Tuesday, May 19. Step [Glover], [Andrew] Pascoe, and I spent our first full day exploring Dubrovnik while Liz [Benjamin] and Jess [McHie] went to Bosnia. Dubrovnik is located in the southernmost part of Croatia on the Adriatic Sea, surrounded by 1940m-long defensive walls. The entire city is made of stone, including the streets that have been polished smooth by the millions of feet that have walked over it for hundreds of years. It was fun to explore all the nooks and crannies, where most restaurants and stores were, in the alleyways off the main street.After Liz and Jess got back we all went out to, in our opinion, to Dubrovnik’s best night club. That place was bumping and would wear anyone out in record time; it look less than ten minutes for Liz! The next day we slept until a glorious 1 p.m. and went to the local beach. It was fairly unimpressive, so we decided to go to Split (north of Dubrovnik) the next day and called the landlady to settle our bill for the apartment.
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Wednesday, May 20. We got up at 7AM and took a 3.5 hour bus ride through Bosnia from Dubrovnik to Split, “the most popular tourist destination on the Dalmatian coast.” There were two girls talking very loudly behind us the entire time -- you would have thought they were Americans! It did not seem to bother Liz too much, although the multiple ticket and passport checks along the way kept waking her up.
We found our hostel clean, inviting, and inexpensive, as well as inside the Diocletian's Palace! We hit up the local Bacvice beach and played a little Picigin (or as we liked to call it, Splitball; the rules, strategies, and techniques of which are much too complicated to go into here...basically it involves Jess not touching the ball). We then enjoyed a delicious meal on the boardwalk.
Side note: In Croatia and probably other places in Europe, waiters never bring you the check until you ask for it. Meals can easily last anywhere from 15 minutes to two or more hours, but you never feel rushed, which is nice. Tipping is also not as important or expected; many places automatically include the service charge in the price, yet most places provide excellent, friendly service. It’s interesting that they seemed to be motivated by more than just money (unlike some, not all, Americans) and genuinely want to perform their job to the best of their ability.
We got up at 5:15 a.m. (!) to catch the first ferry to Supetar, a town on Brac, the third largest Croatian island. We took a taxi to the beautiful Golden Horn Beach and other than an excavator were the first ones there at 8 a.m. The water was a little cold but clear; we spent more than nine hours there and got a little sunburned. When we got back to the hostel, the electricity was out because apparently the Split football team had lost in an important game and angry fans had started a fire in the stadium that spread.
We stayed up pretty late just talking in the dark. We planned on taking a night train through Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, to Ljubljana in Slovenia, so we spent our last day in Split exploring the city. We had discovered this delightful little (possibly a franchise) sandwich and salad shop called “Fab Foods” in the main city square, Pjaca. Pascoe had his last four meals in Croatia there. I picked up a “Best of 2008” Croatian CD to check out the local music; I don’t understand any of the words, but the music sounded pretty similar to our pop or light rock songs. The girls shopped at Zara, etc. We spent our last couple hours in Split watching “Angels & Demons” in a kino (theater). It had Croatian subtitles which was a little annoying at first but I got used to it after a while.
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Thursday, May 21. A bit difficult to pronounce (j’s sound like y’s – just ask Liz if you need help sounding it out), Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia. Our Alibi hostel, although less than ideal, was in a great Ljubljanica River-side location near Preseren Square. We spent the better part of the day exploring the town and took the funicular up to Ljubljana Castle. I picked up “Life of Pi” at a local bookstore (great potential book club material…) and we briefly saw an 8-piece combo band performing on a bridge; they were surprisingly loud and more importantly, sounded great!
We went to Macek and got a shishe; we also got some “Burn” energy drink that not only looked but also tasted suspiciously like Red Bull… Since we had already travelled by plane, train, bus, ferry, car/taxi, and were planning on biking in Copenhagen, we decided to get up at 5:15AM the next morning (I hope we can continue to get up this early when we’re not on vacation!) and go on a hot balloon ride! Along with some incredible views of Ljubljana, it was pretty cool to watch three people unpack and pack the basket and balloon. It was pretty warm in the balloon (from the fire) and the landing was incredibly smooth on an open field. The balloonist, Grego, owned the company, four balloons (each costing approx. $50K!) and had been on 3000+ flights over 20+ years. He even taught us a couple extra Slovene/Croatian words (the two languages are pretty much just different dialects): Zdravo – Hello, Hvala – Thank you; we pretty much doubled our knowledge of Slovene/Croatian vocabulary beyond Pivo – Beer. At the end of the flight, he gave us signed certificates and christened us Barons and Baronesses of Ljubljana!
We explored the city and park a little more that day when I left the Fab 4 that afternoon to catch my flight through Budapest, Hungary to Copenhagen. They were planning on hiking around in Bled the following day.
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Friday, May 22. The flight from Ljubljana to Budapest was one of the more turbulent ones I’ve been on. It was raining, we were on a small plane, and it didn’t help that the pilot wasn’t very good (you can kind of tell prior to take-off by how they turn the plane); it was also a pretty hard landing. It also didn’t help that there were a couple sketchy Middle Eastern guys on the plane that got on late, kept changing seats, or kept taking his seat belt off whenever the flight attendant wasn’t looking. That’s when I thought to myself, being an air marshal would be pretty cool; not only do you get to fly around for free, but you also get to keep people safe. I think as it turned out, they didn’t speak very good English (or any Hungarian), it was something like their first flight, one guy wanted to change seats to talk to his friend, and I think one of them was getting a little airsick from the turbulence.
I purposely booked my flight so I would have a 10-hour layover in Budapest so I could sleep in the airport and save $; It wasn’t too bad considering I find it hard to sleep in libraries. The gate hadn’t been announced yet for my connecting flight so I just found a quiet area of the airport that was near a plug and wireless internet; by chance, of the 30 some gates, it turned out to be the same gate I was departing from!
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Saturday, May 23. I finally got to Copenhagen, a day early and ready to hit the ground running! Unfortunately, SPF [ classmate Sean Patrick Flaherty] wasn’t at the airport and I couldn’t get in contact with him. I just spent the day in the airport. I got a chance to digitize my journal blog, finish reading “Life of Pi” (great book), and organize all the photos I have.
-- Kearby Chen (photos courtesy of Jessica McHie)
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