Saturday, November 22, 2008
Snow in Prague
I woke up early this morning so I could pick up my parents from the airport. I just looked out my window to discover that the world is covered in white. IT SNOWED!! I am so excited/wish I had appropriate footwear and could find my gloves. Winter wonderland pictures to come!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Prague at dusk
There was sun and blue sky today in Prague... at least for the 5 hours of sunlight that exist this time of year... unfortunately I spent the majority of this time in class. After class I decided to take my camera for a walk along the Vltava river. It has taken 2 months but I finally captured the Prague castle at night... sort of... and it did involve me laying on the ground in duck poop. Here are some pictures from my walk.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
10 day vacay: Italy, Croatia, Slovenia
So I just returned from a 10 day vacation from vacation. There are so many things that happened and I have not quite figured out how to effectively describe my experience. I could break it up by location and you could read it all backwards or I could do the day by day and have the longest post ever! Long post it is… but there will be tons of pictures so you can pretend you were there. (the better pics are on my other blog tho).
Intro: So I traveled with my friend André, who I randomly had a class with at Chico and who even more randomly lives in Martinez. I had planned to do this trip alone because it would have been easier than following everyone else and taking hours to make decisions in a big group. I had mentioned this to Andre and he insisted that, me, being a lovely lady, should not travel alone. We planned… by plan I mean booked a flight there and back and researched a bit about the countries we wanted to visit: Italy, Croatia and Slovenia.
Here is the breakdown of our trip.
Day 1: Woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight to Trieste Italy (this was the least expensive flight). The waking up was a bit challenging due to the late night pow-wow in an underground bar with local Czech people the night before. The night had consisted of many beers, broken language barriers and tone-def songs sung. I was even complimented on my Czech language skills (never thought that would happen!). So we arrive in Trieste and catch a 2 hour train ride to Venice. This was the smoothest part of our whole trip.
Once I arrived in Venice, André and I began to look for a place to stay. (we definitely should have planned this before because it was the beginning of the weekend every season in Venice is tourist season). We searched for an internet café and the bar tender immediately asked if we were looking for the hostel. “Hostel?...our ears perked up.. why yes?!”.. the place was booked and after waiting 3 hours for the reception desk to open we were directed to a one star hotel down the road. ( and by road I mean stunningly beautiful and rustic, winding alleyways through Venice.)
Venice was so beautiful. By the time we arrived the light was low and I couldn’t stop thinking about all the pictures I wanted to take. AHHH.. I went a bit insane! When we first got out of the train station a couple from Oregon came and spoke to us. They were a bit whiny and kept complaining about hoe everything was old and nothing worked. Apparently they had been staying on the island for a few days and were headed home. What idiots! The whole reason Venice is so beautiful is because it is falling apart and old and ‘sinking’. I was prepared to stay in the dankest place with no running water and leaky roof…. Wish granted.
Our one star hotel ended up meeting my description… but hey… its only a place to sleep and there was running water and no leaky roof. .. just the smell of musty linens, fresh fish and stale cigarettes. Loved it! After getting rid of our backpacks (or ‘kids’ as we called them) we headed out on the town. Soon after entering the twisting streets we heard the pounding of drums and cheers of people. “YES!”. We caught up with the parade which was made up of strictly young people.
I never imagined that there were so many young people living in Venice. I always relate is with tourists, James bond and elderly people. Andre and I with the crowd having no idea what was going on. We asked a girl and she explained that it was a group of students protesting the budget cuts to Italian schools. They wanted more than one teacher in elementary level schools so that students wouldn’t be taught just one opinion. There were a bunch of other reasons that we later learned after following the group to a local University. The mob of students piled into an outdoor common area and a woman began to speak over a loud speaker. Suddenly everyone sat down and to blend I sat to. We were in it for the long whole, as I initially thought we were striking and were going to be sitting until the requested demands were met.
Andre and I snuck out after about an hour to get Pizza and return later.
We ate and when we came back they were handing out free drinks and talking in small groups. I desperately wanted to fraternize with locals so I interrupted a group of students and asked if they went to school here. They did and invited us to join them for dinner and a few drinks. We were taken to an apartment where I tripped walking up the stairs and embarrassed myself as always. Then we went to the piazza, a place where the hang out was. Got Gelato, talked, exchanged info and left to explore.
Day 2: Friday morning I woke up and grabbed a fresh pastry at a local shop. There is just so much great food in Italy. They have butchers and open markets and bakeries and fish markets… it is just splendid.. hence the 7 lbs I gained on the trip. Oh well! After grabbing a bite to eat we wandered around the city. We just started walking in a random direction and did that for about 5 hours stopping for food when we wanted and entering into every church we saw or free exhibit that came along. Seeing a church on every corner really drove home the concept of Catholic country… seeing all the churches and cathedrals makes me wish I read the bible. I am basically clueless when it comes to anything religious as I consider myself to be more spiritual than anything.
After an exhausting day we decided it was time to find a place to sleep. We hadn’t found any hostels during our wandering so we asked our original hotel (where we had left our packs) if they had any spots. The only room they had open was 90Euro… aka an arm, leg and my first born. No thanks! We were about to leave to find another place when the lady at the front desk says” well I may have a room for you that costs even less than your room last night.. but you may want to see it first.” Umm…. André and I both looked at each other and went with it. The woman was laughing the whole time when she showed us this room in the attic. It was the strangest set-up ever but I loved it and hey, it had a great view.
I was unable to stand in the room or the bathroom, which was down the hall from the room, but this made it even more interesting. There were clothes hanging all over the place and I am still unsure if there were other people living up there or what. There were creepy pictures of family members and sketches that a child could have drawn, along with old fashioned vanity supplies. Odd.
We put our packs down… passed out for 2 hours, woke up and walked around to find a bottle of wine. We went to eat dinner and then sat along the Grand Canal drinking our bottles of wine and taking it all in. It was a nice night and I enjoyed people watching and relaxing without a care in the world.
