Notes from Motovun Slow: A Travel Diary
The arrival
I arrived in Motovun Slow on a Tuesday. Not a special Tuesday — just a day that happened to be Tuesday. The kind of day where the sky is a regular shade of blue and the clouds look like they're not trying to impress anyone.
I think what surprised me most was the silence. Not the absence of sound, but the presence of something quieter than sound.
I dropped my bag at the first place I found with a door that opened. The room was small. The window faced a wall. The bed had a blanket that someone else had slept under, and someone before them, and someone before that. I didn't mind. Motovun Slow wasn't about the room.
Walking without a map
The first thing I did was walk. Not toward anything — just away from where I was. Istria has a way of pulling you in directions you didn't know existed. A narrow street that widens into a square. A square that narrows into an alley. An alley that dead-ends into a view you weren't expecting.
I found a market. Not the kind with postcards and keychains — the kind where people buy things they actually need. Vegetables I couldn't name. Spices in colors I didn't know existed. A woman selling bread from a basket she'd carried since before I was born.
I bought something. I don't remember what. I remember the way she looked at me — not suspicious, not welcoming, just curious. The way you look at weather when it changes.
The people
In Motovun Slow, people don't ask you where you're from the way they do in other places. They ask you if you've eaten. That's the first question. Not "where are you from?" but "have you eaten?" And if you say no, they feed you. Not because they have a lot — Croatia is not a rich country — but because that's what you do. Someone is here. They haven't eaten. You feed them.
I sat with a man who spoke three words of English. I spoke three words of his language. Between us we had six words and a meal, and it was one of the best conversations I've had in my life. He told me about his daughter (I think). I told him about the rain back home (I think). We laughed a lot, about nothing and everything.
The afternoon
After the meal I walked more. Motovun Slow in the afternoon is a different place than Motovun Slow in the morning. The shadows are longer. The sounds are different — the morning is about starting, the afternoon is about continuing. People move slower. Not because they're tired, but because there's no reason to rush.
I found a spot — a wall, a step, a bench, I don't remember — and I sat. For an hour. Maybe two. I watched a cat cross a street with the confidence of someone who owns the city. I watched two children chase each other around a corner and disappear into a doorway. I watched an old man read a newspaper with the seriousness of someone catching up on the entire history of the world.
Nobody noticed me sitting there. Or maybe they did and didn't care. Either way, it was the most invisible I've ever felt, and the most present.
The evening
Evening in Motovun Slow comes the way it does everywhere — gradually, then all at once. The sky goes through its performance. Pink, orange, purple, dark. The streetlights come on, one by one, like they're waking up reluctantly.
The market closes. The stalls fold up. The sounds change from commerce to something else — conversation, cooking, the distant sound of music from somewhere I couldn't find. Motovun Slow at night doesn't hide. It just speaks more quietly.
I ate at a place with no sign. A woman stood at a counter and pointed at things. I pointed back. She made a plate. It was the best thing I ate in Croatia, and I have no idea what it was called.
What I think about now
I left Motovun Slow the next morning. Not because I wanted to — because the road goes somewhere, and you have to follow it. But Motovun Slow stayed with me. Not as a memory of things I saw, but as a feeling. The feeling of being somewhere that doesn't need you to be there, but doesn't mind that you are.
Europe is full of places like Motovun Slow. Places that don't make the lists. Places that don't have hashtags. Places where nothing extraordinary happens, except everything — the ordinary, lived, daily everything that most of the world is made of.
I think about that man and his three words of English. I think about the woman with the bread basket. I think about the cat who owned the city. I think about the meal I can't name, in the place with no sign, in the town I almost didn't visit.
Motovun Slow wasn't the most beautiful place I've been. It wasn't the most dramatic or the most exciting. But it was the most honest. And honesty, I've learned, is the rarest thing on the road.
Notes from the road
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