Motorcycles and maybe a bit of Zen: Pula, Croatia

Istria is the region of Croatia that hangs like a water drop off the North-west coast, a peninsula nearly falling into the Adriatic Sea. The city of Pula is on the very southern edge of Istria. Like many other cities in Croatia, Pula was heavily settled by the Romans, and the people of Istria retain much of their connection with Italy. When Istrians speak, their Croatian words mix with the up-and-down pitch and cadence of the Italian language. Many people speak Italian fluently.

Our Eurail map indicates that there is a direct train from Ljubljana, Slovenia, to Pula. We find out one day in advance that this only starts running in June; we’re about 7 days too early. Instead, we catch a train from Ljubljana to Rijeka, and then a bus to Pula.

The mountains between Rijeka and Pula are called Uçka. They seem pricklier than the Slovenian mountains, which are more rounded and have trees with smoother canopies. The highway runs around and through Ucka. Small towns are nestled in the valleys between the peaks, and each one contains a nearly identical church tower; they look like pencils with points cut by an old sharpener. Each is topped with a pyramid-shaped spire.

When the bus arrives in Pula, we are immediately approached by an elderly woman trying to sell us accommodation for the night. We politely but firmly refuse, and she drifts off, looking disappointed, to wait for the next coach with a fresh batch of backpackers.

Our host in Pula is named Zoran. We call him, and he says to come to the center (wherever that is) and he’ll meet us with his motorbike. After asking directions from a taxi driver, we walk for about 10 minutes and find the Arena, as they call the Coliseum structure constructed in Roman times. The stone is much lighter than the one in Rome and looks bright from the lights of the shop signs on the street below us.

As we keep walking, a red motorcycle approaches and screeches to a stop. The man riding it takes off his helmet, smiles, and says “What’s up, dudes?”

Zoran has blonde hair styled upwards, and a tattoo covers much of his right arm. His smile is easy as he steps off the bike to say hi. After a minute of introductions, he rides off to go get his car.

He comes back with a plastic bag of beers, and announces that we’re going to the water to hang out and drink. We drive around the city for a while, with Zoran pushing the gearshift of his Ford sedan through the front dashboard. We get to the coast and park on the side of the street. Zoran moves with a quickness and energy of a man who likes to get where he’s going because he’s excited to relax when he gets there. We climb from the street down a short hill and onto the rocks that line the coast. We step carefully from one rock to another, avoiding the crags that split the stones down to the water level, but the moon is bright enough to light our way without much trouble. We move closer to the water, and I hear for the first time in a long time the sound of waves crashing against rock. It’s not one I get to hear very often.

The caves below the rock and the small indentations between the outcroppings vanish under the water and then appear again as the Adriatic Sea recedes. With some of the larger rocks, the water looks immobile as the stone seems to rise and fall on its own accord. The sound is of the shoreline breathing.

We sit, drink, talk, and listen to each other and the ocean. The water is cold but feels good on my tired feet hanging over the rock line.

……

Zoran is a motorcycle enthusiast, interior designer, and excellent photographer. He’s learned all his English online and from media, and he loves to practice with English-speaking couch surfers. He grew up in a town on the border between Croatia and Austria, and consequently is fluent in Croatian and German as well as English. This has served him well; Zoran is now a sort of regional manager for an Austrian company with a strong client base in Croatia.

He lives by himself in a 2-bedroom apartment just northeast of the city center. Zoran says that he will spend the rest of his life in Pula, that he wouldn’t live anywhere else. In the morning we eat bread with diced salami, cheese, and a delicious sauce that I cannot place. Zoran’s mother likes to prepare small pickled onions, and he brings out a big jar for us to try. The first bite is unique but exactly what I imagined a pickled onion to taste like. I eat nearly a dozen.

The morning sun sets the white rocks on the beach aglow. Each rock is incredibly smooth; the smallest are golf-ball sized and the larger ones as big as cantaloupes. The bright pearl color of the rocks makes an excellent contrast with the blue of the ocean. I step in the water with my sandals on, and we spend a few minutes skipping stones off the surf and out to the sea. By noon, I’m already red.

