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.
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| 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?"
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Timer! |
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.
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| Tower in background is not apart of the original structure |
It was pretty clear old Donatus had scavenged pretty heavily from the 500 year old Roman Forum that was deteriorating at his front door.
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| Clue 1 |
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| Clue 2 |
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| Added after the stones were re-carved into a church |
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| 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?
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