Plitvice

We woke up in Senj the next morning at about 6 AM. It was a little painful, I’m gonna be honest, but we had an aggressive plan for the day: Drive to Plitvice (Pleet-veet-chay), walk the National Park, and drive all the way to Dubrovnik in the southern tip of Croatia. And in order to beat the heat and the crowds (Think Yosemite in August) and make it all the way to Dubrovnik, we needed to head out early.

The drill was the usual, I drive, and Ben and Seth take turns being passed out in the back and doing their best to keep me from being passed out in the front. We put a few liters of petrol in our ride and hit the road. We followed mountain switchbacks in the dense morning fog most of the way from coastal Senj to Plitvice National Park, which is hidden in the central valley’s hills.

We probably passed through 50 small country towns on our way to Plitvice – most of them consisted of well kept stone houses, a few markets, flowers, and roadside merchants selling their homemade cheese, oils, and brandy.

I’m not sure what about us screamed “tourist” louder – our giant “Europe” backpacks, our ever-present cameras, or my “Hrvatska” t-shirt that I wore so proudly…which would be equivalent to a Japanese tourist walking around Yosemite taking pictures of everything, talking in Japanese and wearing a gaudy “America” t-shirt. Ok, so we stood out a little.

About 1 hour into our drive, we finally found coffee. We walked into a very local café in a small Croatian farming town and asked (in English, of course) for 3 espressos. I tried not to make eye contact, but across the bar, which I could barely see through the plume of early morning cigarette smoke, all eyes were on us. It was as if someone just walked into a cowboy bar in West Texas and ordered a diet sprite and a salad.

Escaping unscathed with our caffeine, we hit the road again, bound for Plitvice. We passed through more small towns and gorgeous countryside that I couldn’t help but think how California developers would be salivating over. The terrain got increasingly rugged until we finally arrived at Plitvice.

My two Croatia advisors – Danny Parker and my climbing friend Amy – had both dubbed Plitvice a “can’t miss”. We arrived at the park, walked into the welcome center and ordered more espresso and some pastries.

We started our journey. Taking a long bus type of car with a bunch of connected cars, they shuttled us to the top of the falls. Plitvice is essentially several miles of lakes that cascade down through a series of waterfalls and rivers. The water is an unbelievable blue color that is so striking, it’s hard to believe that it’s real and it’s equally hard to believe that fish actually live in the water. After reaching the top, we begin about a 5 mile walk on a mix of elevated boardwalk and trails, following the lakes and cascades all the way to the bottom.

The next few hours, there’s not a lot to say. I don’t know how to say it…words can’t capture it. Pictures can’t even capture it. Cotter said it was the most beautiful place he’d ever been. I said it was in my top 5, although I balked when challenged to provide a more beautiful place. I just said “I like rocks” – which I do…but as water goes – I’ve never seen anything like it.

We spent the next few hours walking, taking pictures, and just simply in awe…awe of the beauty of the country…but more importantly awe of its Creator. I can’t be in a place like that without it being a spiritual experience – Plitvice is place you just have to see to believe.

More than satisfied with the 90 Kuna entrance fee ($16), we ate cheeseburgers from the local concession stand and hit the road – bound for Dubrovnik. We had a long drive ahead of us, but we were determined to get to Dubrovnik, or maybe Briste, or maybe…the side of the road.

The Senj Detour

After a glorious night sleep and a shower that sort of worked, the lady’s husband came to meet us at our pre-arranged time…9AM. We handed him the key, thanked him, and give him a 5 Euro tip – since we had such a great night (and we felt a little bad about knocking 40% off of his original price).

We headed our for what became our typical breakfast: 1) double espresso macchiato, 2) a year’s worth of second-hand smoke (Croatian’s like their smoke), and 3) off to a market to find pastries and yogurt. I did everything in my power to find “active cultures” everyday…and I found the yogurt in Europe to be quite different from the States. It’s much more liquid than ours…no spoon required – just drink it…and it’s good. Ah! Give me Euro-yogurt!

We walked around the market for a while and then decided to begin our search for a car. After Budget, Avis, and the local guy “Hector” who needless to say, didn’t do one-way rentals – we were still car-less. “There are no cars for rent in Pula” – all sold out. Zut alors. After much walking, Eurocar said they had one car – at the airport. Our driver picked us up and took us to the airport. As we made our way to the Eurocar booth, Seth spotted our friends Daniel and Iva – we did see them again, just not where we thought. Long story short, Daniel and Iva had reserved a car but due to a mix-up, they were unable to rent it. Forced to wait for the bus, we suddenly had a car available to us. I felt a little bad about stealing their car…but I justified it because someone else would have rented it anyway…or something like that. At any rate, we laughed with them about running into them again, once again, and, half-jokingly we said “see you in Briste”.

