A Mermaid in Trieste

So I finally realized why my favorite color has always been greenish blue/bluish green. It is the color of the Adriatic at Trieste.

The water is SO beautiful, even when it is cold and overcast. I just wanted to jump in and swim, embracing my inner mermaid wholeheartedly.

Let me start further back…

This past weekend I went to visit my great aunt (Teta in Slovenian) Magda and her family in Trieste. She is married to my uncle Bogdan (Strzt in Slovenian) and has three sons: Dan, David and Pavel. Dan’s daughter is Natasa who is 19 years old. I spent most of the weekend with Magda and Pavel. Pavel is 29 and we hung out a lot. I spoke Italian almost the whole time.

Soooo…. Where do I even begin??? Well first of all, my family is NOT Italian. Only Italian by citizenship. My whole family speaks Slovenian together and Italian is their second language. Bogdan also speaks French and English. Pavel also knows German and is learning English. Natasa speaks Slovenian and Italian but has taken a lot of English classes.

To get to Trieste from Perugia, I had to take 3 trains… misery abounds. On the way there wasn’t SO bad. Magda picked me up by herself. The Italian conversation commenced! My aunt loves to talk… and once she got used to me being there, she kind of forgot how basic my Italian was… so suddenly, she was telling me these complicated stories. So I’d get the general idea, nod along and say “Si”, hoping to God she wasn’t asking me a question. But after telling me this WAY COMPLICATED story about the local priest, she’d throw me for a loop by asking a completely unrelated question. Haha. She probably thinks I’m retarded.

After 3 hours of conversation over a delicious meal I barely noticed because I was so focused on listening, she let me go to bed. My brain was so fried that I slept FOR TEN HOURS. I think I moved twice all night. So then Magda, Pavel and I drove to Slovenia for a delicious lunch. We went to this restaurant in the country about 50 minutes away. Of course, there was no menu so ordering was super awkward. I ended up getting a pasta sampler (OMG): pasta with mushroom sauce, gnocchi, ecc. Slovenian gnocchi is SO much better than Italian gnocchi, IMO. Then I had some amazing fresh produce in my salad and some roasted rabbit in sauce. MMmmmmm. So delicious.

I was sooo tired but felt like I needed some exercise. I fell asleep in the car for a bit too. We went to Castello Duino in Trieste. It belongs to some prince but they let people visit it. It has a bunker and was used by Nazis during WW2 as a post because of its location. Magda dropped off Pavel and I so we could explore it. It was such a pleasant chill time. We chatted in Italian and English. The castle had all these pretty rooms. The bunker was cold and wet. The gardens were very fresh and beautiful. But the VIEWS were INSANE. I am such a water person. I’m sure Pavel thought I was nuts. I was freaking out over how beautiful the sea was.

I want to be a mermaid and dash through the green waves to my white rock oasis.

Then we went home… and I took a 2 hour nap. I don’t take naps EVVVVERRRR. Translation = squashing of the brain.