Easter in Croatia

Living in Trieste means you can be in Slovenia in 5 mins and Croatia in less than an hour. We got to the heartland of Croatia in a couple of hours (we’re staying at Casa Matiki, just past Kanfanar). The scenery is a continuation of the Carso – a rocky limestone plain that forms the crenellated ridge above the narrow strip of coastline that is Trieste and continues  throughout ex-Yugoslavia. When we lived in Trieste twenty years ago, this scenery felt barren and austere; now it feels full of life and hope. It’s not the scenery that’s changed. April and May must be two of the best months, the grey rocks and green fields forming the perfect backdrop to blossoming fruit trees, and the low-lying yellows, reds, blues and purples of occasional wildflowers. Plus this weekend it has been hot and sunny.

The B&B we’re staying at in some ways defies and confirms the post I wrote earlier on the virtues of a good view: from our balcony we overlook a bright yellow truck and the girders of a construction factory; beyond that travels a busy road. But if you look the other way, it’s truly picturesque; a gentle green hillside garden full of flowers and blossoms, a chicken run, a wendy house, and further up, far from the road, the perfect outdoor pool. There’s a rustic table and bench in the shade and a swinging garden seat; and a basket ball pitch in the orchard. Between the main house and the renovated apartments there’s a tasteful rustic courtyard where Paco and Obama (two rescued dogs; no need to say which one of them is black..) greet the guests and feed on the homemade bread and omelettes left over from breakfast.

Sonja, who runs the place, makes you feel at home in the literal sense of the phrase: I felt I was back in Acton! She’s full of ideas and plans and community missions. In her sixties, she runs the place single-handedly. This includes changing all the beds, cleaning the rooms, baking bread, making marmalade (apple and coffee flavour, plum and green pepper), feeding the sheep, horses and donkeys, overseeing new building projects and running the whole online business.  I spent an hour helping her write a couple of e-mails in English today: she didn’t know how to cut and paste let alone save a file in a certain folder and yet the place is fully booked and immaculately run. It was guilt that drove me to help actually – earlier we had enthusiastically taken the dogs for a walk down to the sheep pen and the horses and donkeys had escaped. We came back with Sonja in the early evening to round them up. So I made signs for her saying ‘Please keep this gate closed at all times’ and, since I was sat at the computer anyway,  ’It is absolutely forbidden to chase, disturb or touch the chickens’. Next to the sheep pen is evidence of Sonja’s creative entrepreneurship: she has converted part of the concrete barn into a room for ‘relax’: she envisages massages and meditation and general hanging out for her guests. The piece de resistance will be a keyhole staircase that twists up into the roof where guests can take siestas on fresh hay: the traditional method for farmers taking a break throughout Croatia. 

It was at Sonja’s insistence indeed that I set off this morning for a full body massage at the hands of a white-suited young man (my husband nervously dropped me off, saying ‘I leave her in your capable hands’). We didn’t talk much. I had never had a proper massage before and didn’t know the extent to which physical intimacy would ensue. Suffice it to say his well-oiled hands went to places very few men have been. Yet they didn’t feel intrusive or sensual – just incredibly knowing. I realised that I was completely in the moment: aware of every muscle that was being touched, every joint that was rubbed, every nerve that was released, and felt myself following the movements of his hands and tracing their effects. I wondered about all the bodies this man knew so intimately: the moles he would notice, the raised veins, the dry skin, the ridged nails and the care he would take to restore them to dignity.  It felt like such an important job and a work of  skillful empathy. 

In the evening we went to a restaurant on the nearby Fjord (Limski Kanal) with a German/ Polish family who have been staying here for a week. Their two girls are the same age as ours – and though they don’t share a language, they communicate well enough. Mostly by diving into the pool together and tipping over the air mattress. And they hid easter eggs around the garden.

Tomorrow we leave but Sonja has given us permission to spend the day by the pool (why would we want to go anywhere else after all?) and I want to continue my discussions with her: maybe Casa Matiki could be the base for my next writing retreat? It has most of the requisite ingredients (though getting here will be an issue) – and a whole added load of quirkiness.