A Novel Path – Tales of an Adventure Goddess

I was on my hike to town, motivated in part by exercise and budget, which has been narrowed down to a measly 12km (getting lost is a thing of the past!). [Did you know that (in Pula) the cost of a one-way bus journey is equivalent to two liters of petrol?] I stop at the traffic light post, waiting for my green cue. Nothing special about today, I threw on my green fuzzy hat I use to hide my unruly hair, black Ray-Ban’s, and the same arsenal of comfy clothing I’ve had for months now: jeans and a slightly big, long-sleeve, grey v-neck thermal top. My head and shoulders lean against the light post to support my laziness, random thoughts wafting through my head like why it’s so warm out already and whether or not I will indulge in gelato, and I suddenly notice that traffic is bunching up near the crosswalk and intersection. I look ahead of traffic for the answer, but find nothing…the road is clear. So switching gears to analytical mode, I look around me and find nothing unusual. Skeptical, I wonder if this one of those dreams where I wake up in public with just my skivvies? Nope, pinch check – I’m clothed. Is my fly down? Are my boxers showing? No and no. Well, alrighty then. What is it that everyone is looking – and why is it coincidentally men looking in my direction? The only possible reason left is that the backpack is altering the fit of my shirt and a wee little bit of cleavage is showing. Just a wee, after all this is me we’re talking about here. No insane endowments to speak of. I never figured myself as a traffic stopper, but in rural Croatia I guess a little cleavage goes a long way.

I couldn’t have asked for a better host in Zagreb. I decided that this business of buying two round-trips to Zagreb for the purpose of getting my Russian visa was #@$%!, so I consulted my online directory of people I could board with for the night. Sure I’m cheap, but when you’re travelling alone, you get so much more out of the experience interacting with people than staying the night at a hotel. A day trip is possible to Zagreb, as I am pulling it off next Friday, but the 4+ hour bus ride leaves at 04:30 and the earliest bus in the morning from home to get to that early bus is at 07:20. 6k at 03:00 anyone??

I sleep mostly on these trips (buses, trains) as gazing out the window at all hours of the day is not one of my favorite pastimes.

I arrived around 15:30 and decided to give the city a once-over pedestrian-style. I found the nearest tourism office, since Zagreb is not yet equipped for tourists at the bus station, offering NO maps but plenty of concessions options, a market, restaurants, fabric store, and linens. After that, I meandered over to the cathedral which reminded me of my walk through Spain. Giant spires, Romanesque architecture, simply stunning, and almost too huge to get into one photograph. Also – under construction…making this monument number 1,528 which was closed and/or covered in scaffolding during my visit. I lit a few candles in the small niche with a golden Virgin Mary mosaic, brushed aside a few tears, and made my way to the main drag, Ilica (pronounced Ilitza; c = tz). Happily realizing that I had walked for hours and hours with little sustenance, I found myself at a sweet shop with nutty dolce latte gelato on my sugar cone for less than a dollar. Sure beats Italy’s gelato prices! Mmm.

After glancing at my watch to note it’s after 18:00, I called my would-be host, Tanja. We decided to meet at the train station. She turned out to be the coolest Croatian yet, working for PWC, dressed all snazzy in a black suit and briefcase, and we wandered through more of the city before indulging in borek (pronounced I think bore-etsch) for dinner. Borek is a tasty seemingly fried doughy flat thing with cheese inside. Yes, I said cheese. I ate it and Zagreb is known for it…so it’s uh research. Later we went back to her apartment with a stunning evening view of the city and shared music and travel photos. In the early morning, we both set off for a full day: work for Tanja, visa stresses and a long bus ride home for me.

I guess I was lucky that someone who was bilingual in English was getting a visa simultaneously, since the counter rep did not speak English at the Russian Embassy. I paid quite a bit more than I ought to have, but it could be surcharges to use the Russian Embassy in Zagreb over the one in America. Either way, I sadly have to return on the aforementioned early bus the following week to finish off my visa madness. It’s the last one I will need to get beforehand that I am aware of presently for the rest of my journeys. Thank God. Not being able to shell out $20 at the airport for a visa is a lot of work. Especially the questions the Russians pose on the application, which fall short of asking how many people I’ve slept with and their case history.

I left with a greater understanding of the history of Zagreb, the Russian Embassy of Zagreb, another dolce latte gelato, and tired feet. Not to mention a unique lesson learned with respect to budget traveling: here in Croatia the travel agents are cheaper than booking direct with the bus line.

With the experiences of being around the block a few times under my belt, I am capable of fixing toilets in any country (Gerry rigging counts), operating microwaves without a manual, cooking with the most bizarre of produce and making it edible, haggling without words, and getting most of my problems solved through a combination of Pictionary and pantomime. The single most frustrating task I have come across in the language barrier sector, aside from my moment of peril where I almost landed out in the middle of Slavic nowhere because I was short $2, is the seemingly unfailing operation of a washing machine. Back home, I owned mostly neutral colors but there were a few brights here and there. The clothes had all been washed a thousand times and then washed together without fail, so why should I change my clothes washing procedures now? Foreign washers have so many choices (A through X on cycles and temperatures) that I am broken down to absolute frustration trying to fathom what my options are. It doesn’t help that the temperatures aren’t always listed.

