On the sea: Zadar

It’s an enormous suite, overlooking the harbour, with two huge terraces. Usually we book this for six people,” says Matea, surprised when I say it is just me. I wasn’t supposed to come to Zadar, intending to take a train to Ljubljana in Slovenia today. But when I saw Jess and Bozhil last week, she…

Mapping (Zagreb, day 2)

The temperature lightened a tiny bit today — to 33C — and my soul woke up lighter as well. I’m still sick — that two line RAT test doesn’t lie — but I feel like I have a simple cold now, the headache and general achy feeling gone. It’s my last full day in Zagreb,…

War and ice cream

“I’m not Croatian,” says the young, freckled woman scooping my wildberry ice cream. “I am Ukrainian. Putin is killing innocent people. I had to flee my home.” War and ice cream. Seems about right for my first full day in Croatia. I’m not feeling great — sore throat, raspy, sore chest, runny nose, sense of…

Death bureaucracy

“It’s so hard to die in this country!” Bimala is my friend now, the person in my local bank branch who is helping me with my mom’s estate account. My mom died. Did I tell you? It’s still surreal, the swiftness of the call about the ambulance, the primal pain for a week, the moment…

Eggs

I peel a hard boiled egg on the terrace of Cassia Lodge my last morning here. The egg has a minor role in a vast breakfast that also includes a fruit and yogurt course, some vegetables they steamed specially for me, some sweet little pancakes with passable syrup, fried potatoes. I gave the yogurt to…

Nicholas’ Village

We stop at the petrol station at the junction of Nicholas’ village, so he can show me his shop. I get out of the car and Brenda Nsiimenta points out that they are butchering meat right there, for Christmas. She thinks I will find it interesting. Without thinking, I snap a quick photo of the…

Manoti Rebecca

Smith and I take twin bodas to a residential street on the edge of Mbarara, looking for the place Manoti Rebecca works. We shoot forward and back, stopping at a T junction of two red dusty roads, a small sign that says Buhumuriro Counseling Centre. “They have shifted since I was here last.” “Should we…

A Covid accent on everything

Ugandan accents are home to me now, the different regional languages fusing into a shared rhythm in English, alternately soothing and pocked with loud inflection, soft and punctuated with low growls that demonstrate that you are indeed listening to the person.  The upended, rhetorical question.  “We thought the pandemic was coming to an end, but…

My boys brought me flowers

The lift off from Toronto is bumpy, windy and suspended, bouncy enough that I genuinely wonder, for the first time in my life, if the plane might crash on takeoff.  It is a thing that happens.  As I ponder my forethought at revising my will, my seatmate takes a photo of Toronto by dark.  We don’t crash.  We bounce…

5 days in Burgas: be here now

This time in Bulgaria — like all times since March, 2020 — hasn’t actually followed the plan. After the first two incredibly intense days of riding, I abandoned the whole carefully-crafted intention to traverse the country by bike and cobbled together a whole new trip of time with my friends, time by the sea, shorter…