Funny story that may not be funny: after a while of deep conversation and wine drinking André got up to find a WC. He gets up off the bench we were sitting on and says’ watch my booze!’. 2 seconds later I hear a splash… haha his bottle of wine had fallen off the dock and into the water.. haha.. I am the worst babysitter ever! We both watch the bottle as it looks like it is about to sink. It flips over cork side down and bobs along in the canal. Here I am hanging our over the water reaching for this damn bottle of wine looking like a complete fool. … but Erinn saves the day and retrieves the precious goods. All is well. We finish our wine and head out around town to find another spot to hang out.
This cheery bartender man waves us in through the window where we are forced to stand in a crowded restaurant. We drink some very sweet red bubbly wine and the drunken bartender fills our glass for free and gives us samples of eggplant and salami. Yum. I overhear some English and end up talking with some American soldiers who are stationed in Italy. We hang out with them for a while...they buy me some drink that I don’t want and we wander around town. I don’t actually think we paid for anything, which seemed to be fine. After wandering we end up in San Marco square (which I unfortunately only saw at night).
I get bored and we separate from the Americans to find some real Italians!... and we do. I follow music until we run into a group of people crowded around a bongo player and saxophonist. We meet a man named Fabio who gives me a rose and insists on taking pictures with me and André. He was such a funny man. After a while the music stops so we attempt to find the place we had hung out the night before. After a while of searching for it I realize I have lost my wristlet (purse.. with all my everything in it.. Shit!). In a panic I try to retrace all the alleys that we had taken to get to where we were. (I remember this graffiti here, I went to the bathroom over there, this sign looks familiar… ) LOST! … and freaking out…and confusing Fabio who is so desperately trying to help me find my things. I give up and head home… what a way to start my trip… lose my ID, tram pass, 150euro, phone… ahh!
So we get home and I’m wanting to cry, and drunk, and life sucks, and then André empties his pockets of his jacket and…holding my bag in his hand says ‘what’s this?’ I didn’t know if I should hug him or hit him... so I hugged him. DUH! Life saved… trip amazing… me happy..
We climbed out our rickety attic skylight and sat on the roof. WOW! I am in Venice!
Day 3: I dragged myself out of bed ‘early’ to catch a taste of morning venetian life (its 11AM.. but going to bed at 7AM and watching the sun come up makes it worth it) I started my day by popping my head out our skylight and scaring off some seagulls… there was a whole flock of them. I wandered around and snapped some pictures and soaked it all in. Andre finally got out of bed so we ate and headed back to Trieste to catch a bus to southern Croatia. Before we got to the station we ran into our US friends from the night before. (Theme of trip: we always see someone once and then see them again. It became freaky! Ex: couple sitting next to us in a restaurant… yeah we bumped into them in one of the 200 churches in Venice.)
(please note the dead bird)
We eventually caught the train and ended up at the bus station, realizing that we had missed our bus to Split by 5 minutes (another theme of the trip). André and I looked at all the schedules to figure out where we could go… umm Bosnia? We decided to wait and catch and early train the next day, the only problem was finding a place to stay. We wandered around for a while looking for a hotel that didn’t look to expensive and ended up getting directed to this internet café that felt like it belonged in Berkley. I searched online only to realize that the whole city was booked and that we would have to either sleep in the train station or stay up all night with our backpacks in random bars that were open. (spending our while trips saving on a hotel was not an option).
As we sat and contemplated what to do a lovely Italian lady, who had been observing us in all our confusion, started up a convo. After a while she offered us her home to store our bags. She was waiting for some friends but took us to her house where we ditched the bags. Her name was Marina .. uh.. is Marina and she is a student as well. We ended up hanging out with her all night. WE went to a bunch of the hot spots in town and met up with her younger sister and her friends. Fortunately for us her English was perfect because her mother is British.
So we went with a big group around Trieste, singing and laughing as we went from bar to bar. Along the way we had a sightseeing tour. Roman ruins here, parliament there… ya know…. parts of everyday life for Europeans. At about 5 am we hit our last stop where the boys got their last beers… out of vending machines… haha… oh the joys of no-rules land. We headed back across town back to Marina’s (she had by this point offered that we stay the night at her place and catch a later train) OK!.
When we got home we all danced around their kitchen covered in random cutouts of animals (her mom likes them) and we sang and cooked some real Italian pasta. Well.. they cooked… I just danced. We ate as the sun came up and managed to sleep a few hours before trudging to the bus station.
Day 4: We arrived at the bus station only to find that the ticket window was closed. Sunday in Catholic countries means you are screwed… well at least we thought we were. The schedule showed that the bus we planned to take didn’t exist anymore and that we would have to wait around for 4 hours until the another bus left for Rijeka…. Not exactly the destination we had planned. We waited around hoping that we would be able to purchase out ticket on the bus or that the ticket window would magically open.
15 minutes before our plan B bus arrived the window magically opened. We got tickets and got on the bus. WE didn’t arrive in Rijeka until late at night. Again.. with no place to stay we frantically searched for internet and discovered that everything affordable was booked.
On our way to find internet and a place to sleep an old women came up and started pestering André. “you talk to my daughter.. she speak English,” said the lady, handing her phone to André. I walked ahead ignoring the crazy lady and hinting to andre to just walk away. 20 minutes later as she had followed us down the street she begins pointing up to this building saying.. ‘you stay here?’ No way I’m not following a random lady into a sketch building so I can be slaughtered! (I thought) I bet she takes US tourists there to be tortured and killed! (what an attitude to have I know… horrible… but maybe a defense mechanism.)
Ever since I entered Croatia I had this fear that being American would get me killed. The recent conflicts with the US and Yugoslavia caused me to be skeptical of everyone and to pretend to be Canadian eh?. This fear increased when I realized that everyone in Croatia is a giant. When we were sitting around using the internet (free wi-fi for the whole town)all the teenagers were roaming around. I don’t think I saw a single female that was shorter than me. I was fascinated!
