slavic women are scary

this blog says that i am in croatia but i am not actually in croatia right now. i was a couple of weekends ago and its taken me this long to write this. some friends and i took a last minute trip to croatia over last weekend, spending a day in zagreb, taking an overnight bus to dubrovnik, staying one night there, taking the overnight bus back to zagreb and flying back to istanbul sunday evening. it was a quick whirlwind trip with a lot of bus time (thankfully overnight) and as much sightseeing as possible squeezed into a short amount of time. we left istanbul thursday afternoon and arrived at zagreb international around 4 in the afternoon. zagreb international is about the smallest international airport i have ever seen, with the possible exception of harare, zimbabwe but i have a hard time remembering that one. it is smaller than cedar rapids airport but just bigger than waterloo. there are no gates. the planes park on the tarmack and then we are bused the 30 meters from the plane to the terminal. it literally takes about ten times longer to load the bus and then bus us over than it would to just let us walk. we made our way through imigration and customs and found the proper bus to town where we had to entertain ourselves for a few hours before our bus left. zagreb is a nice little city with an interesting juxtaposition between the historic, old europe area with its architecture and the newer communist-influenced areas. there is a lot of construction in croatia everywhere. hopefully they can get rid of the communist buildings because they are really ugly. after seeing as much of the city as we cared to in the cold, we found a nice little bar and sat down to rest before our trecherous bus journey down the coast. we boarded the bus around 9pm and set off for dubrovnik. if you haven't taken an overnight bus trip then let me let you in on a few secrets and dispell some myths about the experience. first bit of info: IT SUCKS! if you manage to sleep, its not very well because of the constant rocking of the bus, or the many stops, or the load people getting on and off the bus. on our way back we picked up a group of teenagers that were just taking it for a about an hour. they happened to get on around 11:30, just as i was getting to sleep and proceeded to have a party right in the back of the bus next to me. i did not sleep again on that bus. fortunately when we got the airport in zagreb later that day i was able to get about 4 hours of sleep in the terminal. and yes i was that jackass american spread out on the benches taking up 5 seats, but i didn't care because i was tired on there were only about 25 people in the whole airport anyway. they could find somewhere else to sit.

after the arduous journey to dubrovnik, we exited the bus and began looking for 1. food and 2. a plate t stay. It was 7 o'clock in the morning, which apparently in dubrovnik, means there ain't shit open. we finally found a hostel after about an hour in the rain and 3 buses. we checked in and went looking for food. unfortunately, it was only about 9 by then and still nothing open. we wandered around in the rain some more and found a neat little pizzeria/bar tucked in a corner of the old city and sat there and waited over an hour for them to start serving food. we ordered the biggest pizzas i have ever seen for dirt cheap and sat and ate all of it, along with some tea. the rest of the day was spent sightseeing in the old city, braving the rain and cold to see a beautiful place. it was really quite amazing but it would be so much better in the summertime. its like the croatian riviera and i can only imagine what its like when you can go to the beaches. the old city fills up and the many bars, cafes, and resturants spill out into the alleyways and piazzas, filling with people who sit and have a good time deep into the night after a long day at the beach or out on the water. i would love to return again during the summer and see it in a whole other light. the positives for us was that it wasn't crowded at all and the prices were cheaper. we stayed the night there and did some more sightseeing the next day which was a lot nicer. we had another amazing meal for almost nothing at this little italian/seafood resturant. that night we caught the bus back to zagreb where we overpaid for a hotel buffet because we were starving and again nothing else was open.

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