{"id":28450,"date":"2016-09-07T16:58:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T20:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=28450"},"modified":"2017-05-09T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T18:14:51","slug":"lost-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/lost-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruminations: Lost in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrived on Pag island for the Croatian Days of Cheese Festival sans underwear. Rather\u2014thanks to the translation of \u201cclothes\u201d in an outdated English- Croatian dictionary and my tenuous grasp of the language\u2014that\u2019s what my driver understood. My luggage was likely looping around a carousel in Paris, where I\u2019d transferred planes, leaving me with just the rumpled loungewear on my back.<\/p>\n

Pag is known for its Manchegolike sheep\u2019s milk cheese. The Croatian island\u2019s rocky hills are sparsely vegetated with aromatic herbs dusted with salt from the sea\u2014a diet that makes for flavorful milk. I\u2019d sampled Pas\u030cki sir<\/a><\/i> (\u201cPag cheese\u201d) on previous visits to the mainland, and now I was about to meet its makers \u2026 in pajamas.<\/p>\n

At the famous Sirana Gligora cheese factory, festival guests lingered at tables displaying wheels and wedges from all parts of the country. Familiar, savory aromas permeated the hall; I was reminded of my grandmother\u2019s kitchen in Dayton, Ohio.<\/p>\n

The same smells lingered when she prepared sarma<\/i>, pickled cabbage leaves stuffed with a ground meat and rice mixture. I wondered what she would have thought of me returning to her homeland, to learn about cheese and sheep and the agrarian life she had left behind. Ivan Gligora, Sirana Gligora\u2019s founder, shook my hand firmly. I hoped he wouldn\u2019t spot the jersey track pants I was sporting beneath my long coat. I also hoped the cameras following him around were filming above the waist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a long line of cheesemakers, and at Sirana Gligora we try to make cheese similar to the way it has been made on Pag for centuries,\u201d Ivan told the cameras. \u201cNow the technological process of cheesemaking is advanced, but we still need to keep tradition alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

I envied these people and their traditions. My grandmother shared her heritage through cooking, but she didn\u2019t pass down the language. She wanted her children to be American. \u201cThe good old days, you can have \u2019em,\u201d she used to say, which made me wonder about the hardships she and her family had endured. But she was proud and tight-lipped, just like my father. He didn\u2019t speak a word of his parents\u2019 native tongue, and by the time I learned elementary Croatian in college, my grandparents had passed away.<\/p>\n

During lunch, guests hunched over bowls of Balkan-style cabbage soup. The next course featured the island\u2019s Pas\u030cki lamb. Even today, lamb is served on Pag only during special occasions. It\u2019s expensive, like the island\u2019s cheese. My grandmother emigrated from a poor country and came of age during the Depression, and she carried those lean times with her. She certainly wouldn\u2019t have splurged on Pas\u030cki sir\u2014and, regardless, the cheese wasn\u2019t available in the US during
\nher lifetime.<\/p>\n

As afternoon bled into evening, local men performed klapa<\/i> music, a style of a cappella with rich, moving tones. I felt the deep, resonant notes in my stomach. Emptiness washed over me. I wished I understood the words, wished I had grown up with these songs, wished I were fully part of this culture. Instead, it\u2019s both familiar and foreign. Each time I visit Croatia, the language remains elusive, an ever-painful reminder that I am removed from my roots\u2014an American who will never quite belong in the country of her ancestors. But when I taste dishes my grandmother used to cook, I feel a sense of home. A warm cheese community, so embracing of a disheveled traveler, helps, too.<\/p>\n

Illustrated by Aleks Sennwald<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Pag, cheese is the universal language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":28451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[590],"tags":[902,901,900],"coauthors":[1039],"class_list":["post-28450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ruminations","tag-croatia","tag-pag","tag-paski-sir"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRuminations: Lost in Translation - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/lost-in-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ruminations: Lost in Translation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Pag, cheese is the universal language.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/lost-in-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"culture: the word on cheese\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/grantgbradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-09-07T20:58:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-05-09T18:14:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/AUT16_Ruminations_ftr.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"368\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kristin Vukovi\u0107\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kristin Vukovi\u0107\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/lost-in-translation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/lost-in-translation\/\",\"name\":\"Ruminations: Lost in Translation - 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