No where to stay, no bus to Split for a while, no food in our stomachs. We ate pizza, had a beer and waited… and waited… and waited… for our waiter to bring us our bill…. Time was running short so I ditched André to try and catch our bus. I was a block away from the bus station (the most sketch place ever) when I see this bus leaving. With my backpack on and carrying all my junk I start sprinting towards the station. Missed it… by five minutes. What is the problem here???… oh yeah. André’s watch is set 5 minutes slow and we keep getting stranded! We fix the watch and plot our next move. Plan C….either we are not destined to go to Split or we are being tested by some higher power… either way it’s an adventure!
Our plan consists of trying to stay up until the next bus comes at 6AM. It is not even midnight. It is Sunday. Everything is closed. It’s cold. We are tired. To pass the time we walked around looking for places that were open and hanging out on the steps of buildings that looked important. I think we ended up at some museum because there was a random rocket out front of the building. We looked and looked for a place that was open and ended up at a café (where we for the 2nd time saw a group of Irish people that were on our original bus.) At this café we were invited to share a table with some drunk and scary, Croatian/Russian, middle aged manage a trois. They jokingly invited André to join I their sexual endeavors and talked vulgarly about every country that wasn’t their own. We escaped and looked for a place to sleep… on the streets.
We found a little place in a store front that was protected from the wind. I used my backpack as a pillow and shared my 55+ sleeping bag with Andre. It was not warm and not comfortable and not the highpoint of my life. I was a bum for a night and feel much more empathy towards all the people who do this on a nightly basis. During the night I woke up frequently, terrified out of my mind that the cops were coming to attack us or drunk late nighters were going to beat us up (I watched “Bum Fights all to often). The set up of our temporary hotel had windows that allowed me to see who was coming in the reflection. As people passed I stared at them trough squinted eyes and observed their stares in our direction. I am ashamed… and proud… that I survived a night on the streets.
Day 5: At 4AM I couldn’t stand lying on the cold concrete anymore so I woke up André and convinced him to walk back to the bus station…. a bus station which was made up of just a few parking spots and a 24hr heat-lamped food restaurant. We sat and waited and made in on a bus to Split. I slept the entire ride minus the few minutes when I looked out the window and struggles to keep my eyelids open to experience the beautiful scenery. The Croatian landscape is wonderful with old stone walls and dilapidated buildings.
We arrived in Split in the early afternoon and made it to our hostel, which we had booked ahead of time for once. On our trip to the hostel we had 9 people come up to us and offer us a place to stay. I have leavened that it is part of the culture in Croatia to offer people your homes. It is typically little old ladies who look homeless themselves. When we got to our hostel we discovered that it was actually someone’s home and that we were staying in a spare room. The girl who answered the door’s name was Marina (the 3nd Marina we met, 2nd being the crazy drunk Croatian/Russian).
Rooms Maria had been the name of the place we had booked online, and knowing the Split is a town on the water we expected it to be rooms on the marina of the sea. The place was nice and very homelike. We were invited into their kitchen where they made us cappuccinos and gave us more mandarins than we could eat. A little English was spoken so we were able to ask about sights to see and places to eat.
Around 7pm we were exploring and noticed that young people were all going the same direction…(not the 'young whores') of course André and I followed them. We ended up at a school so we walked in and tried to blend…. which would have been easy if we were 16 and 5’10 or more! Class started to we left and explored the town at night….only to discover that everything closed early and that the suggested ‘beach party’ was completely abandoned. Croatia, as I now know, is a summer destination. Many people we met, for example Ante, a friendly and well educated bartender, questioned our reason for being in Croatia at such an odd time of the year. Although it would have been more exciting if there were more people, I enjoyed the peacefulness of a town not infested with tourists.
We met Ante at this café on the beach. He was proud to show us a book of the beaches history and taught us about a sport that was played there. He recommended that we return the next day around noon to watch people play and to stop by when he began work at 4pm.
Day 6: Woke up at a reasonable time. Wandered through an open air green market to grab breakfast and picnic materials (fresh bread, cheese, fruit, best chocolate croissant ever!, dried mangoes). Went to watch the ocean sport but due to weather (windy, cold, wanting to rain), no one was playing and the beach was empty. We ordered cappuccinos and picnicked at the restaurant we had gone to the night before. After we ate we went to explore the northern hill. Goal: to reach the Croatian flag at the top of the mountain!
We headed in the general direction of the flag: uphill and straight. We ended up at several dead ends among partially destroyed and abandoned homes scattered among new lived in houses. It seems that in Croatia they don’t rebuild or destroy fallen down homes; they just build around them. This makes for an eerie sort of atmosphere where you can feel the past of the country and the wars that may have taken place there. At one dead end we reached we were torn between climbing a hill and taking a different path. A barking dog helped make up our mind and as we snuck away I spotted another sleeping (unleashed) dog inside a large pipe. Phew!
Eventually we found some stairs that led us to the top of the hill, but not the flag. The views were amazing and only got better as we found an old watchtower. We climbed the tower and I was able to take some pictures of Split and the mainland before basically being blown away. The tower was moving in the wind and the cables that were holding the structure up were curving. Just to be safe we got down and made our way to the flag.
Reaching the flag was nothing compared to the zoo that we randomly discovered. It was the saddest zoo I have seen, or ever want to see, in my life. The cages were dirty and housed the most random pairing of animals. The zoo was made up of: Emu’s and miniature horses, a sad lone owl that was sitting on the ground, about 200 guinea pigs of all sizes (yes.. your typical pet guinea pig), rabbits ( your typical house rabbit), 3 scary wolves, one shy tiger, donkeys (12 in a cage made for 2) and a silly and disgusting monkey with a boner. The use of the word ‘boner’ while watching the monkey helped initiate a conversation with 2 Swedish guys (who later became our best friends). We thought they were Croatian, they thought we were Croatian and we found out that English was our common language we ended up hanging out with them all day and night. We got sick of the stench of the zoo and watching the monkey finger-paint in his own urine and needed a drink… and food.
The group of us (monkey not included) went to a highly recommended seafood restaurant, Fife, where I ordered fish. Just as I had pre-guessed (and hoped I was wrong), my meal came with heads included. I ate the fish anyway… Dad would be proud! Dinner and then second dinner at a stand that served Croatian Hamburgers with corn and hardboiled egg! Delicious!