We hopped into our Peugeot and started driving. We didn’t know where we were going…our next stop was Plitvice – the National Park that was a “can’t miss” from my Croatian advisors Danny Parker and my climbing friend Amy, both of whom had spent a fair amount of time in Croatia. As we cruised down the highway, we were impressed with the highways – all of the infrastructure in Croatia seemed to be very solid. There was construction everywhere … roads… bridges… tunnels. The roads were new, nice and clean. Everything was clean in Croatia (in stark contrast to Italy). We made our way through a billion tunnels (Croatians don’t go around their mountains, they blast through them).

The terrain was rolling shrub-covered hills. We drove and drove, stopping at roadside pit-stops for shots of espresso – which usually set us back about 5 Kunas. We were nearing Plitvice, but it was getting late. Wanting to 1) have a nice place to stay for the night – since it was the 4^th of July, and 2) have the full Plitvice experience, we pulled out the map and decided to head to a coastal town called Senj.

We had passed a large hillside with sweeping views of the Adriatic, which was going to be our bed for the night – but we had heard (and seen) that a huge storm was coming in…so we decided to find a Sobe for the night. We stopped at, what effectively was a Sobe broker and asked the girl if any rooms were available. After a short phone call she said “take a left at the gas station and it’s the second house on the left…ask for Maria”. Fair enough, we thought.

We made our way up the hill…found what we figured was the place and knocked on the door. “Hello” she said. Maria was probably in her late 40’s – she lived in a small but nice house with gorgeous views of the Adriatic. “Call me Momma Maria” she said. Maria had extensive burns all over her body. Burn scars on her face, scars on her legs and arms…one of her ears was half gone. It was hard not to look. I couldn’t help but wonder if something had happened to her during the war. It appeared that she lived alone in this house by the sea.

We gave her 42 Euros and she showed us to our quarters. It was the standard – one double bed and one single. Also standard was a balcony with views of the Adriatic Sea and one of the many islands off the coast of Croatia. We were treated with one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen…it was downright ridiculous.

We considered our night on the balcony at Momma Maria’s to be one of our favorite nights of the whole trip. Two bottles of Vino, Bread and Cheese, and toasting to America on her birthday in Senj, it was pretty remarkable. We talked, wrote, read what we wrote, laughed at each other for what we wrote, and probably made a little too much noise. A glorious night in Senj and another glorious night in Croatia.

Welcome to Croatia

We boarded the ship for a three hour tour (pun intended, ok…sorry, that was really bad). It’ll get better, I promise. We arrived in Pula, Croatia at about 8:30, right as the sun was setting. There was this euphoria (I know I’ve used that word in every blog, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it) all around us as we walked off the ship.

For me, I think the euphoria stemmed from the fact that I had wanted to come to Croatia for so long – and I was finally there. Also, we felt like we were exploring…we were in a small Croatian city, we didn’t know if anyone would speak English, we didn’t know where we would sleep, where we would eat, we didn’t know anything – we (well, in our minds at least) were true adventurers. We fancied ourselves up there with Columbus, Sir Edmond Hillary and Brad Washburn.

Quite a few people have asked me “Why Croatia?” For me, it’s an easy answer. I remember reading an article about 3 years ago about Croatia – I think it was in Outside Magazine. The article detailed how the country had taken huge strides to recover since the war ended in the early 90’s. I remember being enamored with the article, the passion of the people, the beauty of the country, a country returning to its feet after communism. From that point on, I gobbled up every article I could find on Croatia. I read “Balkan Ghosts” by Robert Kaplan which is a fascinating (and sobering) book. When Ben and I finally decided that we were going to Europe, I said, “I want to go to Croatia and Switzerland…besides that, I don’t care”. The culmination of all of that helped to contribute to my well-documented euphoria.

Exiting the ship, we asked a couple to take a picture of us – as we talked to them we found out they were Canadian, from Ottawa. Daniel, born in Canada and Iva – originally from Bosnia but grew up in a small town in southern Croatia and moved to Canada in her teens. We talked for a while when they, seemingly out of duty and a little nervous about the proposition, invited us to stay at their house. “We don’t have a cell…how will we find you?” Iva said, “When you get to Briste, just ask any of the locals…tell them my last name and they’ll point you to our house”. Ben, Seth and I all looked at each other at the same time. “Ok, sure” we all thought. We figured we’d never see them again.

