Counting Down the Hours

Finally, after more than two years we are heading back to Kosovo. We leave Monday enroute to Scotland for a wedding on Friday and then we head to Kosovo on the 18th. Too bad we will be a day late for our wonderful friend Daniela's birthday, but we will be there on the 19th. We have to stay overnight in Amsterdam but the next day it is on to Skopje to get a rental car and then we will finally be in Gracanica. I am so happy to even be thinking about it. Big. Giant. Smile. On. My. Face.

Going back to Kosovo!

I am so excited I can hardly think of anything else. We are flying into Pristina August 8. The first thing I'm going to do is eat a shop salad and a Schweppes Bitter Lemon. Then I'm going to drink a bunch of Jelen beer. I don't want to sleep for the entire 10 days I'm going to be there because I want to make every moment count.

Goodbye to Kosovo

Miracle of Nature

One more post about food and growing things in this region and that's it. I promise. I have been amazed over and over at all the grapes, olives, pomegranates, citrus fruits and figs that grow in this area. I checked and it appears that it is on roughly the same parallel that the central Oregon coast is on, however, I don't remember ever seeing anything growing there like all this. One of those big mysteries of life, I guess.
Nevertheless, listen to me when I tell you that the figs that grow here are something entirely different from any other fig I have tasted before. The ones I had in the past just seemed like so much mush. So when the lady who rented us a flat in Trstenik gave us this bowl full of figs and grapes I thought it was a really nice gesture but didn't get too excited. However, the next day Tom took a nap in the early afternoon and I was starving after being at the beach for the past three hours. So I decided to try the fruit she gave us. Oh, my good heavens....it wasn't just hunger that made me gulp down five figs one right after the other. These were incredible. Ambrosia. Food of the gods. I never did convince Tom to eat any of them, but it was just as well. More for me. Ha.

Pure Paradajz

I don't think it is a coincidence that the Serbo-Croat word for tomato is paradajz which is pronounced almost exactly like our word paradise. I know I have probably bored some of you to death in the past with my goings-on about the tomatoes in eastern Europe. Don't ask me why, I'm just telling you that tomatoes here taste like tomatoes, even in the off season. Those hard balls of orange whatever we get in the US are NOT tomatoes. Imposters, every one!
Anyhow, I have more than once thought about this delicious Napoleten salad we had last year when we were in Trstenik and it was just as good this year. The tomatoes were so warm and ripe right off the vine, they were almost like stewed. And the cheese they put in this salad....kind of like mozzarella, only a thousand times better! Notice the little anchovies. Never ate anchovies in my life until I got this salad and guess what? They added just the right amount of saltiness. Pure paradise, I'm telling you. I'm also including the photo of the fish. You all know I've never been a big "fish person", either. Unless it was canned salmon made into salmon croquettes or my mom's fried catfish, I more or less turned up my nose at fish. Well, this sea bass was KILLER! And I mean that in a good way. Marko recommended it, and I guess I was so weak from hunger when we got there, I said okay. So he brought it to us, filleted it for us right at our table and it was incredible. And one of several cats who hang around the tables was the happy beneficiary of the heads. We all had the best meal ever. And here's one more photo of wine and then I'll stop.

Fair Warning to California

It seems that the entire Peljesac peninsula that Trstenik and Orebic are on is being planted with grapes. We have really enjoyed the fantastic wines that are being produced not only in Croatia, but Montenegro and Macedonia as well. I wish I could bring back a case of Plantaze wine from Montenegro. Poslip wines from Croatia are really, really good, too. In Trstenik is the Grgic winery and we went for a wine tasting when we were there last summer. Some of you in California may be aware of Grgic wines as Miljenko Grgic started a winery in northern California many years ago after working for Robert Mondavi for a time when he was a young man. He returned to his native Croatia in the mid 1990's and opened a winery on the hillside right above Trstenik.
Just a couple of photos you might enjoy. Wish you could enjoy the wine! When I get back to California next week I will try to find the time to shop for wine from this region.

