THE COST OF SINSEMILLA IN ZAGREB
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2009
1
15
26
Trip End
Apr 16, 2009
Zagreb,
Croatia
Sunday, March 29, 2009
All I really want is a real meal, complete with rice and soy sauce and fresh-cut veggies kissing the wok with light hot licks. My stomach's growling, but I'm so bored with bread and cheese that I don't bother to eat. I eat a lot of apples, but that's boring, too. Such are the whinings of the not-so-intrepid traveler. They used to say that the way to a man's heart is through is his stomach, and while that may or may not be PC-OK to say in reference to women any more, it certainly applies to geography
Queuing for... you, too!
. I've been spoiled by years in Asia, with fresh hot cheap healthy (?) food readily available on the street, or close to it. European-style bakeries are nice for a change, but really can't compete in the long run. Pizza makes a valiant try to be the universal standard fast food, but with mixed results. When they start coming out of bakeries, not pizzerias, complete with ketchup on top like I've seen here, I start looking elsewhere. I think I've even seen mayonnaise on them here, but I don't want to know any more than that.I almost got run over crossing the street in Zagreb because I thought I saw a Chinese restaurant on the other side, but it was a false alarm. Then I found a real one, but the prices were in geo-stationary orbit over Iceland. I'll survive without it I guess. At least the veggie pizza here has broccoli, and there seems to be local cuisine with some of the same names as those in Bosnia, so I may venture into the restaurant fray if I find one with a ventilator. But the real food story of this trip is about blood oranges. I discovered them in Italy, found them again in Tunis, then Mladen had some from home in Dubrovnik, and now I find them in Zagreb. Is this something radiating outward from Italy? Why haven't I ever seen them in Asia or South America, places with many sizes and types? Thailand even prides itself on refining oranges to the ultimate sweetness and the thinnest skin and the least fiber possible (any comparison to their women would be inappropriate since my wife is Thai
Mormons have landed!
. If we ever break up, then look out!). Well this sounds like an opportunity for the enterprising adventurer, so I imagine myself taking carefully selected seeds back to Thailand and starting a new life as an orchard magnate. When I see them in the market today, in varying degrees of redness, I figure there's no time like the present so invest in a kilogram (Th. 'lo') of them, some that are light red. There's only one problem. THEY'VE GOT NO SEEDS. I JUST INVESTED IN A KILO OF SINSEMILLA (the word 'sinsemilla' means 'seedless' in Spanish btw, nothing more nothing less. Any connotations of sensual derangement are pure pig Latin). So where does the redness come from? Are these hermaphrodites or something like that? Do I get to manipulate my orange trees' sexuality? It's sounding more like Thailand all the time. Of course even sinsemilla has a seed or two of course, and in a half kilo so far I've found three. This orchard may be a slow starter. I also figure out that the redder the better, or at least, sweeter.
Darko Rundek has a song called 'Sinsemiglia' which gets all mystic and mysterious before ultimately playing out into Balkan over-dramatization, but still he's quite fun to listen to. He's one of the few local boys to find some currency in the current world music market
Tito & Roosevelt square off
. I planned to catch him in Sarajevo tonight but now I'm not there. He'll be here in Zagreb tomorrow night, but I haven't seen any posters for it, so make no plans, except to continue on to Ljubljana. I almost left today, but thought better of it. Compared to S'jevo, my current digs suck- no wifi or cable TV, just a lot of Croatian stuff and some sitcoms like The Nanny, Reba, and similar fare from UK and Spain, but at least the weather's better. Ultimately any place worth stopping is worth staying, at least for a day. You can quote me on that. So I do. Zagreb's pretty nice really, almost like Prague or something, but cheap lodging is scarce, not uncommon in capital cities- Santiago de Chile comes to mind. If the international groovers ever get tired of Budapest and come here instead, some competition may help. Me, I've got up such a head of steam after achieving the escape velocity to leave 'S'jevo' and booking Africa for next month that I'm having trouble slowing down. Well, the big news in Zagreb is that sales of U2 tickets have lines of buyers backed up all over town, camping out and causing the web-site to crash. I'm not sure it's worth it. In Kenya someone who looks a lot like Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic's general Mladic has been spotted after being on the lam for nearly fifteen years. And on the home front a new Chinese store has opened but they misspelled the word 'Chinese' in Croatian
Face of a Nation
. Instead of 'Kineski' they spelled it 'Kienski', the ramifications of which I'm not sure of, like 'Chiense' instead of 'Chinese' in English, no big deal, but if it were like 'Chiens' in French, then that would be worse. To blend into a new place seamlessly, you need to know enough of the language to GET the jokes, not be them. Zagreb and Croatia feel like Europe again, a welcome change after a string of sometimes-not-so-beautiful cities in the Balkans. Ljubljana and Slovenia should be even more so, complete with higher prices. At least they'll be in €uros. I'm tired of counting all this funny money, Monopoly money, shopping certificates only good on the day of the sale and at selected stores. Mostly I'm tired of being in the dark in a region that really shouldn't be so. I'm reminded of the line in the Coen brothers' film 'Brother Where Art Thou', "we ain't got no radio here." That kilo of orange sinsemilla cost about two bucks George W btw.
