Family...Croatian style

Just one or two last stories from my trip to Croatia with my mother, if you'll allow.

Although we were able to find the house where my grandfather was born in 1903, we didn't meet any of our relatives on the island of Cres. But Father Bandera, wonderful fellow that he is, made a call or two to the mainland and contacted members of our family who live in Rijeka (a larger city on the coast of Croatia which is very close to Opatija, our last stop).

A woman named Daria said that her mother-in-law, the woman for whom Father Bandera called, was out of town on holiday in Slovenia and wouldn't be back until Sunday. We were leaving Croatia on Sunday.

On that Friday, Daria called our hotel to say that her mother-in-law has decided to cut short her trip so that she could meet my mother. On Saturday, the day before we flew home to Chicago, my mother met for the first time Christina, her first cousin.

How cool is that?

I've told people that, for me, this trip is a combination of Travels in Europe and the History Channel. I guess it was also a peek inside our family album.

My grandfather, when he was a pre-teen, worked onboard the Italian navy ships. As a teenager, he joined the Merchant Marines. It was on one of these see-the-world trips where my grandfather jumped ship to come to America.

He arrived in Chicago, met my grandmother (who had been brought to America as a toddler), got married and started a family. As I've recently discovered, the village of Beli has strong ties to Chicago dating back many years. A man who knew my father in Beli saw him in Chicago and reported him. My grandfather was deported for 1 1/2 years when my mother was four years old.

Until that day in Croatia, I never knew that part of my mother's childhood.