Croatia! cool crazy Croatia. haha contagious, courageous…

p.s. I didn’t have time to proof this! Hope it’s okay…….

Whew! I’m tired. And sick! Croatia was, of course, aammmaaazzzziiinnnggg. Coming on this trip I really didn’t think about the European countries, yeah they’ll be great to go to but I wasn’t of the mindset ‘oh my god I have to do this this and this there’ So Turkey, Croatia, and Spain seem kind of like bonus countries. I never thought of Croatia as a place I wanted to go. But now that I have been, I of course want to go back, when it is warm, to go swimming, and to go to the islands because they are beautiful and the water was gorgeous and the beaches looked perfect. : )

However, it was really perfect to come here in the off season, a lot of SASers got bored and hated it (!), but I did A LOT. So :) I had a wonderful wonderful time. and if you didn’t have fun it’s because you had poor planning, because Croatia has beautiful national parks and if you like cities you had cities and if you like nature there is nature, if you like shopping there was definitely shopping, eating LOT of eating, etc. The places we went weren’t swarmed with tourists and we got to just hang out and be in Croatia hanging out with Croatian kids and it was really cool. a few countries ago we bought tickets to Zegreb, the capital, for the night of our second day through the morning of our last day because Jess has 3 friends from there who we stayed with.

So we had that in our itinerary, and I had a book on the southern Dalmatian Cost – so our ship ported in Dubrovnik, very south corner of the Dalmatian Coast on the Adriatic Sea. Getting off the ship I think the majority of my thoughts were thinking about how cute it was. And someone said quaint, which sounds more grown up, but I don’t like that word so charming? Picturesque? well it was just very wonderful, all orange tile roofs, all the houses without dryers, so clothes lines and bakeries and old fashion old European looking houses, like I felt like I was in the Christmas Carol at our hotel the first night, we had a window that opened up into a little square and I wanted to shout “it’s not too late! you there! Go to the market and buy the largest Christmas turkey there is, and keep the change!” while throwing… 6 pence down there and thinking about tiny Tim. And the window was like a window you can fling open like that with heavy wood shutters and… maybe you had to be there.

So we walked around a bit, in of course, the rain! We went to a grocery store, Konzum! Our favorite Croatian grocery store, and bought some snacks, finally we can eat the vegetables uncooked! (the Salad!) And the fruit! And the water! I ran into a concrete slab that ripped my jeans, we bought sandwiches that were ham and cheese cooked in the bread, very good, Jackie got pooped on the head by a bird, and that bird must have had a big breakfast, and she thought ‘that was a big drop of rain’ and touched her head and had bird poop all over her hand, so we stood on the side of street and at our sandwiches and took pictures while we wiped Jackie clean.

Because it was raining and only going to get worse, we decided to see Dubrovnik on our last day and jump on a 1PM bus with 3 of our friends (and a whole load of other SASers) to Split. The ride was about 5 hours and some SASholes (eh he he) decided it would be nice to play heavy metal on ipod speakers aloud for the whole bus for those 5 hours. It was really rude and the Croatians were pissed, and luckily Croatians on the whole don’t hate Americans, though I think we may done our best to convert these people. So I took out my (that morning) fully charged ipod, and it for some reason didn’t even have enough energy to turn on. Soo OO oo I enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL though cloudy cost and the islands and the sea, with the sounds of… at one time rap (just honestly all music awful, Nine Inch Nails to… worse), someone should have taken those speakers and chucked them but honestly sometimes there is just no stopping people like that. and the coast was wonderful and I ate my snacks and we stopped in Bosnia-Herzegovina (for more snacks? Hehe no) to take pictures! Which I did. Haha.

So Split was cool. you could walk all around it, we never took any cabs, we stayed in a bed and breakfast like inn inside the old castle walls, there were tons of little shops and bakeries. Because it’s the off season everything shuts down at night but the six of us (me jackie jess kate cassidy danielle) went out to a nice dinner of pizza (Croatia is across the street from Italy), that night I slept on a bed that unfolded from a box but we had a Christmas Carol great view and that is what is important.