Andre and I took the Swedes (Adam and Gustan) to our beach café where we hung out with the bartender man and drank beer and talked politics and country differences for 3 hours. I have learned that Croatians have a major distaste for Serbia and Bosnia. I got bored and sick of making generalizations so I ran out to the beach in the rain with Gustan and got in the water… partially. It was freezing!
We migrated to the main downtown area and found the only bar that was open. I was standing and talking to Adam when suddenly someone grabbed me around the neck! At first I thought it was Gustan but I turned around to see Matt….and other Matt … 2 guys from my USAC program.(found in pictures from Day 7) I was overly excited and surprised because we had already randomly bumped into two other people from our program the day before.
We partied.... met some Croatians… the bartender kept making me free drinks which I secretly made everyone else drink….. danced to the jukebox… socialized some more. Eventually the bartended (drunk) closed the bar. We walked for what seemed like forever to go back to the Croatians house. Similar to Prague, Split’s city outskirts are made up of Block Housing (really run down dorm like apartments). It got late so we left and then sunglasses ruined my life. The short version of the story can be read below and questions can be asked personally or in the comments.
Short version: Andre stole the guy’s sunglasses. We were on our way home and were chased down. The sunglasses were discovered. Andre got socked in the face and kicked violently while he was on the ground. He ran away. Guys chased him. I, terrified for my life, started to go home with my newly made Singaporean friend and realized André had my keys and was possibly going to get killed. I went back for him and found the angry Croatians instead. I told them I wouldn’t leave them until we found André hoping that they wouldn’t kill him if I was there. We found him….Amends was made….Walked home paranoid out of my mind of being followed.
Day 7: I woke up angry at Andre but trying to be ok with his drunken idiot behavior. That morning we were on our way to meet up with the Matts. I am walking along and here “hey”. I look over and see my friend Sean, in all his suaveness (sunglasses on, drinking rum on the rocks, watching the ocean.) Haha perfect!
Sidenote: As I sit in a random café to write this segment (days 3-11)of the longest blog ever… 2 little girls have wobbled over on their newly used legs to talk to me. I have randomly looked down and felt them clinging onto my leg. Haha… too cute.
Back to Day 7: We met up with the boys… enjoyed a relaxing yet not so warm day on the beach and ended the day at a dance club surrounded by the Croatian giants. Oh yeah… and Croatians can dance… unlike people in some other places I have been… and they play Croatian music too which is a relief from euro pop and American 80s.
Day 8: I woke up early and took a 2 hour boat ride to the Island of Hvar. The weather was fantastic. Hvar is a small little town…clean… minus the stray dogs humping all over the place. We walked up a hill to another castle and then back to catch a bus to the boat. “You Go. Be happy young people. Have fun!”-quoted from a man who helped us with direction.
We want to our hostel/house when we got off the island where our host sang to Andre and gave me some home made Liquor. Then we left. From Split we took a bus to Zadar. We arrived very late and only spent a few hours there. These hours were spent walking along the coastline, in and out of marinas to find our hostel. We got to the Hostel so late that the security guard had to let us in. It would have been nice to stay in Zadar an extra day and rent a paddle boat or something.
Day 9: (Halloween): In the morning we took a city bus (that we should have taken the night before instead of walking for 6 miles) to the center of Zadar. Along the shore we saw the sea organ. The sea organ, as you are probably wondering, looks like a set of steps into the ocean but consists of tubes and holes. Water from the ocean and wind moves through the pipes and make a beautiful chime like sound. It was incredible to sit and listen while watching the waves splash up onto the concrete. The wind was intense that day, and so was the organs sound.
We grabbed pizza and ice-cream (diet of champions) and caught a bus (on-time for once) to Rijeka where we waited for a train to take us to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The bus ride to Rijeka was one of the most breathtaking bus rides I have ever experienced. We drove along the water’s edge the entire time…blue and gray mood…stone houses on the shore, mountains in the distance, reflections on the water, flat roofs, small boats and lone fisherman. I couldn’t really capture it on film.
We arrived in Ljubljana late and to our disappointment did not see anyone dressed up. I expected this. There were many young people dresses in all black, some had crazy, makeup and fake blood on their faces… but that was it. We stayed in Zeppelin Hostel.
Day 10: We took the first train to Divača, a small town in Slovenia. From the station we caught a van to the Škocjan Caves. Slovenia is known for its many caves and we chose to go to this one because it is one of the largest and has a crazy river running through it. The caves were magnificent. I always think of my geologist parents and how much they would appreciate it. Stalactites, stalagmites… no photography allowed but I tried to be sly and took some horrible picture.
The end of the cave tour was remarkable. A tiny beam of light at the end of the tunnel…as we approached it the bright colors of fall began to appear… closer and you could see a vast valley filled with trees… fog hovered in parts of the forest and the river, which we had seen inside the cave cut through the hills. I wanted to stand and stare forever… or at least for an hour or two…. but we had to make our way back to Trieste to sleep.
The trains/buses are not as easy as I expected…. And it was a national Holiday in Slovenia so everything was closed and the streets and towns felt empty. A nice man directed us to a small train to Smetana, a town on the border of Italy. We took his advice and got on the train as he had told us “ you have 1 minute and 34 seconds to decide”. Once we got of the mini-train we realized our plans did not work out… typical… haha. Originally we were going to take a bus or a taxi to Trieste. The man who got us on the train spoke with the lady at the train station. All I overheard was “no bus, no train, no taxi.” Uh OH!
Andre and I looked for a taxi, tried to call one from the hotel, tried to walk to Trieste, tried to hitchhike. The sun was setting and we were running out of ideas. We eventually convinced a hotel person to call us a cab and made it to Trieste 25Euros later.
In Trieste we had booked a hotel with the Matts and Sean and then randomly ran into 2 other guys from our program. I was the only girl…boo. Marina and her sister were out of town fighting for their school in Rome (the same fight we had been a part of in Venice). If they had been in Trieste we would have been hanging out with them but instead we explored on our own. We went to a few bars and cafes, one which had a Prague street sign in it. In this café Matt’s chair collapsed on him and in the process of his falling I became covered in my cosmopolitan. How embarrassing! They re-made my drink but we left shortly after.
