Lokve

Amanda’s Journal Entry from Lokve

Friday, July 16, 2010

We arrived in Robert’s ancestral village on Tuesday night via a Couchsurfing contact, Nevena. We were all under the impression that finding cheap accommodation would be no problem since this is a small village of about 1,200 people and surely someone would have an extra room they’d want to rent out for a few nights. Not so. After asking around at advertised apartments as well as strangers on the street and porches, we found that no one was willing to let strangers sleep in their house and those who were willing to house us wanted no less than 40 euro PER PERSON. Ouch. The small village feel was quickly fading and Lokve was looking more like a tourist town every minute. Eventually, we found a nice lady who usually rents per week, but was willing to let us stay till today for 30 euro a night. Iris, the apartment owner, turned out to be very and helpful later on in our “roots research.”

The apartment was a ways out of town so it was a 30-45 minute walk to the center of Lokve. On the way in the first day we found a dog-friend who accompanied us half-way to town. I felt guilty leading him away from his home, but I didn’t do it on purpose. It was nice to have the extra company though. J As we walked to town people walking on the street and sitting on their porches would say hello to us (“dobor dan” in Croatian), so we got good use out of our limited vocabulary. It was starting to feel more like a village now that we weren’t talking money.

Once in town we looked at the school and made our way up a considerable stairway up a hill that we thought would end up in the cemetery, but instead was just a monument to Jesus’ walk up Calvary Hill. Nice view from the top though – you could see all of Lokve. There was a road leading down from the monument so we followed it until we happened on what we were looking for in the first place – the cemetery!

Most of the headstones were pretty new, but there were a few older ones from the late 1800s, early 1900s. Robert and I forgot to write down any first names of family members so we just took pictures of all the Mihelcics…there were a lot. We called my mom later to get a better list and returned to the cemetery to see what we could find. There was an old woman visiting the cemetery also, so we showed her the family tree and attempted to ask if she knew where to find those headstones. She told us that the priest would have a book with everyone in it and led us down to the church to find him. The priest wasn’t there, but she talked to some people for us and arranged for us to meet with the school director the following day.

That night we went down to the Lokve lake to look for frogs (Lokve is famous for frogs and the name of the town itself translates to “puddles”…appropriate!) and for Robert to go for a swim. While we were sitting there I got a call from a man saying he was Iris’ husband. Somehow they heard about our meeting the next day with the school director and he told me that Iris would meet us and help with translation – her English wasn’t great, but it was better than our Croatian. Ah, the village grapevine…

So the next day we met with Iris and the school director and told them the names we were looking for. The school director had helped other foreigners with searching for relatives, so she went off to the other room to get her records. She comes back with this book with a cover two feet tall and one foot wide, and very old-looking. When she opens it, I read the date on the top and it says 1864… These are the handwritten school records of each student from 1864 and it’s all in near-perfect condition. We spent some time looking through these books and found siblings of Robert’s great-great grandparents, but strangely, no great-great grandparents. Perhaps they were more useful on the farm and so didn’t get sent to school.

The school director was incredibly helpful and offered to take us to the bus station in the next town over, and so now we are waiting in front of the school for her and her husband to meet us!