Croatia

 I ate a breakfast of vegetarian pannini and café latte (Soya) prepared by the lovely Liliane, a worker from Moldova, and said goodbye to Ostello Venezia. I would highly recommend the hostel for a backpacker stay in Venice. I was sad to take my last vaporetto ride the Santa Lucia station, and got on a comfortable Austrian train, destination Vienna(!!) from  Venice, towards Trieste. The Slovenian border officials (3) got on and checked my ticket, my passport and my COVID pass. An hour or so later we arrived in Davica, Slovenia, in a huge thunder and rainstorm. I had three hours to wait in a bus shelter, whilst conkers crashed from the trees above. 

There was a German Lady from Hamburg (unvaccinated!) and her 11 year old daughter travelling same route to Buzan in Croatia. The replacement minibus was warm and comfortable. It was due to depart at 16:12, for our connecting train at 17.07 from Buzet, an hour away. 

What I saw of Slovenia was hilly and rural. We passed through the Slovenian customs, and into Croatia without issues. The German Lady offered to take Covid tests in lieu of a "pass sanitaire", a COVID passport, she too was waived through, into COVID free Croatia. We raced to Buzet, to catch our one-carriage train to Pula, which had waited for us til 17:30 or so!

We started high up on a hill and The train passed through 20 or so small stations each with uniformed train controllers  but no platforms. School children jumped on and off. The fare was just 75 Croation crowns, but the conductor didn't have an EFTPOS machine,  and I had no cash, so I travelled for free 😳☺️. We arrived at the dock in Pula two hours later after dark, and I walked up the steps to the Hostel "Crazy House" which was quiet and calm. 

I was sharing a room with a young French Artist called Klereve, who  was from Brittany, with Croatian heritage, who had recently completed her degree in Paris. I made some tea in the kitchen, went to bed and slept like a baby. 

I spent the next couple of days exploring historic Pula.  

The first striking structure is the huge nearly intact Roman ampitheater, largely intact and certainly rivalling the Colliseum in Rome in its size and structure. 

On The first day I explored the castle and 'Zero strasse' - 4 interconnected tunnels underneath the ancient fort,

 carved out in the Second World War to protect up to 6000 families from bombing. The fort itself was built by the Venetians to protect their asset, Pula,  in 12th C, by an French architect called Antonio le Ville (Tony the town 😅). It was used for raves in the 90s but now has protected status. 

On the second day I walked around the town sketching the historic Hadrian's Gate and trying to sketch the ampitheater. A group of  Senior Italian tourists took an interest in my sketches and asked about my ancestry, and my travels. They were surprised about my travel plans, and kept asking "Sola?" " You are doing this alone?", so I assured them I have friends in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. 

On my last night Klereve sketched me whilst I chatted to Tomo, the hostel owner about Croatia and some of the hilarious stories that some of the young guests get up to, as Croatia is very much on the International party Scene. 

The next day, after breakfast Klereve and I set off for the bus station to get the dreaded bus towards Split. I decided to break the ten hour bus journey up by stopping in the Port City of Zadar, only a 7hr ride away. 

I should not have dreaded the bus journey, it was stunning. After heading through Croatian Riviera, through Rijieca, with its Grand villas and hotels, we headed up to a higher altitude, with dramatic mountains, quite literally where Game of Thrones was filmed. 

I landed in Zadar at sunset, and navigated through the ancient polished stone streets to Boutique hostel in the old town, where I met my first young British tourists, two young ladies also travelling alone. I took advantage of 15% discount and ate my first restaurant meal in Croatia: Vege burger and Pommes frites.

The bus left Zadar on Sunday at 10 am, and two hour journey took 3 1/2 hours, dropping people off at the end of their roads. I landed in Split in the rain at 2pm, and despite my intention not to take Taxis on this trip, I jumped in one to take me the short hop to my hostel. 

And so I landed in Beach house hostel, Split. It was like going down the rabbit hole. The walls are covered in graffiti from previous travellers, all their witty and quite funny catch phrases and Art. It's actually a flat in a large old house. How on earth they fitted 25 people into rooms coming off a tiny central kitchen & lounge, I have no idea. 

