Into the mist . . . Croatia.

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(December 17th - 18th) The signs were all there. We just kept ignoring them. Apparently we didn’t want to see them and we just kept turning away. We were not supposed to go to Croatia.

Sign #1: You can’t get there on Eurail. It seems like we’ve been doing good so far on this trip in terms of traveling around, but really its been pretty simple when all we do is whip out our Eurail book, see what time the train leaves and whether or not we need a reservation, and off we go. Any times we’ve had to use other means of transportation, things have gone wrong. Croatia is a bus country. You can get around to some of the places by train, but for some reason they take an exorbitant amount of time to go a very small distance and none of the train schedules match up. As it was we only had five days to travel and see what we wanted to see before we needed to get to Venice. As soon as we started planning and Brian was three pages of note-taking and two hair-pulling head falls into it, we already had to drop Dubrovnik and Zadar.

Sign #2: Eitam’s offer. That was when Eitam made the offer. “You can stay here the rest of the week and just relax.” Relax? We hadn’t heard that in a long time. You see, Brian and I have definitely been on an adventure, a journey, but not really a vacation. On a vacation you nap during the day after drinking two cocktails with umbrellas sticking out of them before taking another dip in the pool. Brian and I wanted to make sure we were able to see and do as much as possible in a limited amount of time, so the only places we really relaxed were when we were staying with friends. We relaxed with Rob and Carl in Dublin, with Rik and Celine in Amsterdam, and of course with Eitam in Budapest. Even though he was in the middle of his 5th year medical school finals, he still wanted us to stay a few extra days for some down time. Yet, we decided to press on.

Sign #3: The train strike in Hungary. Well, if you read “Budafull Budapest,” you know what happens. The train strike cost us a day and a half of time in Croatia, along with less time relaxing and more time planning and re-planning our now two-day adventure if and when we finally made it there. And that was when the fourth sign came.

Sign #4: “No problem.” There were those two little words sitting atop the reply email from the two different hostels I emailed to change our reservations for Zagreb and Plitvice. “No problem.” There have always been problems, complications, stipulations, and most definitely fees when we’ve had to make any kind of last minute change to our plans. Why was there “no problem” this time?

Sign #5: Single journey ticket. We got to the metro station in the morning with the last few forints Eitam had given us to buy our single journey metro tickets in order to get to the bus station and make our way back to Vienna in order to catch a train there to Zagreb. We hopped off at our connecting station and walked across the underground to the new line in order to take the last 10 minutes of our journey and make it to the bus station with about 15 minutes to spare. As soon as we got to the new entrance the guards asked for our tickets which we gladly pulled from our pockets and thrust in their direction. Now, no one in Budapest speaks English. Everyone speaks Hungarian. So what they tried to convey to us was that our ticket was a “single journey ticket” and although in every other country we’ve been in thus far that means from when you enter the underground until when you exit the underground, here in Budapest “single journey” means one train line. So if you have to switch train lines twice you need three tickets. Here I almost lost it. We had no more money, we didn’t no where an ATM was, and if we didn’t get through this whole process fast I was going to be hearing Eitam’s laughing voice on the other end of the phone as I was begging him to take us back for one more night. Apparently we were able to communicate the “no money” problem when I pulled out the five forint piece I had left, so the guard walked us all the way out of the metro and outside to an ATM. We waited in line another five minutes before getting just enough cash to buy two tickets and begin to run.

Sign #6: Where is the bus station? As we ran off the metro at our stop with only five minute before the bus was going to leave, we began to pant and moan as our luggage seemed to increase in weight with each pace. We reached the bus station, glanced at the board, and suddenly our hearts sank as our bus destination and number were nowhere to be seen. Brian quickly ran inside to see what was going on, and just then I happened to glance across the street. And there it was, across six lanes of traffic near a freeway onramp with no crosswalks in sight, our bus station with people lined up handing tickets to the driver. After screaming for Brian and praying for our lives, we once again began to run. We dodged cars and flung our bags along beside us as sweat and tears began to streak our faces. But we made it . . . with not a moment to spare . . . and for a moment we thought maybe there was “no problem.”

Sign #7: Dropped off in the middle of nowhere. And then we realized the problem. One bus ride, one train ride, and one crappy metro ride in which we both feared contracting pink eye (if you read other people’s blogs about Croatia, EVERYONE gets pink eye), and one ten minute walk later we were at our hostel in Zagreb making pasta with butter and salt from the leftovers of other travelers. At least we had made it to Croatia. But the next morning we got up, and without a word of caution or warning from the hostel workers, we were on a bus to see the lakes and waterfalls of Plitvice. We were on the bus for about two and half hours when we began winding up into the hills through pea soup thick fog. I remember at the time thinking, “Oh man I hope this clears up or there will be no lakes to be seen.” And then the bus stopped. Without warning. And the driver waved to us as he yelled, “Plitvika!” We grabbed all of our belongings after spilling and collecting a handful of pretzels on the floor, and exited the bus. I was in too much of a daze staring into the nothingness surrounding us to listen to Brian and the bus driver talk, but apparently the conversation went something like this:
“Where are you going?”
“House Tina,” as Brian held out a map.
“Oh, House Tina ten kilometers back in town.”
“Are there any buses or cabs to get us there?”
“Not sure. Ok bye bye.” And the bus driver promptly got back on the bus and left.

