A Novel Path – Tales of an Adventure Goddess

While I prefer gentle serenity over hellish language-barrier filled train rides, you can’t always get what you want…In what appeared to be International Incident #3, I nearly went ballistic on the train when no one could tell me how to get to Zagreb even though I was pretty sure that is what I booked my ticket for!! Instead in the night the sounds of my train car being re-linked with another train bound for ???the unknown??? with me still on it had visions of terror swirling in my head! Nix the sleep and stress instead.

The first person I asked was a guard walking the platform, repeating ‘Zagreb’ like it was my new mantra. He gestured that the train, which was now moving away, would take me to Zagreb. So in my best attempt at impersonating Indiana Jones or a spaghetti western, I am running with an extra 100 pounds at least of crap stuck to me, trying to reach the door and jump on. Fortunately, that is what happened. Not really the motion-picture perfect way to leap gazelle-like onto a train but it worked well enough for me.

While on the train, my last few dinars, which weren’t enough to get the sleeper car the first time out, apparently weren’t enough again to stay in the seated cabin. When I asked if there was another place on the train I could afford, at least three times, the conductor gave up, took the dinars, and stormed out. So I arrived in Zagreb, and not lost somewhere in Yugoslavia or Bulgaria or Romania as I had feared the night before. I plopped myself on the train to Pula and couldn’t wait to be in April’s destination.

Basically, my trip summary boils down to this – by the suggestion of the ticket counter lady in Belgrade, I choose the wrong amount of Serbian dinars, which almost get me ditched in the middle of nowhere in Yugoslavia or Bulgaria at 02:00 for how much you ask???? $2. I was short 100 dinars, which is the equivalent of $2. What a life-changing amount of money. I will never look at $2 the same way. Without the pity me face, I might be somewhere on the side of the train tracks raped, stabbed, gold crowns lifted, vital organs sold to the black market, and for what – $2. I feel like Sally Strothers and Suzanne Summers are right when they try to force you to open your wallet for the starving kids in Eithiopia…$2 (or in my case, a lot of sympathy) can really change someone’s life.

While the new digs are a wee bit out of the way for my liking with respect to town, it will do. I just need to renegotiate some things which are presently missing though promised, namely the internet which to me is as important as oxygen. Groceries appear to be pretty cheap though compared to Turkey except for tomatoes ($6/kilo). My fridge is pretty stocked with edibles for now, I have a stove and an oven, and there is no cheese to be found in the market whatsoever. I do miss California coastal citrus and berries like you wouldn’t believe though…

Happily, I am now published, though it is only on the internet. BootsnAll, the website which welcomed me as one of their best new members, holds non-exclusive rights to the Postman’s Park article. I have submitted a few more as well, which are currently under review. While it’s not a paying gig, it does mean more action on my website and by getting a few more people on-board following blogs, perhaps I will sell a couple more books down the road when it’s finally published.

Nota bene: I can’t recall where I received this information but I have some very sad news for anyone who believed it as I did myself. Once you lose your lactose tolerance, you can’t get it back. I thought I had read that if you reintroduced dairy to your system, its continued presence in your diet would eventually kickstart the lactose-burning enzyme that disappeared when you stopped drinking that daily tall glass of milk. Not the case. After traveling through insane lactose-overload Italy and Turkey for the past seven weeks, I can assure you the opposite occurred. Not only did I become a flatulence machine (which severely stunted my social development), I developed a milk allergy that caused a type of acne that occurs on your chin and at the sides of your mouth. Gross. I have never even had acne, just an occasional outbreak of a few pimples and for the most part, blissfully clear skin. After living the past several days dairy-free, my skin is back to normal. Now all I need is micro-dermabrasion (facial sandblasting) and my skin will revert back to its clear, youthful suppleness (as I cling to 29 like a bargain-shopper clings to the last pair of super-discounted, trendy Prada heels she’s been drooling over all season).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Croatia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.