No Problem
Bacina, Croatia is a small coastal village located about half way between Split and Dubrovnik. It is where my great-grandma spent the first fourteen years of her life before moving to America with her family. Of us five travelers (Mom, Granny and Grandpa, my sister Angela, and me) only one of us had been there before. My mom, who had traveled there thirty-two years earlier with my great-grandma – the only time she ever returned to her birth place.
We were staying at an agriturismo in a neighboring village to Bacina called Peracko Blato. Within five minutes of getting there, we learned two things about Croatians:
1. Everything to them is “no problem.”
2. They are very bossy (but in a good way!)
Angela and I had just dragged our suitcases up the stairs to our room when Pero, the son of the couple who owned the house we were staying at, appeared.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, thrusting a basket of apricots toward us. “I apologize we have no figs right now.”
“I’ve never had a fig,” I said. “What do they taste like?” I had momentarily forgotten about the Fig Newtons I’d eaten my whole life.
His face registered complete shock. Ang and I both giggled at his bewilderment over this statement.
He put down the basket of fruit. “Come. We will go pick figs.” He gestured toward a beat up old white BMW and started walking toward it. Ang and I stood there, our giggles fading. Now we were the bewildered ones. Pero stopped and looked back at us. “Come,” he said again with a nod toward the car.
“But we just got here,” I protested.
“No problem,” he said with a shrug and continued walking toward the car.
“Go on girls,” Mom said with a big smile.
Ang and I exchanged a look that said “well, why not?” and hurried after Pero. I clambered into the front seat of the car. Being the oldest sister, I get to claim things like that. Pero drove us through Peracko Blato (like a maniac! The Italians apparently aren’t the only crazy drivers) and pointed out various aspects of it. “The lake is down there,” he said and pointed to the right of us. “You will go swimming there in the morning. There are also tennis courts.”
He then drove by a basketball court and a large white building. “That is the gym and meeting place.”
“And everyone can use this stuff?” I asked.
“Yes, of course, if you live in Peracko Blato,” he answered.
I was about to ask him if everyone had to pay HOA dues, but figured he would have no idea what I was talking about.
Eventually we ended up on a dirt road covered in overgrown grass. He drove into a thicket of fig trees and stopped.
“Let’s go,” he said as he got out of the car. Ang and I quickly got out of the car and joined him at the trunk of it. He pulled out three sticks that split into a Y at the end and a basket whose handle had the same Y structure sticking out from it. “I made this,” he said proudly.
“Cool…what is it?” Angela asked.
“For picking the figs,” he said as if it was obvious and demonstrated how to use the curves of the stick to pull down branches and get the figs.
Ang and I studied our sticks as we followed him past a dozen fig trees until he stopped at one.
“This one is mine,” he said.
“How do you know this is yours?” I asked in amazement.
“Because I planted it.”
I smiled. “I mean, how can you tell of all these identical fig trees, which one is yours?”
He shrugged and looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Never mind,” I said and proceeded to take a step closer to the tree. It was surrounded by long grass and various other plants. I hope there aren’t any snakes here, I thought.
“Watch out for snakes,” he said with a mischievous grin, yet I could tell he wasn’t joking.
“Seriously? Poisonous ones?” I asked with concern.
“Yes.”
“Ang,” I whispered. “I don’t want to do this.” Pero had already started walking amidst the fig trees and had started to semi-climb one. He was poking at something with his fig stick. He pulled down a fig, made a face, and discarded it to the ground.
Ang is much tougher than me and rolled her eyes. “Stop being such a city girl.”
“But I am a city girl,” I whispered back, not so jokingly. The real fact of the matter was that I had inherited Mom’s fear of snakes, plus I had developed my own acute fear of spiders, and I had seen a huge one in a web three fig trees back. Snakes and spiders. Not a good combination. Still, I took a deep breath and figured Ang was right. How often am I picking figs in Croatia? It was time to be a brave country girl.
Pero jumped down and deposited a couple figs in his basket, which Ang was holding. “It is not quite fig season yet,” he said. “I will try to find better.” He turned around and took a few steps and stopped. He looked back at us as he pointed toward the tree he had just been climbing. “Look, a snake!”
I looked and sure enough, there was a long, slithery thing chilling by the fig tree.
I screamed and jumped behind Ang.
What a good older sister I am.
Pero started laughing. “I am joking,” he said. “It is a lizard with no legs. Look.”
“I don’t want to,” I cried.
“It’s cool! Look!” Ang instructed me impatiently. I cowardly peeked over her shoulder.
So it was. It was much wider and shorter than a snake and looked like a large lizard as it slithered out of sight.
“Those are good,” Pero informed us. “They eat snakes.”
“So that means there are no snakes around?” I asked hopefully.
Pero laughed. “Come,” he said. “I will take you to another one of my tree’s.”
We followed him up a rocky ledge, which I was very weary about. Aren’t rocky ledges where people always get bit by rattlesnakes in movies?
At the next tree he had Angela use her sticks to pick some figs. Apparently, after my dramatic scream, he had given up on me ever being a good fig picker. With the help of Pero, Ang got some down. Pero seemed to like the look of these figs better, and told us to eat them.
“Right now?” I asked, wishing we could go back to the safety of the car away from any snakes.
“How?” Ang asked gamely.
Pero showed us how to peel them apart and we took our first bites of fresh fig. It was delicious. Kind of tasted like Fig Newtons. Imagine that.
Ang and I greedily devoured our figs. When I finished, I wiped my messy hands on my shirt, not even caring that it was brand new from the Topshop in Belgrade. The fig was that good.
We got back in the car, and I thanked God that we had not been bit by any poisonous snakes, and we headed back to the house. Or so I thought.
First, we stopped by a farm. A woman, three kids, and a snarling dog tied to a chain greeted us. I cautiously stepped past the dog as Pero warmly greeted the woman in Croatian and gestured toward us. She did not speak English, but we could still understand her kind welcome. Pero and the kids led us toward a barn as the woman went back to tending the sheep around her.
We walked into the barn and were immediately engulfed in the typical barn smells of animals and manure. A few baby goats and their mom were looking eagerly over a gate. Pero picked one of the babies up and plopped it into Angela’s arms and it actually snuggled into her! It was very cute. But I was still glad when Pero placed it back in it’s stall without insisting I hold it first. (I’m wearing my new Topshop shirt, remember!) He then led us to see the huge daddy goat and some pigs.
“Be careful of the pigs,” he said. “They’re mean.”
Ang and I heeded his advice and didn’t get too close in case they bit one of our fingers off.
“Everything we eat comes from Peracko Blato,” Pero said. “The cheese, milk, meat…we all share.”
Yum, fresh food. It made me excited for dinner that night, which Pero’s mom would be making. I had at least heard that mentioned before he whisked us away to pick figs and hold baby goats.
Which turned out to definitely be no problem at at all.
Tags: Bacina, Croatia
Pokeyike
Leave a Reply