postcard 8: finding beauty in the mundane
the one where we work up the courage to check on our visa status.
The city of Karlovac, known as the birthplace of Croatia’s favorite cheap beer, is supposedly laid out like a star. It’s old town is the remnants of a walled city and it’s both close to the mountains and has available housing. Our hopes that this is our future home may be a little high as we pull into town.
We silently take in the half-collapsing buildings—whether a byproduct of recent earthquakes or ‘90s shelling it’s hard to tell. It’s been raining, which we’ve realized is not the best time for a first impression of a European city. Plaster never looks good when wet.
Google Maps takes us on a now familiar route of closed streets and we finally just give up and take the first parking space we see and head into the city center on foot through non-existent streets. Hazelnut’s paws quickly turn red from the mud as we navigate a construction zone through the old town. Every street is torn up, scaffolding obscures the buildings and the shops and restaurants lie vacant. The donut shop we’ve set course to is dark, along with most everything else. I pop into a sad bakery, only two of the shelves lined with pastries. The woman looks surprised to see me.
We head instead for some of the city’s many parks and watch swans float in a swollen river. Hazelnut does some zoomies through a leaf-littered lawn since it’s eerily quiet for mid-day on a Saturday. Topher voices what we’ve both known since the moment we pulled in over cevapi, “We can’t live here.”
The sun is peeking out from behind the clouds when we get back to Pula and we head for the coast. Hazelnut chews on driftwood sticks while we watch the sun dip below the horizon to the soundtrack of waves crashing on the rocks. It’s funny how life works, but this seaside town is growing on us. Every time we explore another part of Croatia, the more Pula feels like home. On the trails in the state park the next day, over sandwiches assembled from market finds, we decide that we’re going to stay. It’s not perfect, but is anyplace? I love being so close to nature: the sea and the woods and the rolling hills filled with olive trees. We’ve found our favorite grocery store and can navigate the streets without GPS. Somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, it became home.
It’s 6:30 in the morning and the only other people waiting on the steps for the Ministry of the Interior to open are the Americans we’ve befriended whose tourist visas have just expired. We’re a month and a half behind them in the process, but I’m still anxiously awaiting news of our temporary stay visas. We grab coffees and pastries together and eye the Croatian grannies who push to the front of the line suspiciously. Our tickets are numbers one and two for the foreigners line and when we get inside its a madhouse. Counters line the room with small screens that display the numbers each employee is currently calling. Everyone stands in the center, looking around wildly for our numbers to be flashed. “Strangers over there!” a man with a thick accent offers helpfully and we rush to the counter where our number is now displayed. The employee takes our passports and pokes at the computer for a few minutes with a puzzled expression before opening a wardrobe crammed full of paper file folders shoved haphazardly on their sides into the shelves. She asks the employee next to her something in Croatian and the woman does her own digging through the folders before asking us, “What do you want?” When I tell her we’re checking on the status of our temporary stay visas, she looks incredulous. “They’re not ready yet!”
We leave disappointed, but at least our visit was recorded and branded with an official looking stamp. We’ve heard that the government doesn’t act with any urgency until your tourist visa is expiring, so we vow to be calm about the fact that we’re living here on borrowed time.
The thermometer dipped below 50° for the first time and we’re attempting to move right along to Christmas. Amidst the dozens of red-and-green-clad gnomes at the housewares store I pick out a small one and we put him next to a bottlebrush tree Topher found and light a gingerbread candle. First thing in the morning, before the sun rises and its still cold, with a Cozy Christmas Jazz playlist going, we can almost pretend it feels festive.
Some weeks the adventures are big and some weeks they’re small. Baking cookies in our tiny Airbnb kitchen, discovering tortilla chips at the grocery store, finding new paths to walk by the water. We watch Hazelnut chase her tennis ball across the terrace, dangerously close to loosing it over the edge, and pet the kitties that wait hopefully for someone to let them into the corner store. It’s a strange feeling, settling into the mundane moments of life, halfway across the world.
(Our first rainbow sighting in Croatia, the day we decided to stay in Pula)
—Mikaela