A group of young British & American solo Backpackers had met in Dubrovnik and travelled to Split together and were just recovering from a heavy night the night before. And So I met the lovely Stephanie, a social worker from Netherlands, who works with trafficked people. I met Drew from New Orleans, Louisiana, who told us about his harrowing  experience of Hurricane Katrina. I met Cea (pronounced Shay-ah) whose mother came from Wales, and dad from Iran, a very cool climate scientist working out of Barcelona.  I met Yael, an ER nurse of Peruvian ancestry, one sister of twins living and working in San Diego. She told us stories of working in the ER there, worse than anything you've seen in Breaking Bad. 

We went to an alley where the notorious Charlie's Bar is located, but we stayed dry under awning of a fast food restaurant. I also met Amber, a dudette from Leeds, with Israeli heritage who had spent past 3 months in jungle of Costa Rica, doing turtle conservation work. She had to leave beautiful Costa Rica, as her passport had gone mouldy, which is just the most hilarious reason for having to leave a country early, ever. We chatted until midnight. I spent next days hanging out with Stephanie & Amber at the beach. Whilst we watched the hilarious antics of the Peruvian twins and others, mostly involving copious amounts of alcohol. One girl lost her shoes on a particularly hectic night out, and ended flying back to the UK in my ugly, hated Tevas! We met the lovely Siddhartha, a traveller from Mumbai, India, so we talked a lot about travelling in India. I also met Izzy from Bristol, and Tim from Germany who are also travelling through Greece & Turkey. They however are flying (!!) To India.   Some of the travellers I met were digital nomads, and I found a group of four of us who had never met before, who had all also recently been made redundant from my last employer, the Chinese-based iTutorgroup. What a small, funny World. 

We went out for dinner together, or cooked in the hostel. Cea cooked a delicious Chicken soup, with a vegan version for me. One night I picked up some pumpkin in the market, and made us a delicious vegan curry. 

The hostel is run by lovely Valentina, a mum-to-be, so we chatted about motherhood over brunch of spinach on toast. 

We walked to the top of Manjin hill to watch the sunset, and explored the old town of Split.  And as is the way of hostels, we moved on our various ways: Siddhartha & German Katarina to an island called Hvar; Cea and a lovely group of Swiss travellers onto Serbia; Stephanie back to Amsterdam; the Peruvian twins onto Iceland; Amber home to UK, before overwintering in Tel Aviv; and tomorrow I will take the longer, more expensive, but scenic ferry to my last stop in Croatia: Dubrovnik. 

Catamaran is my new favourite mode of transport! I had set my alarm for 6:30 to get down to the ferry port, and Google's AI failed me, but I woke a 6:55,  packed up and walked to the port in good time for the 7:40 ferry. I had a window seat, and could watch beautiful Croatia on my left as we sped south towards Dubrovnik, and into Game of Thrones Land. 

We arrived at 12:12, and I got lunch of warm Spinach borek from Bobis bakery, which I ate in a park near port, before hopping on a bus to Old walled town of Dubrovnik, a car free zone. I walked through the beautiful, old  stone town to modern Hostel Angelina, situated directly above Pub Dubrovnik. I spent the afternoon sketching scenes from the town. 

I made myself a vegan dinner of fried courgettes and  gnocchi, which I ate on the terrace. We were invited for Sangria at 8pm, and I met fellow travellers, including Daniel from Austrua who is attempting to travel Overland to Japan (!!), if his vintage moped Motorbike makes it that far. He's already broken down, and needs a new motor in Dubrovnik. 

I went to bed at 11pm, but had to listen to the drunken voices of Croats, Dutch, German, French, English, Irish (but not Japanese or Chinese!!) until gone 1pm. 

 So Croatia has a 10:30 to 11 pm curfew. What's the point if it's not enforced? So I asked to move rooms. Hostel life. 

On Saturday evening, I took the cable car up the Mountain for sunset, and views of Games if Thrones mountain scenery. Utterly beautiful. I slept like a baby. 

On Sunday, I walked around Dubrovnik's ancient city walls, built by Italians to protect St. Ignacius church and Monastery from invading foes in the Middle ages. I saught a place to sketch, before heading to beach for sunset. 

I am sad to be leaving Croatia, however tomorrow it's onto Montenegro, and a whirlwind tour through 4 former Yugoslavian countries towards Thessaloniki in Greece. My next posting will be from either there or Istanbul, Turkey.