Korcula, the Mini Dubrovnik

Marko, the guy who waits on us at our favorite (and one of only three) restaurants in Trstenik, the Konoba Feral, is also very knowledgeable about the Dalmatian Coast. He really encouraged us to go to Korcula one day and said we would enjoy it even more than Dubrovnik. He did not steer us wrong. We drove 30 minutes to Orebic one day and took a ferry to Korcula Island, about a 20 minute trip. We disembarked in the town of Korcula and it is fantastic. I took about 200 photographs that day if that gives you any indication. These two photos are just simple little walkways through one part of the walled city but I think it gives you an idea of how beautiful it is.

Back to Croatia

We went to Croatia last week and we had no particular destination in mind. We thought we might spend a night in Dubrovnik and then drive north from there to
Split and time permitting perhaps go as far as Pula. We had more or less the same plan a little over a year ago and got as far as Trstenik and fell in love with it.
This year I was a little reticent about going to Trstenik because I was afraid that if we went back and it wasn't as wonderful as we remembered it would just spoil all our memories.
But when we got to Ston we said to heck with it, we would got to Orebic and would stop by Trstenik "just to see it" and then go on. Ha! The very second we caught sight of Trstenik we both said, "Ohhhh....let's stay again." So we sought out Marko at the Konoba Feral and he helped us find a room. There were quite a few more people in Trstenik than when we were there in late June last year so we made the split second decision to stay five nights. And boy, we are so happy we did. It was even better than our memories and was just so beautiful. It wasn't nearly as hot as when we were there last and the water was warm and so clear you could see several feet to the bottom.
Here's a photo of one end of Trstenik the first night we were there. There are only 60 people who live there year around and there were about 250 people staying there this last week. Most of the people visiting there were Italians, some Hungarians, Germans, Brits, and a few Romanians. For some reason Russians don't visit Croatia nearly as much as they do in Montenegro and Greece.
I'll write more later about the rest of our week there.

The Post about the Ice Cream

Okay, a few posts back I mentioned how serious people take ice cream in eastern Europe. The first time Tom took me to Slovenia I was amazed at all the ice cream cafes, the multitude of choices you had, and the sheer heights of the ice cream cones. It's the same thing in the rest of the Balkans. They just don't go for prissy little one scoop cones, either. They might have a little cone, but believe me, there will be an array of multicolored scoops of ice cream stuck on top at angles that defy gravity.
This is only one of dozens of ice cream venues along the beach in Budva and it isn't even the largest one. I didn't get a very good picture of it because of the glare on the glass, but you get the idea.
I settled on a hazelnut flavor right off but Tom tried a new one each time we went for ice cream. He had one that was over the top: it was called Don Vito and was a swirl of mostly chocolate, with some vanilla, then there was this gooey red syrup type stuff in it and then strawberries. Lots of strawberries. Unbelievable.
Move over Baskins Robbins.

Popeye's Retirement Home

Well, it could be! I took massive amounts of photos like this one in the Kotor Bay area. Every few feet were old doors, weathered windows and old wooden boats. I'll probably post some of them on Woophy later today if anyone wants to see them.

If there is a better place....

If there is a better place on earth than this, someone tell me where it is. I can't remember the name of this little village, but it is very close to Tivat, in the Kotor Bay on Jadranski Put.

Why I Love Budva

Budva has so many things going for it, it's difficult to list them all: the beach, mountains, Stari Grad (the old walled city), shopping, restaurants, fishing, boating, parasailing, the list goes on and on.
But this is what I like the most: simple homes with little courtyards crammed with hydrangeas, roses, figs, pomegranates, lemons and palms. Usually they have a nice plump cat taking a nap in a patch of sunshine.
This is just a house I saw while we were out taking a walk in Old Town one day.