Walking off the dock toward the city, we were immediately greeted with the other Roman Coliseum – and far better preserved than the Coliseum in Rome. The sun was setting over the Adriatic, providing a perfect setting to snap some pictures of the Coliseum. We ran across the street, gawked at the massive ancient structure, snapped some pictures in true tourist fashion. Then the sun set. “Now what?” We all looked at each other.

We had found a campsite in our Croatia book that was about ½ hour walk from the dock – but first, we headed into the city to get some Kuna. Quiz: A Kuna is: 1) A small furry animal that lives in rotting tree stumps and is prepared as a Croatian delicacy, 2) Croatian slang for “woman”, or 3) the local currency.

If you answered 3, give yourself 25 points. 1 Kuna = $.18 (although by the time anyone reads this, the Dollar will probably be worth less than the Peso). A really nice girl sitting in an odd looking booth (for what reason we still don’t know) directed us to a cool little promenade where all of the locals were hanging out. We found cafes, pizza shops, fish restaurants, Roman ruins and tons of local people.

As we were walked to find a place to eat, a lady approached as and asked (in very good English) if we need a place to stay. She was probably in her late 30’s, her husband also – both very athletic looking. Her son, probably 11, was dressed in his Adidas basketball gear. We were planning to camp, but before the guys could say no I said “we’ll take a look”. I figured, what could it hurt? I get some looks from Ben and Seth for that one. After walking to the other end of the promenade she turned into an apartment right on the strip. At first, I felt a little nervous about the building – but when I reminded myself that there was an 11 year old boy with us, my fears subsided.

We walked up four flights of old marble stairs that leaned so badly one way that we had to hold on to the railing not to fall. The room was sweltering hot, probably hadn’t been opened in several days. “50 Euros”, she said. I could tell she was a little unsure of herself. We told her thanks, but we’re going to camp.

About an hour later as we gobbled down pizza, I told the guys that I thought there was room in the lady’s price. “If we don’t stay there, no one will stay there” I remember saying. Just then the lady and her husband came walking by – “30 Euros”, I blurted our as they walked by. Her husband turned up his nose at us, thinking to himself “cheap, rich Americans”…they walked away. Shocked, I said sorry guys – I had really thought 30 Euros would do it. About 5 minutes later (and I could tell after a fairly intense discussion) the lady came back and said it’s a deal.

As we sat and finished our pizza – it really hit us – the beauty of Croatian women. As people walked up and down the promenade, we just kept looking at each and saying, “this is a joke”.

The next part of our evening was so bizarre, I don’t even know how to describe it. We were turning the key to go into our apartment and we heard this chanting and marching coming down the street. The next thing I knew, we were surrounded with people carrying candles and two fellas who were dressed up in their best “death” costumes. The candle-bearers, death-men, and hordes of people passed…we snapped some pictures and then followed the lady up to our rooms. Apparently this was part of an Israeli drama that was going on…we looked at our watch: 11PM – I asked Seth, “what day is it?” “Tuesday”, he said. Who puts on a drama at 11PM on a random Tuesday in July? We looked at each other blankly. Fair enough, I thought.

We put our stuff in the apartment and the lady said – “oh, there’s a balcony”. The lady then led us through the green scary door with the big key, up the broken scary stairs with no lights and cob webs (I thought the odds were 50/50 we would never exit the green scary door). We walked out onto an old stone balcony that overlooked the drama in the courtyard below. We were stoked to find such a cool authentic place to stay for the night. As one of the tallest buildings in the small city, I imagined this stone and brick balcony as sniper’s nest 15 years ago during the war. We watched the drama from our crow’s nest.

We smoked cigars and pipes, looked at the stars, talked for an hour or so on the balcony. We were pretty much in shock about what had transpired. Fat and happy and excited about Croatia, we retreated to our crow’s nest for the night – next stop, Plitvice.

18 Hours in Venice

My first post about Dubrovnik was actually the 4^th day of our trip. So let me rewind and take more of a chronological approach from this point forward.

First, let me explain something about “jet lag”. This was my first time traveling anywhere where some form of jet lag could result – although I swear those Monday mornings on the East coast are a form of jet lag after traveling from the West coast on Sunday. Anyway, before I left, people told me to take sleeping pills, eat some crazy herbal flower, stand on my head…yadayadayada. I did none of the above and I had no jet lag. Here’s what I did (unintentionally, but it worked), which is what I call the recipe for beating jet lag:

• Get 4 hours of sleep each of the two nights before travel
• Travel for 29 hours with two flights and an 8 hour train ride
• Sleep 3 of the 29 hours traveling
• Go to sleep at destination at 1AM
• Wake up at 9AM the next day feeling great

If you’re counting, that’s 11 hours of sleep in 77 prior to arriving. So the moral of the story is – get really tired and you won’t have any problem sleeping.

