Here in the Balkans according to the Orthodox calendar & local traditions, Christmas was only last week and New Year is yet to come & it feels like a good time to talk about all the celebrations we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy so far…
31st December found me in the kitchen. Inspired by weird & wonderful ingredients in Danny’s cupboards just begging to be used & my new-found passion for cooking from the ingredients on hand, I got creative. A world food buffet unfolded, based on aduki beans (apparently also called adzuki beans – never heard of them before!) We had Moroccan Couscous with almonds & apricots; Italian rice with sun-dried tomatoes, wild mushrooms & olives; a Somalian dish ‘Cambuulo’ (aduki beans cooked with cream & nutmeg); Chinese salad (shredded veg, seasoning &… aduki beans); and Mexican spicy bean burgers (you guessed it – made with aduki beans!) with homemade kiwi chutney & sweet chilli sauce and the only non-vegetarian dish… French Lemon & Garlic Chicken.
I’m not a vegetarian and only 3 of our number that evening were but I am increasingly thrifty. So if the dishes tasted great without the introduction of meat (ergo ‘cost’) so much the better. I had so much fun finding ways to bring out the flavours of vegetables, nuts, pulses, herbs… I have just re-read this sentence and am chuckling – this is my idea of ’so much fun’ these days! Don’t tell the folk back home who knew me in my wild days, dancing in showers for money – my reputation will be in tatters!
9 of us washed down the yummy food with plenty of bubbly and beer. Amongst our number was Marjan (probably spelt wrong, sorry!), Slovenian and clearly a big meat-eater. It was praise indeed that he admitted, despite severe reservations, that the food was good! We then set off to a nearby Marina for a fireworks display. Steve was SO excited about seeing fireworks for the first time in 3½ years and he wasn’t disappointed. As the clock struck midnight, the shells painted the sky and we ooohed & aaahed for 15 minutes, sat on a jetty swigging bubbly from the bottle!
Afterwards we were invited onto a beautiful sailing yacht, L’Illiad, moored in the marina. A Dutch guy, Jeroen, his French missus, Sophie & their adopted Montenegrin dog, Luka were liveaboards & had been restoring the yacht over the past 10 years – the polished wood & attention to detail was astonishing. We were a cosmopolitan bunch – folk there from the UK, Holland, France, Ireland, Tasmania, Montenegro & the US. We finally left the boat at around 3.30am and Steve drove some of us back to Dobrota. Kotor was flooded – really, scarily so. A combination of a high tide on this full moon and lots of rain, meant we were driving with salt water halfway up our wheels – only the God of old cars knows how the trusty Fiesta made it through the waves without stalling! More merriment was in order on our safe arrival, especially for Steve who definitely deserved a drink after sailing us home, so we carried on partying until we finally crashed out at about 5am.
Bozic, Christmas Day for the locals, was on January 7th. Just because we are not ‘local’ or brought up in the Orthodox faith does not mean we cannot respect/ enjoy the traditions of the country we currently call home. I love looking out for the sprigs of oak (and sometimes olive & bay) that adorn cars and homes around Badnjak Dan (Christmas Eve) and we have been enthralled by the simple, powerful traditions here – such as throwing wheat into the fire & praying for a good harvest in the year ahead. The streets are deserted here at Bozic when families are cosied up together inside feasting and we say “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and cosy up too. Actually we are developing our own tradition, which is to spend it with friends and eat food that is as far flung as possible in our version of ‘Bozic with a Twist’. This year it was Chinese followed by Mon’s divine Zesty Lemon Cake. It’s the lightest, fluffliest, most lemony creation – if I can produce anything like the same result in our dot-dash oven at home it will become my favourite thing to do with lemons…
Izzy was very tolerant of us silly adults who hooted with laughter at silly Steve’s attempts to draw using her Etch-a-Sketch thingy. Izzy requested a ‘budderfly’ and Steve tried, but oh, my it was funny… We laughed and drank and chatted and… hugged! Nice things to do on Christmas day or any other day…
The following day I succumbed to a haircut. It had been 6 months since the last surgery and my split ends were a disgrace. Trapped in the chair at ‘Cut Cut’ I remembered why I loathe going to the hairdresser… There I was, looking Ridiculous (yep, with a capital ‘R’) clothed in a plastic cape, staring at myself in the mirror. I’m a notorious fidgeter and usually spend the first few minutes looking anywhere but straight ahead in the mirror. Unfortunately it seems I can’t just move my eyes – so as I scan the room, my head and sometimes my body moves too. Zivko firmly places my head front forward, gives me a look and flashes his blades menacingly. If I am to survive this encounter and not end up like a female Van Gogh, I must submit to staring myself in the face. There’s something about the light in a hairdressing salon that is particularly unkind – the creases seem deeper than normal, the laughter lines not funny at all… I think right there in Kotor old town on January 8th I had my crisis about my soon-to-be 40 years on this planet. Stuff it – cut me a fringe, layer the hell out of the hair and hope it distracts people from how aged my silly old face has become.
It was a happy hair day in the end. Steve was delighted with the fringe – he’d been badgering me to try the look for years and although it will probably never look as good as it did when the stylist blew it dry, it has potential. And, looking on the bright side, my early age-rage crisis may mean that I don’t totally lose the plot on July 19th…
The next happy event was Katie’s birthday. She had the inspired idea of asking folk to rock up on Saturday afternoon with gloves and bin bags and do the right thing… trek down to Bigova beach and pick up rubbish! We had walked down to the lighthouse with Katie & Tim and the dogs at Winter Solstice and been appalled by the mound of plastic bottle and junk washed up onto the beach. It was a daunting task for a few bodies but with many hands and willing spirits the clean-up mission could be easy & effective.
12 adults and 6 dogs trooped down to the lighthouse beach waving our rubber gloves and bin bags. It had been chucking it down with rain when we left Dobrota but in Bigova (30 minutes drive away, at the mouth of the Bay) it was dry and warm. The many layers we had piled on to keep us cosy and dry all came peeling off en route! On the beach some of us were working in T-shirts when, inevitably, the rain came. There was a brief squally downpour, climaxing in a stunning double rainbow. Soggy but smug, we continued bagging the broken sandals, rusty cans and countless plastic bottles until all 40 bin liners were brimming full. We stacked them up in the sheltered bushes out of the way of the waves to be collected by boat another day.
Back at the house we changed out of damp clothes and began to make merry. My birthday present to Katie had been to cook a veggie banquet. I hated to think of her slaving over a hot stove on her special day and whilst Tim was a man of many talents, cooking was not one of them! The healthy, veggie grub went down a treat – Tim kindly commented it had been a revelation for many people there who had never experienced tasty vegetarian food, especially in Montenegro. Steve said it was delicious – I waited for the ‘but’ – ‘but it would have been even better with meat’ etc – but it never came… The good deeds done seemed to put everyone in a top mood & the conversations around the dinner table were about important environmental issues and changing attitudes in Montenegro. After much drinking of wine & beer, things disintergrated to their normal base level and many of us got horribly drunk in Katie’s honour!
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