Lauren and Nick's Travel Blog: Splitsville

It was the smoothest drive yet from Budapest to Zagreb, Croatia where we spent the night as somewhat of a half-time in the 8 or 900 km to split. Zagreb’s bloody cheap so we thought wed splash out A$100 on a room at the Sheraton. Zagreb obviously isn’t banking on the tourist dollar to get them by so it was pretty quiet when we rolled into town. It was pretty drizzly weather too so we thought wed stay close to the hotel to eat and try and get a beer, trying out our newly learned Croatian that we were practising in the car on the way.

I tried it first and got told pretty sternly by the big croat kebab maker to tell him in English so we did and we eventually got our kebabs and had a few beers, but once again it seems the phrase book publishers might be having a good old chuckle at the likes of the clueless travellers like us. Ive since learned that the phrase book gives you the most formal way to say things that would never be said in such a way so theres been quite a few times when we would of looked like downright knobs, asking ‘may we please order and aquire a beer big please?’ to the always puzzled bartender/shopkeep. Overall wed have been stuffed without the book though!

Ok now, the Croatian roads were beautiful at this stage because wed been on the A1 national highway for the whole trip. 3 lanes and minimal trucks. And what seemed to be no speed limit. There is, apparently, but after looking on the net, you don’t get fined until you hit about 175km/h because of some crazy equation that they have. The speed limit is 130km/h but no fine until 175. Go figure. And that’s if you have the misfortune of coming across one of the non-existant highway cops. We never saw one. And on top of that, if you did luck out and get fined, the damage was only about 30 aussie bucks. A fair bit by Croatian standards, but still well worth getting to split half an hour earlier for some that flashed past.

Split looked beautiful as we cruised down the side of one of the cliffs that surround It. It sort of reminded me of looking at byron as your going over st Helena hill, only with a thousand slum-quality high rise buildings all over the shop….. That example works! don’t shake you head! The good old gps had done pretty well that day to that stage so it was due to send us on the daily wild goose chase it loves to provide us with every time we turn it on. I reckon that gps lady has a laugh at us as soon as weget out of the car too, just like those language book publishers.

For some reason, the gps thought the most appropriate route to get us to our apartment would be to take us up and down some alleys in old town that were barely wide enough for david boon to walk through. Although some other cars had tried. This made it even harder to negotiate. All the while im cursing at the non-human gps and getting honked at by tossers on scooters and in tiny smart cars. Its such a stressful situation because you get to a point sometimes where you can barely move forward or backwards, and it looks very much like Klaus will be stuck there forever and become an ancient tourist attraction for the tourist of the year 2200. honestly I dont know how some transit vans got to where they were and I wish i could have been there to witness them get out of there! I eventually found a park in some apartment complex and could breathe a short sigh of relief. Only short coz I knew id have to get in soon enough and negotiateour way out of there.

The guy who owned the apartment that we were staying at said for us to give him a call when we got there. But weve never had a phone that could call a European numberso we thought wed just show up and surprise him. Not a great idea, as it turns out. We got there before 2pm so we thought wed be sweet and hed be at his shop downstairs. 2pm being a fairly universally accepted time of day for someone who works in a store in a tourist area to be at work. Not so for mario. He opens up at 9am, then knocks off at midday for 5 hours then comes back for a few hours at night. Not a bad life! Not that he did any more then coffee, a smoke or two with his mates and a bit of net surfing. Me thinks renting the apartment out above his shop is his primary income source and the shop is the hobby. Good on him i say because he seems to not have a care in the world.

Anyway, our options were few. Wait around for 3 hours till he shows up for the night shift, or try and contact him by finding a phone booth and doing our best. By this stage though, I was so pissed off and dirty on the world and especially the gps lady so I wasn’t much help in the situation. Lucky lauren had her shit together because she got s calm and organised us a phone card and had me on a payphone to Mario in no time. He was 5 mins away so all worked out in the end but I hated split at this stage and I had a lot of redeeming to do!

The room was nice. Just like a beach apartment. Kitchen and all that. A nice big fridge for a heap of beers too which was a bonus. We stocked that then went for a walk to check out split. Once id finally calmed down and wasn’t seeing split through the redness of my rage I realised that split was one of the most beautiful places wed been. Completely different to the other places up north. Split is situated on a harbour with crystal clear turquoise water with a few islands a few kms out. A marina with boats of all shapes and sizes bobbing upand down. There was massive car ferries out further and little shitty tinnies that stink like rotten fish right up next to the esplanade. We happened to sit down to our first 3 dollar beer just at the sun was setting. This was the first time that id ever seen the sun set over the water so it was so nice aand relaxing after the earlier trials and ordeals. That sight was nearly as good as the ridiculously cheap bill for the 6 half litre beers that we had while sitting there soaking it all up.

Split looks like a bit of haven for the rich. But it probably isn’t really. If people like us could live it up there too.

The next day we had a cruise around and checked out the beaches. Which were quite weird, in that they were knee deep for about a hundred metres out. At this one beach, there was all these old blokes in theyre speedo’s playing some weird handball game with a small ball that they had to keep in the air. There would have been a dozen games going on, each with about 4 blokes playing. Quite a scene. They were all nearly black, they were that tanned so its obvious that they enjoy this game. Mario toldus later that it’s a traditional croation game that has a ‘world championships’ in split every year. That would be a dead set classic. It just resembled a game of Frisbee with a tennis ball to me.

