WALKING ON THIN ICE

(pic of town in Istria, Croatia)

Croatia’s Istrian towns harken to my preconceptions of Italy. Little towns with cobblestone and municipal buildings, apartments that look like pastel cakes with beige frosting. Christmas lights drip, strung across the narrow streets.

Driving from Istria to Slovenia is like going from a Mediterranean to a more alpine country but with similar language, similar style housing, the red roofs. Slovenia seems a bit downtrodden through the coastal route we took.

Then through a tunnel and into Italy, Trieste, and it’s a magic tunnel and the whole landscape has changed.  My expectation was of some diffusion process through which the population would evenly spread across borders. But we came from sparse Slovenia into teeming Trieste. Factories, apartments, all of it, lots of it, and all at once.

Trieste is a coral reef with smokestacks. Apartments stack atop apartments up the hill. Some of the architecture seems to be of empire. There are tunnels through the city, as it is built on the side of a hill. One tunnel looks like Darth Vader’s head. Traffic streams through his maw into white municipal tunnel light.

The first thing we did in Trieste was stop for hot chocolate and expresso. We found an festive coffeeshop in a main square. It was manned by several attractive accomodating tall men in their twenties. I felt shy ordering, especially as I did not brush up on any Italian prior to our visit. The chocolate was melted chocolate! It was not like our cocoa. It was a blend of melted chocolate and steamed milk, with a large sludge of chocolate pooled on the bottom. Served on a tray, with cookies and unsweetened clumps of cream.

We found a Christmas market along several main pedestrian ways, Christmas light strings blinking down in simulated motion above our heads. Unbelievable stuff, and it all seems cheap. Wool shoes for 22 Euros (Sara says they can cost 80 USD in the states.) And ornate confections unlike anything I’d ever seen. I bought marzipan in the shape of a mushroom standing on a chocolate mound. And a pig made of marzipan! I’ve not seen these elsewhere.

We found our way out of the city almost as easily as we came in. We stopped at an Esso station for gas, and they pointed the way out. Driving out, we went on a path more adjacent to water, and the road wrapped about the expanse of the cup of coast spanned by Trieste, and we saw the shimmery lights of a busy port.

Trieste is like every city you imagine and don’t imagine, a discovery, a reason for travel, something I’d never known of, something that imprints itself and opens the possibilities of the world like the first time I’d ever made a trip by myself, the first book which ever captured me, the first time I ate a pomegranite or stepped onto a different planet.