Meeting up with the cousins somewhere along the road seemed like a fine idea when we were still at home, planning the trip, but for some reason (full-time jobs, sloth, indecisiveness, varying ideas with regard to what constitutes acceptable accommodation, radically different budgets), we never got around to settling on a destination, let alone reserving rooms. In retrospect, we should have been a little more pro-active. Every farmstay bunk in Croatia was being gobbled up while we hemmed and hawed with our thumbs up our heiners. Back when I was a childless backpacker, the possibility that there would be no room at the inn never created much stress. In a pinch, I could always bed down on a beach, a train station or a pile of leaves.
That doesn't fly so well with kids in tow. Also, I was keenly aware that my in-laws get a limited amount of vacation time each year, and weren't too keen to squander more than a few hours of it on the road from Budapest to . . . wherever it was we might wind up. I'd been lobbying for one of these tourist farms, reasoning that animals wouldn't be nearly as pissy as city folk, should Milo and Cousin Ben-Ben's snips, snails and puppy dog tails get the best of them. But with just twenty-four hours before our two camps were due to pow-wow, our coordinates remained uncharted.
In desperation, Greg and I decided to cross the border after breakfast and make a beeline to the nearest Croatian tourist office. They had phones, internet access, insider knowledge and the ability to communicate with non-English-speaking farmers. Once the experts had given us our marching orders, we'd exchange the euros we'd been using in Slovenia for kuna, buy an international calling card, figure out how to use it and ring Greg's brother, Sam, who was expecting us to get in touch at ten, get directions and head for the farm. Yeah, that'd work. According to the guidebook, there was a tourist office an hour away in Opatija, described as a crumbling spa town once favored by Emperor Franz-Josef, Isadora Duncan and an endless stream of wealthy, tubercular Austro-Hungarians.
"Oh, wow," I said, as the Adriatic loomed on the horizon, a twinkling blue surprise. "Kids, look. Pause the DVD and look up for a second."
"Is Cousin Ben here?" Milo asked.
"Uh, no, not yet. Soon." Privately, Greg and I had begun to suspect that the reason Sam and Beth had been dragging their feet was that they were inclined to bag out, but didn't want to hurt our feelings by doing so in advance. As adults, we completely understood where they were coming from, if indeed, that's where they were coming from, but I feared how this news would affect Inky and Milo, who were bursting with plans for cousinly funs. Ah, plans.
We found the Tourist Office, and I'll be damned if it wasn't closed — whether for Good Friday or good, it was impossible to say, though apparently there was another one located two or three kilometers down the main road.
I had to admit that things were not looking good. Traffic was bumper to bumper, and the sidewalks thronged with vacationers basking in the Riviera-like temperatures. It looked like half of Italy had flown over for the weekend. No doubt some were already pressing inland toward the Zumberak, where all the farms I'd been looking at online are located, and tourist accommodation is in much shorter supply.
"Now is Cousin Ben here?" Milo demanded.
"No. Daddy's taking us to find someone who's going to tell us where we can meet him." I glanced worriedly at Daddy. Daddy looked like he wanted to tear someone a new asshole.
"Rrnghh, this is taking too long!" Milo shouted with the righteous indignation of the near-totally ignorant.
"Let's help Daddy concentrate by being quiet, okay?" I suggested, as I stared haggardly out the passenger window. Probably not the best time to ask Greg to pull over so I could take a picture of the incredibly picturesque, wisteria-draped villas lining the boardwalk like some lost work by Tennessee Williams. I would have liked to stay here, I thought wistfully. If only we hadn't gotten ourselves into this mess with Sam and Beth.
"Shit, there it is!" Greg yelled, looking in the rearview mirror.
"I heard that!" Inky called. It's always good to know there's a nine-year-old girl keeping score in the back when the tension's high.
We non-drivers should strive to remain deferential until the vehicle in which we are riding comes to a complete stop, but after five blocks, my anxiety got the better of me and I timidly suggested that we should find a place to pull over.
"Sure, if you can tell me where," Greg snapped. I'd have done the same, were I piloting a toy-littered rental car in gridlock, an hour after I was to have called my brother to tell him where we'd be spending the night in this wholly unfamiliar country.
Opatija bled into Ika, as I thumbed furiously through the Rough Guide, trying to determine if there was a Tourist Info in Opatija — a former fishing village that, like Ika, now qualifies as a seaside resort in its own right. Amazingly, it not only has one, it's on the public pier, right next to a parking lot, where a car was pulling out. Not only that, it was staffed by a helpful young woman in cat's eye glasses, who gamely got on the horn to see if there was any farm in a two-hundred mile radius willing to accommodate us on such short notice.
"Hey, as far as I'm concerned," I whispered to Greg, as our new friend dialed yet another possibility, "should Sam and Beth decide to sit this one out, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for us to stay here."
"Opatija was one of the places Sam said he'd consider driving to."
"Really?" How had this information slipped past me? Had I been too fixated on a farm stay to hear anyone else's suggestions?
Apparently so. After the ensuing four days of sunny, ice-cream-filled sightseeing and mercurial kid dynamics in balmy, palmy Opatija, Beth let it slip that I was the only one crazy enough to have seen vacation possibilities in a barnyard.
"But only because of the kids!" I defended myself, splashing some more of the locally produced truth serum into wineglasses borrowed from the landlady, an upstanding fireplug. If we were getting on her nerves, she was far too discreet to let it show, unlike the icy male half of the Austrian fitness-buff couple lodged next door. He gave Sam detailed directions for an all-day hike he erroneously claimed would not be too challenging for a party such as ours.
"Stop worrying about that jerk," Greg commanded, when I fretted about ruining our athletic neighbors' romantic weekend. "Who does he think he is? He only thinks he gets to act that way because he doesn't have kids!"
Exactly.