Travel and Games

Impressive events occur daily on Smithsonian Journey’s tours like this one through Croatia and Slovenia. Within just six days, we will have visited Croatia’s famed waterfall-and-lake national park (Plitvice), made an excursion to Slovenia’s fairy-tale island in the middle of a glacier lake called Bled, hiked 1.3 miles through the immense Karst caves at Postojna (also in Slovenia). Our heads will be filled with impressions from two historical capitals overflowing with architecture from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Zagreb and Ljubljana). We will have enjoyed wonderful meals together, including local cuisine in an olive grove. Add in the lectures I give that knit impressions and prepare the group for what comes next and it’s fair to say that serious things happen.

Yet, when all is said and done, travel ideally brings unexpected moments of joy and delight. One such moment is captured in the clip you see here. It is a rough cut (in fact, Hank said “too rough” but I’d like to share it anyway to make a point). The clip came near the end of Tuesday’s dinner when a folklore group, Slovenia Dances, entertained us, accompanied by a classic Slovenian “orchestra” consisting of accordion and solo tuba. Believe me, if properly played, that combination works!

For the grand finale, the emcee of the evening taught us a game that I’ll call “Hat Exchange.” The goal of “Hat Exchange” is to pinch a hat off the person’s head to your right, while the person on your left does the same to your hat. Repositioning the pinched hat onto your head, you must quickly switch back to make your next grab. A coordinated rhythm is essential and when a participant loses focus, the whole thing breaks down and the hatless one will be left out of the circle. The last person standing wins.

Games like this exist in every culture. I used to be fond of “Musical Chairs,” despite losing 100% of the time, and that doesn’t begin to require the same skill as “Hat Exchange.” Thinking broadly, it has been traditional games like this one, jump rope, hopscotch, pick-up sticks, and horseshoes that have strengthened coordination and focus while knitting friendships and engendering hilarity (and yes, I know horseshoes can be deadly competitive, but so can “Hat-Exchange” when done at high speed by the locals).

Standing in line this morning to enter the Postojna Caves, one of our gals recognized a Brazilian lady who stood across from her in a group of lady hat-switchers. The eyes of both women shone as they smiled. “Weren’t you there at . . ?” Being women, there was immediate hugging and laughter all around, as this chance meeting recreated the warmth of the game.

We are so easily fooled into thinking we can buy happiness. Consider what happens when parents go overboard arranging their children’s birthday parties at expensive venues. What kid really cares? Isn’t the whole point of a “kid birthday” to be with your friends and receive gifts while devouring overly sweet cake that places every child in a funk once the sugar-high wears off? Why does it matter where any of that happens?

In a similar vein, I remember the excitement of playing “Pin the Tail On The Donkey” at parties. I occasionally won that one, but the best hilarity came when everyone squealed and scattered before a misdirected, blindfolded child who was advancing with a thumbtack pointed straight ahead.

Do kids even play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” anymore? Do they know such games exist? What would happen if they (or the parents) played “Hat Exchange” or dug up similar, old-fashioned games that build coordination, focus, and trust?

That is what is on my mind as we bask in the first sunny weather of the tour. The door to my balcony is flung wide open to the blue of the Adriatic Sea shimmering in the distance. Here, in Istria, a peninsula in northwest Croatia, the joys of the simple life dominate. Food is served plain, with the provision of lemon wedges, olive oil, and pepper for seasoning. Every possible inch is planted with trees and flowers. Each veranda has café tables where patrons can sit for hours. Business in this culture is conducted during long stretches at these tables where the espresso takes the place of the office computer.

Tomorrow we will go to Pula, a modern city that happens to have a nearly intact Roman amphitheater at its center. This amphitheater is so well-preserved, you can almost hear the roar of gladiators charging into the arena and smell the blood of bodies being dragged along special corridors to be dropped into the sea. It will be a serious day filled with learning, and everyone is excited. But since tourists tend to follow similar routes, we may well run again into one of our “brethren-of-the-Hat-Exchange.”

And if that happens, there will again be a roar of laughter and a joy in that fleeting kinship. For we are strangers; yet we have traveled together and played together. Could it be that some of our society’s wounds would heal if our lives came together more often in play, where bonds of trust and spontaneous joy serve to replace the pain of anger and recrimination?