Updated: September 24, 2001
Dubrovnik, Croatia
We were on the ferry from Dubrovnik, and for the first time in three days the sun was shining. Tom Petty was singing into my ears,
The last three days, the rain was unstoppable
it was always cold, no sunshine
Yeah I'm runnin' down a dream,
that never would come to me…
The sea breeze was whipping all around me, and the Adriatic was glistening in its inimitable fashion in the bright mid-afternoon sun. It felt like a drug. No, it felt better than a drug. I was ecstatic: jumping up and down, spinning in circles, and singing along to the probable annoyance of the other passengers on the top deck of our ferry. It felt so…right. Croatia has a way of making people feel that way.
We had just come from Dubrovnik, which is an absolutely beautiful place: even if you have to battle two days of horribly disappointing rain. It is an absolute paradise sitting at the southern tip of Croatia. However, getting there is far from paradise.
I was travelling with Lada (my travel companion throughout this trip), and Clair: a South African girl we had met in Budapest who was heading our way. We had booked ourselves onto the train from Budapest to Split (several hours north of Dubrovnik on the Croatian Adriatic, and the closest rail connection to Dubrovnik). The trip involved two legs: a six hour afternoon train from Budapest to Zagreb, and then we would transfer to the overnight (9 hour) train from Zabreb to Split. Because we were buying the ticket in Hungary, and the second leg took place entirely in Croatia, we were unable to book a sleeper for our second leg. As a traveller, you always know that trouble is brewing whenever a ticket agent tells you not to worry.
Things started out badly. We arrived at the station in Budapest with ample time to claim a non-reserved seat. This we did successfully. Successfully, that is, until the conductor came around and told us that only the front two cars continued to Zagreb, and that we would need to move there before we reached the Hungarian border. Frustrated, but not yet disheartened, we strapped on our backpacks and ran like mad at the next stop (which was quite brief), arriving at the front car just as the train was starting to chug away, threatening to abandon us in Nowhere, Hungary. We swung onto the train to discover that not only were all of the seats full, most of the corridor was full. We squeezed through what little room there was in the aisle and eventually staked out some reasonable standing room. Eventually we had the good fortune to secure some seats for the last couple hours of the trip. Things had, it seemed, settled down.
After some confusion (conductors told us the opposite of the passengers and ticket agent), we confirmed that we needed to switch trains in Zagreb. We dutifully did so, finding to our dismay that all the non-reserved seating was taken. Figuring one corridor was the same as any other, we filed onto a car with reserved seating under the optimistic hope that the owners of the seats would not show up and they would default to us. This plan seemed to be working well, for the train was five minutes late leaving, and about four minutes into those five, the seating was still not taken.
Then it happened.
On the track next to us, a group of 30-40 Austrian tourists poured out and dashed straight towards us, jabbering in comical German the whole way. We were, in fact, going to be spending our nine hour overnight journey in the corridor of a car filled with Austrian tourists.
You might think this is bad. No. Here is the punchline: they were 12 year old Austrian tourists. It was a nightmare. They screamed, and moved between rooms every five minutes (apparently oblivious to the inconvenience they created for people trying to sit in the aisles), and did virtually every other obnoxious thing a 12 year old holds in their arsenal.
Eventually, emboldened by several beers, we started to fight back. We locked them in their compartments with our feet. We tapped on their windows to wake them up once we had reached a sufficient level of misery that we no longer cared. We insulted them. We jeered at them. We even forced them to pay tolls to go through to the bathroom (an event which occurred every thirty seconds). I have never laughed so hard, or so thoroughly combined utter misery with total mirth (albeit sadistic).
Eventually we passed out in the cold, uncomfortable aisle, waking in the morning, mercifully, only half an hour from our destination: hung over, dog tired, frustrated. Another aside: Croatia is the sunniest country in Europe. Most places on the coast receive a remarkable 2600 to 2800 hours of sun per year. So we awoke, looking forward to sun (which had thoroughly eluded us in Hungary) to find, of course, rainy skies. It was still raining when we arrived in Split.
Needless to say we were not happy. We straggled off the train into the drizzling rain and miserably made our way to an ATM and then booked ourselves onto the first bus to Dubrovnik which, fortunately, was leaving in fifteen minutes. Then things started to look up. For starters, we all had an actual seat! Then it quickly became apparent that we were driving through some of the most beautiful land on Earth. The road to Dubrovnik winds for five hours along the Adriatic coast. The whole drive is lined with sharply cut, barren stone mountains which provide a striking contrast to the mixed blue shades of the Adriatic.
The Adriatic alone is gorgeous. The water alternates in patches between deep blues and lighter crystal colored waters. At every point along the coast you can watch complex patterns of these blues mix in a fabulous and entrancing manner. I have spent much of the past week just staring at these waters. When you swim, the water is so clear that you feel quite confident you can put your feet down and touch the bottom, only to find that the water is five meters deep. Astounding.
After five hours of intermittent napping and scenery watching (and a brief inspection at the Bosnian border, which must be passed on the way to Dubrovnik) we found ourselves at long, long last in Dubrovnik. I cannot think of another place I have seen so singularly deserving of the journey I had just endured.
The city sits on the water like a fortress. The old city still has walls which have surrounded it for nearly 1000 years. They are extremely high and always at least three meters deep. You can, for slightly in excess of one US dollar walk these walls (I did so three times) and look out at all the red tiled buildings and literally glittering alleys (the stone pathways are polished routinely). From the best corner of the walls the whole city unfolds before you and then tumbles into the Adriatic. Beyond that the small heavily wooded island of Lokrum. Further in the horizon lie many, many more islands – many have probably never seen a human being. If you time it right, the setting sun shoots ethereal streaks of light through the clouds and lights up the sea in what can only be described as a heavenly matter. It looks like something of an inspirational greeting card, but there it actually is in front of you – stunning you into incredulous silence with its aesthetic power.
Walking through the city is another stunning sight. The city is clearly used to tourists and is packed with restaurants (serving fabulous Italian-style food) and cafes. Though there are plenty of tourists, Dubrovnik never feels like an amusement park. It is simply a well preserved gem of a city that lots of people like to visit. I would like to say something more exciting about Dubrovnik, but frankly I didn't do very much exciting stuff. My time consisted mostly in strolling around, drinking cheap Croatian wine, lounging on the lovely stony beaches of Lokrum, and just generally enjoying the unadulterated beauty of this absolutely wonderful place. Two of the four days I was there it rained, but even that could not make Dubrovnik anything but fabulous. It was, for lack of a better term, sublime. I may have never seen anything so lovely.
Go to Croatia – and more importantly, go to Dubrovnik.