Rovinj Gave Me a Speargun and a Bucket 🇭🇷

Around the World with Beyondia 🧵 Mediterranean Region 🪡 Journal 1

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Rovinj. Where the Adriatic teaches you that everything you need is already here.

Rovinj

I came to Croatia expecting coastline. I got a whole education.

Rovinj sits on a peninsula that was an island until the Venetians filled in the canal in 1763. The old town still feels like it’s floating — cobblestone streets spiral upward to the Church of St. Euphemia, and every alley ends with a view of water so clear you can count the stones on the seabed.

But I didn’t come here to watch.

Speargun?

I went into the Adriatic with a speargun and nothing else. No boat. No sonar. Just a mask, fins, and the kind of silence that only exists underwater. Brancin — European sea bass — doesn’t come to you. You float motionless near the rocks, slow your breathing, and wait. The fish decides. When it finally appeared, silver and unhurried, I had maybe two seconds. One shot. One fish. An hour of patience for a single moment of precision.

I grilled it whole on an open fire near the shore. Salt, olive oil, a squeeze of lemon. Nothing else. When the fish was yours an hour ago, still alive in water you swam through — you don’t add complexity. You respect what’s already there.

Bucket?!

The next morning I was in the Istrian interior, and the coastline felt like another country. A woman handed me a steel bucket and pointed at a cow named Mara. No instructions. Milking is a rhythm — you either find it or the cow lets you know you haven’t. It took me four tries before anything resembling a stream hit the bucket. Mara was patient. I was not.

The chicken coop was less forgiving. Hens don’t negotiate. I reached under warm feathers and pulled out eggs still holding body heat — six of them, brown and uneven, nothing like what sits in plastic cartons. Every single one earned.

Then the forest. Istrian woods are dense with oak and chestnut, and after autumn rain, mushrooms push through the floor like they’ve been waiting for permission. I crouched low, brushed away leaves, and filled a basket with what the ground offered. No menu. No recipe yet. Just ingredients that existed before I showed up.

Back in the kitchen, I made an omelette. Fresh eggs cracked into a bowl, wild mushrooms torn by hand, a knob of butter from milk I watched leave the cow that morning. It cooked in three minutes. It was the best meal I had in Croatia — not because it was complex, but because I could trace every ingredient back to the moment I held it.

Three cities in Italy taught me what humans can build. One small town in Istria reminded me what the world already provides — if you’re willing to go get it yourself.

Next week — the journey continues. But Rovinj stays with me.

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