postcard 57: fizz, pop
election week scaries, halfway across the world.
Some days fizz like champagne, and I feel so happy I could burst. Others are streaked with anxiety, for no reason, except every reason. And through it all, the delirious golden light and crisp air begging us to slow down, wander, soak it all in, even when all I want is to hide under the covers.
We follow signs to the old town center, a narrow road up a winding hill that very suddenly gets utterly clogged with traffic. There’s some sort of a classic car show and ancient Cinque centes parked blocking half of the already skinny road, pedestrians gawking and cars trying to move both ways up and down the hill. I can tell Topher’s stressed trying to navigate the snarl, so I don’t mention what I see on maps. This is the only way in and out of the cobbled old town. He squeezes through an arch and then fights the mess one more time with grace, before depositing us in front of what I’m convinced is the same giant tent that held last month’s prosciutto festival.
The smell of truffles is pungent as we enter. There are glass display cases holding tiny fungi with massive price tags and every manner of oil, sausage, cheese and spread imbued with it. We do one lap before I decide that maybe this is not the place we want to spend the day. We flit through the hills to our favorite towns and wineries but it’s crowded today and we can’t find a place to be and I’m melancholy and just want to be at home in bed, reading my book and eating ramen. So, that’s what we do.
Sunday fizzes. It’s sandwich day, a tradition we’ve clung to the closer we get to leaving. We most definitely eat too much mortadella, but when else in our life is fresh Italian mozzarella going to cost $2 a ball? We fill our backpacks with lunch and a bottle of wine and hike to our favorite beach. It’s cold and breezy, but we find a depression out of the wind and let Hazelnut off leash. I love letting her be a wild animal, splashing in the waves, hunting lizards and getting the zoomies on the rocky shore. We watch a trio of wind surfers and drink wine we brought back from Italy out of camp mugs, soaking in the autumn sun through our sweatshirts.
Hazelnut has been enamored with one particular rock for 15 minutes before abruptly leaving her hunt. She’s nosing something down the beach and all of a sudden we realize with dread that there’s a bloody lizard in her mouth. After 14 months, she’s finally managed to catch a poor, winter-slow little guy. Topher extricates it from her mouth. He’s missing his tail and stunned, but still alive. She pouts as we leash her for the rest of the afternoon.
It’s the worst week I’ve ever had at work between personnel challenges, deadlines and disappointing directions from leadership. Throw in the election and the sadness stemming from leaving and I’m more than ready for St. Martin’s Day, the festival celebrating the first taste of wine from the fall harvest. We walk downtown after work to the square where several of the wooden advent booths have been set up. A few local wineries are present, plus a very loud DJ, one restaurant and a fritule (Croatian donut) booth. It’s sleepy and Balkan in the way everything in Pula is when the tourists leave and I find myself realizing I’m going to miss this, too, as we sip wine and eat donuts. Hazelnut makes friends with a corgi puppy and they bat at each other until the table we’re perched at almost topples. We take the long way home and stop for fries at a kebab stand.
-Mikaela