WPC: Transmogrify this!

What I love most about having a blog is that nobody can tell me what to do, because nobody is paying me for doing it. Weekly challenge? I can come up with whatever I wish and nobody can call it silly or off the point.

But first, as it’s become a custom, a short walk through the last week on my blog. There were:

1. a varied compilation of shiny moments,
2. a visit to a non-boring Etruscan museum,
3. a disembodied laptop with a happy ending,
4. Italian declarations of love on the walls,
5. a glorious visit to the Slovenian Chair mountain,
6. and various doors and roll-ups from Roma’s Monteverde.

This week I’m grateful to the Weekly Photo Challenge for learning a new word (I know smorgasbord, are they related? Next week’s theme, perhaps?), but in my life things are as they are, and tend to stay as they are, and we like it this way. Unless of course I move borders and change countries, languages, packs, climates, everything, really, but once was enough – one cannot go around doing it every time somebody says Transmogrify.

This is the story of the town called Koper (Capodistria in Italian, this is bilingual territory), the 6th biggest Slovenian city actually and the biggest Slovenian port, by the Adriatic sea, about 20 km from Trieste, and one of its pizzerias, conveniently called Marina, since it is located near the big port and a small marina.

This is also to show how pointless it would be for anybody to read this post if it was sponsored by the restaurant in question. (Or by the beer manufacturer proudly featured on the featured photo. WAITAMINUTE! Does it count if my uncle who worked for this brewery all his life paid us dinner there one time?? :o)

We found it by “accident” the first time amore visited my country. He loved the pizza there so much that the first chance he got he wished to repeat it. And that says a lot, coming from an Italian.

Who would have thought, but the second time, only eight months after the first, things were very different. In the meantime I’d moved to Italy and was back to the country of origin with amore and his daughters on my first visit since the move.

Here are some photos from that visit three years ago.

I love this rather Venetian lion.

This is how it goes with that internet.

A man and a door, what else could one wish for?

Oh, possibly a city duck.

A bit of a mystery.

Not very un-Tuscan for Slovenia.

A view towards Italy.

A truly happy man too.

Eccolo, “Marina” with décor to match.

And then I told about it to a relative. “Go,” I said. “You’ll love it, we had to go right back, amore loved it so much.” Next thing I got from her was a long email with plenty of bullet-points pointing out what all was wrong. (She does audits,  after all.) Not food, but everything else. I was surprised because we loved the service as well.

After that we visited again. They let bestia in even, despite two dog-prohibiting stickers on the door. We again ate well in a friendly atmosphere. So the next time mom was about to visit this relative, I told her cheekily: “Tell her to go to Marina.” The next thing I knew was another email from her telling me that she indeed went again, how they loved it this time, and how happy she was to return and wash away the bad taste. Another waitress, a completely different picture.

All this went through my mind this summer as we were approaching Marina once again. Which waitress would it be? Were we in luck? Indeed it was again the woman we came to love and everything was as we remembered it.

See, not even the view of the marina has changed (just the camera has upgraded and Italy has gotten rosy).

2013

2016

Something was new this time though: for a change from my usual frutti di mare pizza, I had baked pasta in dough. I have never seen or tasted anything like that and it was delicious.

The pizzeria is around the corner. There is a lift on the left.

The view from “Marina”.

Union + pizza, that’s a lovely couple.

Happy chef.

Happy amore. Italians eat French fries with pizza. Really!

Whereas I had this baby. Peekaboo!

So what has actually transmogrified in this post? Well, we went to a bar nearby after dinner and these lights were doing it all the time. Just look at them.

Photo: a © signature mmm production

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: Transmogrify