A long New Year’s Eve in Pula, Croatia

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What a way to say goodbye to a whole year – today was New Year’s Eve in Pula, Croatia, and Masayo and I not only explored the ice-cold, windy town and its huge Roman amphitheater some more, but we also joined the festivities downtown at midnight as the big crowd rang in the new year. Amidst all of this I experienced one of the lowest blood sugar readings of this long trip and the highest one.

Today had it all!

It began with a BG of 81 when I woke up, continuing the excellence of yesterday. Breakfast was a cinnamon roll and instant coffee in our room at Apartments Ljiljana on the residential edge of Pula. It’s a nice place, older and dingier but cozy and with a view out the window of the sunshine and a leafy little park. It looked cold outside.

And it was – Pula doesn’t usually get this cold, as I understand it. We headed out to the nearby office to pay for the room and to ask about renting a car. Our plan is to drive around the Istrian peninsula of Croatia tomorrow on January 1 and explore some of the little towns and ancient hilly sights scattered around. I haven’t driven in a while, and never have in Europe, but it seemed like a fun adventure. (Plus the car would be a manual transmission since automatics are twice as expensive to rent here – I think I can remember how to drive a manual!)

But it wasn’t meant to be – there were no cars available since locals rent them out to drive to skiing holidays up in Slovenia, Italy and Austria rather than put those tough mountain miles on their own cars. So we’ll have to find something else to do tomorrow on the first day of the new year. Fair enough; one must stay flexible and make the most out of a situation when traveling like this.

Heading out into cold and sunny Pula we were struck by the fierceness of the wind that sliced off of the Adriatic Sea and by the bone-numbing cold of the air. No snow, but below freezing. In the crisp and clear winter air the gigantic round ancient Roman amphitheater that dominates Pula stood proud, its old stony arches and walls looking weathered but sturdy, an eternal feat of engineering from another time and another people. It’s the first ancient Roman ruin I’ve seen with my own eyes. Just like photos, but so much more rewarding in person.

Ferries in the harbor depart Pula for a local island National Park as well as to Venice, Italy; Masayo and I strode by the chilly port and watched the dozens of boats bobbing in the deep blue water. I felt low.

My feeling was right: I checked my BG and it was 48, almost the lowest of this trip so far. Guess that cinnamon roll wasn’t as thick as I thought. I ate a Snickers bar (one and a half, actually, and they were literally freezing in my hand as I tried to eat them in a little park next to a frozen-over fountain) and we went searching for lunch.

We finally found a place that was both open and wasn’t a pizza/kebab place. It was called Pompei and was a proper sit-down place and everything; we sat at a table upstairs and sat down for a tasty fresh meal and a break from the cold outside. Pompei had large windows and the sun streamed in making it all open and airy but friendly.

I still “felt” low although I probably was coming up. When my cream soup and plate of mixed meat and French fries came I took no Humalog at all. Masayo and I split the meat and fries plate and I mostly ate meat. Not sure how many carbs were in the soup but I couldn’t make myself take a shot while I still “felt” low.

Our own personal amphitheater

Walking past blown-over trash bins through town after lunch, we headed to the amphitheater. Every now and then, somewhere in the near distance, we’d hear a loud CRASH as yet something else fell victim to the gusts of frozen wind.

The Pula amphitheater was open here on New Year’s Eve, and we paid the entrance fee and walked up the old stone steps into the arena. We were almost the only ones there, despite the fact that (according to a Croatian friend of mine) this was a better example of its kind than the famous one in Rome. The joys of traveling in the off-season!

We walked around looking up at the tall arched walls in front of the big blue sky, and sat in the stands to get the view that ancient visitors would have gotten for whatever events were put on here. From some parts of the amphitheater you could see the glowing blue waters of the sea in the distance. I’ve never been to Rome but I bet my friend is right: that one couldn’t be nicer than this one. And there were no other people at Pula’s!

Standing in the middle of the field by some half-crumbled stone walls I checked my blood sugar and was pleasantly surprised that my insulin-less lunch hadn’t hurt me: I was 89. Shrug. Maybe I’m suddenly no longer diabetic…?

After a look at the displays in the darkened tunnels underneath the amphitheater (where a cat followed us around and darted in and out of the old vases and now-dry waterworks. Must be nice for the cat to live in such a scenic and interesting place.

Back in the room I was highly annoyed (if you’ll pardon the pun) to find my blood sugar was now 286. So much for being cured. I took some Humalog and waited for dinner.

When it came dinner was simple: instant soup and crackers, prepared in the room’s small kitchen. I took some Humalog for the food, figuring that the earlier high had been taken care of. Masayo and I ate our simple little meal, the final of 2014, and discussed what to do in the evening. New Year’s Eve in Japan is a time for a quiet evening at home; we’re used to that and aren’t big partiers or drinkers anyway.

But this is Croatia, not Japan, so we decided to go out around midnight and see what was happening. We’d seen people setting up for a party in a town square and kids had been setting off firecrackers all day long.

So around 11:00 pm before going out I checked my blood sugar for one last time before the year changed. How would I say goodbye to 2014?

Terribly: my reading was 422. Very, very unusual for me; I’m almost never that high. I wondered what had happened and suspected a domino-effect from the morning and my post-breakfast low. This 422 is my highest of the trip so far, beating the old record I set after Hungarian pizza. I took five units of Humalog to fix it and, in the spirit of not cowing to diabetes, we headed out to see the New Year’s festivities anyway.

We followed crowds in the cold, dark night to the town square from earlier. A large stage was set up and a band had just finished, with lights and a colored ball suspended over the large and noisy and happy crowd. Soon it was midnight and someone got on the microphone and counted down the seconds. The Pula locals and we all cheered as confetti rained down and fireworks exploded overhead.

The 422 was all but forgotten. You can’t let a bad reading wreck your mood. A lesson easier said than done, but I did indeed do it tonight. Happy New Year!

By 12:10 we were heading back home, looking forward to warming up as best we could and to our day tomorrow: the first day of 2015, when Pula was scheduled to be cold and sunny again but when nothing would be open.

What will tomorrow bring? Who knows – we’ll just have to find out when we get there!

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