At this point, Brian walked over to me and tried to say confidently even though there were squeaks in his voice, “Let’s go ask at the hotel.” We walked over to the hotel and rang the bell hoping someone inside spoke enough English to understand “taxi” or “bus.” Fortunately, he did. Unfortunately, there were none. “None?” we asked. None. At this point I started to flashback into the movie of Stephen King’s “The Mist” because that was basically what we were facing. There was ten kilometers of road in either direction uphill or downhill to the nearest town. There were no cabs and no buses and we had about 100 pounds of luggage. The surreal situation we were facing led me to believe that at any moment a giant bug-like creature would emerge from the mist surrounding me and swallow me whole. We had no choice . . . we either wait for that situation to present itself and die a miserable death in the middle of Croatia, or we start walking. We chose the latter and picked up our pride and our luggage as we began to trudge down the hill.

Seeing our awful and awkward predicament, one driver actually pulled over to offer assistance. The second we mentioned the name of the town he was off faster than my class at the 10:15 recess bell. So we continued on down the road with no sidewalk, fog in either direction so that you only had visibility of up to 20 meters in front of your nose, and tiny little rocks making it near to impossible to steer the big rolling bag without it tipping over. After an hour of walking in which we guessed we made it a mile to a mile and a half, I called House Tina once more to ask what we should do. This time they offered to come pick us up as long as we waited by the side of the main road. I kept my cool and refrained from saying, “And where else exactly would we go?” because I was incredibly grateful that soon we would be done with this predicament.

The family at House Tina were some of the kindest people we’ve encountered, and as soon as we’ve officially forgiven Croatia, we will be back on a summer vacation to visit them. Of course when we arrived at the house we were given the same news we had already assumed. Because of the fog and it being winter time, there were no buses running to the lakes and really no lakes to be seen. Its amazing that after reading about 20 assorted blogs on Croatia, not a single person mentioned the difficulty in winter. Nevertheless we spent the night in a cozy Gingerbread house cabin and had one of the most fulfilling and cheapest meals we’ve had yet. We basically ended up taking a long bus ride for a decent night’s sleep.

The next day we were back to Zagreb after being driven to the bus stop by a friend of one of the owners. It was already snowing when we stepped outside so we hoped the wait wouldn’t be long. We were wrong once again. The time did pass quickly as my love of the saying, “A smile is the same in every language,” was renewed as a Croatian woman and myself continually pointed at things surrounded us like the snow, other people, and accessories we had on, and we smiled. It was nice to have a little human connection after the hell we’d been through. The other passenger waiting for the bus seemed to know every single person in town as carvafter car that passed our way honked, waved, and yelled out their window for a few brief seconds of passing conversation.
The bus finally came after I swore I was going to lose my pinky to frostbite and we were glad to venture back to a connecting Eurail city. Little did we know the horror was not over. The bus driver apparently had an affinity for ABBA, so he blasted it the entire bus ride, in Croatian. You really haven’t lived until you’ve heard, “Take a Chance on Me” in Croatian :p Just when we thought we were in the clear, we got stuck in massive traffic and turned a five minute drive into another half an hour of ABBA time. I’m still surprised Brian didn’t get out and start running.

We got back to Zagreb with eleven hours to go until our train was leaving. So we shoved our belongings in a locker and prayed the homeless gentlemen sitting in the train station drinking what allegedly was coffee were not going to break in and soon be dancing around in our clothes whilst rewriting all my blogs. Brian and I decided to go explore Zagreb and at least enjoy one city in Croatia. That took up about two hours. We ate dinner. Another two hours. Seven hours to go. That was when we decided we should find a movie theater and kill some time relaxing. So we found the nearest theater that was playing movies in English and waited patiently to watch “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Another four hours . . . three hours to go. We went back to the train station at this point and prayed that the little red light denoting the locker was still locked would be glowing ever-so-brightly. It was. So we played gin rummy until the night train arrived. It was twenty minutes late. When we got on we discovered that although we were told. “No reservations needed” we still had to pay to have a sleeping car. We quickly forked over cash and began to turn our 4 foot by 7 foot bunker into a resting point thinking the drama was almost over. Of course it wasn’t. First of all, the heater was broken. And although we tried fiddling with the knob to fix it at various intervals in the night, it was all to no avail. We finally used my empty apple juice box to prop open the train window for a bit of cool relief. Then, every moment we fell into peaceful slumber, another ticket taker, customs officer, or policeman would stroll in demanding tickets, passports, any goods to declare, and more money as we passed through new countries. This went on until 3AM. Let me say this . . . when our original ticket taker came by at 6:45AM and announced “VENEZIA!” throughout the hallways, I almost cried tears of joy. I’m sure Croatia is a lovely country, and someday I’ll be willing to give it another try, but for now, thank all that is holy we made it to Italy!

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Comments

[Cher]

icky
Holy hell! That's insane! I bet you were never ever so thankful to arrive in Italy! ha