November of my youth slid down the mountain clothed in fog and breathed its icy breath over the streets of the downtown. Colourful light jackets were swapped for warm coats in drab colours. People walked faster, hunched as if trying to escape November’s chill breathing on their necks. Zagreb put on a cape of misty grey and slowly hunkered down for the winter. Dullness of Zagreb’s November was somewhat offset by vibrant signs of cafés blinking invitingly to youngsters passing by, seducing us with the promise of warmth, hot chocolate, tea, or something cold that warms one’s guts from inside. In the winter, our social life moved indoors to a few of our favourite cafés where one could always find a friend or two ready for a drink and conversation.
If you decided to brave the cold and stay outside, the smell of roasted chestnuts would pull you irresistibly to one of the many street corners, to a vendor behind a metal cart with a cauldron. Every few minutes, they stirred the chestnuts roasting in it, releasing the aroma in the air. The unmistakable mouth-watering fragrance pulled in customers better than any advertisement. We lined up as close to the cauldron’s warmth as possible, those farther from it step-dancing in place to keep warm. With soot-smeared hands, the vendor rolled a pre-cut newspaper page into a cone into which they scooped a “measure” — a sooty, banged-up tin cup — full of hot chestnuts and pressed it into our hands. Each nut had a cut across its outer shell which gaped open, exposing the golden heart within. With cold fingers quickly warmed on hot chestnuts, we pried open the shells and peeled them, fingers and lips black from soot and the ink of the newspaper wrapper. In chilly November nights, nothing tasted sweeter than sooty street-vendor’s chestnuts. Especially when shared with a friend, or a “special friend.”
After decades abroad in a faraway country without chestnuts, I returned to Zagreb as an older gentleman. One winter evening, on a stroll through downtown, I stumbled across a chestnut vendor. Mouth already watering, I stopped to buy a “measure”. Instead of getting hot chestnuts from the cauldron, the vendor opened a drawer and produced a paper cup pre-filled with nuts. They were lukewarm, chewy, and tasted bitter. I thought the vendor gave me bad chestnuts and promptly forgot about it. But part of me must have become weary of street vendors, because I carefully avoided buying chestnuts on the street.
Recently, while browsing around the local market, my wife and I stopped at the booth with chestnuts. The memory of the chestnuts of my youth inspired me to buy a bag of them. We roasted them at home. When done, they smelled exactly how I remembered. With eager fingers, I peeled one and stuffed it into my mouth. I bit into it, expecting that oft-remembered sweet pleasure coursing through me, but nothing happened. The chestnuts were sweet, but underwhelming.
Had my memories deceived me into remembering them sweeter than they’d really been? Did all the sweets in the years since spoil my taste buds so that chestnuts don’t seem sweet enough? Or did the sweetness come from youth and the company I kept? Whatever the reason, I learned that I don’t like chestnuts anymore.
Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay