James' Croatian Holiday

Možete li to napisati, molim vas? – A travel journal of (mostly) wild Camping in Croatia.

At Lord Round’s suggestion, I kept a journal of my recent holiday in Croatia. It was a good idea: although the photographs we took (found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jamesegriffiths/CroatiaSept2010#) present with perfect verisimilitude Croatia’s stunning natural and man-made beauty, there would many events which, without this journal’s existence, would soon fade from memory.

A quick overview: the holiday lasted 20 days, 12 of which were spent in Croatia. The rest were spent travelling to Croatia in a reasonably old Ford Escort estate belonging to Lena’s mother. Before setting off proper, three days were spent in Scharrel, near Hannover, which were spent getting the car repaired (though never completely), buying necessities, and waiting for Lena’s driving license to be prepared by the German authorities.

The budget for the holiday was €500 each, which includes travel to and from Leiden, NL. We went over-budget by 10%, mostly due to unforeseen expenditure; those pesky hidden costs.

The following is copied verbatim from the soiled exercise book that the lies next to me as I travel on the Deutsche Bahn from Hannover to Leiden. I hope you enjoy!

Entry 1
Day 1, 13:55, on the E30 towards Braunschweig (30km east of Hannover)

Three days in Scharrel precede this first entry. Little of event has occurred. We have shopped, had the car repaired (only for it to intermittently break again), travelled to Hannover and consistently overslept. Much coffee and fags have been consumed on my part.

Some noteworthy episodes: Lena’s Oma, whose cigarettes are rationed and dispatched via Lena’s mother, found the ‘stockroom’ (a drawer in a Welsh dresser) while Mama was absent, and took her bounty back with her to her own house across the lawn. Two hours later, upon entering her living room to turn off the TV and lights, Lena and I found Oma sitting in an armchair shrouded in a haze of smoke having smoked 19 fags in under three hours. An admirable effort by anybody’s standards!

Lena, somewhat impulsively, purchased a sewing machine with which the ‘curtains’ for the car have now been properly darned. €90: not bad. Tension-problems yesterday meant the machine started ‘bird-nesting’, resulting in a great loss of thread. Luckily for Lena the problem was resolved by turning a particular knob in a particular fashion. How many Germans does it take to fix a sewing machine?...

I met Lena’s most recent ex-boyfriend Patrick from whom Lena has borrowed A Brief History of Time by Hawkins. He seems nice. Well, his English is good, which is God-send after listening solely to German for the last few days. He’s a total medic though; as clean as a whistle. He bet Lena we couldn’t complete the Croatian portion of our trip in less than €1,000 (a bet he has lost).

So: we are now on the Autobahn. It’s raining. I’m starting to need a piss. We intend to get passed München before we bed down tonight. Then tomorrow: Austria, Italy, Slovenia & then Croatia (we hope!).

Entry 2
Day 2, 19:00, the Italian Alps, on the way to Udine.

My bum is pretty sodden. Our original camping spot for tonight was situated at a +2,000 metre altitude, and when the clouds came to smother the mountainside, we were smothered too. After 20 minutes of sitting in the car watching it rain on our camping chairs outside we decided to descend to sunnier/less miserable climes. After a 20 minutes descent we discovered a dirt-track leading to a secluded spot by a crystal-clear alpine river.

Today we travelled from Sternburgersee – a lake in Bavaria – through Austria and into northern Italy. The driving experience coming down from the heights of Austria was incredible. A high-octane, pedal-to-the-metal event! I was on the brink of shitting myself the whole time. We try and drive at 100 to 110 km/h in order to save petrol. This was achieved on this stretch of road with the gear stick in neutral. I weaved in and out of the lanes, overtaking trucks and caravans, diving through tunnels, speeding across massive viaducts whose supporting pillars disappeared down into valleys hundreds of metres below. At one point in Italy, as we plummeted at 120km/h into a tunnel, a truck came up right behind me. As the thunderous horn blew I ventured a backwards glance to see in the shadows a burly hand gesticulating angrily. It was then Lena informed me that, in Italy, one’s headlights must be on all the time.

Before leaving Austria we stopped in Innsbruck, a town about which there is little to report. We got a parking fine (€21). Although Tim is currently in Innsbruck we didn’t see him. Neither by arrangement or by luck in the streets (it was before his usual rising time: 13:30). Innsbruck is okay – quaint and nicely framed by mountains, but the city itself held for me little charm.

I didn’t sleep much last night. We arrived at Sturnburgersee at 23:00 and drove onto some farmland (though Lena maintains that it was public property) and up parked up in a verge near to the farmhouse. It rained loudly in the night. I am yet to find a comfortable sleeping position in the car. It’s a mix of physical and mental discomfort – physical because of the confines of the car (even with the back seats lowered the a Ford Escort Estate cannot sufficiently accommodate an outstretched adult man), and mental because of a constant, childish and irrational fear of being awoken by some yokel Bavarian’s polite request for me to ‘squeal like a pig, boy’.

