postcard 19: the dichotomy of being an expat
Spoons, peanut butter and coastal hikes
We’ve discovered that they do, actually, sell peanut butter in Croatia and we invite our friends to dinner. The two things aren’t related, but it feels like the epitomy of being an expat as we make a big patch of peanut sauce and fold gyoza at our kitchen table. We’re hosting our Texan friends for dim sum in Croatia. We play card games and drink our favorite Croatian liqueur, Terranino and end the night reaching wildly for spoons around the dining room table and it’s strange in both its familiarity and its foreigness. I’m still in disbelief, I think, that we’re living life halfway across the world.
Sunday dawns brilliant and still. The state park near our house encompasses the southernmost tip of Istria and gets the fiercest winds. We’ve been foiled for weeks now in our plans to hike the entire coastline but today is the day. We follow the trail down to the water where dinosaurs left tracks in the rocks the waves are gently lapping against. In and out of the woods, along the crystal clear sea. The still ocean is so sparkly it nearly hurts to look at and we walk quickly through the thick undergrowth when we hear rustling. All around us there’s evidence of the wild boars rooting around for mushrooms, or perhaps truffles, and that’s not an encounter we want to have on this lonely stretch of coast. We stop on a rocky beach and let Hazelnut off leash to play in the water. I take my shoes and socks off to wade in just as she finds a dead fish to eat. When we make it back to the car we’ve hiked 8 miles and finished our tour of the peninsula.
The produce bins at the grocery store are abismal. Everything is well on its way to rotten and they’re more often empty than not. Our exhaustion over muscling our way to the scale and price tag printer for already soft onions finally outweighs our trepidation at navigating the market. We walk downtown, clad in baseball caps, walking our 60lb. dog, with Topher wearing our cooler backpack. We definitely look out of place. I’ve learned a few new Croatian words for this excursion and make my way through the handful of winter stalls, buying squash and cabbage, greens and citrus. There’s even mercifully firm onions. I can’t understand most of what the vendors tell me but I smile and hand over too big of bills. We celebrate with coffees from the bakery.
The bad air drifts in and the AQI turns red as it approaches 170. We keep our eyes glued to it, dashing out for walks when it drops below 100 and skipping our daily foray altogether one morning. Smog and busy season at work have me in a funk and we try to rectify it with romcoms and mac n’ cheese and takeout from our favorite kebab spot. It helps, a little, but not as much as finding a magically clean, wooded city park this morning where we walk for miles amid the oaks and ivy.
These postcards have started to vacillate between novels and short notes, but that’s the rhythm life has settled into. Wild adventures, and normal days, the things that were once so foreign feeling strangely familiar.
-Mikaela