6k road to Beli from the main highway was perilous.  I swore we would never drive on the Amalfi coast because of the curvy single lane cliff roads, but this was just as difficult to navigate.  Fortunately, we only crossed paths with another vehicle a couple times.  In Beli, we stopped at the eco-center which rescues Griffon vultures.  We got to see the vultures right before their dinner (a dead sheep), but they hadn't tucked in yet.  Seeing this dead sheep laid out on a cement platform, you can't help but think of Deuteronomy.  Lucky for our appetites, we found an open restaurant, sort of (it may have just been open for a prearranged group but we snuck in) before watching the sheep get consumed.  At our restaurant, the waitress told us they only had fish, in probably in the hope that we would look for another restaurant.  But we said that would be fine, and she then told us we could have whitefish, potatoes, and salad.   No laboring over a menu necessary!  Jonah liked the fish, despite the face he made at the fish carcass.

Beli trail

Roman footbridge

Olive tree with Beli in background

Last summer's pomegranate

After lunch, we walked on a rocky path just on the outskirts of Beli and saw some of the most gorgeous scenery we've seen yet.  The climate was very different than on the mainland.  We passed dozens of pomegranate and olive trees.   In several places along the path, it was difficult to distinguish between the fallen black olives and the sheep doodoo.  We crossed a complete footbridge constructed by the Romans and all along the path, heard sheep "baaing" in the background.  The air was a little hazy, and since we didn't have time to walk the complete path, we decided we must return.  We took a different route home, going through the island of Krk, and got back in time for Jonah's soccer practice.

Beli trail

Road to Beli

The Meal We've Waited Six Weeks to Enjoy

Valentina and kids

Our babysitter, Valentina, watched the kids tonight while Adam and I went out to eat.  Valentina was our lunch waitress several weeks ago, and the kids took a liking to her, so I asked if she would like to babysit.  This was her second time with the kids.

One of the nice things about not being in a touristy area is that the restaurants here largely cater to locals.  So if you are interested in eating food like the locals eat, and regional specialties, our industrial port city is well-situated.  Unfortunately, a lot of the restaurants on our travels within Croatia have been closed.  Or the kids are STARVING TO DEATH and will die unless they get pizza at the first restaurant we see.  These impediments, plus not having a babysitter, are largely why it's taken us six weeks to enjoy the perfect Croatian meal.

Surliche goulash

Ugly but amazingly delicious

We had a drink at a bar -- I had a "marakino" cherry brandy and the cherry in my drink didn't taste anything like what we put on top of ice cream at home.  We then walked to Konoba Nebulova (in a translator app, Konoba means tavern, but it really is a word for a family restaurant that serves hearty, local, good food at a reasonable price).  And wine and beer.  With our half liter of wine, I had pickled sardines over a green salad and they were delicious, a little like pickled herring but smaller and not sweet.  Adam ordered surliche pasta, which is an Istrian type of pasta, like penne but filled in and without the ridges, in a cream and truffle sauce (truffles are another Istrian specialty).  I had the surliche pasta over a beef goulash, and this is also a famous dish in our region.  Adam had a bass that could have been the most delicious fish we've ever tasted.  It was grilled with the head and skin on, bones-in, but the skin got thin and crispy, so that it was almost like a battered fish.  This is the first time I've ever eaten part of a fish with the eye sockets (at least I think they were sockets, I avoided looking at that part of the fish) staring out at me, but it was so delicious, I'd do it again.  Cherry strudel for dessert and an uphill walk home capped off the perfect meal.   Valentina made nutella crepes for the kids while we were enjoying our feast, so they didn't feel deprived in the least.

Worth the wait

Venice, Italy

The Campanile (rebuilt in 1902)

Early Friday morning, immediately after Adam got back from Zagreb for a Fulbright meeting, we took off for Venice in a rental car with our brand new Garmin Nuvi, preloaded with full coverage of all the European countries you would ever possibly want to visit (and partial coverage of all the rest).  Unfortunately, not understanding the Croatian directions, we inadvertently programmed it to communicate with us in Croatian.  After pushing every possible configuration of buttons, I got it programmed for the Tronchetto parking lot to which we were headed, but we mainly used it this way:  if the Garmin started talking, we started watching the signs on the highway.  And in this fashion, we made it without a single wrong turn to Venice, three hours from our apartment.

The first serious costumes out of thousands we saw

We took the vaporetto #2 directly to San Marco Piazza from the Tronchetto car park, and already there were people in the ferry dressed to the nines for Carnivale.  As we wound our way through the square in the direction of our hotel, we caught the end of a procession of costumed people, I suppose these were all entries in a best-costume contest because the costumes could not have been more thorough and elaborate.  We had a gelato and watched this parade.  After the ice cream, we quickly found the Hotel San Gallo, just 50m (about 2 minutes) from the piazza, unloaded our backpack and went out to find something real to eat.  Our meal was mediocre, but the wine valpolicella did what it was supposed to do and we had a fun time meandering through the swelling crowds, crossing footbridges, getting lost, taking the elevator to the top of the Campanile, pointing out all the winged lions, but mainly fighting the crowds and gawking at the elaborate costumes which were everywhere.  Essentially, a dozen people would stand in front of a particularly outlandish costume and snap photos, while the person in the costume would nod slightly and bow when he or she had to move on.  Typically, the Venetian masks hide the entire face, but on the rare occasion that the mask only covered the top of the face, I swear I could see signs of exasperation around the mouth wrinkles.  In Venice during Carnivale, snapping pictures actually makes you fit in.

Us, plus Zoltan, Anita, Zofie (masked), Peti

It was our Hungarian friends Zoltan and Anita who first proposed we meet in Venice this particular weekend.  We arranged to meet at the Rialto bridge between 10 and 10:20, and by racing through thick crowds in unfamiliar, unmapped territory, with their two kids, after riding overnight in a bus from Budapest, they made it!  We had a nice coffee (hot chocolate for kids) and explored a bit of the town together, opting for a traghetto ride across a canal instead of the more stereotypical gondola ride.  The kids were all perched on the edge of the boat, with nothing between them and the Adriatic, while the waves caused by other motorboats made this ride one of the kids' highlights.  Later (with starving kids again), near the Academia bridge, we found an restaurant with very good food but terrible service.  The waiter informed us that it was very busy and if we didn't order right then, well...  then when we did order, he made Anita feel very bad for changing her order even though he hadn't even left our table.  But again, the wine was good and we were fortified to fight our way through the masses again.

By this point, though, the crowds were almost impassable, and losing a kid would have been a disaster.  So around five, we decided to go back to the hotel (at which point we forgot to take the bottle of Hungarian wine that our friends had brought and carried around all day for us!) and make our way back to our car.  Thanks to our Croatian GPS, we got lost in the windy mountain roads of Trieste but fortunately did not wind up on the Slovenian autostrada.

I was in Venice in 1990 and remember all the pigeons in San Marco square -- there is a picture of me from my Franklin College days of about 100 pigeons sitting on me or flying around me, probably eating bird food I bought in the square.  Today, feeding the pigeons is against the rules.  I also think that Venice is not quite as smelly, and it was even colder when I visited in 1990.  There are certainly spots where you think "sewer," and there are probably more of these spots in the summer, but the canal water was as clear as clear can be, and trash was at a minimum even with the millions of tourists there.

Coming or going on the vaporetto

We'll be back in Venice in early May with my parents, and will hopefully have some time to do the things that the crowds prohibited us from doing, but we had a weekend of highlights spent with friends.

Rialto Bridge

On the traghetto

On the traghetto

A couple tourists

View from the Campanile