Ljubljana Love

Every once in awhile I get into deeply dark moods were I can't even see the sun anymore.  They don't happen to often, but once I am in one, its really hard to get me out of it.  Usually I make really stupid decisions while there.  I had really been disappointed by Zagreb, and I was really really sick of being sick.  I was homesick for the first time since leaving.  

The train ride had been hot and long, and despite the very sweet Dutch girls in my carriage, my first train ride had been rough. There was no air circulation, and we needed to leave the window open to be able to breath.  This worked great until we stopped at the Slovenian border for an hour and nearly suffocated.  The final straw had been when the train conductor had double stamped my ticket, a mistake that could have cost me a travel day had I not chased him down the corridor in my socks.  

I was grouchy and I almost made the biggest mistake of the trip, staying on the train to Salzburg, just two hours away.  But then I would have missed Ljubliana and all the wonderful people and things that happened there.  Its late, so I will write more tomorrow, but I wanted to end the evening on an up note. 

It took me a five minute walk and ten blocks before I was in love with a city.  

Ljubliana, Slovenia  

Finally, A Train

There is always an exception to the rule, and the bus driver from the Plitvice Lakes to Zagreb was delightful.  He grabbed my bag without needing to be asked, confirmed we were going to Zagreb and even smiled a little bit.  I climbed on, drank half a bottle of water and fell asleep against the window for an hour.  I woke up just in time to see an old ruin on the hill go by.  Yet another bit of orphaned history in this part of the world.

The last place I saw my sunglasses

Zagreb was always just supposed to be a transit center for me, and try as I might, I could never find something in the travel books that interested me.  I decided to give the town half a day to change my mind, but then I was moving on.  

Blue, Falling Water

One fine day in late winter I was sitting at my desk on the Universal Lot, half way through yet another 500 page book and my brain went, "Enough! Its lunch, I need food and some internet garbage."  The former was provided with some leftovers, the latter by a list of Ten National Parks to See Before You Die.  Most, I had heard of, or even been to, but one was completely new, Plitvice Lakes, Croatia.  What captured my imagination, what captures everyones imagination really, is the color of the water.

That and the waterfalls.

The water is that silly color of crayon we all used in kindergarden, but gave up on actually finding some where along the line.  Even when you see it in photos you think they must have color corrected.  In general the whole place gives off the impression that a nymph should walk out of the lake at any second and tempt you.  Right there over my leftover chicken I decided that I needed to see this place for myself.  

We All Live In a Yellow Submarine

The Croatian people are very hospitable on the whole.  Most either speak English or are willing to work through your halting attempts at Croatian accompanied by wild hand gestures.  There is one exception to this general rule, bus drivers.  The Croatian bus drivers don't like you, don't care about you and don't want you.  

Now, the Trogir bus station is a fairly busy place.  At any one time there are 8-10 buses loading or unloading, and if not careful, one could honestly run the risk of ending up going in completely the wrong direction.  With this in mind, I approached the bus I was pretty sure was going to Zadar with my guide book open to the right page and a smile plastered to my face.  After greeting him with "Dobar Dan" and ascertaining that he did in fact speak a tiny bit of English I asked him if this was the bus to Zadar, while pointing at the page in the book.  What came back was a violent string of angry Croatian and a shove as he moved past me to help the people in line behind me.  Finally, once everyone else had boarded I asked him again.  This time he responded with repeating Zadar about half a dozen times and insisting he had never heard of it before trying to leave without me.  It ended up being his co-driver who leaned out the door and said "Zader?".  Nodding, I walked past the fuming driver and climbed on.  I really try not to be annoying to locals because, I get it, tourists suck.  But it came as a start the strength of the desire that man had not to let me on.  What is a bit heart breaking is that the memory every wonderful person in Croatia I had the pleasure of meeting, is tinged with the memory of this man.  So congratulations misc. bus driver, you won the prize as the biggest jerk in Europe.  

 From there though, the bus ride improved immensely.  My seat mate ended up being a grandmotherly woman who kept sharing her food with me and when we stopped for one of those flying Croatian pit stops/potty breaks she saved my seat and made promised she wouldn't let the bus leave before I got back.  Good thing to, the driver kept glaring at me every time he walked the aile to check peoples tickets.  And within a relatively short space, we were in Zadar/Zader and it was time to find the Drunken Monkey.  

When you get off the bus at a bus stop you really want to have a clear directions your traveling in and start moving pretty quickly.  However, I kept coming up against the same impediment again and again, hostel directions.  Most hostels give you directions based on street names, but street names are often not displayed at street corners or have recently been changed to reflect the new national identity.  Google often doesn't even help as there are many, many unlabeled or unnamed streets in Croatia.  The Drunken Monkey had hit upon the most brilliant solution to this problem, landmarks.  Go to the Nissan dealership, turn left at the green cafe, right at the fork, left at the church.  It was the longest I ever walked without getting lost.  

The Drunken Monkey was a wonderful hostel run by Kyle, a Canadian and Chris, an Australian who had started backpacking ten years earlier and had never gone home.  It was the places first year open, and while it definitely had some growing pains (air conditioning!) it was a wonderful little place. The building itself had been abandoned during the war. The family had never been back and had finally decided to sell it.  Kyle said that when they first opened it up there was still food in the fridge, family photos on the wall and clothes in the closets.  The first thing they had to do was do a fast sort to see what the family wanted back.  It turns out very little.  They had fled and wanted very little reminders of the life they had given up.  

The rooms surrounded a large courtyard that had stairs at one end that led down to the bar, the front desk and the pool.  Each of the rooms had a different name and was lightly themed to reflect that.  On one side there was This Room and That Room while the other side had Ocean, Banksy, and Jungle.  They also had two kittens, Trouble and Snack.

Here's Trouble!

After dumping my bag, I decided the only sensible option was to go swimming.  Grabbing a new Bill Bryson from the book exchange, I took off.  The water felt like heaven mixed with chocolate and I swam out about a few hundred yards and just floated as the sun went down.  Zadar is said to have the best sunsets in the Mediterranean, and that one definitely represented.  The water turned a deep emerald green as the sky ignited into a tyrian purple with streaks of what the Australians refer to as Fosters blue.   I know thats what they call it because the Australian sitting next to my stuff as I got out pointed at a cloud and said "What about that Fosters blue?"

Apparently a color description Down Under

On the way back from an amazing dinner in downtown Zadar with 2 Irish military guys on leave, one British whose family worked in steam trains and yet another Australian, this happened

Coo Coo Ca Choo?

As none of us had any idea what was going on, we found a bar looking out over the ocean and ordered a round.  If you think it was rather tame for two Irish army guys to order just one beer each, it was.  They had just come off a week long party cruise island hopping adventure thing.  They and roughly 45 other boats sail from beach to beach during the day, then raft up along the beach before heading ashore for the entire night.  The real challenge was apparently climbing back over thirty other boats at 4am with half a bottle of Vodka or Rakia to get back to your own berth.  Apparently one night they were coming back and climbed onto a boat with roughly 15 people, all completely naked, were passed out all over the deck.  They carefully kept going. When the Irish Army guys on leave say the experience was intense, I am inclined to believe them.  

The bar was nice, though the music was terrible, in general the music in Croatia was terrible.  This particular local had a wonderful mix of Katy Perry, terrible country, and Croatian rock.  We made it through one beer and then walked the 30 minutes back to the hostel debating the best episode of Top Gear.  

That night was the hottest of the whole trip but I was managing to cope for most of the night.  I had been the first in the room and had snagged one of the beds near the window and the room had a floor fan.  I WAS doing fine until just before dawn, until the a random guy with a black beard on the other side of the room locked the fan so it pointed straight at him.  When this was discovered someone threw there pillow at him, the fan started to move again, but the dude lost his pillow.  

I had been fighting a cold since the second day in Split, and it was finally beating me.  I think the hot night had given  it the opening it needed.  I refused to stay inside, but I was moving at a rate that would have frustrated a glacier.   It took me 45 minutes to cover the 1.5 miles back to town and I kept having to stop and rest in the shade and drink water.  

