A Week on the Road

Aran and I decided to spend our second to last week in Hungary outside of Hungary. And after a lot of research that didn't really help in the end, (I'm convinced it's sometimes easier to travel by the seat of your pants) we crossed a handful of borders in our sporty Regina Rent-A-Car pale blue convertible!! This was a small gift from the rental company who had run out of small cheap cars and was able to give us a size-up with advertisement stickers splattered all over the hood.

Our first stop was Zagreb, Croatia, where we were to spend the night in a hostel that had just opened a few weeks ago. The problem was not getting to Zagreb, but getting around Zagreb. The one-way roads and pedestrian streets had us zooming around the city in circles at a complete loss for where our accomodation for the night was. After asking a Croatian cop and two parking men who barely spoke a word of English, we finally got somewhere with a guy who was coming home from football practice and led us to the street we needed to get to in his car.

The hostel didn't get my reservation, but luckily there was space in a room with seven beds. Exhausted and overheated, we dropped our bags and set out into the city, a city I'd visited a year ago, and a city that looked much busier in the summer than the middle spring months. We grabbed some food at an outdoor cafe on a sloping cobblestone alley and drank a much deserved beer. The city was much cooler at night and the big church that we'd passed in the stressful heat wave of rush hour looked so calm, lit up, when the moon came out.

The next day, we headed for Istria, Croatia's north west peninsula. We drove past several miles of vineyards and rolling hills until we reached the coastal town of Rovinj. We had a three night stay there at a place that was just a walk through a pine forest away from beautiful rocky beaches with amazingly clean water. For dinner we had some seafood and sampled a bottle of white wine from our proud, smiling Italian waitress. A dog barked from under the next table at other dogs walking by and appeared to enjoy people watching as much as I did. For dessert, we headed to one of the several ice cream stands displaying huge mounds of elaborately named cream. The presentation was unlike any Hungarian cone and tasted nothing less than heavenly even as it started to rain.

Not needing to drive anywhere the next day, we set up camp at the beach for the afternoon and made sandwiches from supplies we bought at a market near our guesthouse. Although the beach was rocky, it was still possible to swim, although a little rough on non-toughened feet. I could see the rocks at the bottom of the sea floor even as I swam out to the buoy line and it felt a bit like flying, but also made me nervous as to what I might see floating beneath, whether it be a giant whiskery catfish or something else I’d seen on someone’s plate at a restaurant.

Later on that night, I’d become a little more brave and ordered filled squid at dinner. I liked it so much that I ordered it again later in the trip. Just as a reminder, I usually stay away from seafood, because I’ve never been overly exposed to it, however, I decided that it’s worth trying something new, especially from a fresh source. And Aran was good inspiration, ordering anything he knew he couldn’t get anywhere else or had never heard of without hesitation. Below is Rovinj at sunset.

Below is a picture of the beach at night and one of Aran’s attempts to get the perfect picture of the moon and its reflection on water. Away from the lights of the town, hundreds of stars pricked the sky and if you sat still for long enough, you could see dots of light moving high above.

On the fourth of July, we had a trip planned to Venice. It’s just across the sea and you can get there by boat in about 2 and a half hours. It sounded like a leisurely trip, yet after experiencing it, I wouldn’t necessarily call it that. First, because there was no boat leaving for Venice on the days that we were staying in Rovinj, we had to get to another coastal town some kilometers north before 8:00 am. We didn’t want to drive, because we didn’t know the way and no buses left early enough to get us there in time for the boat departure. A taxi finally did the trick and we successfully boarded our boat on time. The captain announced that the conditions weren’t brilliant, but I figured that just meant our trip would be a little rocky. It couldn’t be that bad.

Before we knew it, the lady a few seats down had made use of her barf bag and thrown up. On a trip to the bathroom, I noticed several people sitting in the corridor with bags attached to their mouths looking absolutely miserable. Even after all those years of practice on roller coasters at theme parks, my stomach started to become annoyed with our ride. I had to close my eyes until we got to Venice to avoid becoming more nauseated. The captain started to announce trips you could participate in when we got to Venice, like a gondola ride with champagne, etc. Aran and I decided to buy a map and just walk around for the few hours we had in the city of canals. The first thing we did was buy some gelato, again amazingly delicious, and aided in comforting my stomach a little after the rocky boat trip over. Away from the center, Venice was nice for a stroll. But once we headed for the Rialto bridge (pictured below), throngs of tourists choked all personal space. We passed many carnival costume stores with elaborate golden masks, masks with long noses, and dresses and suits.

Like every new city I walk around in for the first time, I was overwhelmed with fresh sounds, smells, and sights. An hour of walking had me slumped over in St. Mark’s Square. So, Aran and I took a water taxi around the Grand Canal for 6 Euro to relax. This price was good, considering that the captain of our boat was asking for 20 Euro with a tour guide and saying it would be impossible to get tickets on our own. Here are some shots from the water taxi.

