Quick update, late on this Italian night, from the coastal town of Ancona. Dad and I arrived here this morning on the ferry from Split, Croatia. It was an odd experience to go to sleep in Croatia and wake up in Italy; I almost even slept a little, although the vibration of the ship’s engine made that hard.

We’ve spent a good day here. It’s a nice down, with lots to see and do, and plenty of places to sit and do nothing. Excellent pasta with tomatoes and mushroom and basil for dinner. Italians are nice, in my 12 hours of experience. Off to London tomorrow afternoon, overnight, and then home to the Island on Friday.

Could there be any better present for Thanksgiving than learning that you have 13 great aunts and uncles you never knew you had?

From Kutina, where I last posted, Dad and I drove south, close up to the border with Bosnia, and stayed overnight at a weird hot springs complex where things like “lymph drainage” were available for a fee. Our fellow guests appeared to be exclusively large tour groups who swam, soaked, sang hearty Croat folksongs and had their bodies drained together. We merely slept.

Our next stop was the fantasic Plitvice Lakes, which are incredibly beautiful — a series of interconnected lakes, each rising several metres or more from the previous. Dozens of waterfalls, streams, etc. Raining throughout, but stunning nonetheless. After a good afternoon at the Lakes, we drove south a little, and then turned right and drove over a mountain.

Between the highway south to Plitvice and Gospic, our family´s homeland, runs the Velebit mountain range. Rather than driving south, around the mountains, we decided to go over. This involved driving up, up, up and up, then down, down, down and down. Along the way, in addition to the wreckage of the last war — bombed out and abandoned houses, empty villages — we came with a couple of metres of driving into a very, very large and mean-looking bull, out for a stroll down the road.

Once over the mountains, it was an easy drive into the town of Gospic, itself affected very obviously by the war, but a thriving metropolis nonethless. Dad had built up Gospic to be a dusty, poor, rural town; I was certain we would be sleeping on threadbare army blankets on a dirt floor. An hour later, after a hearty dinner of gnocchi and veal, we retired to our room, where we had 300-odd TV stations from around the world to watch, and 200-odd radio stations to listen to. Nothing says “rural hinterland” better than going to sleep listening to NPR´s All Things Considered with a good meal in your belly.

Monday morning was family research day. We headed out into downtown Gospic early, visited the Museum (and had the luck of meeting the curator, who was very helpful, and showed us prehistoric jewelry dug out of the ground in my grandfather´s hometown). Then it was on the road again, north to Perusic. At Perusic we turned right, over the tracks and under the new expressway to Zagreb, and up a long low hill to the small village of Konjsko Brdo: a small outcropping of farm houses and buildings, nestled together tightly and connected with a paved road cum path. We stopped a couple of people along the road, and Dad used his power Croatian to explore Rukavina connections, but we learned nothing definite.

We headed back into Perusic, which is the administrative centre of the area, and took a flyer and walked into a nameless office building that looked vaguely official. We walked upstairs until we found people, and asked them where the vital statistics office could be found: very helpfully someone was nominated to accompany us back downstairs and point us in the right direction. On the way, we stopped at the Catholic cemetery and found dozens of Rukavina graves; I suggested we photograph all of them, both for our own purposes and others´. Dad stuck with the plan for two gravestones, then abandoned it; I covered half the ground.

We showed up at the vital statistics office just after closing, but luckily the clerk was still there. It was a huge, almost empty office, with two large racks of musty old register books. As luck would have it (again), their first record book started with 1903 — my grandfather´s year of birth. She opened the book, and there, blamo, was his record. And so we learned, for the first time, that my great grandmother´s name was Ana Kurtes.

Having no other information to go on, and no earlier records, we reconciled ourselves to that being the end of the road. On a lark, though, Dad suggested we stop at the post office. There we found a very helpful woman who, although unable to offer us any information directly, suggested, in Croatian, that we “go and talk to the Pope.” So we headed up the hill to the Catholic Church, and knocked on the door of the house next door.

A very friendly woman answered the door, and invited us into the parish office. We told her what we were looking for, and she pulled out a scribbler filled with names. She looked up the address of my great-grandfather, and there, blamo, was not only the information about the birth, marriage, and death of my grandfather and the brother and sister we knew about, but also information about his grandfather. And the 11 brothers and sisters that we had never heard of (he wasn´t a talkative man). Ten minutes later we were joined by the priest — a friendly, 50ish, leather-jacketed man with a demeanour that was enough, almost, to bring me into the flock. He pulled out an old registry book, and then spent an hour with us interpreting it all.