When I was awoken it was by a herd a bulls being escorted into an adjacent field by a farmer. They pushed passed and smelt the car, but the farmer, although clearly aware of our presence, didn’t come and ask us leave. We quickly left before he started herding anything more dangerous past us.

Hopefully tonight will be better – some sedative (wine) should stave off the insomnia!

Entry 3
Day 4, 10:06, 5km South of Umag, on the Istrian peninsula of Croatia.

The night in the Italian Alps was better, though still punctuated by heavy rains which swelled the river and made it roar incessantly. I awoke abruptly at 02:00 after a horrible dream (the car was washed into the river and we couldn’t escape and we drowned) to shout to Lena that ‘we should head for higher ground!’ We didn’t. Interestingly Lena had a similar dream, except that in hers we floated blissfully down the river in the car to the foot of the mountains. Our mentalities are hardly united at the moment. The next morning we washed (I from a bowl, Lena naked in the freezing river), ate, and set off into Italy proper.

Lena drove from our camp high up in the Italian Alps to lowland Italy via Udine. The alpine drive was once again stunning. We climbed to +1,700 meters and chicaned down mountainsides. Although lost on Lena, I especially enjoyed Misty Mountain Hop when it came on the CD player.

The chill from the mountains swiftly dissipated as we drove southwards towards the coastal city of Trieste. By the time we arrived in Trieste I was already sweating buckets. Trieste is what I imaged a regular Italian city to look like: dirty and stiflingly hot. The architecture was impressive, though somewhat marred by the crumbling render. We caféd and gelatoed. The quantity of coffee I received was measly – a small teaspooned puddle at the bottom of an earthenware shot glass. Strong and gritty too. I think perhaps the Italians mistake finely ground coffee beans for its liquid equivalent.

Upon leaving Trieste and advancing toward Croatia we were done twice. First by the 9.8% commission on our Croatia Kuna (equating to €27.50 each) and secondly by €15 Slovenian vignette. €15 to travel a 25km stretch of coast on a ‘highway’ with a maximum speed limit of 70km/h!

In Croatia we headed straight for the coast, where we ate on a pier as the sun fell out of the sky. A stressful experience followed; driving up and down narrow and dusty tracks in search of a suitable sleeping spot. We settled upon a fallow field next to a pumpkin patch a 10 minute walk from the sea. We walked down to the shore and drank a bottle of wine. We were joined by a Croatian man who gave us some Istrian plonk and me Croatian fags. Although the conversation was forced (he spoke little English and less German), we discovered that he was the Policija! He was also a swinger and a chain-smoker – which made him a less little fearsome – but we were still cautious about him following us back to the car (as wild-camping is illegal and heavily fined in Croatia according to Lonely Planet).

In the night the car was HOT and I awoke today at 06:00, unable to sleep again. We breakfasted on a rocky outcrop in a bay. We had a dip and are now just lounging in the sun. We intend to buy some scuba shoes to avoid stepping on poisonous sea-urchins and the like. The water here is clear and warm, but the beaches are rocky. Rough with the smooth I guess.

Entry 4
Day 5, 11:00, Istria Naturalist Camp, Funtana, on the Istian Peninsula.

Yesterday we broke the ski box we have borrowed from Lena’s Aunt and Uncle, but luckily it still closes. The hinges on the hydraulic arm have come away from the plastic lid and so lifting the lid and extracting our stuff is now a two-person job. ‘Prop boy’ lifts while ‘grab girl’ grabs. We’re concerned about the extra tension on the front hinges now. If they break too we’re royally fucked.

Another potential crisis arose when we noticed that the fuel gauge had significantly lowered while the car had been stationary. The first thought was that the fuel tank had been ruptured by one of the many pertruding rocks we had driven over while exploring Croatia’s dirt tracks. However, upon examining the underside of the car for leakages and finding no drip, we concluded that the heat had evaporated the fuel, causing the gauge to lower. This being a happier conclusion it was stuck to. I hope it’s the correct one.

We drove to Poreč (pronounced by me as ‘porridge’) in the middle of the day, which is an old town with a harbour full of speedboats. We ambled through the narrow streets and stopped in the town’s basilica – a crumbling old church with a gold-leafed alter and small wooden pews. I taught Lena how to genuflect; we took some photos, and then proceeded back through the market. We bought out scuba shoes in Poreč too. 50 kuna = €7. Bargain.

The shoes were first worn later that evening at the nudist camp at which we pitched (and are still pitched). It’s pretty cool here: lots of saggy tits and tiny cocks and behemoth bushes at which to ogle. I’ve only had my dongle on show for a short while so far (English prudence is hard to overcome), though I shall attempt some nuddy swimming in the sea shortly. Lena, of course, has been starkers from the moment we parked the car. Typical Germans: nothing changes. In fact the camp is overrun with them, so no wonder she feels comfortable stripping off here: it’s a national pastime.

