Home Again, Home Again

TRAVEL REPORT:

It’s hard to believe I’ve been back in New York City almost a month now, having returned from a month in Croatia on September 30. But I haven’t really been home per se. My first week back, I started work as a Freelance Reporter/Researcher at InStyle, where I fact-checked celebrity, beauty and fashion pieces. Then off to San Francisco and Carmel, where we attended our friends’ wedding at the picturesque Tehama resort, founded by Clint Eastwood. Speaking of weddings, our wedding in Dubrovnik, Croatia on September 5 was lovely—it even rained, which is a sign of good luck (actually, it poured—luck in abundance!) However, I was thankful that when I walked down the isle in open-air Sponza Palace, the Rain Gods decided to make mist instead sheets of rain.

Two days after the wedding my husband drove me to Split, where I joined my parents and aunt for our family history trip. First, we made a stop in Plitvice Lakes National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and hiked to see “Veliki Slap,” a.k.a. “The Big Waterfall.” We continued on to Slunj and my grandfather’s hometown, Karlovac, where we met a distant cousin. My translation skills were questionable, but we managed to communicate with a lot of emphatic hand gestures and Pictionary. On Sunday we visited the little yellow church where my grandfather attended mass. It was amazing to meet the same village priest nine years later. When we gave him photographs from our previous visit, he remembered us, and again showed us the original church birth records with our family name, Vuković. While driving, we accidentally happened upon a small town just outside of Slunj sporting a signpost, “Mali Vuković,” which translates as “Little Vuković.” I decided to keep my maiden name as my writerly name, so Vuković will always be part of my identity. This photo with the signpost reminds me of my heritage.

Now that I’m grounded back in the city for a few weeks, it’s back to the grind. First on the agenda: writing articles about Istria and Kvarner from the September trip…you will need to wait to hear about my adventures until then!