At first my walk took me along the path of the old walls that had been torn down a few hundred years ago when Zadar had been declared an open trade city during the Austrian rule.  Again, nothing shouts Hapsburg like Croatia.  The result was the wide Promenade right along the water.  

Timer!

The really neat thing about the walk is the newly installed Sea Organ.  It utilizes the wind and waves flowing over a series of pipes under the walkway to create a deep notes analogues to humpback whale's song.

From there, I turned inland and, still moving at a snails crawl, headed towards the old Roman Forum. There were lots of bits of the old ruins in the big plaza, but very little of it was were it had been left by it's builders.  Most had been lined up in neat little rows and the large chunks had been dragged off under some trees to use as benches.  The whole thing had a very odd, outdoor museum feel to it. I spent a very pleasant half hour people watching on a the door jam of an old temple with MAG carved into it.  Croatia has slightly less reverence to its ruins then some other cultures.

From there I headed into St Donat's cathedral.  The church was built by an Irish priest who had become the Bishop of Zadar in the 8th century.  I can only imagine how he got there, or what he thought of the place.  This was a time that Islam was starting to rise out of the dessert, Charlemagne was ratting around in Germany and this guy had made it a few thousand miles through Barbarian and hostel land to preach to the Croats.  I think it must have been very lonely and very miserable in the summers for that poor Irishman.  That could have explained the design of his cathedral, a giant stone block.  While not an architectural marvel, it has stood the test of time and was very cool inside.

Tower in background is not apart of the original structure

The original church consisted of one, nearly round, two story, Nave with and alter at one end and a door at the other.  Some of the windows were closed in the 15th century to create an even more impenetrable look to the facade.

It was pretty clear old Donatus had scavenged pretty heavily from the 500 year old Roman Forum that was deteriorating at his front door. 

Clue 1

Clue 2

Added after the stones were re-carved into a church

View from the second floor balcony 

His efforts seam to have paid off, as over 85% of the Croatian population now identifies as Catholic. After leaving the church, I wandered along the Eastern Walls back to the New Town Quay of Zadar. 

The lion over the gate is back from when the city was rulled by the Venetians.  It symbolized who owned the city, who protected it and whose taxes you were going to pay if you wanted to do business here .  I'm not sure what the scary goat faces ment.

The moat used to go all the way around, now its the most expensive harbor in the city.  A piece of the walls can be seen in the background.  To the right of the main gate is the five large wells that used to supply most of the towns water supply.  They apparently still have potable water in them, but need to be kept locked to keep drunk tourist out.  

With that, I needed to go home and take a nap on the beach for a bit.  Two final tales of Zadar and a PS.  

1.  I struck up a conversation with an old man sitting in front of his house and an abandoned one.  He told me one story that was interesting.  His neighbor and him had lived next to each other for many years and had got along fairly even though he was a Croat and his neighbor was a Serb.  When the War of Independence began in 1991, his neighbor and his family fled inland to escape persecution (Zadar had anti Serb riots).  I asked if he ever saw his neighbor again and he said yes, once, standing behind Slobodan Milosevic on television.  Who knows the truth of this antidote, but I think the fact he tells it means just as much as if it actually happened.  Zadar was under siege for two years, and even now many of the homes of those who left are still empty.  Mentally and physically the city has not recovered.

2.  As I was about to head to bed who did I come across?  Hannah and Sophie from Split!  Hannah had been feeling sick the night of the Pub Crawl so they had left early in the night.  They had managed to cook themselves an extremely nice dinner for themselves of pasta with eggplant, chicken and sun dried tomatoes. I was very jealous of them as I ate my spagetti bolognese.  

