Croatia in a nutshell

Hi Everyone!


So I have left beautiful sunny Croatia and am now in Germany!

Croatia in a nutshell:

April 24th-Left Budapest (capital of Hungary) for Zagreb (capital of Croatia). My train ride was hands down the best EVER! As I got onto the train I started talking with 2 American girls, we went and found our own compartment together. Before the American girls I said some offhand remark to a Danish woman (Lis). I went back and spoke with her and she had invited me to come and stay with her. She lives on an island north of Germany and off the east coast of Denmark! YAY! The American girls were really wonderful to chat too and very interesting women. We were chatting away, went out to look at the view of the lake as we trained past and ended up invited a Swedish guy into our compartment after which time we took lots of silly photos, drank 2 shots of Absinth, complained about that and tied one of luggage tags onto each on of us somewhere…mine is on my hiking boot and will not take it off for at least a month!

April 25th-Spent the day in Zagreb touring around with a German girl. We went to the outdoor market, jumped on a tour of American high school students, saw one of the oldest and prettiest cemeteries in Europe and food shopped for our upcoming trip to the National Park which is only 2 hours by bus from Zagreb

April 26th- Cara and German girl separate as Cara needs to clense her camera of a multitude of photos. Agreeement is to meet at the bus station at 10am. German girl makes casual joke of ‘well I will just leave if you’re not there’. Photo burning takes longer then expected and Cara arrives at bus station at 10:30 therfore missing 2 possible German girl buses….hummm….where is she? Maybe she has gone to the park already? Waiting for me there? Cara decides to catch the 11am bus with or without German girl as she must already be in the park if she doesn’t make it to the bus station….all she had to do was get on one tram so she should have beat me there. Arrive at park. No German girls anywhere. There are multiple entrances and German girl could be anywhere….hurrm…ask park rangers…they are fresh out of German girls. Cara rents a big room with 3 beds and a bathroom, feels incredibly luxirous and then goes for a walk around the park! The park is a waterfalls national park, full of travertine waterfalls and incredibly beautiful! Cara meets Adam (Canadian backpacker) who is really nice. Cara and Adam have dinner and then go back to Cara’s palace sharing stories of traveling (Adam did a missionary trip to Albania and most notably slept in a tree atop his bag to avoid finding out if the wild looking dogs outside a Serbain train station were really wild) and taking long showers in the nice bathroom….separately.

April 27th- I’m up early and spend the day touring around the park with Satoshi (Japan) and Christine (Australia). Satoshi is almost retired and Chris is in her 40s so it is nice to hang with a different crowd. Chris heads back to Zagreb and I have dinner with Satoshi or rather he bought me dinner. He is very very nice and has traveled just about everywhere multiple times. Maybe I will visit him and his family in Japan someday.


April 28th- Head out early with the intention of getting a bus. Wait 2 hours with Satoshi and finally when we get a bus I remember that I have forgotten my passports cleverly hidden in my room! So its back to the little village for me. The woman who I stayed with completely cleaned the room and didn’t find it so I guess that’s good right. I am so good at hiding things I hid it from myself! So I had to wait around the park for the next bus at 5pm! I bought some lunch (yougurt and bread) and sat on the path and low and behild who did I meet. A backpacker I gave advice to on where to stay who was getting off the bus as I was getting on. We hiked around togtehr on some of the rim trails which I would have been sorry to miss and then I went and waited for the bus for 2 hours...when they say it comes at 5 its a rought guesstimate! Arriving in Split quite late I asked the guy at bus info if he knew anywhere to stay after looking for something in my Lonely planet and finding it said very little in general about the city of Split. He had a friend whos grandmother rented rooms and a free taxi to get me there. prefect. It was not that close to the town and my room with 3 beds was completley empty (a good thing if you look at it one way and alone therefore bad the other way) but at the hour I didnt care.

April 29th- Headed out taking all my stuff and went looking for a hostel and from this point on life in Croatia starts. I founf Al's hoste, run by a nice englishman and stayed there for 2 days. I met the people there who I travelled with to the Islands of Havar and Korcula. I ended my trip in a beautful city called Dubrovnik and took an overnight bus back to Zagreb where I flew to Germany with a budget airling called German wings!