We found one of the places that Marina had taken us where were got some cups of beer to go. I took the guys to the ruins of an outdoor theater where were sat and hung out for a bit before calling it a night.
Day 11: Took an Early bus to the airport…. Waited for 3 hours for our flight… made is safely back to Prague. What a Trip!
Intro: So I traveled with my friend André, who I randomly had a class with at Chico and who even more randomly lives in Martinez. I had planned to do this trip alone because it would have been easier than following everyone else and taking hours to make decisions in a big group. I had mentioned this to Andre and he insisted that, me, being a lovely lady, should not travel alone. We planned… by plan I mean booked a flight there and back and researched a bit about the countries we wanted to visit: Italy, Croatia and Slovenia.
Here is the breakdown of our trip.
Day 1: Woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight to Trieste Italy (this was the least expensive flight). The waking up was a bit challenging due to the late night pow-wow in an underground bar with local Czech people the night before. The night had consisted of many beers, broken language barriers and tone-def songs sung. I was even complimented on my Czech language skills (never thought that would happen!). So we arrive in Trieste and catch a 2 hour train ride to Venice. This was the smoothest part of our whole trip.
Once I arrived in Venice, André and I began to look for a place to stay. (we definitely should have planned this before because it was the beginning of the weekend every season in Venice is tourist season). We searched for an internet café and the bar tender immediately asked if we were looking for the hostel. “Hostel?...our ears perked up.. why yes?!”.. the place was booked and after waiting 3 hours for the reception desk to open we were directed to a one star hotel down the road. ( and by road I mean stunningly beautiful and rustic, winding alleyways through Venice.)
Venice was so beautiful. By the time we arrived the light was low and I couldn’t stop thinking about all the pictures I wanted to take. AHHH.. I went a bit insane! When we first got out of the train station a couple from Oregon came and spoke to us. They were a bit whiny and kept complaining about hoe everything was old and nothing worked. Apparently they had been staying on the island for a few days and were headed home. What idiots! The whole reason Venice is so beautiful is because it is falling apart and old and ‘sinking’. I was prepared to stay in the dankest place with no running water and leaky roof…. Wish granted.
Our one star hotel ended up meeting my description… but hey… its only a place to sleep and there was running water and no leaky roof. .. just the smell of musty linens, fresh fish and stale cigarettes. Loved it! After getting rid of our backpacks (or ‘kids’ as we called them) we headed out on the town. Soon after entering the twisting streets we heard the pounding of drums and cheers of people. “YES!”. We caught up with the parade which was made up of strictly young people.
I never imagined that there were so many young people living in Venice. I always relate is with tourists, James bond and elderly people. Andre and I with the crowd having no idea what was going on. We asked a girl and she explained that it was a group of students protesting the budget cuts to Italian schools. They wanted more than one teacher in elementary level schools so that students wouldn’t be taught just one opinion. There were a bunch of other reasons that we later learned after following the group to a local University. The mob of students piled into an outdoor common area and a woman began to speak over a loud speaker. Suddenly everyone sat down and to blend I sat to. We were in it for the long whole, as I initially thought we were striking and were going to be sitting until the requested demands were met.
Andre and I snuck out after about an hour to get Pizza and return later.
We ate and when we came back they were handing out free drinks and talking in small groups. I desperately wanted to fraternize with locals so I interrupted a group of students and asked if they went to school here. They did and invited us to join them for dinner and a few drinks. We were taken to an apartment where I tripped walking up the stairs and embarrassed myself as always. Then we went to the piazza, a place where the hang out was. Got Gelato, talked, exchanged info and left to explore.
Day 2: Friday morning I woke up and grabbed a fresh pastry at a local shop. There is just so much great food in Italy. They have butchers and open markets and bakeries and fish markets… it is just splendid.. hence the 7 lbs I gained on the trip. Oh well! After grabbing a bite to eat we wandered around the city. We just started walking in a random direction and did that for about 5 hours stopping for food when we wanted and entering into every church we saw or free exhibit that came along. Seeing a church on every corner really drove home the concept of Catholic country… seeing all the churches and cathedrals makes me wish I read the bible. I am basically clueless when it comes to anything religious as I consider myself to be more spiritual than anything.
After an exhausting day we decided it was time to find a place to sleep. We hadn’t found any hostels during our wandering so we asked our original hotel (where we had left our packs) if they had any spots. The only room they had open was 90Euro… aka an arm, leg and my first born. No thanks! We were about to leave to find another place when the lady at the front desk says” well I may have a room for you that costs even less than your room last night.. but you may want to see it first.” Umm…. André and I both looked at each other and went with it. The woman was laughing the whole time when she showed us this room in the attic. It was the strangest set-up ever but I loved it and hey, it had a great view.
I was unable to stand in the room or the bathroom, which was down the hall from the room, but this made it even more interesting. There were clothes hanging all over the place and I am still unsure if there were other people living up there or what. There were creepy pictures of family members and sketches that a child could have drawn, along with old fashioned vanity supplies. Odd.
We put our packs down… passed out for 2 hours, woke up and walked around to find a bottle of wine. We went to eat dinner and then sat along the Grand Canal drinking our bottles of wine and taking it all in. It was a nice night and I enjoyed people watching and relaxing without a care in the world.
Funny story that may not be funny: after a while of deep conversation and wine drinking André got up to find a WC. He gets up off the bench we were sitting on and says’ watch my booze!’. 2 seconds later I hear a splash… haha his bottle of wine had fallen off the dock and into the water.. haha.. I am the worst babysitter ever! We both watch the bottle as it looks like it is about to sink. It flips over cork side down and bobs along in the canal. Here I am hanging our over the water reaching for this damn bottle of wine looking like a complete fool. … but Erinn saves the day and retrieves the precious goods. All is well. We finish our wine and head out around town to find another spot to hang out.
