Day 9 Koper and Piran, Slovenia/Trieste, Italy

Met by a friend of a friend, native Slovenians Andrea and his sister, Clare, we were driven through the region of Koper, Slovenia, and northwest to Trieste, Italy. Andrea and his sister both studied in California for their undergraduate degrees and their MBAs. Speaking both Italian and Slovene and fluent in English, they were excellent guides.

The city of Trieste, Italy, is surrounded on three sides by borders with Slovenia. Trieste has had an interesting history because of its unique location as a seaport and as a crossroads into Europe. Andrea took us to the city center of Trieste for a coffee at an outdoor café of a hotel/restaurant famous for its mirrors. Trieste is a city over 5000 years old, with its earliest history dating to 3000 B.C. We walked through the backstreets to see shops of meat, gelato, pasta, wine, and everything else imaginable to eat, drink, wear, or put on display. Fresh fruits and vegetables on display by street vendors marked the coming of autumn as squashes, pumpkins, grapes, apples, and pears were in abundance.



The city was bustling in preparation for a huge 9-day festival and sailing regatta called Barcolana to begin on the upcoming weekend. Temporary booths for food and souvenirs were being erected. Over 2000 sailboats participate in the race, also called Coppa d'Autunno.

The drive to Piran, Slovenia, curved through the mountains, where we headed for lunch. This tiny seaside village is a summer resort for Slovenians, Italians, and many other Europeans. The day was warm and sunny, and thankfully, most of the tourists were gone for the season. Hundreds of boats of all sizes and shapes were tethered to the docks. The sea is an intimate feature of the lives of those who live there. Even sans tourists, the village was crowded with people walking through the narrow streets. The town is located at the tip of a peninsula that extends into the Gulf of Trieste in the Northern Adriatic Sea.



Andrea and Clare took us to a favorite restaurant called Neptun, hidden in a narrow lane one block from the water. The proprietor brought out a huge fish that he offered to cook. Local wine accompanied the appetizer of baccalà (salt cod) fish—a pâté of fish that has been soaked in milk and then made into a pate served with fresh chewy bread. The next course was of mussels and sea-dates (a special mussel that really looks like a date and is found within the white stones underwater along the coast). A third course of pasta was flavorful and perfectly al dente, heavy with garlic but with a light tomato sauce. And the fish arrived on a huge platter after cooking on the grill for an hour. It was surrounded with rosemary roasted potatoes. Spectacular.

A walk through the town, with its orange-tiled roofs, opened to a main square fronted by medieval buildings of Venetian influence. Dependence on the sea and God are evident in every glance. The guidebook named seven churches, including a Franciscan monastery. On the highest point of land, the bell tower of the Church of St. George dominates the skyline. Restaurants lined the waterfront. At the very end of the seafront, the church of St. Clement dating from the 1200s was locked, cracked and faded and in sad disrepair. The city center plaza was dotted with a display of posters to promote an upcoming advertisement competition. The exhibits had several divisions for ads to sell shoes and food and clothes, but most interesting to me were provocative ads for the non-profit sector—ads for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, environmental issues, etc. One poster depicted Larry Bird in a green basketball uniform. The banner headline read: Birdwatching. What an irony to find this Fr. Lick phe-nom on display half-way across the world.

People strolled along the waterfront. Some walked dogs; others sat on benches and read or gazed into the sinking sun as the afternoon waned, another perfect day.