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This page tells about a three day trip from Budapest to Croatia and back that we made in September 1999. The same text appears in the diary as well. I'm sorry about the bouncy tenses.
Reveille at four a.m. A most senseless weekend begins. According to the time table our train leaves at Déli (southern) railway station, but we went to Keleti. The right thing to do, since the train left there. We buy two-way tickets to Zagreb, and notice right thereafter that the train goes directly to Rijeka (==our goal).
The IC-train was surprisingly tidy and comfortable. The carriages are divided into compartments for six people, and the seats can be made to beds. Even the toilet was OK and had paper. The trip went fine sleeping, drinking wine and playing cards. We ran out of wine pretty soon, though.
According to the time table, the train stopped in Zagreb for an hour. In practice it stood 8 minutes. We bought tickets to Rijeka and back. An old local man comes to our compartment. He said he's retarded, but might have meant retired. He gives us some place names worth of visit: Opatija, Lovran, Baska Voda (approx. Finnish slang "Shit Water") etc.
The views are hilly and beautiful, and the marks of the war can't be seen anywhere. The view alone would have been a sufficient reason to take the trip. Especially the descent from the mountains to the Adriatic coast was just gorgeous.
We intended to stay the first night in Opatija. However, as we asked for the right way on a bus stop in Rijeka, a 17-years old local girl Anna promised to guide us. She was quite ... er... physically superfluous. She took us to her home village, whose name I've forgotten. (Medveja?) It's on the Istria peninsula a couple of kilometers from Lovran. They say Opatija is a bad place to camp on the beach (200 policemen/10000 inhabitants).
![[Croatian bus tickets]](../pictures/croatiabus.png)
The place we stayed in is a small village that apparently makes its living out of German tourists. Despite that, it was a beautiful place. Mountains are always beautiful. The beach and the bottom of the sea
is small round stones, which is in fact better than sand. The clothes,
towel and everything remain tidier, and the pants are not full of
sand.
We swam (there's a slide on our beach), drank wine and talked (the others talked, that is). PosSibly sometHing illegal might Have hAppened. (Not me.) We slept on the beach. The sky was bright and it was cold enough, at least for those who didn't have a sleeping bag. I had a winter jacket, which is a bit too small to work as a blanket and mattress at the same time. My feet were freezing, and I guess the girls weren't too warm either.
We rented diving masks and snorkels, which I can't really use. The water was clear, turquoise and full of fish, anyway. It's a bit cloudy, but very warm. We elephant-marched to Lovran along a road dangerous for pedestrians. On the way we stopped to take a nude-swim in the sea. The rocks were really sharp, and I got some wounds in my hand and feet. Sarah tried to find out why Nakki is called Nakki.
![[Croatian coffee bill]](../pictures/croatiarec.png)
From Lovran we took bus to Opatija. We (==the others) drank in a
bar our own spirits. We played cards and listened to music. It
starts raining. We move to the beach to drink and look for a place to stay. Nakki and Sarah performed a rain dance, but the rain continues.
We found kinda shelter under the eaves of some pavillion. Nakki and Sarah are having wine in a nearby piano-restaurant, Jarkko tries to
sleep, J-P is arguing with some local teens, Mikko is somewhere and so is Becca, and I'm pissed off. Don't feel like going any disco or bar or anything. Typical. Eeyore.
J-P scared the teens away by speaking some Norwegian. We went to say hello to Sarah and Nakki. The headwaiter mistook J-P for some kind of troublemaker, and probably was right. J-P wanted to by a bottle of wine, but the proposal was defeated by votes 4 to 1.
Mikko passed out in some bar, and Jarkko got fever. He had to go to a hotel (chicken). The rain ceased but we got a some showers during the night. I slept a couple of ours in Mikko's sleeping bag, and after his bar closed I had to move into my jacket.
![[Snippet of map of Opatija]](../pictures/croatiamap.jpg)
Before 6 a.m. I was conscious enough to notice the smell of our residence. I swam naked and walked on the beach clothed a couple of hours before the others got up. J-P washed his sleeping bag in the sea. I brushed my teeth in the sea. The water is too salty to my taste. We had breakfast in a pizzeria and took a bus to Rijeka. We had about an hour to spend in Rijeka before our train left. Nearly all shops were closed and I couldn't spend the rest of my kunas [1].
The return in the train was more boring than the trip the other way. Soberness might have had something to do with it. We didn't have the place tickets required in IC-trains. The seats would have costed 1000ft a piece when bought in the train. The conductor took 500ft and let it be. It took me some time to understand the deal. When the train began to get filled, we lost our seats but the conductor took us to the first class.
Budapest is like coming home, and Martos is a five star hotel.
The morals of the story:
[1] ^ The old geezer told us that the Croatian currency kuna means the fur of a Martes martes. That's Latin for a pine marten (which none of us knew at the moment.) ^
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