Holiday in Croatia

Well, I am back from what I expect will be one of if not the highlight of my trip to Europe. I was interested in visiting Croatia some time back because my grandmother's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Croatia, but as the date approached I became aware that Croatia's tourism industry is just now beginning to flex its muscles after a few years of rebuilding after the wars in the Balkans.

Croatia is in my opinion quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever seen. There are beaches and islands, most of which I did not get to experience sadly. There are rocky peaks. There are lush rolling hills and populated valleys. There are Roman ruins and there is architecture from every period since then. Everything is unimaginably cheap and everyone speaks English and goes out of their way to be nice.

Thursday I left class at lunchtime and had a quick bite to eat with two of my classmates (Penne Arrabiata, my favorite pasta dish here) and then took the subway to Centrale Stazione, where I caught a train to Ancona. I had to get a first class ticket since they were sold out of second class, but it wasn't too much more and the extra space and air conditioning was really nice. After about a four hour ride to Ancona, I found Claire under the departure times as we'd agreed, which was the main thing I was worried about since I never did get a working cellphone.

We didn't know where the ferries left so we caught a cab, which wasn't too bad, and purchased a ticket to Split, as we had planned to make it our first stop. We didn't have much time, so we went through customs and then asked a dock worker where the boat was. They had told us a number but none of the ferry berths were numbered so it wasn't much help. I had to show him the name of our ferry company on the tickets (Jadrolinja) and he pointed us to a ferry. We waited a bit, boarded and quickly found a couple couches that we could sleep on. A girl on the couches next to us struck up conversation. Her name was Claudia, she was from Ancona, and she went to Croatia every year for holiday. We were talking with her about Split when we realized something.

We had gotten on the wrong ferry. I guess there were two Jadrolinja ferries that left that night, and the dock worker just told us one of them. This one was going to Zadar, a smaller town on the coast a bit further North from Split. In the end this was a bit of a blessing in disguise. We had talked of going to Zagreb, Croatia's capital, largest city, and the city which my grandparents had lived in when they moved to America. We quickly adjusted our plan. We would leave Zadar as soon as possible, and take a four hour bus ride to Zagreb. We would spend the rest of the day and evening there, staying in a hostel, and the next morning we would take a 6 hour bus ride to Split, and have some time that afternoon before the ferry left split at 9pm. If we had gone into Split, I don't think we could have seen Zagreb at all.

Zadar is absolutely gorgeous. The main part of the town is on a peninsula and has some ancient walls separating it from the newer part of the city. It's immaculately clean with tiny little walkable streets and lots of little shops. Unfortunately none of the shops were open, but we did breakfast at a nice little cafe before we exited the old city in search of the bus terminal.

We had consulted the maps posted in several places around the city to find the bus terminal, and we headed into normal, residential Zadar, which is mostly run down apartment buildings and houses, with the occasional business. We were afraid we were lost, but as it turned out we just got a tiny bit off track and easily found the bus terminal. We had time to get our tickets and buy some snacks, which are pretty similar to American salty snack food, except the peanut flavored Cheetos Claire got later.

I think the bus ride to Zagreb may have been my favorite part of the entire trip. Croatia has a number of different terrains inland. There are high, craggy mountains and big stretches of flat land in between, and there are rolling hills and valleys, a lot like we have in West Virginia only with slightly taller hills. Vegetation is usually not very tall, I think because the Venetians cut down almost all the trees in Croatia back in the 19th century and the trees haven't had time to grow back to their height. But everywhere is covered with leafy green foliage, interspersed with crumbling old houses and some new houses. Most are built of the Croatian equivalent of cinderblock in brick red and gray, although some are of an older, more solid make with red tile roofs like the houses in the cities all throughout the Mediterranean.

I felt a strange connection to the land, it's difficult to describe. It was an almost spiritual sensation of feeling like I had been there, and the reason that West Virginia has always seemed like home to me is because my ancestors had been born in these rolling hills halfway across the world. It was especially strong when we passed a town with a name very similar to my grandmother's, which is Rekyovich. I think the town was called Raykograd or something like that. I don't know for sure or not if any of my family was ever from that part of Croatia, since her parents lived in Zagreb when they left, but I just got this feeling like I had been in this beautiful place before.

