Croatia: Zagreb and Perković

To get to Croatia, we took an evening train from Vienna to Salzburg (sadly we only got to see it in the middle of the night), and then hopped on the 2 AM train to Zagreb. Instead of beds, we'd only reserved the couchettes for a few euros, and we weren't expecting much, but it was surprisingly luxurious. We got lucky and had the cabin to ourselves, and they gave us sheets and pillows and a hefty blanket, and the cushion/mattress was just long enough that I could stretch all the way out. We both slept super well the entire ride. So well, in fact, that when we rolled into the station around 8:30, I hopped out of bed and off of the train without remembering to grab my phone from under my pillow. I realized this just as the train started moving away down the track (commence swears). Luckily, we knew that Zagreb was the end of the line for that train, so it was probably not heading out right away. I tried to explain my situation to three different people at the info desk, and they told me I might be able to find it on platform 6 where they clean the trains. So I left Matt with the bags and took off sprinting (my sprint these days is kind of a rapid hobble. Europe is rough on the feet). I looked up and down the platform and didn't see our train. As I was walking back to figure out my options I saw a couple guys with walkie-talkies, and one of them spoke some English. I wish I had asked his name and address so I could send him a thank you card and Christmas cards forever, because he was the absolute best. The whole time he kept nodding and smiling and giving me encouraging thumbs up so I wouldn't worry. He got on his radio and started doing some detective work, let out a whoop and a "POOOOKER!" when I told him I was from Las Vegas, and then took me across the tracks to a secret section of the station, where we miraculously found our train car and the cleaning ladies directed me to the office where my phone was. I'm so grateful for my new Croatian friend.

After that, we spent the morning strolling around Zagreb, and it was really charming. It felt really un-touristy and quiet and welcoming.


We never found the Naive Art Museum or the Museum of Broken Relationships, so that was a bummer. I really wanted to know what that was all about. 


Zagreb Cathedral


How fantastic is this lettering on the wall inside the cathedral? I did a little research later and found out that the alphabet is called Glagoljica, and it was used in Croatia for hundreds of years before they adopted the Roman lettering system. I love how angular and almost pictorial it looks.



At one point we hiked up 1,000 stairs and found ourselves at the entrance to a park that was actually just a forest and we were super okay with that. 



My very favorite thing was when we stumbled upon the botanical gardens near the train station. It was very serene and not overly manicured, which is just the way I like my gardens/greenhouses. I could've spent hours in there.


I wish this picture adequately showed the INSANE size of these poppies. So woah. 


Have you ever seen such a full peony bush? I mean what is happening here? I want to use it as my pillow. 



Around lunchtime, we caught our train to Krka (well, the town just outside it), which is when our next train mishap began. But first, a picture of the gorgeous rainy greenness outside the train window.



Also worth remembering: as soon as the train pulled out of the station, all of the big, burly men sitting near us pulled out their lunch sacks and started eating these sandwiches made with the thickest slabs of bread I've ever seen. I'm talking 5-inch tall sandwiches, and only 1/4 inch of that was meat. I don't know why but we loved that so much.

Anyway, back to getting lost in Croatia. Usually we’re those silly looking people who get up and go stand by the door fifteen minutes before the train even stops, but on this ride they kept taking ten-minute smoke breaks at every stop, so we didn’t feel super rushed. As we saw our stop approaching, we casually stood up and walked toward the door. The train stopped, we put on our backpacks, and then the train started again. We figured it was just repositioning or something, but then the ticket taker man walks up and tells us to sit down because we’re leaving the station and we were out of luck. I guess Drnis is not a popular stop or something? So we sat back down and figured we’d get off at the next stop and take the next train back in that direction. Turns out the next stop was Perković, Croatia: population 115, a nice place to grow your garden, home to an exceptionally vocal bird population, not a great place to catch a train. Even though we were only twenty minutes away from where we were staying, the next train wasn’t coming through for over four hours. So we left all of our belongings with a man in the station (if you could call it that), and walked around for a bit.



