postcard 9: climbing baby mountains

and other Istrian things.

Nearly every time we’ve drive inland we’ve taken the Učka Tunnel, almost a mile of underground road that passes underneath one of Croatia’s 12 national parks. On either side mountains, albeit small ones, rise into the sky. From the passenger seat I’ve gawked at them many times, wondering what it would be like to stand on top of them, as I do most high points on the horizon. When I learned that one of the sleeping giants was the highest point in Istria (the peninsula we live on) we find ourselves detouring before the tunnel the next weekend to drive the windy road into the park.

The leaves are changing a deep rust and burnt orange, littering the road and fluttering underneath our tires as we climb through a tiny village to the visitor center. Only a handful of cars fill the parking lot and the one man behind the information desk turns on the lights for us in the gift shop as we enter, despite it being 10am.

Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees as we start climbing up the mountain. They form a thick, red carpet and we have to stop often to locate the trail underneath their mass. Hazelnut presses her nose to the decaying foliage and sniffs in as hard as she can. It’s my favorite smell in the world too, and I join her in huffing the cold, autumn-scented air. It’s been raining all week and the leaves and the mud, roots and rocks under them are slippery. Topher usually instantly declines any hikes involving mountain summits, but I think the "‘highest point in Istria,” a region laid along the sea, convinced him this trail wouldn’t be like my usual wild mountain ideas. 15 minutes into the hike we’re sweating despite the cold wind that has us bundled in our puffies and beanies. The trail crosses a road and we realize we could have driven to the summit. In my book? That hardly counts. Topher might have a slightly different opinion. As we climb through the bare trees, views of Kvarner Bay greet us, huge container ships and small fishing boats alike bobbing on the turquoise waters. I decide I want to climb it from the sea next time, so if I tell you to pack your hiking boots when you come to visit, you’ve been fairly warned.

As we near the summit we enter a cloud, the water vapor freezing our faces and playing peek-a-boo with the weather station at the top. Though we’d only seen a handful of people on the trail up, the path leading to the summit tower is a cacophony of voices. Despite it being mid-November, we’ve someone managed to find yet another tour bus. We take one look at their massive hoard and hightail it back down the trail, but we aren’t fast enough and they quickly catch up with us. We give them a head start, but every time we start hiking again we catch back up to the slowest in the bunch. The trail is wildly slippery on the decent and the going slow, so we finally opt to follow the road the rest of the way down. We crunch through the leaves on the side of the pavement behind a group of rowdy Italian retirees, signing loudly in Italian. We’d climbed to a whopping 4,573 feet. Still lower than our apartment in Colorado.

On a patio warmed by space heaters on the way back we eat fried calamari and fuzi, a handmade pasta, with truffle sauce while a very friendly cat threatens to jump on our table for a bite. Despite it being in the 40s and dark already at 6pm we detour to Pula’s downtown for gelato. In our puffies and beanies we sit in the forum, the city’s first and most popular meeting place, and perch on the steps of a temple built in the first century.

On November 2, the city shut down. We’d expected a sleepier town than the tourist hot spot we knew Pula to be in the summer, but found ourselves looking on incredulously as hotels shuttered, restaurants closed their doors and seemingly everyone went into hibernation. Finding places that are still open has become a victory and as we eat gelato in the square, we’re some of the only people out and about. At 6pm on a Saturday night. In the city’s most popular square.

On one hand its a little eerie to be walking the streets of a sleeping city. On the other, it’s lovely. We stroll the path in front of the shuttered tourist hotels, taking advantage of the empty seashore to let Hazelnut do zoomies. We follow the girl who was smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone leaning up against the wall into the entrance to the tunnels underneath the city and she steps behind the booth to sell us two tickets to explore Pula’s WWI history. Hazelnut is seemingly allowed everywhere and as we descend into the tunnels that run under the entire area, her paws leave little prints in the damp floor. Built during the Great War to shelter the city’s population during air raids, today the tunnels hold displays on Pula’s history.

We wander through them and then hop in an elevator that leads us up to the castle overlooking downtown. In the weak sunlight, we stroll the walls and climb the observation tower, Hazelnut being extra brave on the spiral staircase. Then, we eat kebab on a street corner while a man plays an accordion and make it back in time for me to start work at noon. It’s different than I imagined, but it’s still pretty charmed, I muse to Topher over cheese and wine that night for dinner.

—Mikaela