SUNSHINE AND HISTORY

I’ll set the scene a little here: I’m sitting under a sun canopy on the top deck of a yacht under sail to yet another of the many islands in the Adriatic Sea.  The tour excursion guide has told us repeatedly how many islands there are but my poor aging brain only has so much storage capacity so I’m letting some of the details slip.  We are a group of 34and I haven’t even got half the names straight yet, let alone who the married couples are.  So far I haven’t missed the boat or been late for dinner so I’ve the important things covered.

Our first two days in Croatia were rainy but we are back to hot and sunny now.  Regardless, we went on the walking tours to learn about the history of the place.  The details of names and dates are lost on me but the gist of it is that this region has been taken over/conquered/annexed multiple times over the last 2000 years and each period shows a different type of architecture, and depending on how much was destroyed when the next batch took over, there can be three different styles of buildings on the same street.  (And by ‘street’ I mean tiny cobblestoned passages between buildings.). The way my brain picks up information I tend to store bits of trivia, hence I know now that if you see the symbol of lions with wings it means that the Venetians have been there.  I’m certain that will come up in conversation some day ….

The first couple of days was all land tours.  We have traveled by bus to different places.  We have hiked up and down canyons along a little chain of uniquely blue lakes and countless waterfalls, and we’ve seen several places that were used as sets for Game of Thrones.  The main industry here is tourism but they also grow olives and grapes for wine.  I think today will be our third oil and wine tasting session.  If I keep this up I should be pretty good at it by the time I get home.

Everyone has their own point of context though.  The young people come to destinations like this to party.  The older ones come for warmth and to see the world.  While I am in that bracket, I am also a farmer.  As the bus, and now the boat, travel past the countryside a little voice inside my head keeps asking “why on earth would anyone want to conquer this land?”  There is nothing here but rock.  Oh okay, there’s that wine and olive oil thing, but really? There has got to be easier places to grow them.

Regardless, they came and they conquered.

Repeatedly.

This morning as the party crowd and the adventurous swim off the back of the yacht I’m sitting on the upper deck and pondering the skyline.  When I travel west on #1 between Swift Current and Medicine Hat I am always struck that the land is so open and vast and vacant.  What went through the minds of the first European explorers and settlers when confronted with such endlessness?  Weren’t they afraid of the unknown?

And now I gaze out over the Adriatic Sea from my perch on the top deck of a modern yacht and try to put myself in the shoes of the ancient mariners in their tiny wooden boats.  How fearless they must have been. How did they know where to go?  How did they stay safe from storms and dangerous shores? 

Maybe they didn’t conquer for any other reason than they had found solid ground and weren’t going to give it up again.

 

AS SOON AS I GET BACK FROM EUROPE

The windows need washing.  They are all dirty but the bathroom window is atrocious – robins built a nest just above it and left a full bird family’s excrement over the summer.  Numerous species of flies have tried to match this gross calling card on other windows too.  As disgusting as they all are though, I’m not going to wash them yet. I will do the job when I get back from Europe.

Isn’t that a cool thing to say when you announce your plans to procrastinate?  Just out and say “I’ll do it as soon as I get back from Europe!”

Firstly, it sounds so blasé and worldly, all at the same time.  It’s out-of-the-ordinary and has a lovely fairy-tale ring to it. 

I know; I live a boring life and am easily charmed.

Secondly, I am a world class procrastinator.  If procrastination were an Olympic sport, I would have a room full of gold medals.  Mind you, they would all still be in boxes because I would never get around to displaying them - that’s just how good I am. 

What greater way to say “That’ll never get done” than to put it off “till I get back from Europe”?

The thing is I am also a truth teller.  As bizarre as it sounds, I am about to go to Europe, and not a word of a lie here, I do not intend to wash my windows until I get back.  I only have four days left before departure.  I don’t have time for windows right now.

What I do have in front of me is a list of more immediate concerns … like my hair and nails.  Obviously, I am a procrastinator with a vanity problem.

On a more serious note, I plan to prepare two weeks worth of meals to keep my husband from starvation while I am gone.  It’s not that he can’t cook for himself but at this time of the year he works long hours.  Microwaving a prepared meal is way easier than starting from scratch.  It also keeps the man-cooking mess to a minimum.  I’m all for that; I already have all those windows to do when I get home, remember?

The other biggy on my ‘To Do’ list is packing.  I’ve been kind of working on that all summer, trying to picture what a person wears while touring medieval churches and wandering down cobblestone streets.  Do I have the right clothing for sipping coffee at a quaint little sidewalk café? The itinerary mentions a day at a national park – I will need good walking shoes. There will be beaches to explore and we are warned to bring water shoes.  Part of the trip is sailing between islands on the Adriatic Sea with our final evening a fancy Captain’s Dinner – I better bring something nice for that.  Or, maybe I can buy something ‘European exotic’ instead?  Now there’s a thought.

So far all I have is an open suitcase on the guest bed with my passport, a European power converter plug, and an envelope of Croatian Euros in it, plus a whole bunch of clothing laid across the bed in my ‘possibility pile’.  I will get there.  I do still have four days.

I seem to have come to a transition in the last day or two.  Up until last night, whenever I woke at 4:00 am to ponder middle-of-the-night problems it was the regular stuff that wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.  Last night I got to thinking about the details of this trip.  The flights I would be on, the time zones I would be in, the people I would be meeting.  This has been in the works since Easter but now it’s getting real.  I’m about to explore a foreign land, soak up history, try local cuisine, travel on a yacht, plus a hundred other adventures with a bunch of other people who are interested in, and looking forward to, the same things.  It just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve got to clean up my garden and defrost the deep freezes too.  I’ll do that as soon as I get back from Europe.

I just like saying it.