It was honestly one of the most beautiful little towns I've ever seen, and I'm secretly really glad we got stranded there. Regardless, after about an hour—in which we saw hundreds of chickens and three humans—I messaged our Airbnb host and he graciously offered to send us a taxi so we wouldn't have to wait for the train and risk missing the last bus of the day. Taking a taxi always feels like the ultimate defeat, but luckily Croatia is super inexpensive. Eventually we got to the house we were staying at and got some sleep before our next wild Croatian adventures.

In other news, one of my wisdom teeth has grown in on this trip. So that feels weird.

Vienna Whirlwind

Good luck trying to figure out who wrote what in this post:

We headed out of Prague well-fed and well-hygiened thanks to the Jarmans. We caught the train to Vienna and didn’t really know what awaited us. There are a lot of cities in Europe. Like many. Lots. Numerous. So it’s hard sometimes to be well versed in all of them.

We would've loved to have had more time in Austria. But as it worked out, we only had about twenty-four hours in Vienna, and some of those were spent trying to figure out how to get to Croatia. This was our first stressful experience with not planning well enough ahead. Months ago we looked into how to get from Vienna to Croatia, but never really finalized anything, and when we went looking for the train we wanted it wasn’t there. It was probs at Hogwarts or something. Luckily, we were able to find an overnight train and book some Airbnbs on late notice. Europe is pretty forgiving of poor planners like us.

We got to a rainy Vienna on Tuesday evening, walked around by the river a little bit and went to find another restaurant that had gotten the thumbs up from our friend Kelsey (thanks again for letting us copy all of your eats!). We've made it a big priority to try to eat as much traditional food as we can in each new country, so obviously our first meal in Wein needed to be Weiner Schnitzel. We showed up at Schnitzelwirt starving, and left the complete opposite of starving.


While we were waiting to be let into our Airbnb, we took this stunning glamour shot of our backpacks' backsides. I know they look huge for backpacks, but they are surprisingly comfortable and we're basically in love with them. 



The menu was all in German, and only one of the waiters spoke English. It was perfect. What we didn’t realize was that the 6.50€ schnitzel was actually two dinner plate-sized cutlets of breaded pork (schnitzel) and we each ordered our own servings (rookie mistake). We really did make a valiant effort, but a stomach can only fit so much of the same thing. Just as we were about to throw in the towel (used to help keep our meat sweats at bay), the waiter gestured to ask if two men could join us at our table. (Jessica here: This is a European commonality that would stress me out to no end at home, but I inexplicably love it here.)

The two guys who sat with us were named Mattias and Patrick. They both grew up on the Italy side of the Italian-Austrian border, and their English was magnificent. Mattias studies conservation and restoration in Vienna, and Patrick is a doctor in Switzerland. They were seriously the nicest and funniest guys. We probably talked to them for two hours after we'd already finished our meals. We talked about the European perception of McDonalds, the Italian army and job market, and how we'd found such a local treasure to eat at (they were very impressed that we were there). We told them about Weinerschnitzel hot dogs in the states and they were appalled and so confused at how it could have anything to do with hot dogs. They also insisted on showing us the best way to do the first district loop in Vienna. We would have followed their itinerary exactly had the next morning not been so confusing.


I asked if we could take a picture of them, which was embarrassing, but I'm glad we did.

The next day we spent plotting our train route and meeting up with Jessica’s parents again (the team stopped by Vienna for a few hours on their way to Slovenia). Jessica ate more Weinershnitzel in more manageable portions but I had terrible dreams about the solid mass of chicken in my stomach so I opted for the goulash.