This cheery bartender man waves us in through the window where we are forced to stand in a crowded restaurant. We drink some very sweet red bubbly wine and the drunken bartender fills our glass for free and gives us samples of eggplant and salami. Yum. I overhear some English and end up talking with some American soldiers who are stationed in Italy. We hang out with them for a while...they buy me some drink that I don’t want and we wander around town. I don’t actually think we paid for anything, which seemed to be fine. After wandering we end up in San Marco square (which I unfortunately only saw at night).
I get bored and we separate from the Americans to find some real Italians!... and we do. I follow music until we run into a group of people crowded around a bongo player and saxophonist. We meet a man named Fabio who gives me a rose and insists on taking pictures with me and André. He was such a funny man. After a while the music stops so we attempt to find the place we had hung out the night before. After a while of searching for it I realize I have lost my wristlet (purse.. with all my everything in it.. Shit!). In a panic I try to retrace all the alleys that we had taken to get to where we were. (I remember this graffiti here, I went to the bathroom over there, this sign looks familiar… ) LOST! … and freaking out…and confusing Fabio who is so desperately trying to help me find my things. I give up and head home… what a way to start my trip… lose my ID, tram pass, 150euro, phone… ahh!
So we get home and I’m wanting to cry, and drunk, and life sucks, and then André empties his pockets of his jacket and…holding my bag in his hand says ‘what’s this?’ I didn’t know if I should hug him or hit him... so I hugged him. DUH! Life saved… trip amazing… me happy..
We climbed out our rickety attic skylight and sat on the roof. WOW! I am in Venice!
Day 3: I dragged myself out of bed ‘early’ to catch a taste of morning venetian life (its 11AM.. but going to bed at 7AM and watching the sun come up makes it worth it) I started my day by popping my head out our skylight and scaring off some seagulls… there was a whole flock of them. I wandered around and snapped some pictures and soaked it all in. Andre finally got out of bed so we ate and headed back to Trieste to catch a bus to southern Croatia. Before we got to the station we ran into our US friends from the night before. (Theme of trip: we always see someone once and then see them again. It became freaky! Ex: couple sitting next to us in a restaurant… yeah we bumped into them in one of the 200 churches in Venice.)
(please note the dead bird)
We eventually caught the train and ended up at the bus station, realizing that we had missed our bus to Split by 5 minutes (another theme of the trip). André and I looked at all the schedules to figure out where we could go… umm Bosnia? We decided to wait and catch and early train the next day, the only problem was finding a place to stay. We wandered around for a while looking for a hotel that didn’t look to expensive and ended up getting directed to this internet café that felt like it belonged in Berkley. I searched online only to realize that the whole city was booked and that we would have to either sleep in the train station or stay up all night with our backpacks in random bars that were open. (spending our while trips saving on a hotel was not an option).
As we sat and contemplated what to do a lovely Italian lady, who had been observing us in all our confusion, started up a convo. After a while she offered us her home to store our bags. She was waiting for some friends but took us to her house where we ditched the bags. Her name was Marina .. uh.. is Marina and she is a student as well. We ended up hanging out with her all night. WE went to a bunch of the hot spots in town and met up with her younger sister and her friends. Fortunately for us her English was perfect because her mother is British.
So we went with a big group around Trieste, singing and laughing as we went from bar to bar. Along the way we had a sightseeing tour. Roman ruins here, parliament there… ya know…. parts of everyday life for Europeans. At about 5 am we hit our last stop where the boys got their last beers… out of vending machines… haha… oh the joys of no-rules land. We headed back across town back to Marina’s (she had by this point offered that we stay the night at her place and catch a later train) OK!.
When we got home we all danced around their kitchen covered in random cutouts of animals (her mom likes them) and we sang and cooked some real Italian pasta. Well.. they cooked… I just danced. We ate as the sun came up and managed to sleep a few hours before trudging to the bus station.
Day 4: We arrived at the bus station only to find that the ticket window was closed. Sunday in Catholic countries means you are screwed… well at least we thought we were. The schedule showed that the bus we planned to take didn’t exist anymore and that we would have to wait around for 4 hours until the another bus left for Rijeka…. Not exactly the destination we had planned. We waited around hoping that we would be able to purchase out ticket on the bus or that the ticket window would magically open.
15 minutes before our plan B bus arrived the window magically opened. We got tickets and got on the bus. WE didn’t arrive in Rijeka until late at night. Again.. with no place to stay we frantically searched for internet and discovered that everything affordable was booked.
On our way to find internet and a place to sleep an old women came up and started pestering André. “you talk to my daughter.. she speak English,” said the lady, handing her phone to André. I walked ahead ignoring the crazy lady and hinting to andre to just walk away. 20 minutes later as she had followed us down the street she begins pointing up to this building saying.. ‘you stay here?’ No way I’m not following a random lady into a sketch building so I can be slaughtered! (I thought) I bet she takes US tourists there to be tortured and killed! (what an attitude to have I know… horrible… but maybe a defense mechanism.)
Ever since I entered Croatia I had this fear that being American would get me killed. The recent conflicts with the US and Yugoslavia caused me to be skeptical of everyone and to pretend to be Canadian eh?. This fear increased when I realized that everyone in Croatia is a giant. When we were sitting around using the internet (free wi-fi for the whole town)all the teenagers were roaming around. I don’t think I saw a single female that was shorter than me. I was fascinated!
No where to stay, no bus to Split for a while, no food in our stomachs. We ate pizza, had a beer and waited… and waited… and waited… for our waiter to bring us our bill…. Time was running short so I ditched André to try and catch our bus. I was a block away from the bus station (the most sketch place ever) when I see this bus leaving. With my backpack on and carrying all my junk I start sprinting towards the station. Missed it… by five minutes. What is the problem here???… oh yeah. André’s watch is set 5 minutes slow and we keep getting stranded! We fix the watch and plot our next move. Plan C….either we are not destined to go to Split or we are being tested by some higher power… either way it’s an adventure!