PS.  An Australian girl broke up with her boyfriend via Skype in the courtyard of the hostel just as everyone had left to go out for the night.  I, another Australian and the bartender had all stayed behind for various reasons and were now attempting to soak up a bit of the cool from the tiles before bed.  Upon hearing the news the bartender did the only reasonable thing, and poured us all a finger of Honey Rakia.  Previous, recent and painful experience made me wary, but it ended up being very good.  According to the bartender, its just the fruite and herb versions you should look out for.   Oh my friend, where were you three days ago?

A Geek, A Doctor and A World Heritage Site

When it was time to move on from Split, I had something especially geeky planed. Trogir. Croatian town, UNESCO World Heritage site, Doctor Who set.  

To explain, I suffer from two conditions that led me to this small harbor village.  First, a love of the British science fiction show Doctor Who.  Second, periodic insomnia.  The convergence of these two habits is me cursing through endless IMDB and Wikipedia links until I end up in the oddest of places. One such nocturnal prowling dumped me onto Trogir.  

A brief history.  Trogir was founded by Greek colonist who named it after a goat, specifically a male goat.  After that whirlwind beginning the town settled down for 1,000 years or so until it partnered with the Zadarians from the north against the Genoa's in the south.  Together they formed up a new province

in the Venetian Empire.  It is from this time period that most of the existing buildings date from, creating the best preserved medieval city in Eastern Europe.   

For the next 500 years it belonged the Venetians and maintained close ties with the Italians across the Adriatic, as well as the Serbs and Croats to the East and South.  In the 18th century the Venetians fell to the Hapsburg Empire, because nothing says Austria like 100 degree weather.  Shortly after that (300 years or so) WWI came around and Trogir became part of the new Yugoslavia.  Then that broke up and twenty years later a bunch of pasty British film kids turned up and filmed a ridiculous science fiction extravaganza, subbing Croatia for France and Italy.   

Clearly, neither photo is from my travels.

The BBC filmed two episodes of the 5th season in and around Trogir.  The first is a poignant episode about the Doctor and Amy trying to save Vincent Van Gogh from himself and a monster that vaguely resembles a Giant chicken.  The other is about vampires.  

My day started back in Split at the bus station.  Michael and I happened to be heading the same way, me to Trogir, he to the Split airport and then onto Rome to meet his family.  He had that amazing Australian luck to be able to travel for months at a time, 8 months in his case.  As we cruised north through the rough, yellow Croatian hill country we talked of The Game of Thrones series and Michaels time selling supper high end refrigerators.  The airport stop was first, marked in typical Croatian style with a half shack and a small sign with a plane on it.  As a side note, Michael is in France at the moment, and I try not to hate him and everyone else who is still traveling whenever I see a new Facebook post from them.  I often fail.

I have no idea how far Trogir is in actual miles from Split.  I know its an hour bus ride, I know it three dirty looks, two attempts at flirtation and one misadventure with the bus driver and money.  For you see, distance and time apear totally unconnected on the bus systems of Croatia.  There can be a stop every half mile or ten miles.  People can just wave to get off, if you lose your ticket you will have to repay, and if everything really goes to heck, just smile a lot, start apologizing and leave.    

Trogir was the last stop on the municipal bus line, which made it pretty easy not to miss.  Into the locker room my bag went, I put a water bottle in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other and began to explore.  The first thing I noticed is a few small water crafts tied to the harbor walls.

Boat envy in 3, 2...1

Being very hungry, and having had a cheap day previous day, I opted for a nice lunch along the harbor.  Croatian food has none of the built in heat copping methods that other culinary traditions have developed, such as salads, antipasta or dolmas, they have meat, they have potatoes and they have pizza.  I think they have imported the pizza.   After conferring with the waiter for several minutes, we settled on what he referred to as the light lunch. 

HAHAHA

Above is a brisket that has had bits of garlic, carrots and other vegetables inserted into it before cooking and gnocchi, all smothered in wine sauce and fresh basil.  It also came with a beer, all for roughly $16.  Not bad for roughly million calories and view like this.

Now the food was good, don't get me wrong.  The wine sauce was especially something worth remembering, but it was over 100 degrees that day and the food felt like a rock inside me.  I would have been perfectly happy stretching out in the shade like a cat and taking a long nap. But determination to explore won out and I began to move, albit veeerrry slowly.    After all, I was hear to see the town.  

