"Fabulous Vacations for the Financially Destitute" by Marti Trgovich
If pressed, I would deny that I am lost and instead claim that my hotel is lost. It is not here on Montalbano, as the website promised. I peer at painted numbers on buildings, but the sky's growing dark like denim and this Croatian town—a fishing village not far from Italy—daunts me. I am accustomed to neon cities with electric-pink billboards, mouthy pedestrians, exhaust-spewing cars.But there are no cars in this city center and it's sleepy as a pill, even at 8 p.m. The few signs are in Croatian and Italian; I'm in both Rovinj and Rovigno, whichever I like. The tortuous cobblestone streets are slippery as the fish collected at the docks, from the batanas, and I'm uncertain how to handle this stillness, a quality I have come to associate with danger. (When people complain that New York has too many people in too-close quarters, I remind them that should an emergency arise, at least my neighbors will hear me scream.)A coral building exudes promise—it looks inviting enough to be some sort of inn, though it lacks a house number—so I place my hand on a golden knob and turn, then push: a vase centered on a wooden end table, a hat rack spidered onto the wall, children's shoes lined up on the tile. A staircase leads to the second floor, where someone is practicing the violin. The music ceases, as if the person has paused to listen, to see if she has indeed heard the door open—an intruder. I, the intruder, shut the door.
*
Maybe this was karma for letting the straggler miss the bus. Back in Pula, the southern tip of the Istrian coast, I frowned after everyone under 65 disembarked, leaving only an elderly couple and me to carry on to Rovinj. The two drivers—one tall and skinny, one short and stout, obviously paired together for their Laurel and Hardy quality—smoked outside the station, waiting for new arrivals. There were none.The bus pulled away and I stared out its window, hoping to glimpse Pula's famed Roman amphitheater. Instead a young man ran toward me, duffel bags swinging from each hand. By then we were moving fast, but it wouldn't technically have been too late to stop the bus if only I'd been able to yell to the drivers in Croatian, “Hold on! Someone my own age!” But I can hardly even say hvala, or thank you. (A waitress in Rovinj will later tell me that to do so is not unlike spitting with all your might.) By the time I think to run to the front of the bus, we are out of the parking lot and on the main road. So I let the latecomer miss his ride—not without an ounce of guilt.
*
On Montalbano I am tired and sitting on my backpack in the street, triple-checking the inn's address and plotting my next move. I hear footsteps: a darling septuagenarian with steel gray hair swooped into a loose bun. Her skin is olive and she wears a charming prairie skirt and blouse. She has a cane that slows her down, but it seems to complement her, the same way her hair conveys elegance, not senescence. She spouts something in Italian—animated, dimples popping. I imagine she's asking how a street urchin ended up in Rovinj. I shake my head; she tries Croatian.“I'm sorry, I don't—”“Well what are you doing on the ground?”This seems silly now that she says it, so I stand up and hike my bag over my shoulder.“My hotel is lost,” I want to say, but I know she'll think there's a language barrier, so I say I'm lost.“Let's get you help.” A man carrying a pizza box appears behind her. He is goofy, awkward, like the next-door neighbor in an eighties sitcom. The woman, visiting from Italy, seems to know him from an earlier encounter.“Good luck,” she says before heading toward the waterfront, leaving me with a man I'd call Skippy, if I had to choose a name. I follow head-scratching Skippy down Montalbano, declining his offer of pizza. He has never heard of this hotel. “Aha!” he says when he sees an inn—as if I were looking for any inn, as if I'd asked for a Kleenex and any brand of tissue would do—but the lights are off and the doors locked and it's clear it hasn't yet opened for the season. It's only May.I thank Skippy, who disappointingly cocks his head when he realizes I'm leaving, and decide to follow my gut: so much for Montalbano. Instead, I go to the waterfront, where a rowdy group is celebrating with beers and loud chatter and pats on the back (I will later learn there was an election that day), and find a welcoming hotel across from the festivities, feet from the harbor.In the lobby I see my septuagenarian, who wonders if I was looking for her hotel. “Not exactly,” I say. “But I'd like to stay here now.” We embrace like long-lost friends. She explains something in Italian to the receptionist, and the next thing I know I am being handed the keys to a double—with harbor view!—for the price of a single. The anomie that's been collecting inside me is starting to seep out.