We spend most of our time doing nothing on the beach or sitting on benches in the city center while editing. I hadn’t realized how strong a café culture this part of the world has. I’d first noticed it in Slovenia, and Pula also has chairs and tables lining nearly every street. People watch us walk by, and we watch them.

…

I had never been on a motorcycle before, so when Zoran came to pick us up from the beach on his bike, I was pretty keen to try it. There were no handlebars on the back, so I held on to the bike in front of Zoran.

Saying that the ride was exhilarating doesn’t give it justice. We flew around blind turns hugging the median, passing cars by at least 30-40 mph faster. I remember the how much I liked roller coasters as a child, but they seemed so tame compared to this. Every moment of acceleration surpassed what I thought a vehicle could do. My hands were sweating as I gripped the bike as hard as I could. My knees pressed against Zoran’s ribcage, and I hooked my chin on the top-left corner of his backpack to give me more traction while letting me see the world flying by. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous: mouth wide open, eyes agape. I didn’t know whether people would think I was terrified or thrilled. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure myself.

The ancient amphitheatre appeared and disappeared in a split second. I briefly saw three old women scowling at us. We crested the top of a hill. The sea was on our left, and some thin trees on our right. About 500 meters in the distance was a rocky outcrop chiseled to a point; it stood about 20 feet above the low waves tickling the land. The setting sun was hidden halfway behind it, and a wide, horizontal beam of light seemed to lie on the top of the rock.

I howled laughter at this thrill of being alive, even as I thanked the hitherto unknown patron saint of Croatia for keeping me off the pavement.

That night, we made pasta with Alfredo sauce and asparagus for Zoran. There was no oven, so we cooked the garlic bread on the electric grill. The melting cheese dripped down onto the burner with a sizzle. We watched a hilarious You-Tube video during dinner of a guy teaching fake Serbian language lessons. Afterwards, we sat outside once more on Zoran’s porch to finish our beer. The air was warm; the night was quiet. Every time we heard a motorcycle pass by, Zoran tilted his head to listen. He wanted us to stay longer. With regret, we told him that we had to leave in the morning. When he asked why, we told him the underlying reason for this trip. Too many places to go. Too many things to see. Comfort and familiarity can wait for a while. Radical novelty every day.

Hitch-hiking in Slovenia

Lake Bled contains Slovenia’s only island. The island is only accessible by boat, and from the single harbor, a line of ferries snakes their way along the water. Each boat has two oars that make ellipses as the captains follow a slow, silent rhythm. The ferries are many different shapes and colors. Some look like the gondolas of Venice, and others resemble something you would expect to see on the Congo River from Out of Africa. Half a dozen of the ferry drivers are lounging in one boat. One has his wide-brim hat over his eyes; he’s lying on the bench with one leg hanging down beside him, slowly swinging it sideways. The water is an impossible shade of clear; the crystal surface seems to shimmer.

We’d taken the 10:52 train from Villach to Lesce Bled. The train station is about 5 km from the lake itself, and our first attempt to find it led us to a large field that we eventually figured out was private property. Within the field, a fence enclosed a herd of sheep, and a dog came charging out from a copse of trees to hurry us on our way. We walked about a mile through that field before encountering an impassible hill and turning around to try a different route. It was a beautiful day.

We finally made it to the lake after walking for another hour. The town of Bled makes me think of a place that’s just starting to try modern tourism but doesn't quite know how yet. There are signs in English for “Traditional Slovenian food”, but these adverts are subdued and relaxed, a half-hearted offering to capitalism. The small village doesn’t seem quite ready to give itself up.

The lake itself is not huge; you could probably walk around it in an hour. On one of the hill(tons) surrounding the water, a cable car takes the thrill seeker to the start of a bobsled course that twists and turns in concert with the natural indentations in the stone. On the opposite side, Castle Bled sits atop a patch of bare rock. It has walls and a few other fortifications, but clearly its extreme height was its main defensive advantage. The stairs that criss-cross up the mountain face don’t have any fences or handlebars, just some wooden poles spaced about 5 feet apart. I touch one, and it wobbles under the light pressure of my hand.