And what a town.

You just have to not get lost!  Eventually I navigated my way back to the main square and took up space on the stone bench outside of the town hall under its medieval era front porch.  The roof that once sheltered petitioners, business folks and town gossips now played host to tourists, all looking for break from the sun.  Most followed my lead and carried a liter and a half bottle with them at all times.  These bottles were my constant friends for the entire time I was in Croatia.  The only issue presented by these was the constant struggle to keep them filled and not louse them.  

This afternoon I struck up a conversation with an Italian woman named Maria who was in advertising.  She was on one of her 6 weeks of paid vacation she got every year and was planning for the 6 months of paid leave she got every 5 years, which was coming around in soon.  I think I figured out why Italia might be in a financial pi.  

Anyway, we had a lovely chat about all the different places we had been and traded stories about this and that, gossiped about the people drifting by, and sipped on our water bottles.  Then we watched as 35 Chinese tourist crowded onto the porch, stared at the ceiling and then disappeared down an ally.   Deciding that was as good a spot as any to part, we bade each other ado and headed in different directions

It is lovely 

From the porch, I crossed the plaza and headed into the church of St Lawrence.  While the church was pleasant inside...

...It was actually the bell tower I was hoping to see.  Getting up to the first level was up a narrow, but relatively safe spiral stair case.  This let me out ont a wide porch even with the roof lines.

As I walked toward the bell tower proper, two Australians came down and wished me luck.  Luck? Now why would I need that?  Oh...

I will give the Croatians this, they do not believe in coddling there population.  If you want to go up the scary rickety staircase you are allowed to make that decision for yourself.  If you die while doing it, thats on you, not there fault if your an idiot.  I kinda appreciated that.  They also don't paint curbs yellow, put low door signs on things, or mark anything slippery when wet.  I guess when you just had a long, brutal, civil war, the concept of danger is a bit relative.  

I made it alive! Notice the liter and a half water bottle

Trogir from above

Splitsville

When you get off the bus in a Croatian cities the first thing you are going to see is a wall of people hawking various goods.  Most of whom are older woman trying to rent private rooms to the tourist coming into town for the first time, but you also see young woman trying to encourage people into restaurants and young men trying to sell excursions or pub crawls.  Who you don't see in the fray at all is older men, but if you keep your head up you will suddenly start to see them in the corners or sitting at tables nearby keeping an eye on everything.  The best thing you can do for yourself is grab your bag and get the heck out of there.  If you just sit there on your butt for longer than a minute you are just leaving yourself open to pickpockets and all other ne're do wells. 

The Split bus station was in the middle of the sparkling blue harbor half-way down the white paved Riva Promenade.  Following my own advice, I grabbed my bag, pulled out my map and headed away from the water to find the hostel.  After five hours on  bus, with nothing but Bosnian cookies to eat and I was starving.  I just hopped I could find the hostel quickly and then find some food.  Unfortunately the directions to the hostel, which had made perfect sense on paper, melted down at first attempt to put them in practice.  After wandering around a less then ideal neighborhood for 30 minutes I headed back to harbor to look for the tourist office, cursing poor maps and there makers to the seventh circle of Hell the whole way.  

Nearly back to the bus stop, I was distracted by a sandwich shop.  I utilized my foolproof strategy for getting food store owners who didn't speak English, pointing and smiling.  This was always surprisingly effective for, while I almost never got what I expected, I didn't starve.  

As hard as I tried, I could never make heads or tails of the Croatian language.  It always sounded like an impenetrable mishmash of Italian and Russian to me, with the soft rolling vowels of a latin tounge and the harsh consonants of a Slavic one.  After a week, all I was able to pick up was the phrase "Dobar Dan", whose use is similar to Aloha, and "Molim" meaning please.   By the by, those two, hand gestures and exceeding politeness proved generally effective in Croatia.  

