Istria

Carera ulica, Rovinj, Croatia

In the time I spent in Istria, I never stopped being surprised at how weird it was when someone spoke to me in English. The place is full of tourists in the summer, and the babel of languages is great. Lots of German, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian, Polish. But with the exception of a group of Irish girls who were on the bus with us to Zagreb, not a word of English. I guess it must have something to do with being a cultural superpower that so many waiters, shopkeepers, and bartenders managed to pick up simple English skills. I wonder how long that will last.

For us in Anglo-Saxon world, the Croatian coast is in a permanent state of arriving, even if it has served more or less as Central Europe's Cape Cod for generations already. The small heart-shaped peninsula also has been, if any place can be said to, the crossroads of history. The coast was Venetian, the interior Austrian, it was passed around a few times between fascist Italy, socialist Yugoslavia, before landing in independent Croatia. Even if most of the Italians left after the war, it feels like it took a little from each moment.

And if ever there was a place ready for its moment, born to be a tourist destination, this is it. The Adriatic here is perfectly blue and calm and clean. When we were there the sea temperature was an absurd 27 degrees C. The interior is green and lush. It boasts a ton of unique things you can only find there — its unique, rough wines, the white Malvasia and the red Teran, its high quality seafood and olive oils, and above all, the black truffles that there are an affordable luxury.

But it is still becoming. From what I can tell, the tourist economy is still almost a large cottage industry. There are rough campgrounds near the shore, old socialist era resorts, and lots of single apartments available for rents. The places seem to cater to people who drive down and spend a few weeks, the kind of way that Europeans pass their summer alien to contemporary Americans, who fly somewhere for a few days and do their damnedest not to engage with their surroundings. In other words, it feels like a lot of people from all over go there to live for awhile, and everyone seems to treat this arrangement with respect.

There seems to be a tacit understanding that the amenities in Istria cannot yet compete on the international market. You often see billboards and fliers for "resorts" around, but instead of showing luxurious hotel rooms and glamorous swimming pools, they show aerial shots of islands and beaches, a degree of remove that seems like an admission that the reality can't quite hold its own yet.

I can't pretend that I dove into the reality of Istrian life while we were there. I'm always aware when I'm a bloody tourist and trying too hard to insist otherwise makes me feel like a hypocrite. But the feeling there, in that economy, isn't like any other place I've been. We would always go to the seaside at a park south of Rovinj, which from the start had pine trees and stoney beaches, which would make most Americans rule it out without another thought — even if you didn't have to fly nine hours to get there. I was suspicious at first too, but you soon realize that having lots of shade right by the sea is rather convenient, and the rocks don't matter that much if you are swimming. There was a little bar set up near the sea, which neatly had a trampoline set up that my daughter was unable to resist. So many days we would stop and have a beer and let her bounce and watch the dusk fall over the sea. The beer was cheap, there weren't too many people, it was the kind of scene that makes you wonder when others are going to discover it.

And it is weird the way the Istrians who man the economy act. Usually, in most places like this, everyone has a very cold-blooded kind of contempt for you as they scheme to extract as much money from you as possible. This is the worst part of traveling for me. Istrian service workers seem not to have gotten the notice about this. I haven't figured out if it is a kind of residual post-socialist alienation of labor from capital — that they can't seem to square cheating you so that the person that pays their meager wages should make more money. Or perhaps it is a kind of general Mediterranean easy-goingness.

It came out in all sorts of ways. One day I stopped at that beer stand and asked for some in plastic cups so I could take it to where we had spread out all our stuff. The kid working at the bar said they were out, but I could just take a few mugs instead. I explained we were pretty far away, but he just shrugged and told me to bring them back sometime. Another day, I went in to a cellphone store to ask about wireless internet options. I asked her a lot of questions about a particular model, and its pricing structure, which we answered until she finally blurted out that before I made a decision I should probably go to the competitor's outlet around the corner and check what their plans were like too. And on our last night we went to a fabulous little Italian restaurant in the center, where we ate a ton of pasta and fresh seafood. Being our last night, we ordered a grappa, a rather sublime treat I've come to really appreciate in the past few years, and which they make very well in Istria. The owner of the place came over to check on us and brought over two glasses, and left the bottle. The honor system at restaurant in a tourist town. Imagine that.

Istria is a great place to visit, and in the two trips I've made I've felt that it was only a matter of time before it got "discovered." Then again, this time, after months reading about the never-ending "eurocrisis," perhaps an overlooked benefit is that we've bought a few more years.