Hrvastka, Love Those Red and White Checkers

It is Tuesday night, and I think I may finally be recuperating after one of the possibly most exhausting weekend trips we have had yet. Croatia, excuse me Hrvastka, is one of the most beautiful underrated countries in Europe. As far as I can tell, from visiting Split and Zagreb, the people might be the most welcoming to Americans as far as my experiences can tell. Something else I can tell is that I will not be able to walk away from any weekend trip without something crazy happening to me. For example, in Venice I officially had over 90 mosquitoe bites covering my body, in Barcelona I found out that I get motion sickness from trains, and now in Croatia my digital camera was dropped and broken, fabulous.

So with my newly acquired over-the-counter Dramamine in hand, I braved the train station in Florence and got on the "high speed" train to Venice. Andre had convinced our travel agent to book the earlier train ride, giving us ample time to reach the train station and have a nice relaxing dinner in Venice. Turns out, the train decided to take numerous random stops in the middle of fields and drag on the ride as much as Italians possibly could have (almost comparable to any dinner they have here In Florence). Andre convinced the train master at the Venice station to wait for us so we could catch our sleeper train just in time. I ran into a room, grabbed the first bed I saw and passed out until the morning.

Friday morning, we arrived in Zagreb and stumbled our sleep deprived bodies out into the open air around 6am. Throwing our bags into lockers at the station, we met outside and went on a short walking tour around the city. Surprisingly, people were actually up at this time, giving us the false hope that it wasn't actually this early in the morning. By 8am we had seen a beautiful church, the famous picture of the Virgin Mary that had survived fires, and climbed the steepest hill imaginable. Arriving on top of the hill, overlooking all of Zagreb, for a moment it felt as if no one was awake in the entire city and we had a private viewing of the town. Trying to capture the moment, I asked Quante (Andre's friend John's friend, yes confusing) to take a picture of Tim, Kari, Megan, Bill, Bennett, Ryan, Liz and myself. The saying is true, all good things must come to and end. Two moments after taking the picture, Quante dropped my digital camera on the ground and it was "done-zo." Not wanting to turn on, or even close the shutter, I realized that my Croatia trip would only be documented through the help of my g

irlfriends, Liz, Megan, and Kari. Oh, and document they did.

Receiving a map from Andre, our group wandered away from the crowd and stopped in at a cafe for some coffee and breakfast. Liz and I decided upon the granola and yogurt, which turned out to be 80% granola and 20% yogurt. Crunching our way through breakfast, we looked at the map and decided to grab the #11 tram to the zoo. Best idea we ever had. I danced in a gazebo singing "I am sixteen, going on seventeen" recreating the scene from The Sound of Music walking into the entrance. We bought tickets for THIRTY KUNA (only 6$ but seeming like so much more) and wandered into the zoo. I decided it would be a good idea to mimick a lion only a foot and a half away, right before he came back with the most ferocious growl I have ever heard up close. Getting a few pictures, we walked around the Zagreb Zoo looking at the zebras, birds, snakes, and fish. Awkwardly running into a pen of deer, not uncommon to see in the U.S., we finally made our way to the exit and sadly left without the Zagreb Zoo kid's size t-shirt of a tiger.

Our next mission, finding a place in Croatia that sells food, also known as a restaurant. Turns out, restaurants in Croatia only serve drinks, or so we thought. After what seemed like endless complaining from every member of our group, we were saved. A woman came up to me and asked if we were American. I responded yes, and that I was sorry for how obnoxious we were being. She laughed and asked if we were hungry. My eyes lit up and I responded yes again, hopeful. She led us to a nice restaurant and left me her business card if we had any more problems. The lunch was absolutely fantastic and left us completely satisfied, thanks to our sweet Croatian Delta representative.

Meeting back at the train station, we took a bus to a town where Andre's friends had a huge surprise for us. They had created a massive feast at their "Clet" for our own enjoyment to fully experience Croatia. The meal was full of meats and vegetables and potatoes and a variety of desserts. My personal favorite, the triple delight. They even had a band come to play for us, complete with even an accordion! It was such a long eventful day that everyone enjoyed. We hope back on the bus and headed back to the train station for an overnight to Split. They called this train, the Party Train...

Ciao,

Molly

(Kudos to Megan Considine for letting me take her pictures!)