Zagreb is as beautiful as the land around it. The oldest part of town, Kaptol, rises steeply above the city, and a river separates new and old Zagreb. The buildings are this strange collision of medieval Austro-German, Eastern Bloc and Mediterranean. You will see one house of each style all in a row, and then occasional modern glass and concrete structures. More of those in the new part of town, which we only briefly drove through. We arrived safely in the very modern looking bus terminal, which is fairly new I think. Claire had called and arranged rooms at a hostel recommended by her Lonely Planet book when we were in Zadar, and the directions they gave us worked like a charm. We asked some locals for help figuring out which way to go, but it was easy once they told us. Zagreb's main public transportation is a series of trams similar to the ones we have in Milan. We took one out to a big chocolate factory in the neighborhood of Radkovice, which is where we found our hostel.

The hostel was homey and lovely. The people who worked there were amazingly nice, and all the other people staying there were really nice. We talked for a long time to a Canadian couple who had been living in London and we visiting too. We got our beds, two bunks in a room with two other backpackers we never talked to or saw awake, and used their super cheap internet for a bit before we went into town. Another quick tram ride and we were in the main square, Trg Bana Jelacica, or Governor Jelacica Plaza, roughly translated. Ban Jelacica was a leader during the period of time Croatia was part of the Austrian empire.

We had found some free maps at the hostel with walking tours, so we embarked upon one while we looked for a place to get a bite of food. We walked up a huge hill with a train like the incline in Pittsburgh, only smaller and with lots of buildings all around it. We passed a tower built in 12- or 1300 and saw a beautiful square and walked a bit. My pictures will have to speak for themselves. Just before we got to Zagreb's big gothic cathedral, we found a place to get some food. Claire had some amazingly tasty calamari (I tried one, delicious) and I just had some salad with pancetta (bacon) and some french fries.

When we finished, they were having mass in the cathedral, so we did a little looking around for touristy shirts. I found one incredibly goofy one with a heart in place of the B in Zagreb. It was raining and we had both forgotten our umbrellas, so we found a Croatian department store and bought umbrellas before going back to the cathedral. Of course by then it had stopped raining, but anyway we went into the cathedral, which was very tall and beautiful, although I have seen a lot of cathedrals lately so I am inclined to be a bit picky. I will say its sheer size was impressive. Like the Duomo, they were doing work on the outside of it, so I mostly only took pictures inside.

Following that it was getting close to 8pm, the time when all the shops close. We walked into the lower part of the old town, and found an old record shop, where a nice Croatian guy excitedly played us records. I ended up buying two, one a compilation of Italian 80's disco and the other a Croatian synthpop record that actually sounded quite good. We stopped in a few more shops and walked around a bit longer, viewing some beautiful Baroque theaters and then decided to head back to the room to drop off our purchases before dinner ended at 10pm.

At the hostel we discovered that Croatian restaurants close EXACTLY at 10pm, and we couldn't get back downtown in time to eat. We dejectedly went downtown and ended up just going to a McDonald's. I know that sounds ridiculous! But honestly there weren't any other choices. Besides, hungry as we were I think it was the best McDonald's ever. The service was certainly the best I've had in any McDonald's, even if my vanilla shake wasn't quite as good as in American McDonald's. One thing they've got also is that McDonald's ketchup, which I normally don't like so much, is heads above the typical horribly sugary tart European ketchup. Anyway, we enjoyed our little meal, pitiful though it was.

In the hostel I had looked up a dance club for us to go to that seemed relatively similar to our tastes, or at least as close as we could manage. It ended up being pretty out of the way, and although there were a bunch of teenage looking Croatians outside, we were a bit nervous and walked by a few times before we decided to go in.

I have to say, I am really impressed at the accomplishment of our going to this dance club, called (laughably) the Boogaloo Club. It was the most authentic thing I've done yet, and I'd put money down to bet we were the only Americans, probably the only foreigners there. We didn't really talk to anyone besides the bartender, but we had some incredibly cheap drinks (30 kuna for two shots of Jagermeister, which is $5 total, 20 kuna for two Heinekens, which is $4 total, at a club) and got on the dancefloor.