Jaz Beach

You can see from this photograph how Jaz (Abyss) Beach got its name. Not only is the beach really clean, the water wonderful and the view spectacular, but they also have restaurants right there. I don't mean your Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk variety of fast food, either. We're talking full service restaurants with salads, grilled meats, brick oven wood fired pizzas, pastas, beers and wine. And you would have to go there to see for yourself how cheap the prices are. We always went to the same one, Poseidon. Fantastic! We would have breakfast at the hotel and then not eat again until about 3:00 in the afternoon and that was pretty much all we needed to eat for the day. We would get an ice cream cone in Budva at the beach maybe about 10:00 sometimes and I'll have to write a whole post later about the seriousness of ice cream in eastern Europe.

Dobra Dosli u Crna Gora

We went to Montenegro for a couple of weeks and just got back. Seems like no matter which place we visit I always think that is my favorite place in the whole world while I am there. But Montenegro really does have a very special place in my heart. It is about an eight hour drive to the coast from Pristina but the sights you see before you get to Budva! You can't imagine. It really is "Wild Beauty". That's part of the advertising campaign they are using on their tourism commercials. I'll post some photos I took while we were there, not in any particular order.
These two are from Jaz Beach which is about a 10 minute drive north of Budva. We like the beach there, too, but it's more crowded than Jaz so we went here most of the time. (By the way, Jaz is pronounced "yahz" and it means abyss in Serbian.
Just look at the water: crystal clear and as warm as bath water. The beach itself is very rocky with a hard surf which is perfect for grinding down little pieces of glass to produce the beach glass seen here. I picked up about a pound of it while there, but tried to find the really pretty light aqua colored ones. They were a lot more difficult to pick out in all the rocks but the green ones sparkled like emeralds.
The weather was perfect this year, too, not up to 100 degrees like last year. We brought three bottles of 50+ spf sunscreen and slathered it on. We didn't get one speck of a sunburn, miracle of miracles.

I can't stop....

I am still fascinated with all the different forms of conveyance you see here. I take photos every chance I get. I just can't get used to it.

Gyro Mania!!! Yeah!

Okay, all of you in the family know I have a passion for Greek gyros. Remember how I used to always stop in Missoula at the Greek Gyro place in the mall every time I went to visit you all in Montana?
So of course, I got pretty excited about eating "authentic" Greek gyros in Greece the first time I went there. First thing I discovered is that you don't get that blend of spiced beef and lamb that you get in the Greek Gyro place. What they have in Greece is either chicken or pork. And they put the French fries inside the gyro! And they squirt a bunch of mustard and ketchup inside the whole thing. No feta cheese or tsaziki sauce. Unless the person waiting on you speaks English and you order it the way you want.
Well, we have always gone to Gyro Mania in Paralia for the best gyros. At first we were all happy because Kostas, the guy who seems to be running it, speaks pretty good English and he understood how we wanted our gyros....NO pommes frites inside, no mustard and ketchup, and we wanted the feta and tsaziki. Well, then one day he forgot or our order got mixed up or something so we had it the other way. Know what? It was pretty darned good that way, too! So then after that we had the chore of explaining that we wanted it the way he usually makes them. I know he was thinking "stupid Americans" but he was really nice and seemed to appreciate our business. I mean, we went there every single day. They have fantastic Greek salads, too. Big old chunks of cucumbers, feta, olives....all the good stuff!
Just in case you ever find yourself in Paralia....you have to go to Gyro Mania. It's right across the street from the church.

Still going on about the heat...

Aside from the beautiful beach and totally fun atmosphere in Paralia, there is this one odd component about it. There must be 100 stores that sell fur coats there. Seriously, this is a little town and on every block there are several furriers. The first time I went there back in 2003 it seemed that every other store was trying to sell me a fur coat. I've since learned that they all aren't necessarily retail operations. Apparently most of them are showrooms and wholesalers and they cater primarily to Russians.
So right in the middle of a heat wave that is gripping the Balkans are people trying on fur coats. A lot of the stores have coats outside and you see women trying on one after the other. I don't know about them, but I don't know if I would want my merchandise getting all oily from suntan lotion and sweat, but hey, that's just me. I have kind of gathered that the ones that are outside aren't the best quality furs. In fact, green seems to be a favorite color. Other than some working girls in New Orleans, I can't imagine who would wear them.

