Train Trouble

Wow, Dubrovnik!

Twas nice, but I'd gone and shoved myself in the absolute south-east corner of where my rail pass allows me to go. Have just decided where to go next... but will get back to that in a sec.

Last time I wrote I was in the garden internet cafe, talking about using my first night in Dubrovnik wisely. Well.... I didn't - was so tired that I crashed, slept from around 6pm till midnight, then read for an hour or two, and slept again till about 7.

At least my second day was productive. I went into the old town and wandered around, did a walk along the walls of the old town - it's spectacular... took tons of photos so you'll see some soon. After wandering around a maritime museum, I grabbed some lunch at an outdoor cafe, and went searching around for a beach towel (err, yes I am collecting quite a bit of gear... back isn't liking it!). After a bit of confusion in the local department store, I ended up with a cheapy towel and hit the beach for a couple of hours - although is quite boring with just me... I'm not likely to laze around in the sun without someone to talk to, or at least a book to read, but decided that taking gear down to the beach with no-one to watch it might not be such a good plan... although it does seem that plenty of people do that.

Can you wear contacts while swimming in the sea?? I haven't yet tried it. At least being daylies then I don't lose much cash if I lose them!

So swam for nearly an hour and lazed for about an hour in the late arvo. Am a healthy brown, but no where near as dark as the crazy europeans that sunbake for ages. It does seem to be more friendly sun than in Australia... although I have been wearing sunblock.

But the day was not yet over! I went to the hotel, got changed and went into the old town again. I made it by about 9:00, and bought a ticket for a 9:30 Dubrovnik summer festival performance of traditional songs and dances. After rushing to find some food and water in 10 mins, I sat next to an Irish couple and watched an amazing display of Croatian culture. Unusually, it started by being quite similar to Irish dance! But when the women came out with jingley necklaces and the men with bells on their shoes, or when the women rolled over the men's shoulders, or when the women were spun around so their feet left the ground for about 30 seconds... haha was going to say you get the picture... but my descriptions don't do it justice and I wasn't allowed to take photos. The band (all guys) did some excellent acapella singing too! The bass guy was especially kewl (although I am quite biased!)

So it was 11:30... I was starving after only having an apple strudel for dinner! I rushed through eating a plate of spag bol, and found Club Lazaretti, where the Japanese DJ was playing... but it was mostly empty! I met quite a few people, Hamashakiro from Japan who had lived in Croatia for 6 years and his croatian friends, Sarah and Serena from Austria, Ivana and Ria from Zagreb... I danced a lot and drank a little, and before I knew it, it was 5pm! I caught the first bus back to the hotel at 5:40 and slept until midday! Oops... no hotel breakfast!

Sleeping in wasn't that bad, it was really icky on Friday. Raining quite heavily. I dragged myself out of bed and sat in a restaurant for about 3 hours, reading and eating seafood risotto :-) I met Gillian and Andrea from Illinois (& Chicago?) I chatted to them during lunch, then left and walked all the way into the old town. Was pretty far! But felt like I had to do *something* other than sleep all day. On the way back to the hostel I bumped into the Americans again, and we decided to meet up later that evening. We ate pizza and danced a little, but it was quite an early night.

So, today! Well as you can tell, at the moment I'm trying to kill time - telling you everything in wayyy too much detail. I'm in Split - I caught a bus here from Dubrovnik at 1pm... it's a 5 hour trip. My train leaves here at 9:43pm, so still have 2 hours to kill. A big dinner and a walk around Split should make that quite easy though. At least there's train stations here, so I can make use of my rail pass - unfortunately I have to go all the way back to Budapest. I don't really want to stay there another night though, so after arriving around 2:30pm, will jump on another train to Gyor at 7:40pm. Its a nice, small, quiet and cheap place to stay for the night, before I catch 2 trains on Monday to Prague. *phew*

So all in all, a scary total of 24 hours on trains in the next 2 days!

At least I'm stopping half way for a bed and a shower - I did consider going straight to Prague though. Unfortunately I can't go via Vienna and make use of faster Western-European trains... am stuck with trains that will stop about 20 times during the journey! Hopefully I'll be able to sleep enough to throw energy at Prague!

OK I think that's about enough time killing. Time to eat some cheap Croatian grub.

Till next time :-)

Posted by Sam at August 07, 2004 06:39 PM