Croatia and Italy with an unexpected delay in Zagreb

So, we made it to Dubrovnik quite easily, as it's only a 2 hour bus ride from Kotor. As we crossed into Bosnia-Herzegovina, and then again into Croatia, it occurred to me that we might have had a bit of trouble getting across two borders in our rental car. Perhaps we made the right decision about that Madonna concert after all.

When we stepped off the bus at the station in Dubrovnik, we were as usual greeted by a throng of people renting sobe in their homes. This was probably my favorite sobe-renting experience. We had been through the ropes by now, so we knew which questions to ask: Is it in the old city? Is there a kitchen? Do we have to share a bathroom? We got to talking with this old stout woman who spoke some English, and assured us that her place was the best. Then there was the question of price. As it was now halfway through the trip, I was starting to become a little alarmed by the fact that we had already spent more than half my money. Especially considering we were now entering more expensive territory. So we were on the prowl for cheap- like, 10 euros a night. But we quickly realized Dubrovnik was just too touristy, and that wasn't going to happen in the center. So we thought, ok, 15 euro each, which would translate to a 200 kuna room. We could do that. So we went back and forth and back and forth with this squat little woman, who unfortunately remained nameless, and finally the young girl turned to us and said, "Ok, 200 kuna." So we were off.

Getting to this woman's house was an ordeal, and wasn't made any easier by the fact that we had our enormous backpacks (which of course had only become more enormous over the course of the past weeks). We had to take the tram, then walk into the old city and weave through alleys and finally up about 200 stairs. The woman was huffing and puffing like crazy, and clinging to the walls as she went. And I thought to myself, how the hell does she do this every day? She looks like she's about to die! Finally we arrived at her home, shimmied our way up a narrow staircase, and threw our bags down in a tiny but pleasant double room. She showed us a map, and the bathroom, and let us get settled for a few minutes. And then I said, "We should pay you now?" And she said yes. And I said, "200 kuna?" And her face went blank.

See this is my favorite part about Croatians. And it happened everywhere we went in Croatia. When you ask a question that people either don't care to answer or deem too dumb to answer, they'll stare at you as if all of their skills in the English language have suddenly been zapped away. Or as if you're speaking Martian. So I tried, Lord knows I tried. But that bitch would not budge until she had 300 kuna in her hand. And at one point I thought about getting up and going back down all those god-awful stairs. But Kristen looked at me and said, "It's going to be 300 anywhere we go." And I knew she was right. I'm still pissed she got that extra hundred kuna though.

Anyway, Dubrovnik is a beautiful city. Very touristy though, more touristy than anywhere else we had been. It's funny because Dubrovnik was one of the destinations that I was most excited about when we left for the trip. And it was great, but it was other unexpected things in Croatia that really caught my eye. For instance, the islands on the horizon that looked like they had been dolloped onto he water by a spoon from above. It was rainy and we had run out of time to go to the Islands, but oh what a sight. And the drive from Dubrovnik to Split that we made the next day was one of the more stunning things I've ever seen. The Dalmatian coastline really is, as Lord Byron said, "the pearl of the Adriatic."

So the plan was to catch an overnight train from Split to Zagreb, and then a morning train from Zagreb to Venice. Our overnight leg was REALLY uncomfortable. The sleeper cars were sold out, or maybe I just didn't want to pay, but we wound up sharing a six person compartment with one older Croatian couple who felt they were entitled to take up four seats. And even after the woman snapped at me for putting my shoes up on the seat, she and her husband took off their shoes and put their smelly feet in our faces. Awesome. Needless to say, we didn't arrive refreshed in Zagreb.

So we wandered into the train station and up to the international ticket booth, and waited our turn. When we got to the front, we asked the woman for two reservations on the 7 am train to Venice. She looked up sharply and said, "No morning train. Only 23:35." And we said, "What?? Our Eurail timetable tells us there's a train at 7:20 am?" And she got that blank look that the Croatians get when they don't want to deal with you, and said, "Only 23:35."

Dammit. So for the second time in as many days, Kristen and I sat down and had to rethink our plan. Should we walk all the way to the bus station to see if we could get to Italy that way? Should we skip Italy altogether since the train was rerouted to Munich anyway, and Munich was our next destination? (That was not actually an option, as my original excuse for coming to Europe was to visit my brother in Padua.) Ultimately, we had no choice but to wait in Zagreb until the 11:35 pm train. And even though we were trying to save money, we figured there was no way we could do back to back overnight trains without getting some sleep during the day. So we walked to the tourist center and booked a room with this cute little French-speaking woman. (It was exciting to get to speak French with someone, since it's the only European language I actually speak and we weren't going to France.) So here is what our day in Zagreb consisted of:

-walking around the city and the main square- much of Zagreb is seeable in a day
-buying sweaters and boots since it was cheap and we were cold
-sleeping and taking showers at the French woman's house
-eating amazing Croatian sandwiches at this little stand called Pingvin
-seeing a play! We happened to land in Zagreb on a Friday during the Zagreb International Theatre Festival. I know, pretty cool. And even though this Flemish production of Antigone was not exactly my bag, how awesome to be able to say that I saw theatre with all the culture snobs of Zagreb.

All in all, not too bad for an unexpected day.

The next morning we arrived in Venice surprisingly quite refreshed. We had actually had a comfortable sleeper car from Zagreb to Venice! My bro, David, came to meet us in Venice and help us get back to Padua, but we figured since we were in Venice, we might as well walk through San Marco Piazza. BIG mistake. Can I say something actually? I kinda hate Venice. It's nothing but huge crowds of tourists, pigeons that shit everywhere, and convoluted streets to get claustrophobic and lost in. And honestly, I usually like getting lost. But not in Venice. I mean, for the love of God, it took us THREE HOURS to make a simple loop through the city. And yes, it's beautiful, and yes we got some nice pictures. But having been there twice now, I don't mind if I never go back to Venice. Seriously.

Padua, or Padova as the locals call it, is only 30 minutes from Venice, but a whole different place. I loved walking around the calm city with Dav, and meeting his study abroad friends. There's really nothing to do but eat there, so on our first day, we had lunch, had dinner, got gelato, and sat in the square to drink a Spritz. Not a bad day.

My second evening in Padua though, was my favorite, because David's host family invited me to have dinner with them. It was a group of 11: David, me, David's host parents, brother and grandmother, and then David's friend Elise, and her host parents and siblings (Dav's host father and Elise's host father are twins, hence the connection). I mean, how cool to sit around a table eating home cooked food while Italians gesture emphatically. Everyone engaged me a bit with English, but even when they slipped back into Italian, I swear I understood at least 50% of what they were saying. Italians are inherently theatrical, which is something I understand, and the commonality of Italian and French made it easy to follow. I don't even really remember what we talked about that night, but oh was it good conversation and good food! I'm so happy that David is so well taken care of there.

But alas, every good thing must come to an end. And we had to get to Munich. Michael Schwartz was arriving on a plane at 8:10 am Monday morning. And Oktoberfest 2008 was calling our name. So we we boarded our last overnight train of the trip (THANK GOD) and tried to sleep as we raced over the countryside into Germany.