Sunday June 26, 2011

Strobrec, Croatia (Dalmation Coast); Tounj, Croatia, and Rijeka, Croatia (Istria).

Packed up our campsite at Strobrec. As we were packing, our neighbors from Romania asked if we had scissors, which we did not. (Made a note for next time, though.) When we went into the bathroom, our Romanian neighbor was cutting her hair with a huge Bowie knife! Wish we had gotten a picture of that!

Took off for Josipdol, the village where our Paulkovich grandparents were born, baptized and married. Thought we'd do a drive-by and take a few pictures, see if we could find the church or the cemetery. It's a little confusing - and we're still not clear on this, but there is Josipdol, Tounj and Potok. Tounj appears to be the governing body for this area. The villages are so small that several times we were out of one before we realized it, and had to turn around. We found a church and a cemetery, took some photos, but it clearly wasn't the church we were looking for.

Marko Frankovic, but not the cemetery we were looking for

We stopped at a little store (we called it the 7-11) and a bar looking for someplace to eat. About the only game in town was a nice hotel restaurant, Hotel Josipdol. We sat outside and told the waitress we wanted real Croatian food. We ordered cheese salad, cream of mushroom soup, hamburger stuffed with cheese, Ajvar (paprika sauce), grilled vegetables, water, beer and for dessert, policinke with jam and 2 espressos. Everything was great except the policinke; nothing seems to measure up to our grandmother's recipe.

At Hotel Josipdol

Some free bread stuff

Mushroom soup

Mixed salad with fresh CHEESE!

Stuffed hamburger, ajvar and mixed grilled vegetables

Cevapcici, ajvar and grilled veg

Policinke

Espresso x 2

While we were there, Suzanne showed the waitress the papers Mom had given us - birth, baptism and wedding certificates for our grandparents, and a list of questions, in Croatian, about them. She took the papers away to show someone else, then returned with a piece of paper that said, "Ivica Sopek Gov from Tounj (Gradonacelnik)". We were pretty sure that "Gov" meant "Mayor". She told us that the name on the paper was someone who could help us, and we could see him tomorrow being that it was Sunday. Unfortunately, we planned to be in Pula in a few hours setting up another campsite, but we thanked her, thinking we could do some research and get an e-mail address for this guy.

Driving through Tounj we saw a cool bridge and decided to stop and check it out. We walked across the bridge and decided to continue across and then walk down to the water. When we got to the other side of the bridge, a man came over and our first thought was, "Oh no. What did we do now?" We were pretty sure we were trespassing or something. But he just greeted us and gave us some fliers about the town. They had just had a major festival there for St. Ivan's Day. We started talking to him, which wasn't easy. He spoke no English, and a smattering of bad German. He said he was the "sheriff." We thought we'd ask him if he knew an e-mail or mailing address for the name on our paper, so Suzanne went back to the car to get that, and the documents to show him. Having documents showing our grandparents were born, baptized and married in this very village seemed like a good way to validate ourselves. We gave him the documents and he got pretty excited and asked if he could make a photocopy. Then we showed him the paper with the name on it and asked if he knew this guy. He was saying "Yes! Yes!" and we tried to explain that we'd like to contact the Mayor. Meanwhile, he shooed us into his car (yes, Jane and Suzanne will get in a car with a stranger in another country) and drove us to the Town Hall. He began making photocopies of our family documents and started handing us all manner of gifts: a CD of Croatian music (it's not going to make the top 10, I'll be honest whicha), flags, pens, a notebook, postcards, key chains, more. I again asked if he knew the man on the piece of paper and this time we realized, IT WAS HIM! He was the Mayor whose name was on the paper the waitress gave us!

We got back in his car, and he drove us to the church where our grandmother was baptized in 1881. He introduced us to the parish priest, Slaven Mijatovic, who let us into the church and allowed us to take photos. Fr. Mijatovic had studied at Georgetown University and spent time in the U.S., so he spoke English. He said that he and the Mayor would like to take us out for some coffee if we'd like that. We said we would and he said that first we would go with the Mayor and he would meet us at the café. The Mayor took us to the cemetery where someone else was waiting, and the two of them helped us find family graves, which we photographed.

When we got to the Cafe, Father Mijatovic was waiting. So was the entire village, with their eyes buggin' out of their heads. Two strange American women, on a Sunday, with the priest and the mayor. Fr. Mijatovic ordered two Cokes for us, making sure to tell the waiter to give us lots of ice "American style." While we were chatting, a car drove up and a young man and an older woman stepped out and came over to us. We were told that they had come to take us to a village grandmother, who might know more about our family. So just like that, we were whisked off by another set of strangers!

They turned out to be mother and son (Teo), and were taking us to his grandmother's house. She was one of the older persons of the village, and it was thought she might have some knowledge of our family. We arrived at Milka's small cottage and were warned by Teo not to walk in the grass because of snakes! Teo's aunt joined us as well, and we sat in the back yard, between what was clearly a very old cottage, and a newer house. There was a small garden, a table and chairs and it was a most pleasant place to sit and talk.

Everyone began looking at our documents and talking. Teo did his best to interpret what they were saying. After a lot of discussion, it was discovered that Milka's grandfather was our grandmother's brother! We had a new cousin! They remembered our grandmother and her family. And...the house our grandmother was born in still stood directly across the street from where we were sitting!

We were offered, and declined something to drink, until Teo told us the women were wondering what was wrong, why would we not accept something to drink? Though we did not really enjoy it, we had two cokes (not diet!). Soon we were offered something to eat and though we were still full from lunch, Teo made us aware we had better eat or our hostesses would be offended. Out came homemade sausages, plump ripe tomatoes, home baked bread and homemade prune schnapps. It was definitely schnapps - as Teo says, "If you can't feel it, it isn't schnapps". When the sun began to set, we said we had to leave. Our hosts told us we had a bed if we wanted to stay, and gave us a bottle of schnapps to take with us.