Brijesta - Finding My Roots

  Brijesta, Croatia
Thursday, November 30, 2006

See all our Brijesta photos on our Smugmug Page!

After spending one day in Dubrovnik (we are returning later) we headed to Brijesta, a very small village on Peljesac peninsula where my (Sara's) great-grandparents were born and lived before the emigrated to the USA. We found a guesthouse on the internet owned by Nedjelko Peric' (the c has a dash over it in Croatian, giving it a "ch" sound). That is the same last name as my great-grandfather so I joked with him that perhaps we were related. He said that almost everyone in that village is related in some way or another so we probably were. After studying a family tree that Uncle Louie had e-mailed to us, we realized that we were in fact related - third cousins (our great-grandfathers were brothers). Nedjelko only stays in Brijesta in the summer, otherwise he lives in Dubrovnik. His mom lives there full time. But Brijesta is a major satsuma orange growing area and he was going to be in Brijesta for harvest, along with his sister Miranda. If we took a bus up the peninsula and told the driver to drop us at the road to Brijesta, he would pick us up there.

The bus ride there was fine but when the driver dropped us at the correct spot we found ourselves standing in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, there was no sign of life for miles. Tumbleweeds were rolling by. You could hear crickets chirping and a bird in the distance. Thankfully another man was dropped off at the same spot and let us use his cell phone so we didn't have to wave down a passing car. We assumed we would see a pay phone and Nedjelko assumed that we had a cell phone (everyone in the world now has a cell phone so it is a fair assumption). He came and picked us up and when we drove over the hill we gasped at the beauty of this place.

Brijesta Sunset

Brijesta is on a cove, on the landward side of the peninsula. There are pine covered islands outside the cove with the mountains on the mainland in the distance. More beautiful than the San Juans? You all be the judge but they are close. No wonder Great-Grandpa and so many other Croatians chose to call Anacortes home.

The satsuma orange harvest was an unexpected treat on our visit to Brijesta. Most winters in the states we buy two or three boxes of the oranges every week for the short time they arrive in the grocery stores from Japan. We eat them until our mouths are full of canker sores and we don't want to look at another citrus fruit. So here we are in a village where there are hundreds of trees full of the fruit and given permission to eat as much as we want. We won't say that we ate twenty a day but we probably came close. We took a good twenty pounds back with us to Dubrovnik.

Our main task in Brijesta was to find Grandma's first cousin, Katica Bautovich and her husband Nikola. They are quite old and we hadn't heard much in the last few years so we sent a letter to them over the summer to let them know that we would be coming this month. My friend Lidija from work even translated it for me into Croatian. We were pleased that they wrote back just to know that they were still alive. Being a small village Nedjelko knew them and where they lived so we went to visit them the next afternoon.

Katica and Nikola were adorable. They were doing quite well at 80 and 82. They had various health ailments to share with us, as many people their age do. We had a Croatian dictionary/phrasebook that helped a bit with translating but otherwise we used miming and short one word phrases. We were impressed on some discussions we managed to have, like the one about Katica's bowel impaction surgery. Miming bowel impaction is as impressive as it sounds.

Much like the my other Grandma's cousin in Biella, Katica welcomed us with food every time we arrived for a visit. Prsut, Croatia's salty prosciutto and homemade bread started the meal but it would follow with soup, meat and the freshest salad we have ever had, with lettuce picked a minute before from the garden and extra-extra virgin olive oil pressed that week. Olive trees were everywhere in the village and the olives were so plentiful that the locals couldn't pick them fast enough. What they picked went to make delicious oil in the village oil press.

With Bautovich Family

 An unlucky chicken was sacrificed in the morning for a lunch at her home on the second day. She also had bottles of homemade wine and grappa, a spirit made from grapes that could probably cause blindness if you drank more than a shot. She sent us home with two bottles of wine, two loaves of bread and two bottles of Grappa. We drank the wine, ate the bread but tried to do our best with the grappa.

When our Uncle Phil was ordained in 72 he said his first mass here in Brijesta at the small Catholic church. He studied at the seminary for American students in Rome so he was ordained at the Vatican. He came with many of the Blooms and Jim and Becky Burns from Italy to the village and performed midnight mass on Christmas eve. Many people we spoke with still remember that so we were pleased to share that with Uncle Phil. They only stayed one night on that trip. We visited the church and took a photo through the window. Outside the church were the graves of all the residents in the town. We found some for some deceased family members but were a bit surprised to see an open tomb for Katica and Nikola. They weren't the only ones to do this, so it must not be a strange thing here.

Brijesta is not for people looking for excitement. The village is quiet in both activity and noise. An outboard motor is heard once in a while when someone goes out to check their mussel pots. People here fish and harvest mussels, oranges and olives. Other parts of the peninsula are famous for their grapes so most also make their own wine. In the summer they get a few tourists coming to stay for a few weeks, looking for peace and quiet and grandchildren of the residents arrive from the city. We were the only tourists to come this time of year but no one gave us much notice, They were all very nice.

The only drawback of visiting Brijesta this time of year was the very short days. I guess that is a problem with traveling in winter in general. Brijesta had it worse because the village was surrounded by tall hills and the sun went behind them by about 3:00. Once the sun set all bets were off and the temperature dropped very quickly. It was freezing! Of course the apartment we stayed in never got visitors this time of year so the only heating they had was lots of blankets. Sometimes we would go to bed by 9pm just to try and stay warm! We also drank a lot of tea and hot lemon water. That seemed to help.

After a few days in Brijesta Nedjelko was heading home so we were able to ride back to Dubrovnik with him and Miranda. This is one place we will definitely return.