postcard 14: three months
Our first trip to the capital.
Zagreb is a mad house.
I don’t know what I expected from Croatia’s capital, but it’s not the gridlocked traffic, horns blaring, sea of development I peer out the window at as we attempt to enter a parking garage. We realize it’s full nearly as soon as we enter and after 20 minutes we finally re-emerge in the winter sunlight, right back where we started. We’re a long way from the sleepy Croatia I’ve come to know. I point out a Thai restaurant, nothing more than a window with four stools out front, as we circle the block again.
My hiking boots are still muddy from our last trek as I push open the door to a marble lobby, gold accents above the elevators, the man at the reception desk in a suit. I’ve unwittingly booked us a five-star hotel. Living out of hotels and rental cars this year has gained me status and we’re hurriedly unloading our daypacks and dog bowls out of the dog-hair filled car with empty energy drink cans rattling around in the cup holders so it can be valeted. The staff kindly stores our gear and we beeline to the place we spotted from the window, laughing over pad thai at our Home Alone 2 vibes.
The crowds grow thick as we make our way towards the city center and bass thump fills the squares from sped up renditions of Christmas songs. We sip cups of mulled wine and try to keep Hazelnut’s tail from getting stepped on as we wind our way through some of the city’s 25 Christmas markets. In the main park, the one that was bombed less than 30 years ago, the most magical skating trail unfolds in front of us. It winds around a fountain and past trees strung with lights and buildings with golden angels on their rooves. It’s strange and incongruous but I remind myself that we humans are resilient. It was just three Christmases ago that we were all social distancing, after all, and now we’re pressed amongst a crowd, not a mask in sight. We wait in line and buy tickets for the evening.
We’ve made a grave error and forgotten any of Hazelnut’s toys. The pet stores are all closed by the time we realize, so I unwrap the disposable terrycloth slippers from the closet and she throws them around like frisbees before falling asleep on the king sized bed watching Croatia’s Got Talent. We sneak back out into the night, sparkling lights on every building leading the way. Sausages and cabbage rolls get overlooked for fluffy bao buns full of pork belly and slaw. I’m not sure we’d realized how much we were missing our favorite Asian food flavors until today. I’ve been cooking with tiny bottles of fish sauce and Kikoman at home, but flavors other than pasta-pizza-grill-fish (the label seemingly every restaurant in Croatia carries) feel decadent.
At the skating rink we get in line, sandwiched between a rowdy group of high schoolers and their shorter middle school counterparts. At a quarter til our session we’re ushered into a tiny temporary building, with a bar weighing down the roof, and it becomes a sweaty, sharp mess of skating blades and plastic puffer jackets. When the doors finally open we take a breath of cold air and glide out onto the freshly zambonied rink. Around and around and around we twirl, past the sparkling lights, ducking the teenage boys weaving through the throngs and the wobbly first-time skaters who cling to anyone who’s close enough to grab when they lose their balance. The speakers blast, inexplicably, Feliz Navidad and You Make It Feel Like Christmas. We hear a Croatian cover of Shakin’ Stevens’ Merry Christmas Everyone
and its permanently stuck in our heads for the rest of the holiday season. We peel off before the session ends to escape the hoarde on the back end and carry our skates through the sparkly streets back to Hazelnut.
The city is, thankfully, quiet the next morning as we sip coffees and climb a steep set of stairs to the cobblestoned Upper Town. Without the crowds, I can start to see the markings of the old European capitol it is. Christmas trees, bedecked in silver and gold, shine in the sunlight and candles flicker at a war memorial in the shadows of a building. After a compulsory hot dog, we hit the road, winding up the mountain overlooking the city on the hunt for snow.
Despite it being December, the ski area is abandoned, the grassy slopes crunchy with frost but not fresh snow. There’s a small, icy looking snow bank leftover from last winter halfway up and we try to race Hazelnut to the top, slipping and sliding breathlessly on the wet grass. She’s unimpressed, instead doing zoomies up and down as we take in the views across the border to Slovenia. At a mall on the outskirts of the city we shamelessly stop for KFC, one of the only American food chains in Croatia, and eat fried chicken in the parking garage. It’s our 12th dating anniversary and I smile thinking about how far we’ve come since our teenage years, but also how much has stayed the same.
It’s officially been three months and when I tell people we’re illegal immigrants now Topher corrects me , the letters in Croatian neither of us can read hopefully proving our legal status. The ministry is still silent on our visas. We buy sheets for the guest bed and stand in line at the grocery store, preparing for our first visitor, and our cart is piled high with all manner of groceries for Christmas, including a panetonne that dubiously doesn’t expire for six months. I’m off work for the year so we read in bed and take long walks along the water and furiously vacuum out the rental car so we can swap it out again. In a town up the coast, where the skating rink looked so much bigger in the photos, we sip coffee along the marina and buy a painting from a woman who opens her shop for us as we admire her work in an abandoned cobblestoned alley.
“Asian Street Food!” Topher cries with glee and the next thing I know we’re sitting on an equally abandoned patio eating karaage and rice bowls piled high with kimchi. It’s weird and it's perfect.
The stars are still out and I soften butter as our friends halfway across the world Skype in for a virtual 5am cookie baking extravaganza. We’re short four eggs and the frosting comes out weird and gritty but my heartstrings pull. It’s hard to be gone for Christmas, the lyrics of seemingly half of all holiday music filled with longing and homesickness, for the first time ringing true. This is the first time either of us have been away from our family for the holidays and we’re sad but we’re forging new memories and growing and I know a year from now I’ll be feeling a piece of my heart missing too, left behind in Croatia when we return home.
Our Christmas letter, recapping our whole year, will be out later this weekend, but until then, Sretan Božić 🎄
-Mikaela