Slovenia: In Search Of Cousin Jaka (cont.)
Not sure how to react, I asked for a bed. She led me to a room that had clearly been Jaka's office; there were awards, photos and paintings bearing Jaka's signature covering the walls. Not sure what else to do, I went to sleep.
I awoke early the next morning to find a feast of eggs, breads, boiled meats and hot coffee on a table set for one. It was the first meal Ani had prepared for anyone since her husband's passing a few days earlier. For the next three days I stayed up late into the night hearing Ani's stories of Jaka and looking at old photos, some of them of my great grandparents long before they ever made the voyage to America, years before my grandmother, now in her nineties, was born.
Ani spoke with pride of Jaka fighting with the Allies against the Nazis. She told me about Bled, the crystal lake with an island church at its center, where they spent their summers swimming and winters skating.
During my stay, Laddo lent me his Yugo one afternoon and I made the hour drive to Bled. It was an overcast day, but the lake was still staggeringly beautiful. I took my time walking around and began to understand why, several times during the Cold War, my mom made the journey to her (then communist) ancestral home.
After a few days with Ani, I decided to return to the capital.
There was one other Slovenian phone number my mother had sent with me. Several years earlier, a letter came addressed to her from a girl in Slovenia, my age, who, after finding a box of letters and photographs in her grandfather's attic, realized she had distant relatives living in America. Diligently my mother responded and thus began a friendship with Maja, whom she's still never met.
When I called Maja, I had no idea what to expect. I never thought that years later I would return to Slovenia to watch a solar eclipse with her over the Ljubljanica River. I didn't count on making a lifelong friend. Slovenia is full of surprises.
I spent a few days in Ljubljana with Maja and her friends. They showed me around their perfect medieval city, a place that embraces the future, with its cell phones and cyber cafes, but also holds on to traditional ways of life. They often complained about how small everything was. In Ljubjana they say that if you run into someone you know three times in one day, one of you is expected to buy the other a drink.
We strolled through the town from café to café, crossing its three famous bridges: the cast iron Dragon Bridge, with its signature monsters that are the symbol of the city; the Shoemaker's Bridge, which got its name when the town's authorities decided that the stench of the butcher shops on either side of the bridge was limiting its use, thus replacing them with cobblers.
And finally, the three-spanned Triple Bridge, which leads to the heart of old Ljubljana beginning with Preseren Square, a monument to France Preseren, Slovenia's poet laureate and author of its national anthem. The statue shows Preseren facing the balcony of Julija, his unwilling muse who he wrote about openly and by name, but who would never have him. My new friends took turns translating and reciting his poetry for me as we continued the short, yet comprehensive tour of Ljubljana.
When I returned to Slovenia two years later, Jaka and Ani's son Mettjash, the co-owner of a dairy company and part of Slovenia's emerging class of young capitalists, took me under his wing. He had received an MBA from an international school in Bucharest and was impatiently waiting, with little hope, for Slovenia to transform into a global economic force.
Mettjash wanted to take me on several day trips to that would show me some of the best Slovenia has to offer.
We started with Kranjska Gora, Slovenia's first class ski resort where the Alpine World Cup is held each year. It was April and flowers were beginning to bloom in Kranj. He lent me a sweater and some wool pants and we skied a handful of runs in blizzard like conditions.
The next day he took me to Postojna, the home of a vast cave, where visitors are toured by electric train through halls and chambers of stalactites and stalagmites some of which bore striking resemblance to icons like Mickey Mouse. Later that day, he took me to a farm in Lipica where the world-renowned Lipizzaner horses are bred. That night we dined on schnitzel and river fish in a little roadhouse café, cradled between two snow-capped hills.
In subsequent days, we explored islands in the Croatian Adriatic and took in operas in Vienna.
It wasn't until many months later that I realized how deeply my first trip to Slovenia would influence me. Coming face to face with one’s roots is an experience few Americans ever have.
I've since returned to Slovenia often. I've visited the childhood home of my great grandfather as well as his grave, encountered dozens of relatives and learned things about my ancestors and ultimately learned things about myself. All because of Cousin Jaka, a man I never had the pleasure of meeting.
I thought back to the decision I made in Florence to make good on a promise to my mother. Sometimes she does know best.
Page 2
of 2 Previous Page
All contents copyright ©2006 Pology
Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly
prohibited. |
