It's Raining It's Pouring

Today we woke up early to try and head out and see some more of Split before hopping on the bus to Dubrovnik, of course mother nature had other plans, and a torrential downpour kept us watching old music videos in our rented room until it was time to trek down to the bus station.

After traveling for nearly 3 months, you would think that I wouldn’t get anxious when a bus is 20 minutes, or 30 minutes late to leave – but I still do, and having an extra cup of coffee while waiting for your late bus, doesn’t calm the nerves. After a delayed start, Ulises and I boarded the bus to the southernmost city of Dubrovnik.

The ride was relatively uneventful, with beautiful scenery all around, and random bus stops along the side of the road. We decided that a movie was in order, and watched The Queen on the laptop (thanks Q-Team). It was a good film, but I must say that I don’t know how I could have felt further from the refinement of the British Royal Family than when sitting on a 6-hour bus in my “lived in” pair of jeans.

On the ride, we crossed a boarder check, and then another boarder check, where we all had to hand over our passports to the control police. We were a little in the dark about why we had to do this, until we glanced at our maps later and saw that the main road heading North to South in Croatia runs through about 12-15KM or Bosnia Herzegovina – so technically you have to go through another country and if they choose to stop your bus or car, you’ve got to go through the whole control and maybe customs inspections too.

At last we arrived in Dubrovnik, where the weather was sunny and warm, and far more Mediterranean than it had been up north. We cabbed it over to the apartment and wandered around looking lost until someone wearing a Croatia Football Headscarf poked their head out of a 4th story window waving frantically at us – “Dinka?” I yelled…She nodded, and so we walked up the 4 flights of stairs hoping desperately that this was the apartment that we had rented.

Of course it was, and our host, Dinka, was so funny, trying to explain to us, that she hoped that we didn’t think she was some crazy lady leaning out of windows and flagging people down, but she thought that maybe we were the Chio’s and maybe we were lost. All correct of course, as that look of “where am I and how do I find where I am going” is without language barriers.

We put our stuff down, said thanks and goodbye to Dinka and settled into our apartment. It was sweet! A full kitchen, washing machine, bedroom and 5 TV channels, with a little balcony outside of the bedroom. Quite an awesome place for our respite in Dubrovnik. We dropped in a much needed load of laundry, and set out to grab a bite to eat – of course during the final qualifying game of the Quarter finals of Croatia’s bid for the Euro Cup 2008 – meaning that it was the crappiest wait service every and every restaurant was packed.

We managed to find a pizza place and have a beer and watch as Croatia went on to win the game. It was quite amazing, as minutes after the win, all of the fire extinguishers in the entire town were gone – every man, woman and child had run to the nearest fire extinguisher box and stolen them, and then proceeded to run through the streets streaming chemical smoke behind them. I’m sure it took a few weeks off of my life, but it was quite a site.