postcard 51: it's fall y'all
Harvest, castles, visiting friends.
The ferry has been cancelled. When I see the trees blowing around in the strong bura gusts, I can understand why, but now our friends Keegan and Hanna are stranded in Venice. They take the train to the Italian border and Topher drives to meet them and they are being hugged and mobbed by Hazelnut and walked downtown for dinner without having lost much time.
We’re wearing jackets and the sky is gray and threatening rain. It’s disconcerting to have only lived in a place for a year. Were the rhythms, the seasons, we clocked last year normal? The moment I think I understand something, it changes in an onslaught of fall weather. Our beach and snorkeling plans pivot, but it’s actually sort of lovely to finally have cool weather. We walk along the coast, Hazelnut leading the way to show off her favorite woods for zooming, the cliffs she expertly maneuvers and the little canyon where the waves make ominous noises. We stop for coffee overlooking the sea and they tell us they can’t believe we live here and it’s like the lens at the eye doctor finally clicking to a crystal clear option. It’s easy when you get used to something to have the novelty and the sheer wonder become fuzzy. Seeing this place through others’ eyes brings it back into sharp relief.
My favorite hillside town, Motovun, comes into view and we stop at a winery at its base. There’s tractors puttering down every road and the sommelier tells us the harvest has come two weeks early. He pours us “tastings” of sparkling rosé that are just full pours and we squeal with delight as a trailer full of grapes so deep purple they’re almost black arrives out the big picture window. It gets hooked up to a stainless steel contraption that separates the grapes from the stems and smashes them into juice. The future Teran wine gets sucked into big, steel vats. It's magical to watch as we sip a Teran vintage from several years ago. The sommelier corrects our swirling “for Instagram!” and we can’t keep a straight face as we try to sniff out notes of tropical fruit and butterscotch and the elusive graphite I don’t think actually exists.
Two and a half hours and five full glasses of wine later, we’re grateful our dinner reservations are in sight. We’re on the protected side of the hill, shielded from the gusts, and we order truffle pasta overlooking the vineyards. Hazelnut got left at home, so we’ve gained the company of three street cats. They mew plaintively until Hanna lets them lick the clam shells from her spaghetti vongole. The sun goes down and the lights in the villages dotted throughout the hills wink on.
Topher calls a guy named Boris, whose number he got from someone he biked with once, and it's hard to tell from our shitty Croatian phone, but it seems like he does, in fact, rent mountain bikes. It’s a process to ferry four people, a big dog and Topher's mountain bike the 20 minutes to the state park in our tiny Hyundai. He drops us off at a glorified garage and the guy (not Boris?) tries to rent Keegan a hard tail and warn us of the trail difficulty. When he spots Keegan’s Yeti shirt and realizes we’re from Colorado, his tone changes. A full sus gets lowered from the ceiling and he adds several more trail recommendations to our Google Map.
The boys head off on bikes and Hanna, Hazelnut and I drive into the park to go hiking. The woman at the office speaks to me in rapid Croatian with lots of gesturing and I guess the swim beaches are closed. But then, she hands me a stack of papers and the top one warns us that there’s a race going on today, with police and military in uniform with weapons—don’t be concerned, just clap and cheer it says. I was totally off.
We weren’t going to warn the boys, but then 10 vans full of police and military pass us as we walk to the trail and we decide to text them. The coastline is full of blowholes and caves, dinosaur tracks and weird shaped rocks and we stroll along the shore until the guys are ready for lunch at the Safari Bar, a strange spot tucked into a bamboo forest with thatched roofs, hidden swings and tables dotted all over the hillside. We order some very sus sandwiches and then continue on our way.
The trails are full of people in various degrees of fitness and uniform jogging with full packs, heavy boots and, as promised, big guns. We deduce it must be some sort of orienteering competition because they all have maps and are haphazardly running back and forth, some with more gusto than others.
