Goldilocks and the Three Bears -- Sibenik, Croatia

Hitchhiking Odyssey of Tessa and Aimee

Day #1

I'm starting this post from the Trapula Caffe Bar in Sibenik, Croatia.

How did we get here, you may ask?

We hitchhiked.

Yes. Surprise.

I woke up to the sound of rain splattering all over Judy this morning.

Damnit. Croatia, you've been blazing blistering sunshine for the past week. Why did you have to pick today to get all drizzly? 

Maybe Ivan's mood is contagious. Croatia has contracted a dismal sense of melancholy.  

I packed my bag as strategically as possible, putting all the heavy equipment (camera, laptop, cables and cords) as close to the bottom as possible.

It still weighs as much as a small to medium sized elephant. How am I going to walk/hitchhike around Europe carrying this aubergine beast? 

I decided to ignore the aubergine beast for the next few minutes and sit in one of Ivan's stone chairs with a cup of cold milk. Pondering the sky and also ignoring the rainwater soaking my harem pants.

It's a wet, sad morning, I scribbled in red ink into my newly purchased notebook.  It's a soft, peaceful morning. The dogs. The dogs are quiet. The rain has even washed away the snails, creeping, crawling up the stone chairs. 

We leave Ivan's this morning. I'm nervous and melancholy. Excited and... poetic? 

Can melancholy with a positive twist be construed as poetic? 

Giuseppe prepared the last meal for us last night. Mussels (cozze, in Italiano) that we'd gathered on the beach in front of the cement factory (delicious) after Elizabeth, Tessa and I had swum to a nearby island. 

Swimming is just so difficult for me. I get the slightest bit of water in my face and I absolutely lose it. Panic. Anxiety. Spluttering, flailing, lemming action. But Tessa (who was a lifeguard in New Zealand) swam next to me and I was able to find a bit of calm amidst the panic rising in my throat. 

I finished my scribbles, heaved my pack onto my shuddering shoulders and said goodbye to Elizabeth.

Giuseppe is from Southern Italy and doesn't believe in mornings, so he hugged us goodbye the night before.

I hope we see him again. Tessa and I have adopted his exclamation of "oh, Madonna!" and use it whenever we possibly can.

"OH, MADONNA!"

Giuseppe has left his footprint on our hitchhiking odyssey. We like it just fine. Although we like his risotto even better.

We trekked down to the road, walked to the first big stoplight and stuck out our thumbs.

Cars whizzed by. Trucks zoomed past. Vehicles full of tradesmen waved regretfully as they left us in the dust.

Tessa and I smiled and laughed and tried to look loveable.

"The cars too full to pick us up make eye contact and we're invisible to all the rest."

We tried standing on one foot, but to no avail. Drivers were not impressed by our one-legged antics.

An hour passed. The rain returned. Tessa wrinkled her little nose as a foreboding cloud threatened to dump its contents all over our not loveable enough selves.

"Why did it have to rain today?"

Just as I was about to let my spirits drop into a rain puddle, a car flashed its lights and pulled over.

Tessa looked at me.

I looked at Tessa.

We grabbed our bags, rolled up our signs and ran for it.

"Trogir?" the friendly looking man with a baby seat in the back right seat said as I opened the front door.

"Perfect!" I climbed in front and Tessa clamored in behind.

"No English," the mild mannered fellow commented as I attempted to close the car door over my timberland boots. "Italia, Croatia."

"OH, MADONNA!" Tessa and I yelled in unison. The mild mannered man looked mildly surprised and switched on the radio.

We rode in mostly silence for a few minutes.

"Coffee? No problem. Five minutes?" our new friend interrupted the radio with his broken English.

We pulled into a gas station and he treated us each to a cappuccino. Then dropped us off in Trogir and seemed very apologetic that he couldn't give us a ride all the way to Sibenik.

"Grazie mille!" I beamed as I heaved my elephant out the door.

Ride number one had taken about an hour to catch and had delivered us about 20 km closer to our destination.

"So, lesson from this ride. Stay positive. Even when it's raining. Also, baby seats are a good sign."

We spent the next half an hour walking through and out of Trogir.  And up lots of hills.

"Second lesson from this ride. Ask the driver (if language barrier allows) to drop us off on the highway where we can get another ride. Perhaps we should have stayed at the gas station."

My mother told me she'd be praying for us when I skyped her last night. I'm not a religious lady, but I believe my mother's prayers might have had something to do with our second ride. A German speaking Croatian priest drove past us as we lumbered up the narrow, winding road, spun around and drove back to pick us up.

He spoke no English. I told him something similar to, "Ich spreche kine Deutsch. Danka schoene!"

And this catholic priest with a Jesus fish and a cross hanging from his rear-view mirror drove us up the winding hill and towards our destination.

On the way, he managed to communicate something about Croats being cousins to native New Zealanders, but Tessa is going to fact check that one.

Our priest dropped us off ten kilometers away from Sibenik and continued on his solemn way to Zadar.

"Do we walk?" I asked Tessa as my shoulders screamed in protest.

"Let's hold out our thumbs, just in case."

We walked for twenty-odd minutes along a very narrow shoulder, finally running into the toll station.

Where we stopped to eat some peanuts and assess our situation.

Just as we'd started to enjoy our nuts, a tall, slender worker clad in bright orange approached us.

My hands quavered above the nuts.

"You speak English?"

"Yes," Tessa responded for the both of us. I try to let her New Zealand accent make the first impression (Americans aren't thought too highly of abroad. Surprise).

"You aren't allowed to be here."

"We kind of got stuck," Tessa replied.

Part of me wanted to hyperventilate and stress out. But then I decided that I had two choices.

I could lose my bananas, or I could simply enjoy my peanuts.

I enjoyed my peanuts.

"Where do you want to be?" the workman asked.

"We're trying to get to Sibenik," I chimed in.

"Oh, Sibenik! Okay. Wait here."

After a lot of Croatian and waving arms, the slender workman pulled over a driver passing through and asked if he'd give us a ride.

By asked, it seemed a bit more like he demanded the driver give us a ride.

"Is he hitchhiking for us?" Tessa seemed amused and confused.

"I think so..."

The cantankerous middle-aged man in the car moved aside his bag of cherries. Tessa sat in the front and I climbed into an empty back and propped myself and my bag against the back door.

And now we're in Sibenik. Enjoying coffee and beer at a cafe and feeling very satisfied indeed.

"What's the lesson for ride number two?"

"Don't take toll roads. No little roads. No toll roads. We're like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Medium sized roads are just right."

Tessa is smiling on the outside for this picnic.

PICNIC #2