Croatia

After Kravica, I hitchhiked to the near town, Ljubuski. As I waited for another ride, I saw the house next to me had a few fruit trees. I asked the guy if I could have an apple. He urged me to take what I wanted, and then he brought out a beer and dropped it down to me. Hospitality.

I waited 2 hours to be picked up. A Croatian woman, this time, and she brought me across the border into Croatia where I took these photographs.

I waited only about 5 minutes until a weather-beaten guy in a dirty car stopped to pick me up. He spoke no English but we gestured together, and I knew some very basic Serb-Croatian. We got on well. He was a generous guy. He brought me to the next town, Metkovic, and dropped me at the bus station.

I found out when the next bus would leave for the coast, and tried hitchhiking until that time. Nothing. So I got a bus to Ploce. They charged me a dollar just to put my bag under the bus. Whatever.

When I got to Ploce, I walked outside the city to hitchhike again but it was late and I figured people wouldn’t stop in the dark for this lonely murderer. So I looked for a camping spot. Really tough though. Croatia’s all rocks and cliffs. I found a small war memorial with softish level ground, so I slept there until 6am when it started getting light out. Then I packed up and hitchhiked again. I got a local guy to bring me about 40 km to Drvenik.

I got in to Drvenik at about 7am. I changed in the bushes into my swimming gear, and then washed off in the sea. Then I just hung out on the beach for a while.

I walked out to the main road again and tried to hitchhike for about 45 minutes, but no one stopped. I was at a bus stop, so I just took the next bus to Split.

It was weird being back in a place I had already visited. It was cool since I already knew my way around. Split’s beach is pretty ugly though, and shallow. I still got in for a dip.

I realized that Split was very expensive, so I got a night train to Zagreb at about 10pm. It seemed like a perfect situation. I got 6-seat cabin with only one other guy in there. We both spread out on each side and slept. But we made one huge mistake: we didn’t pull the curtains to the hallway. So at about 1am, we were nudged by this soft, ugly twenty-something with long hair. He and his ugly girlfriend had just boarded and wanted to sleep in our cabin. So I changed and arranged my legs to go on the seat opposite where I sat. Pretty uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep, and I just kept looking at this ugly couple, hating them for being so ugly. I shifted, taking my feet off the seat, and I put them on the ground. Then the soft, ugly guy shifted his legs onto the seat I had just temporarily abandoned, so that he was taking up two seats next to each other. So, I put my feet back up onto the seat, and tried to nudge his legs to move. Nothing. His soft body just sat, plump as ever.  I was seething, really hating this guy.  At least there was a cool breeze coming in.  Really pleasant.  But then his ugly girlfriend got up and closed the window.  Like she owned the place.  After a few minutes, I gained the courage to get up and open the window, fighting back for my freedom.  But the ugly guy still had control of the seat opposite me.  He had won.

As the train got closer Zagreb and there was daylight, we all started to gather our things and get ready.  I found it difficult to look them in the face.  I still hated them.  But I sneaked a few peeks and confirmed it in the daylight.  They were both really ugly.

I was in Zagreb very early.  I walked around to get a feel for it.  It was nice with an old town section with a lot of winding streets and churches.

There wasn’t a whole lot to Zagreb though, unfortunately, and CouchSurfers weren’t getting back to me.  I had a pretty boring time just walking around and thinking.

I got online to contact CouchSurfers in Pécs, Hungary, which is just across the border.  A guy there responded to me quickly and offered his couch, so I was pumped.  I booked a train for that evening and got out of Croatia.

It was a short re-visit to Croatia, and I am pretty happy with that.  The beaches are beautiful, but beach gets boring quickly.  It is also an expensive country, so I was glad to leave.

Brac

We got woken up and kicked out by the matron of the house at 9am because we told her we’d probably be out by 8am. I guess they are running a business.

We got ~$6 ferry tickets to go to the nearby island of Brac, an hour away. We immediately did some self-catering at a supermarket. It was great: bananas, yogurt, bread, orangina, white chocolate, beer, and cornetto. No spoons; we drank our yogurt. The best part was finding a shady patch of grass right outside the store. It was definitely a highlight.

The beach was rocky and we took a dip. It was a pain getting in and out over the slippery, sore rocks. Our feet got cut The water was really deep and choppy. So great. The best part was drip-drying in the warm wind under some trees.

We walked to another beach where there were a bunch of people. It was more of a typical beach with shallow water and some shore. We spied a bunch of topless girls. It seemed they all had a weird self-consciousness about how free they were being. Had an extra jaunt in there step. It got boring at that beach so we went back to the original, rocky, secluded one and got blown away.