“I hope those aren’t loaded,” I muse as Hanna jumps to the other side of the trail. The group passing us doesn’t have their guns strapped down well and they smack wildly around, the barrel pointing right at us. Later, we’ll read it's a multi-day race in honor of the Homeland War and see the poor, sweaty participants jogging all the way back to Pula. We pass Not Boris leading a group of school kids to see the race as we make our way back to the bike shop. Not a good sign.
But then, real Boris is waiting for us, an older Croatian man with a hearty laugh and a thick accent. We return the rental bike and head to the beach to swim while Topher ferries his bike back home.
The sky is overcast and the air temperature isn’t exactly warm, but we’re determined. We change behind towels, strap Hazelnut into her life jacket and wade out into the gin-clear water at a rocky beach.
The sea is fridgid. It’s only been a week since we’ve last swam, but the temperature must have dropped by 20 degrees, at least. A slow entry is not going to work so I plunge up to my neck, shivering, and swim out. Hazelnut follows. It’s possibly the clearest it's ever been, but it never really warms up. We manage 10 solid minutes before retreating to shore, the air suddenly feeling warm. That night we go to our favorite cevapi bar in the rain and drink beer and eat sausages.
Keegan and Hanna have smartly rented a van to get us all to Slovenia. It’s bougie, with a panoramic sun roof and plenty of room for all of us. Hazelnut spreads out happily and we’re in Bled in a few hours with miraculously little traffic. We get spritzes overlooking the lake and climb the hill to the castle, before eating dinner at one of our favorite restaurants on a patio tucked under an Irish pub.
It takes a few tries for me to find the right route to the trailhead parking lot I remember, but when I finally look up from Google Maps, assured I have us on the right path, there are half a dozen cows ambling up the road in front of us. They are in no hurry, an elderly man and a young woman walking slowly behind them with sticks they tap the cows with every so often to keep them moving in the right direction. We crawl along, watching as the massive cows try to hump each other, despite the fact that they’re all female cows. Unfortunately, they turn up the road adjacent to our trail. There’s going to be cows in the high pastures, for sure.
We hike through a gorge carved by the brilliant blue Sava River, the soft white rocks shaped into weird and wonderful formations. One looks like an elephant, another a sleeping dinosaur. We peer down into impossibly deep canyons and climb up into the pastures. There are indeed cows, but they barely give us a second look as we wander down the road to a hut and a waterfall. We order coffees and beers and strudel and hang out until we’re mobbed by several frantic yellow jackets. Hanna hates them just as much as I do and I feel vindicated as we slug our drinks and book it.
“Do you know how to row a boat?” The rental lady asks as Keegan settles behind the oars.
“Yeah, pretty much.” He replies and she watches us with some concern as we take a rickety rowboat out on the lake. We can’t figure out which way the oars are supposed to face and the tiny boat pitches wildly every time one of us moves. I’m not sure it was designed to fit four adults. Hanna pulls up a YouTube video and we get ourselves to the island in the middle of the lake where a church sits. The light is long and golden, drenching the whole world in honey. We eat gelato and watch as a wedding party deboats and the groom carries the bride at a run up the long staircase leading to the church. He doesn’t look so hot when he gets to the top. Someone grabs him a chair.
On the way back, everyone (besides me, I’m secure in my lack of paddle based skills) wants to try to rowing and we play musical chairs, attempting not to tip the tiny boat, to swap seats. Hanna, having studied the instructional video, is a natural. When Topher is at the oars, we realize he was responsible for all the tipping. We can’t stop laughing.
On their last day, we head to our favorite little capital, Ljubliana. We’re probably selling it a little hard, but we bounce around the city, eagerly showing them all of our favorite things. We’ve never been to the castle before, so we climb another steep set of stairs to the top. The views of the city and the snow dusted mountains in the distance are beautiful. It’s the perfect fall day, the trees just changing, the light gold, the air cool but the sun hot.
Of course, we get Indian food for dinner and we linger over masala and naan on the patio until it's dark and we all have goosebumps. It always feels so lonely to say goodbye, like suddenly we’re the only people we know on this continent again, which is actually kind of true.
Just a few short months, we promise, and head home where Hazelnut cuddles up, depressed, on their sheets.
‘til the next adventure,
-Mikaela