One day in Split was perfect, we (me jess jackie) got up early and walked around the old palace, into an old church, and got some breakfast at a really cute café. I ordered hot chocolate and got honestly liquid chocolate. And the very worst part – my nose was stuffed! I couldn’t taste it! Oh it was miserable. Also we ordered omelets and toast, and they gave us a basket of bread and then the toast was actually its own meal a little ham and cheese toasted sandwich! So, 8,000 calories later we waddled out and hiked up to the top of a mountain/ uh mountain I’m not sure is right, but very large high wooded hill and saw the whole city, 360 view. It was a great morning. we walked down a different way then we had come so ended up in a different part of town. We came across an archeology museum and while the other girls were museumed out I am not so we peaked our heads in and then tried to run away but they keeper chased after us telling us to come in! no cost! There aren’t many tourists! You are students! Come in! be my guest! – so! luckily how could we not.

The part of the city we stayed is so cool because it’s a giant old castle that is now shops and stuff and there is a classy boardwalk to the Adriatic and one of the coolest things, I think, is that inside the castle walls was a contemporary art exhibit and there was performance art and minimalist art and all sorts of weird stuff that after my class last year I really enjoy. And I thought it was awesome that it was inside a castle. We spent the rest of the day outside, shopping around, I feel I have come to a shopping max so I didn’t really buy anything and was sad about it. :( I did buy a purse and a Croatia key chain – which I attached to my purse. These simple purchases produced an unproportionatly large amount of happiness for me the rest of the trip. My little backpack was great in Asia but just not fashionable enough for Europe, my purse (that I bought from a street vendor) is much classier and the key chain is just really pretty and made me feel really cool. haha seriously.

Also making me feel really cool, at one point the following conversation actually took place between us and our 3 friends when we were saying goodbye to leave Split – “Have fun in Split tomorrow.” “yeah you guys have fun in Zagreb!” “We’ll meet you back in Dubrovnik.” Uhh or something to that effect, but it was a cool little thing to hear, you know? We are just so very cool. haha.

We flew out of Split just in time, tons of SASers were showing up by the bus load. Our flight was at 7pm and it all just was very perfect because one day and night may not have been enough if Split was in full swing, but outside tourist season – we had just enough time to do everything, though it was a really wonderful place and one could spend a month there I am sure.

We got to Zagreb and had had a good flight, we laughed a lot, and it was like 45 min long, as soon as we got up we descended again. and we got a cookie! Drazen picked us up at the airport and it was wonderful! We were taken care of for the rest of the trip. If they ever read this, that would be weird, but hopefully they wont! So Drazen and Daniel are brothers from Croatia who have spent the past 3 summers working in Jackson Hole, Daniel is dating a girl from the US who also works summers in Jackson Hole and now she lives there with them, her name is Danni, so Drazen (26), Daniel (25), Danni (22). :) and it was so wonderful to spend some time with older smart funny nice attractive resourceful thoughtful etc. whole picture guys when you have been on a ship with spoiled baby boys. But they were definitely guys guys, like order pizza at 2am, selective hearing, music on while watching TV.

They had just moved into their apartment right in the middle of Zagreb that day, it was supposed to be the next day, but they sped things up just for us! It was a really cute apartment, kind of like a cabin, it was furnished, mostly made of wood, the stove you have to light with a match, the furnace was right in the kitchen and you could see the flame! I don’t know if that’s normal, but it’s the flame we used to light the stove, and there was an open loft, which was Drazen’s room, and he had a big giant bed that instead of sleeping in we 3 girls slept in like 3 peas in a pod. haha uh. while he slept on the couch. We did a lot of just hanging out which I think taught me a lot. Economically Croatia is really interesting because they were on the top of the game until their civil war, which only ended 10 years ago, and a lot was destroyed and their economy tanked, but people are really into appearance and style and so everyone lives kid of a fake life. The country is 98% catholic and their were elections the day we left, but the boys were not baptized and very against politics. Everyone kind of knows English or can understand it because it’s all around them but many just choose not to use it and pretend they don’t know any of it.