My landlord’s daughter in Croatia gave me the head’s up on the washing machine, telling me that if I used brights, “5” would be the best setting. After a pair of lacy pink panties squeezed into my all-white linen load, all hell broke loose. What will the landlord’s think when they pull into the driveway and see pink sheets hanging from my balcony??!! This will be Foreign Laundry Incident No. 2. Incident No. 1 took place in Turkey when again I washed my clothes together, with a well-washed turquoise blue hoodie and white Gap t-shirt amongst the load. If you guessed pale blue Gap t-shirt, I’ve set this up all too well. If when I unscrewed the caps at the grocery store there wasn’t an impermeable cover, I could smell which one is bleach and solve all my problems. Today’s mishap seems to be nearly solved, after a thorough re-washing of the whites sans panties. My Gap t-shirt is still recovering and seems to be a bit whiter after being exposed to pink. Am I completely stupid, non-technical, and dependent on others to do my laundry? I don’t have an existing track record prior to March 2007, but apparently while in foreign countries I am definitely in need of assistance where all things laundry are concerned.

My bus schedule tell me that pick up is at 12:00p. I wait until 10 minutes after, nothing. I figure that the decision to walk to town has been made for me, so I head off in the direction I think town is. After all, when you’ve rented an apartment outside of town and off the page of all tourist maps, you either take notes on the bus as a passenger on where you’re going or you wing it. In this case, it’s a little of both. Besides, as long as I know how to get back home, I’ll be fine. I have all the time in the world and need the exercise. A 6k through the countryside of Croatia will do me good.

After what feels like ages (in real time, 50 minutes) of walking along a busy, narrow highway, a sign up ahead says ‘Centar’ so I am close. I serendipitously come across a farmer’s market. If I bought a few things, I could conceivably carry them, even without my backpack. I perused the selection and narrowed down my options. Something green, wild asparagus, apples, fresh bread…and tomatoes. When I had accompanied the landlord to the market the day before, tomatoes were a whopping 29 kuna a kilogram, which works out to be roughly $3 a pound. Quite a bit for average tomatoes. I was even considering a run to the border in Trieste, Italy, just for tomatoes…
well, and some warm weather clothes since I have jeans, jeans, and no short anything to my name.

A stall selling tomatoes for 16 kuna per kilogram -sold! – along with some apples for the road. When I find what looks to be healthy wild asparagus, I point and give the finger for ‘one’ and since the price isn’t marked I hold out 10 kuna, which is what seemed to be the going rate for a bunch elsewhere. Apparently, it wasn’t enough so I hold out my entire coin collection and she picks through it nearly taking all of them, which must be over 20 kuna. I give her the ‘all of this’ face, to which she responds with a ‘yeah’ face, and I shake my head, retrieving my coins and dropping the asparagus. I saw a deal for 10 kuna and I am going to find it in print.

When I encounter the stall with the deal on wild asparagus, I point to it, handing over 10 kuna. The woman starts speaking Croatian as my head is down while I count the rest of my coins. She reaches over for my chin, lifting my head up, and asks ‘You’re not Croatian, are you?’ I shake my head. She smiles. I hand over 6 kuna, since there is a large crate of green matter that reads ‘6 kuna’. She nods her head, grabs the change, and prepares a one kilogram bag of this stuff, which I have no idea what it is other than to say, for a dollar a kilogram, it’s cheap. Green stuff is healthy I reassure myself. It looks like it’s collard greens, and if it isn’t, they are surely related. If it is too tough for salad, I can stir fry it in a little olive oil and garlic. It will be edible; I always find a way.

I am too tired to do much more than window shop, and after 14:00 on the weekends, the shops are closed anyways. When I reach a stop I am certain the #27 bus passes, I check the time schedule. 14:00. My watch says ten till. I wait. After 14:10 comes around, I start to wonder whether ‘radni dan’ has a meaning, other than what I assumed to be ‘daily’. I happen to have the Hrvatska dictionary with me. Radni dan. Week or work day. Sh#t. Not even knowing where to catch a cab, I decide it’s all in a day’s work, shake my head, and set off to walk back home.

I pass by the familiar for a few miles and then reach a traffic signal I don’t recall. In fact, none of my surroundings look familiar. When I reach the intersection, two towns that aren’t really that close to mine are listed on the sign, except they should be parallel to each other, but they are not. My instincts tell me I am too far west, but my brain tells me to follow the Medulin signs, only because I swore my trip to town was a straight shot down a curvy street and not filled with lefts and rights. I passed construction workers, an old man, and a few young men working on a car in a driveway. ‘Vinkuran?’ I ask. Unlike the fun with directions I had in Bangkok, Croatians have their act together as the answers were all the same. When you are lost in Pula, provided you can pronounce the name of your village, there won’t be a problem finding it by asking for directions. However, in the early afternoon, finding people outside in residential neighborhoods becomes a game of Where’s Waldo.

I encounter a bike tour in progress and couldn’t help myself from hooting and hollering. After all those races and rides I’d done on a bike, I know how invaluable cheering is once you’ve hit the wall. I reach the home stretch (the tally for today is somewhere around 15k) and finally see the apartment in the distance. I am eager to walk through the door and rest, kicking my shoes off and putting my poor, tired feet up on the furniture – because I can. Instead I settle for soaking my feet in cold water, in the bidet of course. What else am I going to use that thing for?

Then the thought comes along…dinner. The leftover tomato soup meets chopped garlic and wild asparagus. After sautéing the organic greens (organic because I lost count of miniature snails) in oil, salt, and garlic, I toss them into the soup as well. A mish mosh of sorts, but after a dollop of yoghurt, I have to pat my back on originality.

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).