Jamie’s Travels

Interestingly to enter Croatia you still need to show an ID. Despite the whole Brexit thing that wasn’t an issue for us. It was however for a bloke that was in our cabin. When the police came they pulled him off the train and forced him to take his stuff and sit on the platform. All in all his argument with the police held us up for a good half hour.

When we arrived in Zagreb we decided to Uber out to our campsite. I’d been very excited for my luxury tent experience until I realised it was an hour and a half outside the city. Maddie seemed to find my mishap funny. Eva not so much. Especially when I used the excuse ‘it didn’t look that far on the map’.

We all sat around revelling in the situation when who should show up – but the guy from the train. Quite the surprise to see such a chance encounter in the middle of butt fuck nowhere. We waved him over and started chatting to him. He was a 20 year old Spanish guy who was travelling on his own because his friend had ‘gotten in trouble with his mum’. He entertained us with information about Spain, his general interests and the stories of the many things he’d stolen.

The next day we encountered our new friend Marcos at breakfast. We offered to split an Uber with him but he seemed content with the longer and more expensive public transit experience. We headed into the city an hour later and did our usual ‘new city routine’ (walk around for an hour and see what weird different things is on the foreign maccies menu). On our way out from McDonald’s who should exit the shop next door but Marcos. We awkwardly followed him to the square where the free walking tour started. We spoke briefly but the whole thing was a bit bizarre.

The walking tour itself was decent. I learned many things such as that the Croatians invented the neck tie (assholes) and an interesting story about how the chandeliers in the cathedral was originally from a Las Vegas Casino. Walking tours still act as a decent way to learn a city I think.

Afterwards we headed for some lunch and then took the apparently traditional Croatian activity of sitting in a coffee shop for an hour and a half. Then of course we started drinking. The strip of Zagreb is a nice place to enjoy a drink and even has people busking out of windows from above the bars. It was a nice way to end my first 2 weeks of travelling with Maddie and Eva. As after our excursion to Split they’ll be off to explore the rest of former Yugoslavia whilst I head off to god knows where.

We returned to the campsite rather late to find Chris had rejoined our travels after his detour to Venice – and he had brought Niamh with him! And they had apparently befriended Marcos in the meantime too!

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Marcos and packed up and left. Chris and Niamh went on the walking tour. Which led to the high jinx of us standing behind them for about 5 minutes staring. They never seemed to notice – being too engrossed (or maybe bored) with the tour. Meanwhile we went and bought some authentic Croatian alcohol and repeated the coffee experience. Then we ran for our train to Split.