With two hours to spare, we found a table outside in the university area to get some Italian lunch. Being Italy, it turned out to be a big lunch complete with two main courses and a salad plus wine. Just as we were finishing up, the sky darkened and the wind swept any loose debris across the square. The temperature dropped dramatically and eventually a mighty gust knocked down wine glasses, chairs, empty bottles and threatened to take umbrellas down as well. Debris flew into my eyes and we hurriedly moved everything inside. It was time to head back to the boat and just as we boarded, the sky opened and rain pelted against the boat windows.

If our morning ride was rocky, the return trip was to be nothing short of treacherous. It turned out to be just that. I didn’t actually see much out the windows on our trip home, but when I did open my eyes for split seconds, the horizon on the sea seemed to be constantly diagonal. And it wasn’t long before the sick bags came out from the backs of chairs. It was a rollercoaster ride. We went up, up, up, and our hearts went into our throats, and we went down, down down smashing into the water with successive thuds. Collective screams and giggles of excitement from the passengers eventually turned into collective screams of anxiety and finally collective retching into sick bags and when those ran out, garbage bags. I was victim to the sick bag myself, although I didn’t have it as bad as a guy in the far right of the boat who was retching and sounding like a moaning zombie from a horror movie. In between my bouts of sickness, I couldn’t help but laugh as I listened to the chorus of people getting sick and seeing a loose microphone near my feet. A man behind us had lost his shoes and the raspberries we had bought earlier were smashed into juice from the bottle of water in the same bag. From everywhere all over the boat, people raised their hands for boat attendants to collect their sick bags and get more.

When it was all over, the captain said that he hoped this journey wouldn’t stop us from coming again, because the conditions would surely be different next time. And for lack of anything more reassuring to say, the captain announced in English, German, and Italian, “at least it was an experience for you.”

We took to the roads again the next day leaving a lovely nest near the beach with its free breakfast for the unknown, Trieste. Without any idea of where to stay that night, we drove up the coast with the top down able to smell the sea air in a less rocky vessel. Around lunch time, we stopped in Piran, Slovenia, a small town on the tip of a peninsula. We walked around, sampled a glass of wine and had lunch. I enjoyed my second helping of squid here, this time with miniature fried tentacles. Dark clouds were collecting at the very tip of the peninsula where many people were lying on the concrete beaches or swimming in the shallow clear water, so we decided to get back to the car and drive to Italy where we’d stay that night.

Once we reached Trieste, a coastal city in the far northeast tip of Italy, we had trouble finding a place to park and trouble finding any information on hostels or hotels. English was definitely not as prevalent here as it was in Croatia and Slovenia. Most people would speak back to us in Italian and finally we negotiated one night in a sketchy hotel. Tired from walking, we stumbled around the city looking for a late dinner and found it at a restaurant where the chef spoke to us in an amalgam of very choppy English and Italian. I pointed at something on the menu with spaghetti in it and saw that it was some type of seafood spaghetti dish when I got it. The chef came over to our table and said “no fromaggio!” and took it away. Apparently, he didn’t approve of sprinkled parmesan cheese on his creations. Nevertheless, understated Aran made a sweeping statement, saying that it was one of the best spaghetti dishes he’s ever had at a restaurant.

One night in Trieste was enough, so early the next morning, for fear that the car would get towed, we made way for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Almost immediately we found a nice two star hotel with a very modern bathroom, TV, and air conditioning. Just what we needed on our sixth night of the trip. For lunch, I finally tried truffles, something that region of Europe is known for. My culinary knowledge only went so far as the sweet truffle. I didn’t know that they were also type of underground mushroom found in the wild and hunted for by pigs and trained dogs.

We were weathered after lunch and collapsed onto a park bench to rest and watch the pigeons. I suddenly felt very old, sitting on a bench in the park, watching pigeons, tired and enjoying it. The quaint, forested, and pedestrian city of Ljubljana was a nice respite from bustling Trieste. We ate a leisurely dinner and tried to go to a Brazilian music concert in the city’s outdoor summer theatre, but retreated when we learned it was 40 Euro a pop. Ljubljana was a different city than it was a few months ago when I went by train on a long weekend. There were more people and more outdoor cafes and more music this time around. But Ljubljana was still just as relaxing. On our way home the next morning, we drove through a lot of mountainous valleys and past a lot of sloping vineyards and forests. Slovenia is a short, but beautiful country to take in by country road.

We logged in over 800 miles on our rent-a-car and crossed into three different countries. Aran was also a great person to travel with in that even in times of extremely heightened stress (i.e. driving on a pedestrian street the wrong way in Zagreb because we don't know how else to get through the city with people honking) he never lost his cool. It's something I'm trying to copy, although it'll probably take awhile.

It was nice to see things by car in Europe after not being able to for so long. The train and bus system here is very efficient, but when traveling by car, it’s nice to stop when you want, where you want, say in Slovenia for lunch and go to Italy for the night.

It was a good way to end my stay in this part of the world…at least for now.