Croatia Achieved

We’ve been in Croatia now for a day and so far it has definitely been worth all the hassle it took to get here. We had endless problems in South Africa to get the visas. Red tape billows about the Croatian visa process like the cloud on Table Mountain, but unlike the cloud, it’s not even a little bit charming. The Croatians are also burdened with the most unpleasant receptionist creature that I have ever the misfortune to encounter in an embassy. She was rude, brusque and nasty to every person I watched her deal with. She was utterly unhelpful to me and to everyone else I saw her interact with. I was just working up to telling her that if all Croatians were like her then she could take her visa and stick it somewhere and we would find somewhere else to go, when I heard her talking Afrikaans and realized that she was actually South African and not Croatian. Eek! Fortunately I ended up getting past the sour creature and I ended up dealing with a lovely Croatian lady.

So anyway, here we are in Split, depsite the best efforts of that troll from the embassy. It is gorgeous. The old town has narrow, windy, charming streets and they are cleaner than the streets we encountered in Italy. It’s also not quite as expensive as Italy, which is a great pleasure to my pressured pocket. Yesterday we took a shuttle bus from the airport and then walked a short distance from the bus stop to our new accommodation – Apartments Nikolla. This is a small, family run establishment very near to the old town. It has a friendly, welcoming atmosphere and it has a kitchen at our disposal. Oh joy of joy!!!!!!!! I dashed out and bought real vegetables to make stir-fry. Well the ankle does not let me dash anywhere, but I walked out very slowly and bought real vegetables and some chicken breast fillets. I had my first proper home cooked meal since 18 May! It was great. I think I may have been on the brink of scurvy. I found myself positively salivating over the marrows of all vegetables. So much so that I have bought more marrows for dinner tonight.

Dinner tonight will be fish and marrows and red onions. But the coolest thing is that I bought the fish from a real fish market. Woo hoo! Split is a coastal town, and every morning there is a genuine fish market in the old town. I saw it on the map yesterday and developed an insane desire to buy a fish and cook it as part of my genuine Croatian experience. So today I wandered to the market and bought two fish. I don’t know what kind of fish I bought – Croatian is not like Italian or Spanish where you can at least take a flying guess at what a word means. It’s unintelligible to me. Anyway, I bought two fish that looked like they wanted to come home and be dinner. Of course, they were whole fish, and I was faced with the realization that I had to gut and clean these fish before we could eat them. But this did not fill me with dismay; I was actually quite keen to do it. It seemed to me that gutting and filleting a fish somehow needed to be part of the whole experience. I had no idea how to even start the process, since I have never done it before. So, ever resourceful, I logged onto the internet and googled “how to clean a fish.”

Cleaning a fish is more complicated than it sounds. I found a myriad of articles on how to clean a fish and each one said something slightly different. Eventually I lost patience and skulked off to the kitchen with the idea that I need to cut it from gills to somewhere near the rear, scoop out the muck and then just hack about generally until I magically had boneless, fleshy, fishy fillets. Easy peasy! The only thing that all of the articles were in agreement about was that I need a devastatingly sharp knife if I want my fillets to be fillets and not shredded tuna. No sharp knives here, they have been blunted by many tourists. I snuck into the kitchen quietly to try and prepare my fish without an audience. I didn't want any veteran fish filleters catching sight of what I was doing and falling over laughing and pointing... As per my internet instructions, I started off by slicing the fish from somewhere near the gills to somewhere near the vent/anal fins. I then got to scoop out all of the entrails and bits and bobs, which was not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it was easy and not even remotely icky. That was the easy bit. From there I wasn’t sure how to cut the fillets but as I gamely prepared to attack the fish with my hacking device, a very nice Australian man came into the kitchen. He exclaimed in excitement about how cool it was that I had gone off to the market and bought fish. When I confessed that I was about to butcher them with no previous training, he showed me how to hack off the heads and then cut out the fillets. He first procured a razor sharp knife from our landlady. It seems that a razor sharp knife really is the one and only golden rule of fish preparation. He did the first one and then left me to do the rest, which I duly did, filled to the brim with a great sense of satisfaction.

It was around this stage of the proceedings that N arrived somewhat warily in the kitchen, looking like a deer that might take flight if it saw any raw meat. (He is more than a little squeamish.) Despite my exuberance, I managed to resist the urge to fling a fish head at him and shriek “Catch!” At the fish market he had made it absolutely clear that he would not be involved in the preparation. He said he said he didn’t mind cooking them, but he totally refused to do any slicing and dicing of raw fish. Ha! I am not about to relinquish the cooking of these fish! There is something extremely satisfying about preparing your own food from scratch and I want to see the whole thing through. (Well, it is satisfying to prepare your own food from scratch when you have the time to do it. It’s another story when you have worked a 10 hour day and squeezed in a run and would still like to shower and prepare for the next day. Then I say bring on convenience food.)

So now the fish are filleted and the veggies are sliced. I am eagerly awaiting supper time. I am well chuffed that I have learned a new skill and am experiencing new things. I feel as if I should be a farmer or something earthy. (Funny how learning how to gut and fillet a fish has given me the same feelings I got when I used to grow my own herbs!) And, most of all, I am thrilled by the fact that it has been more than a day since I last had to consume a tin of tuna or a slice of pizza! Today has been a good day.

Ps - we have discovered an internet freebie thing but we only have limited bandwidth at our disposal. I shall attempt to buy a top-up package later today or sometime soon. Until I get this right, this will be a no photo blog.