Our plan consists of trying to stay up until the next bus comes at 6AM. It is not even midnight. It is Sunday. Everything is closed. It’s cold. We are tired. To pass the time we walked around looking for places that were open and hanging out on the steps of buildings that looked important. I think we ended up at some museum because there was a random rocket out front of the building. We looked and looked for a place that was open and ended up at a café (where we for the 2nd time saw a group of Irish people that were on our original bus.) At this café we were invited to share a table with some drunk and scary, Croatian/Russian, middle aged manage a trois. They jokingly invited André to join I their sexual endeavors and talked vulgarly about every country that wasn’t their own. We escaped and looked for a place to sleep… on the streets.
We found a little place in a store front that was protected from the wind. I used my backpack as a pillow and shared my 55+ sleeping bag with Andre. It was not warm and not comfortable and not the highpoint of my life. I was a bum for a night and feel much more empathy towards all the people who do this on a nightly basis. During the night I woke up frequently, terrified out of my mind that the cops were coming to attack us or drunk late nighters were going to beat us up (I watched “Bum Fights all to often). The set up of our temporary hotel had windows that allowed me to see who was coming in the reflection. As people passed I stared at them trough squinted eyes and observed their stares in our direction. I am ashamed… and proud… that I survived a night on the streets.
Day 5: At 4AM I couldn’t stand lying on the cold concrete anymore so I woke up André and convinced him to walk back to the bus station…. a bus station which was made up of just a few parking spots and a 24hr heat-lamped food restaurant. We sat and waited and made in on a bus to Split. I slept the entire ride minus the few minutes when I looked out the window and struggles to keep my eyelids open to experience the beautiful scenery. The Croatian landscape is wonderful with old stone walls and dilapidated buildings.
We arrived in Split in the early afternoon and made it to our hostel, which we had booked ahead of time for once. On our trip to the hostel we had 9 people come up to us and offer us a place to stay. I have leavened that it is part of the culture in Croatia to offer people your homes. It is typically little old ladies who look homeless themselves. When we got to our hostel we discovered that it was actually someone’s home and that we were staying in a spare room. The girl who answered the door’s name was Marina (the 3nd Marina we met, 2nd being the crazy drunk Croatian/Russian).
Rooms Maria had been the name of the place we had booked online, and knowing the Split is a town on the water we expected it to be rooms on the marina of the sea. The place was nice and very homelike. We were invited into their kitchen where they made us cappuccinos and gave us more mandarins than we could eat. A little English was spoken so we were able to ask about sights to see and places to eat.
Around 7pm we were exploring and noticed that young people were all going the same direction…(not the 'young whores') of course André and I followed them. We ended up at a school so we walked in and tried to blend…. which would have been easy if we were 16 and 5’10 or more! Class started to we left and explored the town at night….only to discover that everything closed early and that the suggested ‘beach party’ was completely abandoned. Croatia, as I now know, is a summer destination. Many people we met, for example Ante, a friendly and well educated bartender, questioned our reason for being in Croatia at such an odd time of the year. Although it would have been more exciting if there were more people, I enjoyed the peacefulness of a town not infested with tourists.
We met Ante at this café on the beach. He was proud to show us a book of the beaches history and taught us about a sport that was played there. He recommended that we return the next day around noon to watch people play and to stop by when he began work at 4pm.
Day 6: Woke up at a reasonable time. Wandered through an open air green market to grab breakfast and picnic materials (fresh bread, cheese, fruit, best chocolate croissant ever!, dried mangoes). Went to watch the ocean sport but due to weather (windy, cold, wanting to rain), no one was playing and the beach was empty. We ordered cappuccinos and picnicked at the restaurant we had gone to the night before. After we ate we went to explore the northern hill. Goal: to reach the Croatian flag at the top of the mountain!
We headed in the general direction of the flag: uphill and straight. We ended up at several dead ends among partially destroyed and abandoned homes scattered among new lived in houses. It seems that in Croatia they don’t rebuild or destroy fallen down homes; they just build around them. This makes for an eerie sort of atmosphere where you can feel the past of the country and the wars that may have taken place there. At one dead end we reached we were torn between climbing a hill and taking a different path. A barking dog helped make up our mind and as we snuck away I spotted another sleeping (unleashed) dog inside a large pipe. Phew!
Eventually we found some stairs that led us to the top of the hill, but not the flag. The views were amazing and only got better as we found an old watchtower. We climbed the tower and I was able to take some pictures of Split and the mainland before basically being blown away. The tower was moving in the wind and the cables that were holding the structure up were curving. Just to be safe we got down and made our way to the flag.
Reaching the flag was nothing compared to the zoo that we randomly discovered. It was the saddest zoo I have seen, or ever want to see, in my life. The cages were dirty and housed the most random pairing of animals. The zoo was made up of: Emu’s and miniature horses, a sad lone owl that was sitting on the ground, about 200 guinea pigs of all sizes (yes.. your typical pet guinea pig), rabbits ( your typical house rabbit), 3 scary wolves, one shy tiger, donkeys (12 in a cage made for 2) and a silly and disgusting monkey with a boner. The use of the word ‘boner’ while watching the monkey helped initiate a conversation with 2 Swedish guys (who later became our best friends). We thought they were Croatian, they thought we were Croatian and we found out that English was our common language we ended up hanging out with them all day and night. We got sick of the stench of the zoo and watching the monkey finger-paint in his own urine and needed a drink… and food.
The group of us (monkey not included) went to a highly recommended seafood restaurant, Fife, where I ordered fish. Just as I had pre-guessed (and hoped I was wrong), my meal came with heads included. I ate the fish anyway… Dad would be proud! Dinner and then second dinner at a stand that served Croatian Hamburgers with corn and hardboiled egg! Delicious!
Andre and I took the Swedes (Adam and Gustan) to our beach café where we hung out with the bartender man and drank beer and talked politics and country differences for 3 hours. I have learned that Croatians have a major distaste for Serbia and Bosnia. I got bored and sick of making generalizations so I ran out to the beach in the rain with Gustan and got in the water… partially. It was freezing!
