postcard 27: a quest for vindaloo

A day trip to Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana

We are, unabashedly, driving to a different country for Indian food.

Well that, and half a dozen other food stops on the list that started rapidly expanding as we browsed Google Maps.

We are driving two hours to Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, to eat everything we can’t here in Croatia.

Which is basically anything that doesn’t fall into the four categories every restaurant sign around advertises: pizza, pasta, grill, fish, in one never-ending sentence.

It's cool and breezy when we emerge from the parking garage into the city. The trees up here are a few weeks behind Pula and everything is in full bloom. We sit down on the patio of a promising looking burger joint, the menu claiming “California style” and order two cheeseburgers and a snack sized chicken nuggets for Hazelnut. She has, after all, unwittingly signed up to be dragged city sightseeing all day. They come out wrapped in wax paper and dripping fry sauce and melty American cheese. Yes, you read that right, American cheese.

I know you're thinking to yourself, wow she’s cracked, she’s getting weepy eyes over Kraft singles, but a good, diner style cheeseburger is one of my life’s greatest joys and is deceptively hard to find in the U.S., let alone Croatia where most burgers closely resemble a meatball sandwiched between buns. This one blew us away.

After lunch we wander into the heart of the city, over a set of triple bridges above the river canal that runs through town and into the bustling market. It’s overflowing with olive branches and fresh flowers for impending Palm Sunday. Ljubljana is a university town and it quickly became clear that it’s decidedly cool. We ordered mochas(!) from a coffee cart using locally roasted, single origin beans and sip them as we wander, taking photos and soaking in the sunshine.

We pop into boutiques and a zero waste store and an Asian grocery, admiring the strange metalwork, looming dragons guarding the bridges and punk bars. As we walk, we see a dozen more restaurants to save on Maps, but we’re here with an agenda, so we leave them for another day and stop into a pink boba shop blasting pop music and serving mochi donuts. We order taro boba teas and sakura and lychee donuts and wander across town, through embassy row, and into a massive park right in the city. There’s a pond with a pair of swans watching a huge nest and paths winding through endless trees, past a sprawling university greenhouse and into the distance. Hazelnut has slowly lost patience with this adventure that requires her to be a civilized nut, and descended into full monster mode. We stop to rest at a picnic table and I make the mistake of letting her off leash. She immediately breaks into big, arcing zooms and quickly hits a section of thick mud. It must be glorious, because she doubles back for a second and third round and we’re laughing so hard we can’t breathe, let alone call her off. By the time we’ve composed ourselves she’s absolutely covered in mud. Our laughter dies away as we’re faced with a conundrum. There’s no way she can walk through crowded city streets, let alone accompany us to dinner, in this state.

After an hour of wandering around looking for a solution, I’m strongly considering throwing her in the swan pond but I still have wild European animal PTSD from the Austrian cow incident and decide against it. We walk the long way around, avoiding the busy center, and Topher goes into a grocery store to buy sponges and a bottle of water while we wait outside, trying desperately to avoid ending up as extras in whatever movie is being filmed on the sidewalk.

I’m sure you can imagine how well trying to sponge bath a muddy dog ends, but we give it a valiant effort before sacrificing the seat cover on the rental car and letting her snooze in the parking garage. If you ask her, the day went exactly as planned.

Topher and I, now streaked with mud, find an empty table at a bar overlooking the river and sip Hugo spritzes while we watch another pair of swans float by. We still have an hour to kill before our dinner reservation and we wander back around the city as slowly as possible, still arriving early to the Indian restaurant that had catalyzed this spur of the moment road trip. We order mango lassi and naan, tikka masala, vindaloo and lamb korma pressed into more naan. I actually think I might cry as the smell of spices wafts around me. I hadn’t realized until we moved how much I adore having access to diverse food. I will never again take for granted being able to go to H-Mart or grab takeout from dozens of different cuisines, all in a few square blocks of each other, on a whim. I am a sucker for bold flavors. I like funky kimchi and smoky chilies de arbol, tangy pickled onions and umami packed soba, and I miss being surrounded by so many food cultures at once. I have fallen in love with Swiss fondue and Italian mountain fare, Austrian spaetzle and Croatian style pizza, but being able to spend the day eating around the globe brought me so much joy. We get back to Pula a muddy, very full mess with to-go boxes lining the fridge and a 9pm dog bath to do, but it was absolutely perfect.

We walk along the beach at sunset, watching as the moon rises 180° across the peninsula. The lady I buy vegetables from grins when I get stoked over the season’s first peas, though I’ll later realize they’re shelling peas not snap peas when I try to stir fry them and gnaw through the fiberous exterior. Topher braves the butcher and comes out with a bag full of short ribs, ready for weekend pasta sauce. Rain comes and washes away the thick yellow pollen coating every surface and I take another allergy pill.

-Mikaela