Ljubljana, day 3

In which we eat our fill

I call them summer camp friends.

In North America (and possibly other places) when your parents want rid of you during the summer they sign you up for a camp. I’ve been to many, later returning as a counsellor, and let me tell you - they’re awesome and terrible and sometimes I wonder if my memories about them are made up.

Within the first day of any summer camp you’ll meet your best friend. This is the friend you’ll stick with until the end of camp, usually some 2 weeks distant. After camp you may never speak to them again.

The opportunities for these kinds of fast friendships, forged immediately over one or two common (but intense) interests, seem to disappear as an adult. Friendships start to take time. You wonder about the cost of adding new friends into your ecosystem. You think in friend ROI.

The thing about summer camp friends is the finiteness. At that age different schools in the same area might as well be on the moon. You know you’ll probably never see these kids again, at least not until next summer and maybe even not then.

Naive Yearly is like summer camp on steroids.

One day. One intensely niche interest. People willing to travel long distances, by boat and plane and bus from Venice. People who haven’t seen each other since the first one last year, who had only met then, greet like long-lost family.

We meet up in a park near the modern art museum, a pile of people on a patch of grass. I attempt a collage, my first—seems I’ve grossly overestimated the amount of print material I’d come across.

Last night some attendees had gone to a restaurant a thirty minute drive outside of Ljubljana, and had what looked like A Very Good Meal. I’ve found my interest in a certain kind of fine dining fall off a cliff, somehow in direct correlation with my ability to more easily afford it. (Maybe the struggle made it more appealing…?)

But firmly in my summer camp moment I agree to go with a group, and we meet up outside a hotel to grab a taxi together.

Hoo boy.

I don’t get car sick. I’m mostly unbothered by aggressively speedy drivers, having made the mental bargain between convenience and a certain level of safety. Thousands of trips and they’re still alive, right? So when we entered the mountains around Ljubljana, and the roads became narrower, and the corners harder, I wasn’t immediately concerned.

S would reveal later that he’d spend the entire trip in the shotgun seat reliving his inevitable death, the first to go in a head on collision that would sheer the right side from the van. From the back row I could feel my stomach make contact with all four sides of my body, ricocheting like a speedbag as we spun and whirled and floated towards our destination.

I swear to god at one point our wheels left the ground.

But then the speed dropped. The landscape opened up. And suddenly:

Grič is situated in an area of the same name, a family-run (father and two daughters) restaurant of 30 years, a generational undertaking where what you eat is grown literally a short walk from where you sit.

I thought I’d become immune to this. But from the minute the waiter started to talk, inviting us, at any time, to wander into the absurdly clean and quiet kitchen and ask questions of the chefs, I was completely charmed.

I have two rules for eating (which I’ve made up just now, having followed them unwritten for many years):

1. The cost of the meal should not be a challenge.

2. The company for the meal must be demonstrable enjoyers of food.

I’m talking about eye-closers. Declarers. People who put their hands on the table and look annoyed at how good something tastes. Gentle moaners. Heck - loud moaners, if the space allows, if the food demands.

My summer camp friends were ready. I was ready. We ate and gushed and complimented and sighed. The waiter clowned one of us for a “non-fish preference” by first explaining they had left the fish in the dish anyway, and then later checking if the dish had killed him.

It was one of those perfect meals.