Blogs > News-Herald Food and Travel

Food and travel captivate Janet Podolak, who chronicles both for The News-Herald. Get the back story of her three decades of stories here. Guest bloggers and fellow News-Herald staffers also periodically share details of their trips.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Croatia trip meant to be

Some things, I think, are just meant to be. And my trip to Croatia, which begins tomorrow, is one of them. Perhaps it's the leftover Mayan woo-woo (see http://tinyurl.com/27hhoo3) from my very spiritual trip to Mexico earlier this summer, but I've had signs to confirm the rightness of this journey.

For instance: I thought I'd introduce myself to the woman who is to be my roommate on the yacht sailing among the Adriatic islands. ROW adventures told me she was Jayme Otto, a major writer of women's adventure stories based in Colorado. So I emailed Jayme to tell her about myself. "You won't believe this," she replied. "But I grew up in Mentor." She actually was in town for her grandmother's funeral when she got my email and saw my Wednesday Food section, complete with my photo. I got goosebumps over that astonishing coincidence.

Not long after, Nada Milkovic served me dinner at Gavi's and I learned that she was from Split, the city I will visit at the end of my voyage. She's among the 30,000 or so Croatians living in Eastlake and has been here 22 years.

I asked her about restaurants, some basic terminology and what to eat and drink while I was in her homeland. In between serving tables she wrote some things down on the back on an old menu. I had planned to write the words' meanings and their phonetic pronounciation, but time got away from me. So I asked Nada (maybe it's Neda!) to come to the News-Herald so I could shoot some video. Now all I need to do is to look at the film of Neda telling me about the foods and wine, and I'll be good to go.

Click here to meet Nada.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, this was meant to be, but because you are always out in the community asking, talking, finding out what is going on...you simply attract all kinds of people and you know some of these folks will always be newsworthy. Hats off to you and your continuously well written and interesting columns.
Kathy

September 20, 2010 at 12:33 PM 

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