Max had invented a game with our cat Miro It was very simple Max would throw marbles all over the hardwood floor in the kitchen for maximum noise and distance Miro would pounce from the table the counter or the top of the refrigerator and try to capture them Meanwhile Max would do the same thing Whoever caught the most marbles won It was a game that demanded high intelligence and great rolled under it I had to lie flat on the floor and try to push out the marbles with my ruler On my third try I fished out a postcard You’ve got mail There was a faded picture of a rocky island in the middle of a turquoise sea It was impossible to read the message The writing skill Well this time the stove won Every single marble
looked like a bunch of crushed spiders But the picture on the postcard was great You could almost feel the sunshine beating down on the red roofs of the little stone houses Meanwhile here in Montreal the snow was piled up to the second-floor window and I’m not exaggerating by much As if on cue my parents came into the kitchen They can smell a foreign place a mile away Hey that’s the old postcard from Fred my father said The one from K-r-k I’ve always wanted to go to a place with no vowels That’s what you said when we got this card two years ago my mother told him And we went to France instead You want to go to K-r-k Max asked How could you go if you can’t even say the name I’ll learn my father answered When he starts getting his enthusiastic voice and my mother gets her dreamy faraway look I get my familiar sinking feeling Another family trip to an impossible destination is on the horizon this time to a place whose name no one can even pronounce My mother read the card out loud but I think she was
making the whole thing up No one could read that squished-spider writing Dear Friends she read We are waiting for your visit There’s plenty of room for everyone We’ll take you to Vrgada the island where Gordana was born Meanwhile here’s a picture of Krk She sends her love and so do I Fred Who’s Fred Max asked And who’s Gordana I said They’re old friends of ours my father said From a long time ago They used to live in Yugoslavia my mother explained But the country doesn’t exist anymore If a country stops existing where does it go Does it just drop off the map Or does the sea swallow it up like the lost continent of Atlantis And where do the people go Do they escape in boats or on foot Or do they wake up one morning and find out that they’re living in a new country with new food and different houses Where do they live now I asked After the war in Yugoslavia said my father sounding just like my hundred-year-old history teacher the country split into five new countries One of them is Croatia That’s where Fred and Gordana live now
Oh boy A country broken up by a war where people spoke a language with no vowels and that no one could understand The perfect place for a vacation I don’t know about you but I didn’t even know where Croatia was Though I had the feeling I’d be finding out soon I knew my parents They just loved visiting a new country or discovering an out-of-the-way place Who knows what would have happened if Max hadn’t lost his marbles that day Sure enough the next week when I came back from school there was a book on the kitchen table Serbo-Croatian for Beginners I sighed I wasn’t in the mood to learn another language And I didn’t want to go off on one of my parents great escapes to nowhere How could I get out of this trip I went upstairs and told my brother that we had to figure out a plan to stop our parents from taking us on another crazy family vacation Then I went to my room and closed the door The next minute Max came bursting in I know We’ll hide in the basement We’ll stock up on food and take the TV down there They can go on their own