I arrived in Zurich feeling very tired. The first thing I noticed about Zurich was that it’s clean. Really clean. The second thing I noticed about Zurich is that everyone is fit. You’re hard pressed to find more than a couple overweight people in Zurich (I’m still haven’t figured out why considering all of the cheese and chocolate they eat). The third thing I noticed about Zurich is that it’s cold. It was July 2 – I was in some plaid shorts looking like a total goober and freezing my arse off on the 50 degree, rainy July day. Hopping on a train in Zurich, I cruised (first class – which is worth it, I highly recommend it) through the Alps and down into Italy.

Ben, who is Romania and lived in Romania until he was about 7, had spent a couple of weeks in Romania with his mom – visiting family and friends. Seth had joined Ben in Budapest, Hungary when Ben’s mom flew home and the two of them spent 4 days in Budapest. Our plan was to meet in Venice on the night of July 2. None of us had brought a cell phone, so I (who am generally not an anxious person) can honestly say that I had a lot of anxiety about whether or not I’d be able to find them in Venice.

8 hours later I arrived in Venice, walked out of the train station, and saw Cotter’s big smiling face – which was a huge sigh of relief (I had had visions of sleeping on the floor at the train stations). At that point, the trip (for me at least) had begun.

“It’s Impossible”, the guy working at the hotel kept telling us in his thick Italian accent. Well, it’s not really “impossible”, I said, one of us could just sleep on the floor. Cotter and Benny had checked in to a 2 person room, thinking that one of us could just sleep on the floor or a cot or something. When the guy working the desk saw 3 of us walk in, he started telling us it was “impossible” for us to get 3 in a room. After debating with this guy and his manager for 15 minutes, we started to realize (through some shoddy broken English) that there was a city ordinance that did not allow more people to stay in a room that was designated for a certain number of people. Hence, “impossible”. The pissed off manager essentially “fined” us 10 Euros for taking a shower in the room and kicked us out. From that point on, anything we didn’t think we could do was coined “impossible” in our thickest Italian accent.

We grabbed some beers and started walking around looking for a room to rent. After about 30 minutes we found a room with 3 beds for 87 Euros – definitely our most expensive night of the trip. If there’s one thing we learned about Italyh the Dollar in the tank right now. – it’s expensive, especially wit Towards the end of our trip, I believe the Dollar was down to about $1.45 for 1 Euro. Painful.

I was pretty euphoric the first night in Venice. We walked around, took pictures, found a little café – had coffee…just wandered around talking to people and taking pictures.

What really epitomized our trip, and, one of the reasons that I loved it so much was that we had a general itinerary, but we had no reservations and no concrete plan. We figured we’d just “figure it out” – and we did. So about 5 hours after I arrived, we were retiring to our 87 Euro glorified hostel room and we didn’t have a concrete plan for getting to Croatia the next day. We knew we wanted to go, but we weren’t really sure how we’d get there. Should we take the ferry from Venice to Pula? Should we take a train to Anconand take a ferry all the way to Dubrovnik? a

What we did have was a map and some ferry schedules. We looked at maps, ferry schedules, car rentals, and prices and 5 minutes later, we had made a decision. In about 15 hours, we’d catch a ferry to Pula, Croatia, we’d camp for the night, rent a car the next day and take off. Done.

The next morning we had breakfast a café, walked around Venice and visited St. Mark’s Square. There were a billion pigeons in St. Mark’s Square. I individually hated every one of them. There was this kid who was laying the ground letting birds eat stuff off of him. The kid was weird – so I took a picture of him, partly because he was weird and partly because I was thinking about my sister Annie, who, (don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bird lover by any means) has an unnatural abhorrence for all things foul. Hey sis, this one’s for you ;)

After getting our fill of the birds, we headed off for some lunch – a Panini of course, and off to find some gelato. Although we talked to tons of people, we didn’t take a lot of pictures with people. One girl we did take a picture with was Valentina. She was sitting on the dock – writing and tanning at the same time. We wandered her way, found out she was studying English (she was Italian) – so we invited her to come to Croatia with us. She said she couldn’t leave her classes so we took a picture with her and went on our way.