Get thee to a nunnery!

Tom and I went to northern Greece two weeks ago and stayed a week. We stayed in Paralia, a beach community a couple of miles from Katerini, which is practically in the shadow of Mt. Olympus. The beach is awesome and we wouldn't have strayed from it but it got so hot (it had been hovering around 40 C)we decided we should go on a tour to Meteora. We had this big idea that we could spend most of the day in a nice air conditioned bus and then jump in the ocean when we got back. We went down the street from our hotel and booked a day long tour with Vasco da Gama Tours. I almost shudder when I think about it. And that's not from the cooling effect of the air conditioner in the bus, either. Far from it.
We met at 7:00 a.m. and since it was still relatively cool, we didn't suspect a thing for awhile. But within about two hours we realized there was a big problem. There was almost no cool air coming out of the vent and everyone on the bus was getting sweaty, fanning themselves, mopping their brows, etc. We thought for sure they would take us back to Paralia or turn up the air, but no, we forged on. By the time we got to the Meteora complex we were about to faint. The bus parked and we went inside The Monastery of the Transfiguration. It really was beautiful and even though it was incredibly hot, at least there was some air moving so we thought we could make it through.
Our guide told us we were leaving at 2:00 sharp and that if we weren't on the bus they would leave without us. Well, they parked a looooooong way from the monastery so we really had to run to make sure we got on the bus in time. As if we weren't already dying of heat exhaustion, the run to the bus made it worse. Only when we got there, hardly anyone else was and so we cooked (some more)inside the bus for 20 minutes. Obviously the guide didn't really mean they would leave without us.
We really thought that the AC would come on when they got the bus to rolling but that was not in the cards. We went down to the Monastery of St. Stephen which is for nuns. (See the photograph) I could not climb the steps to it, because by this time I was beyond having heat stroke. Our guide told us he checked and it was 46 C, which is 114.8 F !!!
Anyway, we finally left, and everyone was about to revolt over the heat and they said they would get the air conditioning fixed. Supposedly it had a freon leak...at least that's what they said. So they took us to a restaurant for awhile and when the bus came back we were all happy. That lasted about 2 seconds because then we discovered that they did not fix the air conditioning, and now there was absolutely no air whatsoever.
When we got back to Paralia we went straight to Vasco da Gama and the guy there was "shocked" to hear about all this. We were equally shocked to learn that he wasn't going to do one thing about it, either....no money back, no voucher for another trip, nothing.
So there, Vasco da Gama! And just for good measure I posted this story on a couple of travel websites, too. Neener, neener. Thanks for charbroiling us almost to death.

Gracanica Festival to Honor Prince Saint Lazar

I'm a little slow getting this posted as this occurred on June 26. We went to visit our friends in Gracanica this night and it just so happened that a big celebration was going on at the monastery. So we all walked down there and the street was packed. There were vendors set up selling food, drinks, jewelry, clothing and so on. Inside the monastery grounds music, poem reading, and dancing were presented. I had to show you this girl who was participating in a "beauty" pageant of sorts. It really isn't a beauty pageant in the way we think about it. It's more about the girl that best embodies Serbian young womanhood. I L-O-V-E the traditional clothes that she is wearing. All the children who performed that night also were wearing traditional clothing. There were no cheap costumes made the night before on these people. These costumes are handed down from generation to generation. They're all handmade, hand embroidered and young women were expected to make a set of clothing before they married.
Some women were there displaying some of these traditional costumes. Almost no one was selling any. The ones that were for sale were very expensive and if you could see the detailed handwork you would understand why.
It was a really fun and interesting night. The weather was perfect and everyone was in a really good mood having fun.