That first night we just hung out and they had a computer, with free internet set up right in their living room, and they had a tv (I watched an episode of everybody loves Raymond and a Fergie making the video in Croatia), they had a washer but not a dryer, no one in Croatia really has a dryer because they’re not necessary. Though I would say nice to have. The next morning we walked across the street and got some breakfast pastries, the boys made sure we tried all the Croatian food… it was amazing… but we ate a lot… and the food they cooked! Whew! and the food their mom had made! !! !! that was good. We spend the morning walking around Zagreb, the 3 of us, we went into a giant old church, walked around a park area, peaked into an archeology museum – they are everywhere! We went to another modern art museum, in which I decided I am going to become an artist, come back from going around the world and switch my major to art and be an artist forever. What do you think? and I was going to tell my mom that my Bama should move into our house and have my room, on the condition that I would probably get the toy room and that we would have to convert it into my studio! Haha. seriously though. And I was going to tell my dad – Dad thank you for sending me around the world! I don’t think the business world is for me, I want to go to art school now! So we’ll see how that goes, not everyone appreciates contemporary art, as I do, haha, so we have my future work to look forward to.

At 1 we met the other 3 in the main square of the city. there were politicians advertising all over the place, playing pretty graphic American music, but maybe they didn’t know what it was saying? Ahaha, well we met for lunch and they took us to a little place – interestingly the restaurants actually fill up, like they send you away and it’s just so interesting because that doesn’t happen at Chili’s you know? If the place is full someone will be leaving soon and you can get in, but we were turned away here so we went somewhere else, and we got salads – because Croatians are always on diets says Drazen, though Daniel is like a cheese addict and he got a giant cheese pasta thing, but their salad was really good and the first good one we have had in months and they don’t use salad dressing there! Just maybe some oil, if anything, and I liked that.

The boys had to lead a meeting for the program they are a part of – the work they do in the US for the summer actually supports them for the rest of the year in Croatia. though I kind of can’t believe that, Croatia was pretty expensive. Though I can believe they make a ton of money in Jackson Hole. We 3 girls walked around a bunch more, then we went back and hung out with Danni at the house until the boys came home, and then we went out to a Croatian bar/club called SAX, it was really pretty fun, there was a cover band singing American songs so we danced and then later in the night there was actually a line to get in and we were in, and there was an outside court area where we stood (to get away from the smoke for a bit! whew!) and could see the line and it was pretty fabulous. Drazen said everyone could tell at a glance we were Americans but no one came up to us or was creepy at all and really all the Croatians were much cooler than us.

The next morning when we woke up it was snowing! The years first snowfall and it was so beautiful and so wonderful to walk around in! it snowed all day and until we left the next morning. We got up pretty early and Drazen got us Javape, spelling? Which was the most amazing greasy food ever, it was like this big buttery English muffin but pita sized piece of breat, and there were a bunch of like little sausages on it and you rip the bread, roll the sausage up, add onions and then we added this red sauce made by their mother and it was really good. We hung out at their place for awhile and laughed and talked and stuff.

That day Drazen showed us around, Zagreb is divided into a high town and low town, low town is like shopping and museums and stuff and high town is more government and less cars and smaller cobblestone steps. He took us up there and told us some history and I asked a million questions. We walked through a kind of a miniature tunnel, it was really cool, like a little street with no cars and it did a curve, and in a covered square area was a very cool tribute to the virgin mary. Just right in the middle of everything, there were candles and benches and people praying and a really beautiful shrine and it was snowing and, very lovely. :)

After this it was time for us to try all food Croatian, we bought roasted chestnuts on the side of the street, we got, oh man it was so good, like a hot dog kind of thing, in a long piece of bread toasted – like a panini, with mustard. And we had a cup of boiled spiced wine, they boil it up and add spices and it’s really hot and tastes like tea and is good. And then we had Croatian ice cream, which was cheap but not really the best ice cream that I have had on my travels… perhaps I just got the wrong flavor. Because a sample I had was very good.