We headed to the port to board our ship. At 5 PM we pushed off from the dock, bound for Croatia.

Croatia (Part I)

If a picture says 1,000 words - then let this tell the story of Dubrovnik. Ok, so maybe it's a little trite to suggest that a picture of me jumping into the Adriatic in any way signifies anything about Dubrovnik - it's simply a "belligerent American" (which is how we referred to ourselves on this trip) mindlessly and reckless trying to get a little thrill (which I did and, yes, I have health insurance). I will admit though that one of the highlights of the trip was roaming the city walls of the Old City, looking for new places to cliff jump.

Constructed in the late 12th century and situated on the coastal southern tip of Croatia, the Old City of Dubrovnik was a leading trading center for centuries. The world watched in horror as the Old City (Stari Grad) of Dubrovnik was blasted by over 2,000 shells in 1991 and 1992 during the civil war that ravaged the former Yugoslavia, causing damage to 68% of the 824 buildings in the Old City. We noticed no effects of the shelling as the Croatians had carefully and meticulously restored the Old City to her former glory.

Let's get this out of the way...Croatian women are beautiful - there's really no other way around that. We pretty much referred to it as a "joke" the entire time. I mean, really it was a big joke. With that said, as three Christian young men, we did our best - and were quite successful.

From the slick marble city streets to the cathedrals, the architecture in Dubrovnik was intricate and stunning. The city walls jet out of the Adriatic forming a barrier about a half mile square protecting the city from invaders. We wandered around the city during the day, cliff jumping, wandering through the old city streets looking for cool retro Croatia T-Shirts and, of course you can't forget the backpacker's patches - which we picked up in every country to sew on our packs.

We found the fish in Croatia to be prepared slightly different than we were used to, but good nonetheless. After wandering around the Old City for a day, we headed off to find a Sobe - Croatia has a huge network of people who have converted a room in their home to a guest room - and they denote it with a sign out front that says "Sobe". If you walk down any Croatian street near a tourist location, you'll see Sobe after Sobe. We would walk up any house with a Sobe sign, knock on the door and see if they had a room available. That was probably one of the coolest things about Croatia - we didn't have to book or worry about hotels or hostels - we just knocked on people's doors and found places to stay.

After leaving the Old City, the 2nd house we came to had a Sobe sign. We secured our room for the night with 45 Euros and headed off to jump off of more stuff. Cotter, pictured below - poses in mid-air.

Our Sobe turned out to be amazing - we had an epic view of the Adriatic from where we had our dinner. Trying to conserve money, many of our dinners consisted of some sort of sandwich we threw together at a local market, cheese, and wine. The girls at this market were kind enough to make us sandwiches to go. 3 sandwiches, a bar of chocolate and a bottle of Croatian wine = 70 Kuna, or about $13. The girls at the market were also kind enough to laugh hysterically at us the entire time we were in the market...we still don't know why, but we found that to be a common theme...so we just laughed along - because if we were laughing too, then, in our minds at least, they were laughing with us and not at us.

After a some dinner and a shower, we headed down to the city to enjoy a Dubrovnik sunset. We watched the sun set below the sea and toasted a glorious Dubrovnik day. After the sunset, we headed back within the city walls for some espresso. European coffee is good. It was kind of hard to put our finger on the different coffee experience we were having...but we decided that for Europeans, coffee is more of an "event" than it is here in the States. Something to be savored, not guzzled. I'm not sure, maybe we were just sort of euphoric about the whole thing - either way, we loved it.
None of the three of us are the clubbing type, but being in Europe for over 2 weeks, we figured we had to go "out" at least once. So we "put our shirts on" as we said (each of us brought one nice shirt which were collectively referred to as "our shirts"). Anytime someone wanted to look a little more than a scummy, smelly, American backpacker - they would suggest that we put "our shirts" on and go out.
At any rate, we headed back to the room to put our shirts on. Being my little brother's birthday, I had promised before I left that I would propose a toast to him with Croatian Plum brandy "Slijvovica" (the Croatian locals are famous for distilling their own, so we figured, when in Rome...). I had picked up the brandy from a farmer on the side of the road on our way to Dubrovnik for 40 Kunas = about $7.50 US. It was...powerful...to say the least - but we forced it down as I proposed a toast to James.
Feeling warm, we headed to Club Latina (which is a misnomer because there's nothing Latina about it...Croatians love to dance to remixes of 90's rock music). We clubbed it up, Croatian-style in Dubrovnik and capped off, what was my favorite stop on our trip.