Travels with Baby: "Don't Make Me Stop This Car"
Our drive through Lovran, Croatia, is tense — but pretty!
by Ayun Halliday
May 22, 2007
Meeting up with the cousins somewhere along the road seemed like a fine idea when we were still at home, planning the trip, but for some reason (full-time jobs, sloth, indecisiveness, varying ideas with regard to what constitutes acceptable accommodation, radically different budgets), we never got around to settling on a destination, let alone reserving rooms. In retrospect, we should have been a little more pro-active. Every farmstay bunk in Croatia was being gobbled up while we hemmed and hawed with our thumbs up our heiners. Back when I was a childless backpacker, the possibility that there would be no room at the inn never created much stress. In a pinch, I could always bed down on a beach, a train station or a pile of leaves.
That doesn't fly so well with kids in tow. Also, I was keenly aware that my in-laws get a limited amount of vacation time each year, and weren't too keen to squander more than a few hours of it on the road from Budapest to . . . wherever it was we might wind up. I'd been lobbying for one of these tourist farms, reasoning that animals wouldn't be nearly as pissy as city folk, should Milo and Cousin Ben-Ben's snips, snails and puppy dog tails get the best of them. But with just twenty-four hours before our two camps were due to pow-wow, our coordinates remained uncharted.
In desperation, Greg and I decided to cross the border after breakfast and make a beeline to the nearest Croatian tourist office. They had phones, internet access, insider knowledge and the ability to communicate with non-English-speaking farmers. Once the experts had given us our marching orders, we'd exchange the euros we'd been using in Slovenia for kuna, buy an international calling card, figure out how to use it and ring Greg's brother, Sam, who was expecting us to get in touch at ten, get directions and head for the farm. Yeah,
"Oh, wow," I said, as the Adriatic loomed on the horizon. "Kids, look. Pause the DVD." that'd work. According to the guidebook, there was a tourist office an hour away in Opatija, described as a crumbling spa town once favored by Emperor Franz-Josef, Isadora Duncan and an endless stream of wealthy, tubercular Austro-Hungarians.
"Oh, wow," I said, as the Adriatic loomed on the horizon, a twinkling blue surprise. "Kids, look. Pause the DVD and look up for a second."
"Is Cousin Ben here?" Milo asked.
"Uh, no, not yet. Soon." Privately, Greg and I had begun to suspect that the reason Sam and Beth had been dragging their feet was that they were inclined to bag out, but didn't want to hurt our feelings by doing so in advance. As adults, we completely understood where they were coming from, if indeed, that's where they were coming from, but I feared how this news would affect Inky and Milo, who were bursting with plans for cousinly funs. Ah, plans.
We found the Tourist Office, and I'll be damned if it wasn't closed — whether for Good Friday or good, it was impossible to say, though apparently there was another one located two or three kilometers down the main road.
I had to admit that things were not looking good. Traffic was bumper to bumper, and the sidewalks thronged with vacationers basking in the Riviera-like temperatures. It looked like half of Italy had flown over for the weekend. No doubt some were already pressing inland toward the Zumberak, where all the farms I'd been looking at online are located, and tourist accommodation is in much shorter supply.
"Now is Cousin Ben here?" Milo demanded.
"No. Daddy's taking us to find someone who's going to tell us where we can meet him." I glanced worriedly at Daddy. Daddy looked like he wanted to tear someone a new asshole.
"Rrnghh, this is taking too long!" Milo shouted with the righteous indignation of the near-totally ignorant.
"Let's help Daddy concentrate by being quiet, okay?" I suggested, as I stared haggardly out the passenger window. Probably not the best time to ask Greg to pull over so I could take a picture of the incredibly picturesque, wisteria-draped villas lining the boardwalk like some lost work by Tennessee Williams. I would have liked to stay here, I thought wistfully. If only we hadn't gotten ourselves into this mess with Sam and Beth.
©2007 Ayun Halliday and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ayun Halliday is author of The Big Rumpus and No Touch Monkey! and the popular zine East Village Inky. She is a columnist for Bust and a frequent contributor to Babble. Visit AyunHalliday.com.
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