After a quick pit stop at the tourist office, I was on my way again.  The new directions took me almost 90 degrees from the original directions and within my  first sight of Diocletian's Palace.  Originally built by the Roman Emperor Diocletian as a retirement home in the forth century AD, the grounds have been continually inhabited since them.  In some cases they have repurposed old walls into new structures, and in others they have just built on top of them.  Its a warren of apartments, stores, churches, narrow streets and small plazas.  I had specifically chosen to not book a hostel within its labyrinth interior because I knew I had no chance of finding it.  Goodness only knows what pizza delivery men do in there.  

I shadowed the outside wall of the palace past a large fish market until I ended up in the open space to the east of it.  There I dodged right and then left up an alley, found a small sign leading up a third, and suddenly found the best hostel in the entire world, CroParadise Green.  I can not speak warmly enough about the spot, I mean look at it. 

Photo Courtesy of CroParadise

Its got everything a girl on the road could want, large rooms, few beds,  a kitchen, and lockers. There was even a TV with cable and a movie library. Hey, standards are low when you become a backpacker and only three strangers in my room was something to celebrate.  The hostel was actually broken into two apartments in different buildings due to some strange Croatian hostel law that limited the number of beds a hostel could have to 16, so the broke the hotel's 32 beds in half.  This was quite literally the only place I was in who actually followed the law, everyone else just bribed the officials when they came for the inspections.   

When I cam into my room and dropped my stuff I met Michael, the first of many many many Australians I would meet in my travels and his new British friend Mark.   They had that Common Wealth camaraderie that I quickly learned to envy, this time exemplified by there shared love of rugby Youtube videos.  It just so happened that nearly the whole hostel had turned over the night before.  To celebrate everyone being in a new town, the lot had signed up for a pub crawl later that night and the boys asked if I wanted to come to. Having never gone on one, I happily accept and headed out for an afternoon of sight seeing before night fall. 

I also met Hannah and Sophie, two super nice girls from England.  The whole hostel ended up skyping with Hannah's mom for a few minutes.  While they don't factor to much into this story, they come in much later and deserve at least a nod now.  

My words will fail to describe the true craziness that is the palace grounds.  Nothing has been torn down in 1700 years, just reincorporated into new buildings.  Buildings are stalked on top of each other, streets end in walls and windows are poked through ancient walls.  I have no idea how they got plumbing into there.  

I headed into the architectural madness through the Eastern "Gold" Gate.  The original Palace also had the Silver, Iron and Sea gates.  Please consider the next 12 photos as the Split Dozen.

The area to the left of the gate, old, bordered up windows complete with new windows and shutters.

The old exterior walls have been incorporated into new apartments who utilise the UNESCO World Heritage Sight any way that works. 

Over each gate is an ancient and tini chapel...

Stairs to the chapel over the eastern gate

Eastern Chapel 

The small chapel over the eastern gate felt haunted.  I did not want to, nor attempt to go through that stone arch way because whatever IT was didn't want me to.  You all can laugh at me, but I have heard far to many ghost stories and watched to many Doctor Who's to ignore the feeling that the walls have grown eyes.  

One of the wider streets

Though I didn't see it myself, there is apparently a street who's name roughly translate to "One Man Wide Way".  I have no doubt it exists.

Layers and layers of humanity

An arch to the past

An unmissable feature of Split is the Palace basements.  These were the old store rooms and subterranean spaces of the palace, and the current city is literally built upon the old.  Now they are deserted and super duper creepy.

Foundations of a city

The door out

Standing in a 4th Century basement, looking forty feet up  to an 18th Century apartment complex

Standing just outside the Sea Gate, 1700 years ago I would be swimming, and the coolest person in the world because I was from the future.

Main square

Sometimes the line between ruin and a house is a fine one

Now, I can't say to much about the pub crawl due to the fact that my parents read this blog.  However I would like to warn you all about Rikija, the national liquor of Croatia.  It can be made of fermented fruite, honey, or just about anything you have laying around.  And its evil.  Pure pure evil.  Its like tequila's angrier, bitchier sister and the next morning I felt like this...