Dining Out

So, you don’t like olive oil? Then Croatia is the land of bread. Bread eaten without any adornment of any description. I had eaten 34 loaves in the first 7 days. Towards the end, I have eaten my body weight in bread. There is every chance I won’t be able to go to the loo until 2016. Then there will be an explosion – sort of like Aliens, but with dough.

The Cro restaurant does have some choice: pizza, meat, seafood, bread. At times they will mix some rice with the meat/seafood and call it risotto. At other times meat is stuck to pasta with either oil or cream, usually in combination with tomato.

Want a salad? Lettuce and tomatoes bobbing in olive oil, with some splashes of vinegar to add interest.

Grilled meat/fish? Not a problem – first let’s marinade it in oil for 2 days before we put it on the grill.

Soup? Meat, mushroom or tomato – with olive oil as the ‘stock’.

I have discovered that it goes with everything – put it in an atomiser and splash it around your hot points, very useful for those dates with the boys from Split, Zagreb etc. They will be sucking on your neck with all the enthusiasm of Dracula.

From Zagreb to Dubrovnik and every stop in between, the food has been the same. Whilst predictability can be charming (Cro-man is a case in point), in food, this level of predictability is only going to end in either starvation, or a catastrophic colonic event. Volcano over Iceland – that’s nothing compared to what could happen in the air over Frankfurt.



Knik-knaks

If any of you are looking to buy statues of rabbits pulling carts full of flowers or extravagant plastic lace placemats in all the colours of the rainbow – then get on-line and visit Ikea Cro-style (just type in Crokea and there are hundreds of outlets).

I’ve become a little paranoid when I wake up at night. There is usually just enough moonlight to make the little glass eyes of goats and donkeys and little boys dressed in red felt waistcoats, glow like the hot coals of Hades. Its all very Chucky/Amityville Horror: you know, Tupperware meets Stephen King.

And there are so many of them. I’ve decided that the knik-knak was invented in Croatia. They have reached the apex of excellence in turning any life-form into a plastic artefact – very bit of greenery and flower I have ever seen and quite a few that I haven’t (nor has anybody else in the known universe).

And I didn’t realise that cows can be pink with panniers strapped to their backs filled with fruit and nuts. And purple, green, orange and blue work well when they are used to weave a plastic table runner that is then framed and hung on the bedroom wall. I’ve discovered that such art really does work well with fuschia bedspreads covered in brown cabbage roses.

Part of me (the one that liked my nan’s dunny doll when I was 6) is glad the knik-knak lives on in such abundance. Another part of me is heading home to throw out anything that has more plastic than the average bottle top.

Until next time…….