We strolled around the first district and saw as much as we could. The museums, palace, and government buildings and basically all the beautiful monuments you see are built in one giant ring where the city walls used to be so it’s pretty convenient to see it all. You just walk around in a circle tip you're dizzy. There is a pretty amazing rose garden near the palace where there are hundreds of varieties of well-manicured and old rose bushes. We gawked at Stephansdom Cathedral, which was very impressive inside. It had all these wires hanging down from the ceiling that I never figured out what they were for, but they gave it almost a smoky, mystical look so I wasn’t complaining. We wandered around the Naschmarkt and then just trekked around aimlessly fueled by Mozart balls and Coke. We didn't have enough time to go in any of the museums or anything before they closed, which was a bummer. There's a lot to do in Vienna (almost overwhelmingly so), and they have the easiest metro we've used so far. Definitely a beautiful place to try to come back to someday (maybe on a day with less wind).

And behold, photos of stuff!


The Hofburg Palace. Right in front of it is a pretty cool excavation site with Roman ruins.  


The Austrian National Library (or Österreichische Nationalbibliothek because German is awesome.)


Mystical heaven strings inside Stephansdom.


The rose garden had hundreds of these tall bushes labeled with the name and origin of all the different species.


A really fancy and liquid-y picnic we enjoyed on the side of the street. 


Naschmarkt goods


We really loved all of the window boxes spilling red geraniums all over the place. 



And just because we were full of really mature humor all day:

Prague with an Argentine

When two friends who met when one was a high school exchange student from Argentina in a little town in Colorado find themselves in a big city in Europe, they also find adventure.

That’s how a pretty below average film for lame kids would start if it were about Fermin and I. Fer was an exchange student for all of my senior year and we became good friends. Now he’s doing a college exchange program for a semester in Prague so we had to meet up. I expected to just enjoy a good bowl of goulash together or something but he had planned a grueling six-mile walking tour up and down Prague’s gorgeous streets. We loved every minute of it. 

At first we felt bad that we were making him play tour guide and walk so much but he said he was happy that he had people who could walk as fast as him. Apparently his eighty-year-old grandma was going to come and he was bummed that he wasn’t going to be able to take her on the walking tour because she’s too slow and it was too much walking.

He took us to most of the sites on the map and to a lot of little hidden gems. For the sake of not boring you with words, I’ll bore you with a lot of pictures.

 But first, a few photos from our morning visit to Pražský Hrad (Prague Castle) with Jessica's parents. So don't be mad that some of the pictures weren't actually taken on our grand tour.

St. Vitus (Vito if Fermin is talking) Cathedral. We climbed 288 steps to the top of that spire. You'll get most of the benefit with none of the work by keeping on scrolling.


The view from the top of the bell tower. 



Fer's tours™told us that the reason Prague is so pristine and undamaged compared to most European cities is that it was one of Hitler's favorite cities, so he tried to protect it from the ravaging of the war. 


The Basilica of St. George. Because all castle complexes need both a Gothic cathedral and a Romanesque basilica. 


The columns and ceilings of the royal palace were intense. In person they look even more like tree branches extending upward. 


This was basically an HR move by the royals. They decorated the ceiling with the coats of arms of the people who worked in this room (accountants, if I remember correctly) so they would feel important. 


The big oxidized-copper dome that you see in all the aerial photos of the city is home to Prague's most famous Baroque church, St. Nicholas. It's overwhelmingly over-the-top and ornate. Mozart played here in the 1700s, which is cool. 

And now we finally bring you to the beginning of Fermin's tour:

The view of the communist-era TV tower


We walked through the royal gardens outside of the palace where there were trees from all over the world and peonies the size of your head. 


Found this pretty man lounging around the senate gardens. We accidentally wandered onto the Polish embassy and got chased out while we were looking for this place.


Don't be fooled. Those aren't real stalactites (real leaves though).


The world's smallest street.



A close-up of the communist TV tower. The people of Prague weren't super thrilled when this thing went up, but supposedly they really loved this crazy baby installation. It was so popular that it's been there for thirteen years longer than was originally intended. Also, apparently there is a one-room luxury hotel at the top of this tower. Best bathtub view in the city. 



It was truly fantastic to catch up with Fermin. He has a great perspective on life and I'm a better person for knowing him. We can't wait til he can give us a tour of Buenos Aires.