We migrated to the main downtown area and found the only bar that was open. I was standing and talking to Adam when suddenly someone grabbed me around the neck! At first I thought it was Gustan but I turned around to see Matt….and other Matt … 2 guys from my USAC program.(found in pictures from Day 7) I was overly excited and surprised because we had already randomly bumped into two other people from our program the day before.
We partied.... met some Croatians… the bartender kept making me free drinks which I secretly made everyone else drink….. danced to the jukebox… socialized some more. Eventually the bartended (drunk) closed the bar. We walked for what seemed like forever to go back to the Croatians house. Similar to Prague, Split’s city outskirts are made up of Block Housing (really run down dorm like apartments). It got late so we left and then sunglasses ruined my life. The short version of the story can be read below and questions can be asked personally or in the comments.
Short version: Andre stole the guy’s sunglasses. We were on our way home and were chased down. The sunglasses were discovered. Andre got socked in the face and kicked violently while he was on the ground. He ran away. Guys chased him. I, terrified for my life, started to go home with my newly made Singaporean friend and realized André had my keys and was possibly going to get killed. I went back for him and found the angry Croatians instead. I told them I wouldn’t leave them until we found André hoping that they wouldn’t kill him if I was there. We found him….Amends was made….Walked home paranoid out of my mind of being followed.
Day 7: I woke up angry at Andre but trying to be ok with his drunken idiot behavior. That morning we were on our way to meet up with the Matts. I am walking along and here “hey”. I look over and see my friend Sean, in all his suaveness (sunglasses on, drinking rum on the rocks, watching the ocean.) Haha perfect!
Sidenote: As I sit in a random café to write this segment (days 3-11)of the longest blog ever… 2 little girls have wobbled over on their newly used legs to talk to me. I have randomly looked down and felt them clinging onto my leg. Haha… too cute.
Back to Day 7: We met up with the boys… enjoyed a relaxing yet not so warm day on the beach and ended the day at a dance club surrounded by the Croatian giants. Oh yeah… and Croatians can dance… unlike people in some other places I have been… and they play Croatian music too which is a relief from euro pop and American 80s.
Day 8: I woke up early and took a 2 hour boat ride to the Island of Hvar. The weather was fantastic. Hvar is a small little town…clean… minus the stray dogs humping all over the place. We walked up a hill to another castle and then back to catch a bus to the boat. “You Go. Be happy young people. Have fun!”-quoted from a man who helped us with direction.
We want to our hostel/house when we got off the island where our host sang to Andre and gave me some home made Liquor. Then we left. From Split we took a bus to Zadar. We arrived very late and only spent a few hours there. These hours were spent walking along the coastline, in and out of marinas to find our hostel. We got to the Hostel so late that the security guard had to let us in. It would have been nice to stay in Zadar an extra day and rent a paddle boat or something.
Day 9: (Halloween): In the morning we took a city bus (that we should have taken the night before instead of walking for 6 miles) to the center of Zadar. Along the shore we saw the sea organ. The sea organ, as you are probably wondering, looks like a set of steps into the ocean but consists of tubes and holes. Water from the ocean and wind moves through the pipes and make a beautiful chime like sound. It was incredible to sit and listen while watching the waves splash up onto the concrete. The wind was intense that day, and so was the organs sound.
We grabbed pizza and ice-cream (diet of champions) and caught a bus (on-time for once) to Rijeka where we waited for a train to take us to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The bus ride to Rijeka was one of the most breathtaking bus rides I have ever experienced. We drove along the water’s edge the entire time…blue and gray mood…stone houses on the shore, mountains in the distance, reflections on the water, flat roofs, small boats and lone fisherman. I couldn’t really capture it on film.
We arrived in Ljubljana late and to our disappointment did not see anyone dressed up. I expected this. There were many young people dresses in all black, some had crazy, makeup and fake blood on their faces… but that was it. We stayed in Zeppelin Hostel.
Day 10: We took the first train to Divača, a small town in Slovenia. From the station we caught a van to the Škocjan Caves. Slovenia is known for its many caves and we chose to go to this one because it is one of the largest and has a crazy river running through it. The caves were magnificent. I always think of my geologist parents and how much they would appreciate it. Stalactites, stalagmites… no photography allowed but I tried to be sly and took some horrible picture.
The end of the cave tour was remarkable. A tiny beam of light at the end of the tunnel…as we approached it the bright colors of fall began to appear… closer and you could see a vast valley filled with trees… fog hovered in parts of the forest and the river, which we had seen inside the cave cut through the hills. I wanted to stand and stare forever… or at least for an hour or two…. but we had to make our way back to Trieste to sleep.
The trains/buses are not as easy as I expected…. And it was a national Holiday in Slovenia so everything was closed and the streets and towns felt empty. A nice man directed us to a small train to Smetana, a town on the border of Italy. We took his advice and got on the train as he had told us “ you have 1 minute and 34 seconds to decide”. Once we got of the mini-train we realized our plans did not work out… typical… haha. Originally we were going to take a bus or a taxi to Trieste. The man who got us on the train spoke with the lady at the train station. All I overheard was “no bus, no train, no taxi.” Uh OH!
Andre and I looked for a taxi, tried to call one from the hotel, tried to walk to Trieste, tried to hitchhike. The sun was setting and we were running out of ideas. We eventually convinced a hotel person to call us a cab and made it to Trieste 25Euros later.
In Trieste we had booked a hotel with the Matts and Sean and then randomly ran into 2 other guys from our program. I was the only girl…boo. Marina and her sister were out of town fighting for their school in Rome (the same fight we had been a part of in Venice). If they had been in Trieste we would have been hanging out with them but instead we explored on our own. We went to a few bars and cafes, one which had a Prague street sign in it. In this café Matt’s chair collapsed on him and in the process of his falling I became covered in my cosmopolitan. How embarrassing! They re-made my drink but we left shortly after.
We found one of the places that Marina had taken us where were got some cups of beer to go. I took the guys to the ruins of an outdoor theater where were sat and hung out for a bit before calling it a night.
Day 11: Took an Early bus to the airport…. Waited for 3 hours for our flight… made is safely back to Prague. What a Trip!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