Walked around the old town that afternoon and were impressed again with how nice it was. So relaxed and easy going although it would probly be a nightmare in summer. Heaps of interesting restaurants and shops and nothing was expensive, although it always looked like It should be.

Had an amazing seafood platter for two thaat night right on the water with seafood that was swimming a few hours before. It almost got me romantic! We had a couple of beers and a few caraffs of wine on top of that and paid about 60 bucks. ridiculous.

Split was all about relaxation and we continued this the next day. Just strolling around, checking out the crazy markets where the stall holders always yell at us in Croatian to by a bunch/bag/string/handful/pocketful/whatever of whatever unusual shaped fruit or vegetable, sometimes nut they were flogging for generally about 20c a kilo. Bit of ahead spin really. But funny. You just need to get used to either ignoring the old crazies or busting out a ‘Hvala Ne!’ (no thanks) and you’ll be right.

We would always try a bit of our newly learnt Croatian on Mario when we’d catch him in the shop and was always impressed. Well, he acted impressed. But hed correct us when we stuffed up which was important, considering how long we were gonna be in Hrvatska. he owes us a free night in his apartment too because on the last night we were there the alarm to his shop kept going off. we thought it was kids tryingto break in so it keptus up all night. i couldnt call him so i went out and checked and there were some dodgy looking kids around which made me think it was definitely them. he later said that it was probably a fly flying past the sensor so he said when we go back, he will give us a free night...

Split was not without its crazies and we saw a few crazy things at times. Apart from all the kittens that just roamed the streets and in the restaurants, we saw:

A bloke sprint through a bar we were at waving his arms and just screaming at the top of his lungs.

A well dressed ladt in high heels and a leather handbag bin diving and collecting cans.

A lady walking around apparently trying to sell a random childrens wooden chair. Just going up to anyone and hitting them up to buy it. Later that day we saw a guy walking down the street with said chair so she obviously had a win!

A bloke flop it out and have a leak on a tree in the beer garden of the restaurant we were at. He wasn’t a patron and he was about 80 in the shade. I caught It in my periphery and could not believe it.

Yet people don’t even blink at this stuff over here!

Another feast fit for a king later (I think it was a 2 person mixed grill this night) and we were ready to move onto Dubrovnik. We wish we could of stayed longer, in hindsight. But at the same time pretty keen to check out Dubrovnik, considering the pictures we were looking at on the net. We jumped in the car and punched the address of our next place into the gps. It said we were only about 200km away so we were happy with that and expected to be in Dubrovnik ina few hours. Ha! So naïve we were….

The direct route would oftaken us through bosnia and our rental agreement didn’t allow that so we had to take the coast road the get a ferry over to another peninsula then drive down that. The coast roadworthy mainland started off nicely, meandering around the bottom of the hills with the blue water of the Adriatic a few metres to lauren’s right, as we were driving south and on the water side of the road. It sort of snuck up on us, but all of a sudden we were a few hundred metres up and practically dangling over the water on the edge of the cliffs. Im not great with heights, but Lauren has an almost debilitating fear and this was causing her to actually scream at times. I wanted to slow down sometimes but I couldn’t because it was probably less safe to crawl along there and have a bunch of crazy croats road raging me the whole way. So we pushed on with Lauren almost physically sick at times. It was bad. But we made it to the ferry and thought the worst was behind us. The ferry was so relaxing and it was such a nice day that all our nerves were calmed and everything was good again. But then we get off the ferry….

We got off and it was a tiny little village with no easily recognisable way out of town. It too was surrounded by massive steeping hills and we couldn’t find the highway out. Because there wasn’t one. It was a tiny little road that for once the gps was right on, but we wish it wasn’t. a tiny half laned road wound its way up the side of the hills and we started to get this sense of ‘here we go agaaaiiinnn!’. we tossed up whether ornot to just cut our losses and turn around and risk breaking avis’s laws in bosnia, but I was the one who said that we should soldier on because wed come so far.

We needed petrol so we pulled into what seemed like the only servo on the peninsula. We pulled up to the onlybowser at the place and I filled up while lauren went in to tryand see whether the roads further on would be drivable or whether they would be cliffhangers, therefore making up turn around and got the other way. The bloke manning the servo spoke a bit of English but not much so when lauren asked if the roads were scary, he was replying with ‘no, you shouldn’t be scared of getting lost. Theres only one road’. so we didn’t know what to make of that and the map we had showed the road as running down the centre of the peninsula so we thought wed do it….. They ended up being even scarier than the ones on the mainland and made lauren go grey with fear. Shaking and sweating. It was even worse when a local bus would fly by in theother direction and cause me to take the car to what lauren say was about inches from a 200m plunge into to water. Crazy stuff! And something I never want to do again. But im becoming an even better driver than I ever was. As hard as it is to believe….

Klaus. expertly parked.

The lane out the front. one of the many that the car gpshas tried todrag us through.

crazy fish market.

crazy busker who comes complete with birds perched on his hat and instruments.

old guys playing handball.

nice beach.

frolicking.

part of Diocletian's Palace. the heart of oldtown and is about 2000 years old. they use it as a market to flog cheap crap these days. The pic up the top is also a remaining wall from the palace, it's really cool how there's just bits of wall/palace still standing through Old Town, and often utilised later to form walls of buildings that are now... churches/shops/hotels/people's flats.