After the feast we walked home, I kind of wished we had kept going around but everything had closed (it was the weekend) and I was cold, so it was okay to go home. I forgot to mention we stopped at a betting shop! Betting is legal in Croatia and there are betting shops all over the place, it’s a 3 billion kuna a year industry there – 4.8ish kuna (and dropping probably!) to a dollar. So that’s a lot of money for a smaller country and Drazen and Danielle bet like everyday. They break about even.

That night, as if we needed more food, Drazen made pasta, ah so good! And we watched 2 soccer games, the big one being Croatia vs Macedonia, we lost which was sad, though it was cool because they had a friend come over with a projector to watch it on, so we watched it projected on their wall. We drank a bit more spiced wine, this time homemade, and something else called… ? which was red wine half and half with coke. Europeans drink a lot of wine, but I don’t so I liked the taste of these concoctions.

We spent the rest of the night hanging out and talking and stuff, it was pretty low key, Jackie wasn’t feeling very well and we had to leave pretty early for our flight the next day. All and all it was an amazing time in Zagreb, I don’t have pages to write about it but I really got the feel of the city and got to hang out with real people and hear the real ways of the city, also I decided upon my life path! Art! So. nothing but good. haha.

Drazen drove us to the airport and it was snowing and beautiful and people were going snowboarding and sledding and skiing and we were very very sad not to be staying. Like really sad. We were planning ways to call the ship and tell them something had happened and we would meet back up in Spain, while taking a road trip with Drazen driving through the alps and Italy and France and stopping in Milan and Barcelona before meeting the ship in South Spain and it sounded so awesome. I must have been over tired or something or just really caught on the traveling bug, which happens x 10 when you spend an extended period of time with fellow travel lovers, did I mention that Daniel and Drazen showed me pictures of a road trip they had across the United States? I don’t think I did, but I learned stuff from them! About my country! They went to a really cool national park I haven’t been to, stone arches, and I want to do a road trip around my country! It doesn’t seem fair and also kind of bad that I haven’t and they have – I actually just shook hands with Andy my friend from DePaul that next December we are going to complete our world circumferenceing by getting an old car (to paint SAS on it) and drive from Miami to San Diego. And we’ll camp along the way and maybe get some other SASers and we could stay in SASers houses and it would – I mean will, be really fun. Then all I’ll have left is some time before I had to go back to China and drive from Qingdao to Hong Kong, because I flew that part and that’s cheating. Some day my husband will be a rich business man and we’ll go for a conference to HK and one rainy day I’ll drive up and back. :)

Ah but seriously, I wanted our flight to be delayed until 8pm and missing the ship would’ve been out of our hands and I haven’t (hadn’t I actually am right this second because it’s so beautiful out and we get one free skip in philo and we’re talking about a book I read last year) missed a single class. and I really really wanted that to happen, the road trip thing it just sounded amazing, and kids and faculty are all the time meeting the ship back up in the next port for medical reasons or because they lost their passport or something and I fantasized this whole scheme of saying we left our passports on the plane and had to wait for it to come back or… something and we totally would have gotten away with it but it takes a lot of guts and planning to do something like that, because unfortunately our flight was not delayed, but I guess that is just a testament to how much fun we had and how wonderful the people were that we wanted to spend more time with them.

But I have to say that we were very lucky our plane was not kind of delayed because the day in Dubrovnik was not one to have missed, Dubrovnik was not snowy but warm and sunny and beautiful. We dropped our stuff off at the ship and then walked (hahaha I honestly packed my contacts and the handbook in my purse just in case we still decided to make a break for it… seriously I loved Croatia). we walked towards the old city. did I already mention it? I thought that I had but maybe not, it’s an old city inside a wall and people still live in there and it is BEAUTIFUL! All the roof tops are orange and you can walk along the wall it’s right on the sea and see inside the city too and there are no cars in there, but a ton of churches and houses and shops and museums and art. We stopped along the way for a ridiculously good sandwich, but when we were there – not a lot was open or at least not for very late because it was Sunday. Walking along the wall though really was everything it was built up to be, beautiful, fun, we took a million pictures, most the other SASers had already done it a few times so we were pretty much by ourselves up there.

