Dispatches from Croatia
Wednesday — Thursday
We arrived at the Portland airport over two hours early for our flight to Frankfurt.
Ordinarily we arrive less than an hour before a flight, but we had some concerns about flying on Condor Airlines (company slogan: You Have Never Heard of Condor Airlines). The tickets on Condor had been $500 cheaper apiece than American Airlines, but then I made the mistake of reading online reviews for Condor, which led me to believe there was a 50% chance the airplane would actually be a 1972 VW Bus with wings painted on the side.
We got our boarding passes at the check-in desk, which was in the ghetto part of PDX near Icelandair and a muffler repair shop. Hadas asked the airline representative if Condor participated in the TSA Precheck program, and she laughed heartily. It was a bit like asking the cashier at McDonalds if we could sample the chef’s tasting menu. We went and got in the regular security line like animals.
After successfully navigating security and putting our pants back on we had over an hour to kill until boarding, so we grabbed a pair of Cobb salads and the traditional pre-flight bourbon for Hadas. She announced that this was the LAST FOOD SHE WAS GOING TO EAT UNTIL BREAKFAST IN CROATIA. Hadas had read a study that said the key to fighting jet lag is to fast until regular breakfast time at your destination, so she was hell-bent on fasting for the next 26 hours or so until breakfast in Zagreb. I don’t mind fasting, except for the part about being hungry, so I decided to be the control in the experiment and I ate the half of the salad that she didn’t finish. We wandered to the gate.
Condor Airlines boarding procedure is as follows:
8:30 pm: “We would now like to begin boarding for our first and business class class passengers, as well as anyone else who needs a little extra time or assistance.”
8:32 pm: “Everyone else get your ass on the plane.”
This was surprisingly efficient, and by 8:45 we were fully boarded and ready to sit at the gate for another hour for unspecified reasons. Possibly because it’s hard to find replacement parts for a 1972 VW Bus.
Actually, the plane was fine. Leg room was not the most generous, but then again my legs aren’t the most generous so it wasn’t an issue. The seats were no more uncomfortable than your average Lutheran church pew and the in-flight entertainment selection (for which I had pre-paid $10 at booking) had a vast selection of movies to choose from, by which I mean an oddly-random mix of 24 movies released in the last five years. FAA rules mandate that every international flight over four hours must provide the latest installment from the Fast and the Furious franchise, and I was relieved to see that Condor was in full compliance with Fast and Furious 12: Fast Times at Furious High.
We settled in for the ten and a half hour flight, each watching a movie and then enjoying Condor’s complimentary dinner, which Hadas announced was THE LAST FOOD SHE WAS GOING TO EAT UNTIL BREAKFAST IN CROATIA. We both slept fitfully for the next six hours or so, waking occasionally to German-language announcements from the cockpit and Condor flight attendants hawking duty-free cartons of cigarettes in the aisles. We landed in Frankfurt with 45 minutes to make our connection to Croatia, but learned that the connecting flight was now two hours delayed so we were good to go.
It took most of those two hours to walk from our arrival gate to our departure gate, which was in the ghetto part of the Frankfurt airport near a muffler repair shop. Despite a clearly-indicated departure time of 19:30, multiple people paraded up to the gate agent demanding to leave immediately, which led him to make an announcement in both German and heavily-accented English explaining that the airplane was not technically in Germany yet and it would be impossible to depart until it arrived. This did not seem to placate the passengers.
Eventually we were boarded onto a bus, which ferried us for 10 minutes the length of the Frankfurt airport and then away from the terminal until, far in the distance, we saw a single Croatia Airlines plane sitting alone in the middle of nowhere on the tarmac, a half-mile from the airport. Portable lights and various trucks surrounded the airplane, giving the entire setup the look of some sort of deadly virus quarantine situation. The bus pulled up and we joined the rest of the passengers in climbing into the plane by the stairs at the front and rear doors. We took off for Croatia after viewing the safety video that looked as though it had been animated with a Flash clip-art application on MySpace.
After landing in Zagreb, it took only a minute to pass through customs and immigration, and barely longer to pick up our rental car, which cost all of $112 for 12 days. We navigated our way to the Airbnb, got the keys from our host, and fell into a deep slumber until 4 a.m., at which point we were both wide awake and it was TIME FOR BREAKFAST IN CROATIA.
Friday
It was a cool morning in Zagreb, and we walked over to the train station to meet my friend Jasna, who is TeamSnap’s lone employee in Croatia. She was kind enough to take the train an hour and a half from her small town north of Zagreb to act as our tour guide for the day. We were famished since BREAKFAST IN CROATIA had been at 4 a.m., so Jasna took us by tram to a delicious restaurant where we enjoyed a cold platter of Croatian meats and cheeses, followed by the famous national dish of ćevapčići, which are yummy grilled sausages served with onions and a creamy cheese. Hadas also had the traditional bourbon. There were enough ćevapčići that we had leftovers for that evening’s dinner and the following day’s lunch, plus ample diacritical marks to take home as souvenirs.
