The Croatia Diaries #5: Sretan Uskrs!

Easter in Croatia … Meredith and Caitlin style.

Easter in Zagreb, sans jelly beans

I made this egg myself! (That's probably why it sucks.)

Sretan Uskrs, y’all! (That’s Happy Easter in Croatian).

It’s just after 8 p.m. local time, which means most of the Easter festivities are winding to a close. While we could not make batik-style pisanica or cook an elaborate ham for dinner — which, we’ve been told, is traditional in these parts — we did make an attempt at the whole Eastern-European-Easter shtick.

Religion is, as you can imagine, a pretty big deal here. I actually think I’ve seen more nuns and priests in the past seven days than I have in my entire life up to this point.

(I went to Catholic high school, so that’s really sort of remarkable).

Zagreb’s 900-year-old cathedral, or Kathedrala, has five masses on Easter Sunday, and both the 9 a.m. and 10:30 services were packed to the point of awkwardness. Old men and women elbowed us out of the way to get to the front of the standing section — as for the pews, you had to get there during the previous mass to score a seat.

The Croatia Diaries #4: Last day in Dubrovnik

Thanks to the glacially slow Internet in our second hostel, I was only able to upload this latest Croatia diary today. Assuming that Youtube, my short-lived computer battery and the hostel’s spotty Internet align — this is, in truth, a rather risky assumption — I’ll also be posting an Easter video this evening.

Until then, I think I’ve got some decent Uskrs photos …

Photo: “Putting out the vibe” in Zagreb

Our (awkwardly worded) British guidebook says that people flock to Tkalčićeva Street on Saturday mornings to “put out the vibe” — a phrase that we think probably means “drink coffee and look cool.”

Sure enough, the cafes were absolutely packed when we got there around noon, and we had to walk the ENTIRE length of the street before finding a table. That’s really saying something, when you consider that there are upwards of 30 caffe/bars on the street, and each one of them is packing several dozen tables and a flotilla of wicker chairs outside.

But the cafes are almost always crowded, especially in the afternoon and the early evening. No one eats anything — that’s apparently not the point. They just sit there with their 1 p.m. beers or shots and gab in loud, excitable Croatian to their effortlessly cool, equally loud peers.

We’re not sure we aped the vibe correctly, but we did receive some very welcome attention from a Nestle representative giving out free candy bars. Greatest country on earth, amirite?

P.S. If you’d like to see a gratuitous picture of me smirking/”putting out the vibe,” it’s here.

An abbreviated Croatian dictionary

We should probably spend more time with one of these little things.

We were walking through an Easter market today, searching for a very particular kind of Easter souvenir, when two men called “dobar dan!” to us from a bakery stand.

I reacted in a very excitable, touristic way.

“Hey! Dobar dan!” I said, waving excessively. “That’s like the one Croatian word I know!”

Meredith and I actually took stock of the Croatian words we’ve learned today, and decided they express a lot about our personalities/travel styles. Observe:

• Hrvatsca = Croatia
• Dobar dan = hello
• Bog = hi/bye
• Hvala = thank you
• Sorry = sorry (one of our favorites.)
• Engleski = English
• Jug = south
• Sladoled = ice cream
• Torta = cake
• Palačinka = pancake
• Autobusni = bus
• Besplatno = free

So, all told, a fourth of my Croatian vocab deals exclusively in desserts. Uhhh nothing wrong with that, right?

Welcome to Zagreb / the world’s best cake (!!)

Croatia is like the world capital of cakes. (That's the real reason we came here.)

Ten uncomfortable hours later … and we are in Zagreb!

We caught the 9:00 overnight bus from Dubrovnik yesterday and endured several hundred miles of twisty, unlit coastal roads until just before 7 a.m. It was a highly punctuated journey — I think we stopped in every village with a population over 100.

We also made a brief (inexplicable) foray into Bosnia some time between 11 and 12. A police officer woke me up and asked to see my passport, which was briefly really startling. But, you know … a bus ride that long benefits from startling!

Now we’ve been in Zagreb a few hours, just kind of wandering, bumming around, eating and shopping to break up the day. This one restaurant deserves mention: we were walking down Tkalčićeva Street when we passed what appeared to be a gigantic gingerbread house on the left-hand side.

“This is the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, before looking through the window. “Oh, God — there’s a waterfall inside. And the waitresses are dressed in traditional costume.”

Little did we know, but this bizarrely tacky place is actually really famous. All their food is organic and made with whole-grains, or some health shtick like that. And they had the best cake/cheapest cappacino ever. In fact, their menu makes some reference to someone calling their cake the “BEST IN THE WORLD.”

… Not sure I buy that.

Anyway, Meredith and I successfully spoiled our dinner there before heading back to the hostel. This is what vacations are all about, right?!

Photo: Dubrovnik from the city walls

Cardigans, sunshine and spinach risotto

The view of the Old Town from the beach. Wish we were spending more time here!

High points of Croatia, day 3:

1. Cardigan weather (a.k.a., 60 degrees and sunny.)
2. A spinach risotto for the ages.
3. Long walks around the harbor and outside of the Old Town.
4. Coffee with our spirited, unconventional roommates.
5. Some shopping/haggling. Always fun.

Low points of Croatia, day 3:

1. Waiting two hours to use the shower.
2. Boat ride. (If you know me, you know exactly what this means.)
3. Iberia Airlines.
4. Ants in the hostel.

… So, ants aside, a phenomenal day!

Today was actually our last full day in Dubrovnik, as we’re catching the overnight bus to Zagreb tomorrow evening. Since the weather is supposed to stay sunny, we’re dreaming of a long, leisurely picnic on the rocks outside the Old City harbor.

It’s too cold to swim, but we’re making the best of it, yeah? Besides, if over-sized Croatian bagels are on the menu, you really can’t go wrong.

The Croatia Diaries #3: Dubrovnik Old City walls

We walked Dubrovnik’s most famous landmark in a near-tropical storm … and it was way cooler than the preceding sentence makes it sound.

Do you guys like these videos? Do you even watch them? I’m having fun making them, but I don’t know if y’all care either way.

Five people you meet in hostels

My roommate Meredith and I! I'm squinting at the weird dude taking this picture.

Glad to say that, as of this afternoon, we’ve officially had the “real hostel experience” — a.k.a., meeting a ton of very random people with very strange back-stories, all in a vaguely unusual hostel environment with limited amounts of personal space.

We went for Bosnian food with the men currently sound asleep in the bunk next to me : a 27-year-old forest-fighter and his grizzly Californian dad, who frequently use words like “dude” and “tight” and have no set itinerary for their month-long backpacking trip across the Balkans.

Later, the Croatian receptionist invited us downstairs to wear Mexican wrestling masks and take shots of some unsettling local liquor, in celebration of the four Mexicans who were slated to show up any minute.

The Mexicans were late, so we sat around and talked to some Brazilian kid who’s in month six of a seven-month odyssey. The Mexicans — who also, somehow, have French and British citizenship — arrived shortly thereafter, on break from the Swiss school where they’re studying hospitality.

This picture, in case you’re wondering, was taken by some American boy we ran into on the walls. After making a really big deal out of the fact that we had the same cameras, he proceeded to take an exceptionally out-of-focus photo.

… On some level, I SERIOUSLY can’t believe this is my life.