So on this thanksgiving, welcome to the family we never knew we had: Bozo, Roko, Nikole, Ana, Kata (one and two), Regina, Marta, Ana (one and two), Matija (one and two) and Manda.

We´re in Split as I type this — in 4 hours we board the ferry to Italy, then up to London on Thursday and home on Friday. What a trip.

Last night, coming out of a showing of the Tom Hanks movie Terminal, Dad and I ran into an older couple who had come into the movie late, and wanted to know what had happened at the beginning. They were a well-bred couple, he born in Croatia and she in the U.K., both Oxford-educated. When Dad revealed that his father was from Gospic, the man´s response was “oh, you come from serious Croatia.” We weren´t sure whether that was a compliment or an insult, but it sounds pretty good to me.

Today we left the gentle confines of Zagreb in search of family. We headed east on the E-70 to Kutina, and then off the main highway into a smaller, but still rather substantial village. All we had to go on was a name — the married name of my father´s cousin Regina.

By some miraculous series of events that involved a trip to a bookie, a trip to the police station (for information, not arrest), and about a dozen extremely helpful Croatians who sent us “up the hill, to the right, until where the pavement ends and you come to a vineyard,” at 4:00 p.m. we found ourselves driving our little Renault down a rough country lane towards a fedora-wearing man leaning on a fence. Dad asked, in his best Croatian, “can you direct us to Manda´s house?”

“This is Manda´s house!” was his response. We had found the house of my step-great-Aunt Manda and her husband Ivo. Manda´s father Stipe is my great-grandfather. We were invited into their humble farmhouse, fed a meal of cured ham and whisky (Dad drank the whisky — I was driving), and Dad pulled off an amazing facsimile of a native Croatian speaker to engage them in conversation about family connections, family history, and their life.

I think Dad and I are still both in shock — especially him, for I think he completely exhausted his brain by dredging up the 60-years-latent Croatian from the depths. I can only imagine what Manda and Ivo are thinking about their strange relations… especially me, the strange one who doesn´t speak at all and refuses a fourth helping of ham.

We´ve come back into Kutina for the night, bedding down in the oddly palatial Hotel Kutina, which has an Internet terminal in the restaurant — 40 lipa a minute for very fast access. Tomorrow morning we´ll had back out and try to find our cousin Regina, who wasn´t home today. Amazing.

Lots of little technical items to take care of otherwise here in this Internet cafe in downtown Zagreb, so this will be quick.

As helpful readers (Nick and Foog, if I recall) suggested, it was very easy to get my borrowed locked-to-Rogers mobile phone unlocked: the first place in Ljubljana we stopped in would do it for 2500 SIT, or about $15 — a much better deal than the Rogers offer to not do it for $250. I dropped the phone off this morning at 9:00 a.m., and they met me at the train station at 2:00 p.m. with a working phone. I dropped my Croat VipMe SIM card in and, presto!, I was live and wired. If you need to get in touch while I am in Croatia (until Oct. 12), you can call (from Canada) 011 385 918810854 (no cost to me — you pay international rate to Croatia).

Trip is going very well: Dad and I met in the airport in London, had a shower, caught the bus to Stanstead where we caught an EasyJet flight to Ljubljana. The Hotel Park — pre-booked by Dad — was clean and central, if a little pricy. Our 24 hours in the city were great: we rode bikes through Tivoli Park, had a great supper of gnocchi and a great lunch of pizza, and got a good taste for what is arguably the most beautiful city I have visited to date.

Dad and I have yet to kill each other, which is positive. We have not even come close. You will notice the complete lack of apostrophes in this post — cannot figure out how to type it. Had the same problem in Thailand. Makes for more formal sounding writing, so not all bad.

Off to find a hotel for the night.

On May 22, 1928, my grandfather, Dane Rukavina, received his passport in Karlovac, Croatia. On June 2nd, 1928 he boarded the Empress of Australia in Cherbourg, France and he arrived in Quebec City on June 8th, 1928. And so started the history of one branch of my family in Canada.

