Not in Kansas anymore

I am currently sitting on the top bunk of my room at the Mali Mrak hostel in Zagreb, Croatia. You know what that means? Blessed, blessed free FAST wifi! It also means I’m alive. It has been quite the journey. I’ll tell you about it.

Padova. We stayed here Monday night in an ancient monastery turned hotel that actually felt more like a hospital. Needless to say, we were never fully comfortable there. I knew I wasn’t in Siena anymore when I tried crossing the street without looking for cars and I narrowly missed getting hit by a bike AND a car. We got in at about two in the afternoon, and felt completely useless with no cathedrals or museums to check off the list from Peter. We wandered the streets for hours looking at the clock and thinking, “it’s only FIVE?” Time seems to go much slower when there aren’t garlics to draw, contrada scarves to buy, riciarelli to try, or Life Club meetings to attend. But the city was so charming! And I had my very first kebab. It actually tasted like something from Taco Bell. We kept being nostalgic for Siena and exclaimed loudly every time we saw a store we recognized from Siena, and even abandoned our charming city walk to spend about thirty minutes in the 99 cent store, discussing what sort of different things it had from the store in Siena.

Venice. The magical land of gondolas, bridges, pigeons, blown glass, and winding alleys. Sometimes I wonder if the weather effects how much a person enjoys the places they visit. But I now know that I love Venice no matter what the weather is when I am there. Two years ago I came to Venice in the heat of summer, sweating my guts out every day and drinking gallons of water. This week we were in Venice in the middle of November donning pea coats, hats, gloves, and scarves, and still shivering with cold. But neither extreme lessened my love for the enchanting place! And this time I got to visit some of the islands. Murano the glass blowing island, and Burano (clearly the name-thinking-up committee was feeling very uncreative that day) the lace island. It turns out we went to Burano on the day that all the museums were closed, so we just wandered through the city looking into stores and enjoying the colorful houses. We were content to spend a few hours wandering around the tiny place in the freezing cold, and even found a piazza with benches to celebrate Kimberly’s Golden Birthday with an astronaut cake!

Friday dawned cold and gray. It was the last day Lauren, Kimberly, and I would be with the girls in our program. We dragged our bags down the many stairs of our hotel, navigated through the tiny streets of Venice, boarded our last boat taxi, and arrived at the bus where our group would leave us for good. We got all or our luggage out from the bottom of the bus, said our goodbyes, and watched the group drive away. Then wondered what we were going to do for eleven hours. We made our way to the train station and ditched most of our luggage for a few hours, then found some bread, fruit, and cheese for breakfast. We had already seen everything we wanted to see in Venice, so we mostly wandered down roads less traveled or sat in campos watching pigeons and delving into the deepest corners of each other’s lives. Once we started getting too cold we decided to find ways to entertain ourselves in the train station. Somehow, we didn’t die of boredom or cold (we even ate gelato! Some would call that fool hearty, I would call it a true test of the deep love we have for gelato) in that station, and finally boarded our night train at nine. And slept. Or something like it.

Croatia: We were rudely awakened at about 3am by men in uniforms with the word "Policija" on them, speaking very rapidly in a language we didn't understand. Luckily, we made out the word "customs" somewhere in that fully foreign language. We quickly brushed the sleep from our eyes, pulled out our passports, and sat nervously waiting. After that experience, we didn't feel much like sleep anymore. I mused aloud, "what if they don't have public bathrooms?" To which Kimberly answered, "what if they don't go to the bathroom at all?" This sent us into a period of deep contemplation about what the heck we were doing in a country we knew absolutely nothing about. But despite our upsetting lack of planning and general knowledge of the country, this whole day has gone by with an amazing ease. My motto since I got into Europe has been, it always seems easier than it actually will be. Croatia may prove me wrong. **Knock on wood** Or maybe the trick is EXPECTING lots of problems and troubles, then everything will go without a hitch! But I’ll tell you what, I never realized how very comfortable I had become living in Italy until I got here where I am very much the opposite of comfortable. We don’t know how to say hello, goodbye, thank you, three tickets, receipt please, where the heck am I?!? And reading signs or street names is a joke. We pronounce them with a combination of English and Italian, forgetting which is which, but knowing neither is right. Luckily, more people than we expected speak English, and the Croatian people have turned out to be incredibly helpful and kind.

One day down and we still have all our limbs. I promise to post pictures in the next post, as I think this one is threatening to break some records as it is.