Jasna taught us the proper pronunciation of key Croatian words and phrases like hvala (thank you), molim (please), oprǒstite (sorry) and brzi i žestoki (the fast and the furious). Hadas has a good ear for languages and picked up the accent immediately. I pronounce all foreign languages as if I am speaking Spanish, so when I thanked our waiter in Croatian after the meal it sounded like I was challenging him to a bullfight.
After lunch, Jasna showed us some highlights of the city, such as the Ban Jelačić main square, the world’s shortest tram that takes you to the upper part of town, a church with a roof that looks like needlepoint, and the botanical gardens. Then we sat in the park and enjoyed some traditional Croatian chocolates (diacritical mark-free) and said our goodbyes. Jasna caught the train back home and we returned to the Airbnb to try to stay awake until a normal bedtime.
To kill time before bed, Hadas flipped through the channels on Zagreb’s cable TV:
Croatian soccer league…
Smurfs, dubbed into Croatian…
HGTV’s Flip or Flop with Croatian subtitles…
Hardcore porn…
Croatian news…
Wait, what?
The hardcore porn was neither dubbed nor subtitled, so neither of us could figure out what was going on. It’s possible someone was being challenged to a bullfight.
Saturday — Sunday
We awoke early as usual, re-packed our bags and headed for Plitvička National Park. It was a foggy two-hour drive through beautiful countryside (I assume). Halfway there we stopped in a small mountain town where it was a frigid 35 degrees. Hadas stepped into a bar to get a cup of coffee, where she immediately contracted lung cancer and died. OK, I exaggerate, but they are really into their smoking here.
We reached the national park, put on five layers of clothing apiece and braved the cold to go hiking after purchasing a pair of gloves from the gift shop. It’s six kuna to the dollar in Croatia, so the gloves cost somewhere between $3 and $17,000. Math is hard.
The park was stunningly beautiful. Tranquil lakes on multiple levels, with blissful waterfalls running in between. The water was so clear you could see to the bottom; fish swum lazily beneath the boardwalks that circled the park. The only downside were the busloads of tourists gumming up the walkways — Japanese couples walking slowly hand-in-hand and groups of ruddy Austrians stopping to take selfies in front of every vista. There was no way to push politely through the throngs, so we settled for pushing impolitely and shouting ćevapčići (sausage!) as we knocked people aside.
All told we spent four hours hiking in the park, including a boat ride between ends of a long lake and a tram ride between two trailheads. I also became fluent in Japanese and German, both of which I pronounce with a distinctly Spanish accent.
After another two hours in the car we pulled into Zadar around 3 p.m. Zadar is a small town that sits on a peninsula on the Adriatic and has the distinction of being earlier in the alphabet than Zagreb. Other than that, there’s not much going on in Zadar, and we were looking forward to a couple of peaceful days walking along the oceanfront and enjoying Zadar’s number-one attraction, morske orgulje — the Sea Organ.
At the very tip of Zadar’s oceanfront walkway, a 75-meter long musical instrument is built into the concrete walkway. Using a series of tubes and chambers that are tiered in a number of steps leading out to the sea, the rushing water creates musical notes through a line of holes in the path. As the waves rush in and out, an eerie musical symphony plays — like whale sounds remixed by Phillip Glass. The entire effect is haunting and mesmerizing and fascinating, the music constantly changing as the waves ebb and flow. It’s one of the most enchanting things I’ve ever experienced.
After sitting and listening to the morske orgulje for a while, we wandered into Zadar’s ancient and winding streets and found a café for lunch, where they played an entire Phil Collins greatest hits album in the background; it was just barely less enchanting than the sea organ. Phil Collins has had a lot of hits.
Monday-Thursday
We packed up again and headed for Krka National Park (park motto: Buy a vowel!). Krka is also a waterfall-intensive park, and we hiked through lush, beautiful marshes until we reached the main waterfall, which was apparently featured in a recent episode of The Bachelorette. I think it was the episode where Emily pushes a busload of Japanese tourists into a lake.
After Krka we drove another hour to Split, which will be our home for the next six days. Split is a large city on a beautiful stretch of the Adriatic, with a quaint and historic old town surrounded by the walls of an old Roman palace. It’s heavily touristed, but very few of the tourists are American so it feels less touristy than some other places we’ve been. Our first day we hiked up Marjan, a tall hill overlooking the city with expansive views of the ocean and the town. Signage was a bit sketchy on the way up, but eventually we found the summit by following gravity and stray cats.
There are roughly 100 billion restaurants in Split, all “family-run” and each serving aggressively fresh seafood. When you sit down to order at a restaurant they bring a plate of whole fish to your table. Rather than choose from items on a menu you simply decide which fish looks most delicious and they cook it, whole, on the grill. It’s somewhat disconcerting to make eye contact with your dinner, but a surprisingly effective way to pick your entree. So far we’ve sampled the John Dory, sea bream and amberjack, all of which taste like fish. Hadas has also had the traditional bourbon.