Tomorrow my father and I will take a trip in the opposite direction, flying first to London, then on to Ljubljana. We’ll take the train from there to Zagreb, and then we’ll drive south to my grandfather’s birthplace in Konjsko Brdo.

There are many reasons for the trip. It’s an opportunity for my father and I to take a trip together, something that we haven’t done for 25 years (our last trip was a bus trip around the United States in 1979). It’s an opportunity to see if we can make contact with other Rukavinas in the old country. And a chance for me to see the where part of my roots lie (I was there in 1972, but I was only 6 years old, and remember only vague impressions).

I’ll report in from the road as often as Internet and inspiration present themselves. Back in Canada on October 15th.

Here’s some more fun with the The Old Farmer’s Almanac RSS feed and NetNewsWire:

I’m headed to Croatia on Monday, I’ve got myself in a cell phone pickle, and I’m wondering if anyone in the readership can help with advice or pointers.

I’ve a borrowed Sony Ericsson T68i GSM cell phone. I originally thought it was unlocked — that is, not tied to a particular cell provider and thus capable of accepting SIM cards from any. I went ahead and purchased a SIM card from the Croatian VipMe provider (from the helpful folks at Telestial), a mobile charger, and a Bluetooth gizmo for my laptop.

It was only yesterday, when I was able to power on the phone for the first time and put all the pieces together, that I found that the phone was, indeed, locked to the Rogers network, and incapable of accepting SIM cards from other providers.

I spent a good part of the day on the phone to various parts of Rogers, and found only that (a) I could get the phone unlocked for a fee of $250, but only if (b) I have a Rogers account that’s been valid for a month or more. In other words, Rogers claims it’s impossible to help me by Monday, and even if it was would charge me $250 for the privilege.

I don’t have time to get an alternative phone, I don’t have access to a T68i “service cable” that would allow the phone to be unlocked via one of the various online services that advertise this.

It’s not vital that I have a phone while I’m away, and I do have the option of picking up a cheap phone in Europe or renting a phone once there.

But if any of the smart people in the readership have any suggestions, I’m open to them. Deadline is Monday at 2:00 p.m.

Someone found an LG-brand cell phone battery and left it in our vestibule at 100 Prince St., Charlottetown this afternoon. It has the following information on the back:

• Model: LGLI-ACGM
• CGMILL
• 03Y26M

It’s a silver battery that would clip on to the back of a cell phone, about 2 inches by 1-1/4 inches and 1/8 inch thick:

If it’s yours, or you know who owns it, please email me at foundbattery@reinvented.net. Pass it on — I have great faith in the six degrees of Island separation.

I made the mistake of listening to Island Morning on CBC Radio this morning from 8:25 to 8:30 a.m. and heard plenty of banter between host Karen Mair and news presenter Andrew Sprague related to some sort of “road trip” that Andrew is about to take. But I missed the back story, so it was all very confusing.

I made a quick call up to the station just now, and found that Andrew is about to head off across the country to parts unknown.

I’ll miss Andrew’s dulcet tones every morning on the air, and I’ll especially miss him at the New Year’s Levies come January.

Rock on a travel well, Andrew. We’ll be waiting for your triumphant return.

Update: Andrew himself just called: he’ll be back for Christmas, and the Levies; no worries.

Even if you’re not a regular customer of Shoppers Drug Mart, if you have any interest in the future of retail design you should really pay a visit to the new location on University Avenue in Charlottetown: it is truly a sight to behold. The design makes every other drugstore in the city look like a relic from the 1970s: the store is bold, bright, airy, and dramatic.

Whether or not we should be making our pharmapurchase decisions based on retail design is another issue entirely (certainly The Friendly Pharmacy, which went in an entirely different direction, emphasizing service over design, would have us not).

For me what’s important about the new store, though, is that they sell my absolute favourite iced tea, that being the product of the Honest Tea company of Bethesda, Maryland. This bottled iced tea is almost perfect: not too sweet, not too tart, and in a good range of natural flavours (my favourite is the Peach Oo-la-long). There are five bottles sitting in the fridge here at the office, waiting to fuel my trips into “the zone.”

You can find the Honest Tea in the new Shoppers in the “natural foods” section, right at the back of the store on the right in the cooler. Enjoy.