Now I do have to say, the DJ was good, but Croatian kids just can't dance. Half of them do the I'm-not-sure-if-I-want-to-dance shuffle, and the of the ones who do dance, they mostly don't move their hips or feet as much as possible. Still, a few knew what was up. Claire was a little nervous so she danced pretty nondescriptly, but I must have gotten a little attention from the way I danced, as a couple Croatian dudes came over and tried to dance like I did. They were joking around but I'm pretty sure it was good-natured, since one of them smiled and said something in Croatian and I shook his hand and it wasn't a big deal. Later on a couple Croatian girls passed in front of me and said "Keep it up" playfully in English. But that was about all the interaction we had. I'll also take the opportunity here to note that Croatian women are the most beautiful I've seen. Not only are they all perfectly proportioned, but their features are so exotic and eastern looking. Maybe it's just a preference of mine, who knows.

We left around 3am and found a taxi and took it home for about two hours worth of sleep. Then we had to get to the terminal in time to catch a 7am bus to Split, which we made with no problems whatsoever, having bought our tickets the day before. The ride to split was even more beautiful, since it was the same ride plus two extra hours. I slept a lot more on the way back, but I caught a lot of the same things, like this weird Croatian equivalent of truckstop we went to both times with a bunch of stuffed hares and foxes smoking pipes. I made sure to take a picture. Once past Zadar we stopped in this beautiful little town called Knin. I couldn't get a picture of the approach, but we came down the mountain and saw it in all its red-roofed glory.

The coast near Zadar and Split has less influence of Austria and more of Italy. Split itself could be an Italian town if you added some more graffiti. It's fairly tourist-driven and we got there on Saturday, market day, so there were lots of stalls selling towels and t-shirts and the like. We didn't really have time to check them out. We went straight to the beach, since this would be our only time to do so. We got some delicious gelatos to keep from getting too hungry, and set about doing the beach thing.

The beach we went to (its name escapes me) is the one all the locals go to. It's really close - only five minutes walk from the ferries, and probably isn't the best beach nearby. The best ones usually require a ferry ride to a nearby island. This one had concrete walls like a pool for the most part, with a small patch of beach, and then a long row of bars and gelaterias. The water was really cold and very shallow. You couldn't get in much past your waist unless you went out pretty far, and there was almost no surf. It looked pretty fun to play handball in, as lots of local kids did, but since one of us had to always watch the bags we didn't get to do much swimming. But the weather was nice and we got some sun and relaxed for a bit.

After we had finished there we went back uptown to look for somewhere to eat. We looked around Diocletian's palace, which is an amazingly well preserved palace built in 306 by one of the last emperors of a united Rome, Diocletian, who was born in Dalmatia, the part of Croatia we were in. After we took some pictures we continued looking for restaurants without much luck. Finally we found a nice-looking place. Seafood in Split is way overpriced, but I managed to get some delicious seafood spaghetti for around $9, along with a $2 salad. Claire got a similarly set up risotto. Mine had this slightly creamy subtle tomato sauce, tiny shrimp, mussels and clams. Claire had some shrimp and one giant whole crayfish which she was too squeamish to break up. I don't normally even like shrimp much, and these I had to cut the legs and heads off, but they were really tasty, especially the clams, which were mostly about the size of a quarter.

We hurried back to catch our ferry, and this one had few couches to sleep on, so we had to settle for some airplane style chairs in the midst of what must have been a high school trip of Croatians watching some reunion concert very loudly on TV. We did catch a few winks, and then we were in Ancona, and a few hours' worth of sitting I was safely back in Milan. I mistakenly left my copy of Heart of Darkness somewhere, that I had been reading, but I had gotten bored with it anyway. I thought for a little while that I had left a bunch of American cash and traveller's checks at the hostel, but later I figured out I had just put them someplace else and forgotten.

All in all it was an amazing trip. I got back here before 3pm, and have plenty of time to do laundry and work out and maybe take a quick trip to the grocery store before the night is up. I talked to my classmate Nicole who said most of my friends ended up going to Switzerland instead of Rome because you couldn't get tickets due to the Live Aid concert there, and they had a lot of trouble in Switzerland and spent a ton of money. Looks like I made the right choice. I'll try to put up some photos tonight, maybe even work them into the text. We'll see...