The ferry brought us back to Split, we got a big meal, and then boarded the ferry to Ancona, Italy. It was a sleeper ferry since it was a 10-hour trip. We paid 71 euro each for the most basic sleeping accommodation in a 4-person cabin. Eleanor and I were split up into male and female cabins, but we each had the whole cabin to ourselves. If only we had known, we could have booked one of those cabins and both of us could have stayed in it, saving maybe 20 euro. Mmmm. It was great though; we had showers, watched 2 Baywatch episodes, and slept great.

Split

We got a bus from Dubrovnik to Split, about $20 each. They charged us another $1 for putting a bag under. When went out to get my glasses from my bag, the bus attendant made a huge deal about having to open the cargo door for me. And when I went to open the cargo door myself, he made another big deal. Some Croatian bullshit. Later on in the trip, we had to show our passports for some reason (we were traveling WITHIN the country). Ours were in our bags in the cargo area under the bus. I went out to get them and I knew what was coming. Another big deal from that same dude. Our experience with Croatians was very pleasant, except for that bitch.

The bus ride was actually pretty awesome for 4.5 hours. We were traveling on a road cut into mountains all along the Adriatic coast. It was scenic and we saw a lot of beautiful spots.

We got out at the bus station in Split and again, we had a bunch of people approach us about a place to stay. We bargained a little and got a place from a guy for about $20 each, and it was close to everything. This time, it was just a room in their house, and we shared the bathroom with them. It’s strange how they can put up with strangers walking in and out of their house and using their shower. It might be a big portion of their income — waiting at the bus station all day to find a tourist.

Split wasn’t all that impressive. We toured Diocletian’s Palace which was huge and imposing but it’s now just an area for shops. It’s cool how it’s got a harbor; that’s about as much as I can say.

We went to the beach. It was rocky and shallow for a good bit which was sort of annoying and not great. It was really packed. We got out and just watched people for a while. Then The Dweeb roamed by.

A real-life incarnation of John Mark. This really soft potato-bodied middle-aged guy with coke-bottle glasses came by and stared at Eleanor and I for a creepy moment too long, then moved on. We watched him. He walked on to a sunbathing girl. He stood over her and stared at her way too long and then she looked up and he moved on. We decided to follow him. He kept doing this, watching girls, staring, being really creepy. He’d go out of his way to step through girls and then stare down at them for a while as he was standing over them. Some lifeguards caught on to this and talked to him but they couldn’t bust The Dweeb; he was only staring.

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik was beautiful.  A mountainous coast on the Adriatic with white-stone houses and red-clay roofs.  Old Town is a small area with fortress walls and watchtowers around it.

 

We walked through the narrow streets, and stopped frequently to watch people and get a rest from the packs we were carrying.  I had mussels for lunch with some Croatian beer, Ozjusko.  We had to deal in their weird Kuna currency, and things were moderately priced, not *really* cheap, especially not in tourist-centric Old Town.  We walked on the dock outside the walls of the city, and found guys playing an organized game of water polo in pretty choppy waters.

It seems all the locals are ready for you to rent a room in their home.  As we got off the bus from the airport, a few women approached us asking if we wanted a place to stay.  However, Eleanor had already booked a place online with a guy who was doing the same thing.  He picked us up and brought us to the apartment above his home.  A pretty good place, two beds for ~$20/person/night.  We possibly could have gotten a better price elsewhere with all the desperate locals trying to fill their rooms.

The next day we headed for the water first thing.  We had to go down a lot of windy streets to descend to the “beach,” which was a lot of rock jutting out into the sea with a couple of ladders for getting out.  We got in and it was awesome.  Really choppy deep water with waves crashing against the rock, and we could float really easily.  I felt alive!

We drip-dried and walked around on top of the city walls.  We got great views of the blue beauty Adriatic, and the city.  What’s strange is that the city was bombed by Yugoslavia in 1991, for no reason.  They restored it, and you can the original roofs from the new ones.

Eleanor and I then went to the other side of Old Town and dipped in to the sea again.  This time it was a beach much like what we are used to except the sand was all pebbles.  Really annoying to walk on, kind of sore.

We got back to our place and went to a grocery store named Tommy, picked up some yogurts, bananas, a beer, and we had a feast as we watched a Baywatch on the patio.  An awesome time.  Then we went to the pizza place nearby for a little more.  That was awesome too.