Psotscript

JTK Taylor
Off the north coast of Croatia is Oto Krk (Island of Krk), the biggest island in the Adriatic Sea, 30 kilometres from Rijeka and 120 kilometres from Trieste in Italy. The island is linked to the mainland by the two arches of the 1,309 meter Krk Bridge, and, to the world at large, by a small airstrip that also handles the Easy Jet economy flights out of Bristol in the UK.
We had rented apartments at Numbers 17 and 19 Megla Frankopana, located on the second row of villas, about 20 meters up the little slope from the beach and nestled snugly into the green shrubbery, trees and tall, fragrant bay-leaf hedges.
The “troops” (two daughters, one grand-daughter, a friend and her son), arrived ahead of us, having landed at the Airport on Krk, from the UK early in the morning. Besnik and I had driven up from Tirana, slept overnight in Split and then climbed the steep ascent inland, above Split, to join the excellent motorway North towards Zagreb. We arrived on the Island at about midday and found our way to the village of Njivice and the offices of the Agency that had booked our accommodation for a very welcomed holiday on Krk. Marijana, the wife of a family team that owned and ran the agency, turned out to be just as pleasant, helpful and friendly as I had grown to realize in the course of the endless exchange of e-mails culminating in the right flats being booked.
Our family had already settled in and unpacked and there was a great deal of tired but excited first-impressions banter going on when we arrived on the back door-step. After endless hugs and kisses we all headed down, two houses further up the street to where our little flat was. Happy to see we were satisfied with our accommodation, Marijana departed amidst a flurry of thank-yous and promises to have a coffee at a later date.
The day we arrived the weather was perfect, warm and balmy without being hot, and a hint of a sea breeze wafted through the trees and down the bush-lined lane. Up above the hedges and shrubs, from the terrace of the girls’ apartment, the sparkling green-blueness of the sea filled the nothingness in between the tree trunks and leaves. There was so much greenery between the villas and the sea that, although it was so close at hand, you only got inviting glimpses through the thick foliage. Idyllic and so peaceful. Spirits soared, the family immediately reflected the conviction that this had been the right choice, that for the first time in seventeen years, our first holiday altogether, in the one location, for 12 days in a row, was going to be very comfortable and relaxing.
Minutes later we were all traipsing downhill towards the beach under a canopy of branches and leaves. Although most likely accustomed to the banter of foreign tourists and lodgers along their leafy lanes, the heady laughter and loud voices of our group drew some looks from the otherwise friendly old people lounging quietly on the front porches of their lovely villas.
The beach was a dream and I watched happily as my daughters and their friends from England, together with my husband clambered up and down from the tiny pebbled coves and inlets to the wonderful beach-side footpath under the overhanging trees that stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions along the beach front. We walked the short distance along the beach front to the centre of the village of Njivice and sat down under reed thatched sunshades that formed the cubicles of a coffee bar on a flat rock that protruded out into the sea. The gentle and warm breeze off the sea caressed the nape of my neck and made the myriads of sparkles on the surface of the lucid green-blue almost sanitarily clean waters of the sea, quiver.
This was the setting of the next pleasant surprise of Njivice-first class espresso coffee, perhaps the influence of neighbouring Italy. We sat there for some time chatting about the girl’s flight out and our trip up the long stretch of coastline from Albania, and I gazed inland towards the shore, over the bobbing heads of bathers and around the colourful plastic peddle boats, and it dawned on me that although the stretch of beach in the centre was “heavily populated,” it was tranquil, there was a quietness and calm about the scene. There was respect for one another’s desire to relax in peace and quiet and savour the rays of the afternoon sun, the warmth of the sea water and pleasant company of friend or family. The effect was so soothing. In Albania so many bodies in the one place would have been generating dozens more decibels of sound, it would have been far more rowdy and disorderly and soiled with rubbish. Lulled into “peace mode” we strolled back along the beach walk, past the bustling stores, ice cream stands (we were told were owned mostly by Albanians), the picturesque little marine, crammed full of pleasure craft of all sizes, and up the little alleyways to the main supermarket of the village and fruit stalls for supplies of food for a now hungry family.
The ensuing days, although four or five were rainy or overcast, proved to be exactly what I had hoped to achieve by organizing a family vacation. After so many years of living apart as a family unit, with one daughter going through school at the other end of the world, in New Zealand, growing and learning about life on her own; with another daughter in England waging her own traumatizing battles and getting herself through University, also on her own; and parents working hard in the conditions of a country that is light years away from becoming a country like NZ or England – the gaps punched into the once shared family file seem non-negotiable. However, the “shared family file” does prevail, the basic values of a sound childhood upbringing, inherited from parents and grand-parents alike, based more on personal example of a family that works hard, rather than constant childhood lecturing, had proven to be the mainstay in the years our children “made it” out their on their own, naturally with our ongoing financial support and love, conveyed via phone, fax, SMS, e-mail as Albania’s communication means modernized over the years.
Although as parents we feel sad that the years have slipped by without our children witnessing and helping us to become, and win, what we are, and posses today, and so that we better understand the reasons for things occurring over the years, it is however, a great experience to see and taste their cooking, be pampered and massaged, listen to their ideas and views on everything imaginable and probe the depth of the culture they have assimilated. As a family we are the richer for all this diversity.
Njivice lent a sense of togetherness and yet ample privacy, also created by the broken coastline, the minute coves with their tiny pebble-covered beaches and flat slabs of rock where there is room for six or seven persons, forming a community of beach-goers split into groups basking in the sun in the semi-seclusion of their “personal” coves, like a line of theatre boxes facing the water, and all linked by the beach front promenade four or five steps above the coves. The separate little “family” enclosures softened the noise and as you strolled along the footpath looking down on the sun-bathers, it was so quiet and peaceful that the only sounds were rustles, as the ripples broke and the sea water tripped over the tiny banks of pebbles and lapped against the rocks. This is where we came together again in a very fulfilling and relaxing holiday and this is why, whether we return or not, it will always mark a special place in a re-opened family “shared file.”