We get to the top and discover that it costs 8 Euros to get into the castle! Instead, we climb around on the outside walls awhile to view the lake from a height. It seems so small from above: a Duke’s private swimming pool or a Bishop’s fishing pond, perhaps.

As we climb down the stairs, we notice a parking lot on the other side from where we came up. We aren’t keen on walking all the way to the train station, so we decide to try and catch a ride. There are about 40 cars in the lot, and an old man is putting his things into one of them. He must be in his late seventies or early eighties. He moves slowly; his hands shake slightly.

Just as he’s about to climb into the car, I summon my gall and ask him if he speaks English. It takes him a second to discover that my voice comes from me, and it takes another few seconds for him to respond.

“Yes”
“Are you going to Lesce Bled?”
“Lesce Bled?” He says it with a combination of sounds that my mouth can never hope to replicate.
“Yes.”
“Ya ya ya, come in!”

I would say that he enthusiastically begins to move his stuff from the passenger’s seat to the back, but his motions are so slow that it is hard to tell. We get in the car, and I consider offering him a cookie before deciding that it would be rude to get crumbs in his car.

There’s a highway that runs from the lake to Lesce Bled, but he skips the first part of it, winding through the narrow streets of the village instead. We begin to talk, and it becomes obvious that he understands English quite well. He says his name is Tony. He pulls into a gas station using an illegal left turn, and says “Yah Yah, I know I know” to the honking cars that swoop behind us.

Tony wants to talk, and we want to listen. It seems like he hasn’t spoken English in a while; he appears to enjoy feeling the foreign words come from his own mouth. His face scrunches and puckers. Not for the first time, it strikes me how rough my Germanic language must sound to ears that are used to smoother sounds. I like how he begins every sentence with “Yah, yah”

Our plan was to take the train from Lesce Bled to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Tony tells us that he lives about 13 kilometers from Ljubljana, and will drive us there. This will save us a lot of time, and we thank him profusely and sincerely. He protests that he is happy to do it.

Tony was a manager in a company that produced and exported a variety of gelatin-based products like glue and chewing gum. He has been retired for about fifteen years now. He has two daughters, but he never says a word about a wife.

He talks a lot about his former boss, ten years dead now. His boss, we learn through Tony, was a heavy drinker. Whenever they went to a conference, his boss would always be asking where the beer was. Tony thinks that is why he died relatively young.

We drive through the hills that become lower as we go further south, and Tony tells us about life in World War II and through communism. He tells us that his boss killed an unarmed German soldier in the woods that we are driving through.

“To kill a man”, Tony says, “it never leaves you. A man with no weapon, I think he (the boss) never forgot that. The German asked to not die because he had a family, but my boss killed him because he was scared and didn’t know what to do.”

Tony tells us more about his boss’s destructive drinking behavior, and I think that Tony believes his boss committed suicide slowly, one liver cell at a time.

We arrive in Ljubljana, and Tony decides to take us to the castle. He has not been up there for more than ten years, and he wants to see from above how the city has changed. There are dozens of stairs leading upwards, and I’m astounded at the speed with which Tony climbs, especially given his shuffling gait and shaking hands. We spend nearly thirty minutes atop the highest tower. Tony points out to us many of the historical and cultural landmarks: the University, several old churches, a couple of monuments. Tony is very proud that the main monument in his city is to a poet, rather than a politician or a war hero. This, he tells us, shows that culture is most important to Slovenians. I like how he tells us this with an affectionate pride, like a parent. It’s clear that he’s enjoying himself.

Tony drops us off just outside the border of the Old City, which is inaccessible to cars. We watch as he does a halting 5-point turn and disappears with a wave, and we walk along the river whose name translates to “Little Ljubljana”, enjoying the trees that hang low over the bank to graze the water, the brown stone of the houses standing remarkably close to the river, and the peacefulness that settles over a city whose residents want only to sit outside at a café and enjoy some sunshine.