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Fine Dining at a Croatian Farmers’ Market
How I experience travel on my tastebuds as a vegetarian
Cherry red umbrellas open toward the sky’s golden yolk and shade farmers who shout “Izvolite!” to the swarms shopping at Dolac Market. Honey bees hum above piles of royal plums sold by a sturdy-looking babushka, and I stammer, searching for a word in Hrvatski to ask for a bag of fresh figs.
It’s Saturday morning in Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, and I’m starving.
The babushka looks at me with weary eyes and smiles as she murmurs something in her native tongue. It sounds like a question.
“Ja ne razumijem,” I respond. “Govorite engleski?” This is where my understanding of the Croatian language both begins and ends. For all I know, my attempt sounds like vowels and consonants tossed in a salad mixed with too much vigor. I don’t understand. Do you speak English? My mouth is filled with English, my stomach desperate for her dirt candy. She shakes her head. No.
We begin a delicate dance — me, gesticulating wildly at a table filled with fruits, and the babushka, staring at me quizzically over her pile of precious plums. I pick up three of the most tender morsels and present a few coins. She laughs, waving me away. “Gratis,” she says. This, a familiar word borrowed from Latin, I understand. Free.
I leave her a coin on the nut-brown countertop, thankful for her generosity, and continue my dance among the food purveyors with three delicate fruits nestled safely in my bag.
This is a waltz I know well, and my favorite fine-dining experience while traveling abroad: hunting for food at local farmers’ markets.
The letters v–e–g, combined in that order, are a roadmap for vagabonding vegetarians on a quest to adhere to their self-imposed dietary restrictions.
As a monolingual American in Europe, I’ve done my best to learn a smattering of mispronounced phrases in Italian, German, French, and Spanish, made a frightful attempt at Danish and butchered Czech far beyond repair. The most important of these phrases is a noun I offer as a proclamation at restaurants. Vegetarische. I…
