Hiža jaga
Our story
Our story begins, and will always revolve around Jaga. Baba Jaga, that is.
Many people don’t get to meet their great-grandmother. We were so blessed to have known her. And though we were just kids at that point, the memories of her stay untainted.
Every time we would visit our grandma, we would visit Jaga, too. Walking down this short green lane from our grandmother to our great-grandmother was a mini adventure for us kids. Possibilities and dangers accompanied it. You might find a mushroom, the sweetest forest strawberries, or an asparagus. But beware of direct sunlight in summer and the two barking dogs on the way. Life-threatening to a kid :)
Then we’d enter the garden and go down those six steps to her door. Every opening of Jaga’s squeaky red door welcomed you to a spot where time stood still. The smell of unused wine barrels on the right, dried soap in the middle, and cooked milk on the left. “Sit, sit, have a cookie, have a cookie”. The mantra that’s stuck in our ears. There was always a cookie. And taking the cookie is a must!
They say kids learn to be kind by watching, and if there is one adjective to describe Jaga, that would be the one.
What made her kind is the humility that… inhabited her. This lady didn’t have an easy life, far from it, but it made her a fighter, and it made her a worker. Honestly, apart from her gorgeous face and smile, we’ll always remember her hands - overworked, tired, formed by Istria’s red soil. Same as the hands of our grandma, the hands of our mother…
And she was entirely selfless. What she had was enough pots to cook and enough clothes to wear. A roof over her head. That’s it. There was no water in the house. There was no TV, not even a phone. The toilet was a shack in the middle of the garden…
We can imagine her face if she saw what we’ve done with just a part of her property. A happy mix of confusion and amazement. “A house with everything?” Yes. Cookies, too.
So, you see, there is no other way this house could have been called. It stands there because of Jaga. The house is hers. The house is her.
From a ruin to a home
When we started to renovate, the property was in pretty bad shape. We had no idea at that point what we could do with it. So we decided to start by doing what we knew with the money that we had.
We spent a total of 8 years renovating. Now, when we say “we" renovated, we mean that we actually did most of the work ourselves. Walls, tiles, plaster, furniture, micro-concrete, garden, etc., you name it! And we are very grateful for all the help we had along the way.
It was learning by doing for a lot of activities. It was hard. We put every spare cent and every free minute in it. It made us sweat, bleed, cuss, and cry. But we made a space in which we would live in, that feels like home, that makes us proud. So, it was all worth it in the end.