We spent some time walking around the city, talking to SASers, there were a ton of us there, we got a last meal on the sea, it was wonderful. We were all pretty much spent, I came to the conclusion, in the second to last country, that I should probably do last days by myself because I am just tired and kind of crabby and would do better to be alone. So jack and jess went back to the ship and I stayed to walk around a bit more, I got a coffee to warm me up and then I ran into a guy I kind of know who asked if I wanted to go to a mass with him… and so I did. And it was interesting because for a 98% catholic country the vibe of this church… was just not happening, like everyone had their coat on, even the speakers and there was just a lot of shuffling noises and people walking around and you know how even if you aren’t religious you can kind of get a feeling standing in a room where everyone else is passionate? In a spiritual beautiful place you can just feel something. Well I don’t know, but it wasn’t happening for this heathen that night. there were 3 priests and the whole thing was in Croatian and there were all these SASers there and I was just wondering what the hell (excuse me) are these SASers doing here, because the atmosphere is honestly not happening, they are all wearing their jackets, it was not a particularly beautiful service or anything, there was no singing or stain glass windows or anything like that, there was 2 people who went up (in their jackets) that read something, then the priest gave a Croatian sermon, and then all the Croatian Catholics where saying stuff, because Catholics say stuff, but I was wondering how these SASers felt that this benefited from this? Did they think God felt better about them because they went to a service on a Sunday? I mostly felt this way because I like to go to church when it is beautiful and that is beneficial to me. and I don’t want to generalize for everyone… but I very much doubt that anyone could have found this a particularly spiritual moment… ah maybe I shouldn’t include this in my blog because I won’t be able to be president someday. Haha, I’ll stop. anyway I would hate for my negativity to ruin a service for anyone so I left early, I wanted to walk back to the ship and the beauty of the outside and walking along the sea and looking up at the stars and experiencing people is exponentially more powerful to me.

but then I felt kind of bad that I left, so why is that? like kind of tight inside and that I should have stuck it out. interesting, though I can pretty much tell you it is because I don’t speak Croatian and tried to go out a door that I thought said exit when it didn’t and really the one next to it did and a lady was talking at me in Croatian and a priest came over shaking a finger at me as I escaped. hahaha. It is a much better idea to do what makes sense to you then to hang out in a place that doesn’t make sense just because you started it. Anyway, there’s my Egypt lesson talking for you.

I walked back to the ship while I ate a gigantic candy bar. I realized I have an eating problem. Haha it was this chocolate smore bar. Oohhh my god. Milk chocolate, white chocolate and graham cracker. I was hoping to save some but, no. so I stopped at a place and called my mom, that was nice, and I was really sad because I wanted to stop at the grocery store and buy Jack (and my friend Molly, haha) this Croatian white and milk chocolate spread. It was amazing, I tried one little bite of it and knew I had to get it, but the grocery store was closed! So I went back to the ship with like 45 min to spare and wrote a few post cards! : )

What a wonderful trip! Very very perfect.

So by the way in other news I’m reading Nietzsche, he has his own hiking metaphors, on tourists, “they climb mountains like animals, stupid and sweating; one has forgotten to tell them that there are beautiful views on the way up.” And oh my god I broke my new flashdrive! This morning I stepped on it and Brett said “you scared the baloney sandwich out of me!” Haha.

I should really journal every day because day to day on the ship is totally nuts, we just had a silent and live auction and… it was nnuuttsss. Someone bought a cup of coffee for 205$ someone bought dinner on a ship balcony for 2 for 2 thousand dollars! Though someone got a 7 night stay at 5 star hotels plus transportation plus 2 dives in the red sea in Jordan for 4 for 1,700$ That would be awesome, my friend Jackie wanted to go in on it, she bring a friend, I bring a friend, and that would be awesome 450$ for everything.. plus airfare? And auctions are just so hectic and you don’t know the details and you can’t consult your mom… :) Also a lot of people, boys and girls, have been shaving their heads… I don’t know why, because it’s liberating? Beyond me… anyway everyone just saw dolphins except for of course me, and we were standing there and everyone was like – oh a baby! They’re jumping! On both sides of our wake! Do you see them! – and I of course didn’t. okay well! bye!