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Published: August 20th 2009
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Rijeka
Taken from the window of the Catamaran Set off from the hostel in Ljubljana at half 5 on Tuesday morning to catch the 6.20am train to Rijeka, which ended up not leaving until about an hour later due to the late arrival of some zombie carriages which needed to join us. As we went off, I fell asleep almost straight away and was woken up at the Slovenian border station by the police. Half an hour after the lengthy process of clearing both border stations we were scaling the Istrian coastline towards the clump of huge cranes and paneláks which sat on the shore. The confusingly named city "Rijeka", confusing as this word in Croatian just means "river" and the only things remotely like rivers in this city are a small canal/wharf and the meditteranean sea. Perhaps it was named in the same fashion that the vikings named "Greenland".
I didn't do much in Rijeka, it was far too hot to be walking around in jeans and the whole city had free wifi, so cue me spending most of the day plugging myself in in cafés around the city to GTFO the sun. I did see the museum, which had an interesting display of "fossil art", i.e.
Olivia
My youngest cousin inherits the duck from the cover of "Pseudoscientific Quackery" patterns made by fossils on rocks, but that was about it. Left on the ferry in the evening, again slept most of the way, woke up in Novalja 2 and a half hours later and was picked up to Stara Novalja by my uncle, Marcus, whose (half Croatian) wife Rachel had a baby 2 months ago as I mentioned in some entry or other after it happened. She has been really receptive to me, which I'm quite chuffed with, she will wave at me and give me the finger which is definitely a start for a 2-month old! We spent the first night stargazing as stardard, then went down for a couple of drinks at Uljak (the local bar), then back to sleep.
Since then I have been swimming in the morning, hermiting in the afternoon (as it's too hot to do much else - 36°C!) and exercising in the evening. Yesterday evening I cycled into Novalja and back, about 5km each way, and although it was cooling down I was still sweating uncontrollably the whole way back. Got my grandmother (who arrived last night along with another aunt and uncle of mine) a birthday present and myself some
Rakija
I knew that I would need this for my own safety more than others'. much needed Red Bull, which Uljak have decided to stop serving this summer.. boo! Also got some homemade Rakija from a woman selling it from her house, just a small bottle for 25 kuna which I am most looking forward to testing out on everyone in Prague before I go! Yesterday evening after the rest of my family arrived and we had some food and slivovice together, I met up with my friend Ana, who I had met here at Marcus and Rachel's wedding 2 years ago and was back this summer, and went with her and a few others to this pub in Novalja where they fed me something which I think was called "Medica", a Rakija made from honey, which not only got me a bit drunk but just sent me to sleep. On the way back we stopped off at the 24 hour bar on the beach, where I just fell asleep in a deck chair.
Today in the morning I needed a huge swim to shake all that off, and in the evening I did my yearly pilgrimage to No Snakes Hill (which Ana found hilarious that I call a "hill"). There's now a beach
underneath it, so it was getting more cars going up the path than usual, however I managed my 5 minutes of peace there and drew some more symbols in the rocks, and then sweltered back to the apartment again. Tonight we are having a barbecue probably followed by some more drinks at Uljak, and tomorrow morning I am heading north again, getting a coach to Zagreb, and then couchsurfing my way home to Prague via Keszthely in Hungary tomorrow night, and Vienna on saturday, then stopping in Brno on sunday evening and therefore, despite the fact that I told myself I wouldn't this time around, I will be concluding on dear old Metropol again. Hold tight...
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Susan
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Lovely pictures...
... of Olivia and of Stara Novalja. Say hello to everyone from me. Mum xx