*
Still, I have no business being here—in Rovinj, in Croatia, in Europe, period. I am broke, and by all accounts, I cannot afford to be anywhere a two-buck subway ride won't take me. Due to an unfortunate error by my previously competent tax preparer, there is a problem at home. I booked the trip after he swore I was getting a $1,600 refund. So I bought an excessively cheap but nonrefundable plane ticket, and the next day, he called to say there had been a mistake. I would not be getting any money back. And I owed the government $400. Since we're on the subject of money, I should also mention that there are past due student loans, and that my spotty credit report makes all landlords demand a guarantor. It's easy to feel like a criminal sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if I am a criminal.One late afternoon in Rovinj I start thinking too much about money and before I know it I am sitting outside, shaded by an umbrella, pickled in beer, the restaurant's sole patron. I only mean to sip slowly on one Ožujsko while I am writing postcards, but after one I ask the waiter for another and another and another. I feel cleaner.At sunset I sit on the docks. The sky is persimmon and blue, the caw of seagulls loud as clapping thunder. A child hides in between the rocks, shoreside, which are taller than he is. As the sky darkens he's crouching down, hiding from his family, blending in with the stone. Later I will notice his silhouette in a photograph I forgot I took.I eat outside at Stella di Mare, on the Adriatic, and watch a cat meander onto the patio, beneath tablecloths, dodging waiters. Rovinj is full of strays. When I approach, they do not run like cats in American cities; they let me pet them and say hello. I have always felt sorry for strays, but these cats seem happy. On the hotel patio at breakfast each morning, the same gray kitten has greeted me two days in a row, rubbing up against my bare leg. Each time I've fed him two small pieces of cheese, but when I offer a third, he turns away.At Stella di Mare the cat stops at each table on the patio—not begging, just touring the restaurant as if to gauge the atmosphere. In America he would be shooed out, but here no one minds.“There are so many cats in Rovinj,” I say to a busboy as he collects my plate. “Are they all strays?”He pauses to consider the proper English words, then says, “Yes, they are free.”
*
Rovinj gets overrun with tourists in July and August, but the rest of the year it's a quiet hamlet, nowhere near the bustling maritime center it was in the eighteenth century before cities like Rijeka replaced it as a major port. Nowadays, one teen explains, it's kind of a bore.“There's nothing to do,” my 17-year-old waiter says the next day. “It is so boring.” He sounds like an American kid, testifying on camera to MTV, before he leaves his hometown for a coveted spot on The Real World: San Antonio, or anywhere that sounds better than where he came from.For the first time in my life, boring sounds good. It's taken a long time to realize that sometimes things are better when they're more subdued, less exciting. I've learned I cope better when I know what to expect, and life is often easiest to predict when there's just you. So, in the center of town, I rent a bike with a basket and spend the afternoon weaving in and out of city streets, not uttering a word to anyone. Afterward, I head east from the town center, past the marina, following Rovinj's perimeter along the sea. I end up in Zlatni Rt, a park south of the Old Town, with cypresses and cedars and oaks and pines, all limning paths along craggy shores with silvery lizards scrambling on rocks. The sea lapping at the shore's stones is clear like water you can drink.That evening at the market I am tempted to indulge in souvenirs, like wooden mementos or hand-carved keepsake boxes. I duck inside a jewelry store and find a thick copper bracelet for twelve euros. The saleslady slips a pink glass necklace in the tiny shopping bag—no charge. “I just thought the color would suit you,” she says. Other stores offer unique souvenirs: a wax-paper map of Istria and the north Adriatic, tied with string and a fresh sprig of lavender, for just a few bucks. Small galleries feature expensive art, but I'm afraid I'll be tempted to buy something that will cause me to lose my lease back in New York, so I stay clear. I might lose my lease anyway, what with the tax situation and all the debt I try to wash away with Ožujskos. In fact, in a few months, the student loan people will threaten to garnish my wages if I do not pay them at least $301 every thirty days. I will lose my beloved Brooklyn one-bedroom, with its eight-foot windows and all the sunlight, following an embarrassing situation in which I sob when my landlord asks why I am late with the rent again. (I bleed money, I want to say. I don't even have cable or Internet. I turn off lights when I leave the room. Plus, my apartment has mice! The kitchen is too small to fit two people. I struggle to afford this, but I don't want to leave because it's the best I can do.)Of course he doesn't care. I have no choice but to move when the lease is up—to an Upper East Side studio so small that friends and family begin to question my good sense. But I know none of this now. And even later, I will not regret Rovinj. Financially, I would have been screwed anyhow, with or without the vacation.
*
It's a long day and the sun changes and I stare at the sea through spaces in the pines, matching the glassy Adriatic to other colors I know; picture paint samples and make up names like Cerulean Tile, Blue Lavender, Cyan Glass. Here's the thing about relaxation: I was in Rovinj at a time when I had no idea how to relax. I was twitchy as a bee. Still, I managed to take what I learned there and incorporate it back in New York. For many months later, going through a rough spot, I'd ride the subway, melt into the dirty orange seat, and close my eyes and think of Rovinj. I had never understood why people closed their eyes on the subway. I'd thought, It's impossible to relax with all this noise. But now I saw they were dreaming of somewhere else, too. I would try to smell the lavender, catch a glimpse of sea. V-shaped gulls squawked over the roar of the train, screeching into a station.