We had a wonderful BBQ last night and drank and wine whilst listening to a covers band play ABBA hits from a hotel across the bay. I slept much better in a relatively cool tent. I have felt more relaxed here than anywhere else on the trip so far. Properly because I can stretch out fully in the tent, and have something other than spaghetti in my stomach.

Today, after a round of crazy golf, we intend to see some of the natural splendour offered by Croatia, firstly at the Lim Fjord (a gaping wound in the Istrian landscape created by melting glacier after the last ice age) and secondly at Včka National Park (oak & chestnut forests, bears, falcons and eagles). We will wild camp near the park and continue onwards down the Dalmatian coast from there.

Entry 5
Day 8, 16:00, Kamp Paklenica, Starigrad, 20km north of Zadar.

Firstly, we did not play crazy golf at the nudist camp. Running out of time to check out we instead opted for a shower – our first proper wash of the journey thus far. We drove then drove to the fjord, which was very beautiful. Its waters were a turquoise colour, and the vegetation either side of the water was a vivid green. It reminded me of the waters surrounding the archipelago of islands off the coast of Vietnam or Thailand (from what I’ve seen of the pictures on the covers of travel books anyway).

From the fjord we journeyed inland across the Istrian peninsula to the foothills of the Včka National Park via a LIDL we espied in the small town of Pazin. Because we only arrived at the national park at 16:00 – not time enough before dark to hike, trek or bird-watch – we changed course and headed for the medieval town of Labin. Labin is a town split asunder: a grotty collection of soviet high-rises in the valley, and a haphazard collection of crumbling houses, churches, stairs and alleyways on the hilltop. Upon parking on the hillside we sauntered though the deserted old town, which is populated only by cats and dust. Although pretty, the town was very dull (‘much like Leiden’ ventures Lena), and we left within an hour heading inland in search of a secluded camping spot. We found one in the village of Trgnt (not on the map), and had a nice evening there playing chess (the game abandoned due to bad light) and drinking beer. It was during the chess game Lena thought of using the plastic string (the kind used for making clothes lines) we bought to attach the lid of ski box to the hydraulic arm. This proved to be a great idea, and has provided us a temporary solution to our ski box problems.

The next day was supposed to be a ‘relaxation’ day in an official campsite near the town of Opatija on the eastern coast of Istria. However, as we advanced up route 66 (an amazingly pretty road – sea on one side, broad-leaved forests on the other) we realised that the imminent rainstorm may mire our plans. As we got into Opatija town centre driving visibility reduced to zero and we were forced to park by the promenade and shelter in the car for an hour in the hope that the rain would pass. When it didn’t we changed plans and drove on to Rijeka, Croatia’s third largest city. This was a drab town; one which the then absent sunshine I doubt would improve. We spend most of the time in MacDonald’s on the free wi-fi connection. This period was punctuated by a trip to the laughably small and completely pointless ‘natural history museum’, which was a town-house of three floors. In the basement was the ‘aquarium room’ – a cellar with three 2x1x1 metre tanks encased in the walls. The fish looked like rejects from the day’s catch. The first and second floors were devoted to the wildlife of the Rijeka region: glass booths containing fibre glass models of bears, lizards, lynxes and snakes. These floors only served to inform Lena and I as to what wildlife may try and eat us whilst we wild-camped in the region. The fact the models’ accompanying blurb failed to inform us as to the venomousness of Rijeka’s wildlife did little to assuage these growing fears.

It was still raining when we left Rijeka, and so we drove southwards along the Northern Dalmatian coastal road, hoping to beat the rain. Soon realising that the rainstorm stretched further south than we could reach before dark, we headed inland and up into the hills in search of spot in which to sleep. Darkness rapidly approached as we entered the pastoral and uninviting hamlet of Ledenice. We first intended to sleep in a hilltop car-park overlooking a rusting cemetery, but upon the wind picking up and vigorously shaking the car we decided to seek shelter in the valley below. In our haste the spot we chose – the corner of the some pastureland for sheep – was poor: open, visible, and frequently trodden by locals. Before we arrived the car had cut out (it occasionally fails to start upon turning the key in the ignition: a problem we are currently ignoring in the hope it goes away by itself), and we were losing light quickly. Lena built a makeshift stove from stones to protect our gas cooker from the now gale-force wind, and we ate soup in the car. The famer came and collected the sheep not twenty metres from the car, but it was too either too dark and miserable for him to see us, or too dark and miserable for him to care about us sleeping on his land. As we set in the car playing chess (James 1 – 0 Lena) the last of the light was swallowed by the darkness. The night was moonless. The wind swept around the car, lifting and dropping it. We bedded down at 22:00 and arose at 06:00 this morning, anxious to leave for the coast. As the sun rose on a tranquil morning we coffeed by the sea and then drove onto our current campsite in Starigrad (not before checking out four other campsites – 2 just because they had confusingly similar names as the site we sought). We now sit in the baking sun. I’m burning, but Lena isn’t. She assures me she doesn’t burn, but I know that this is a lie. Why would she wear sunscreen otherwise? We hope to chillax and finally play that game of crazy golf.

Entry 6
Day 10, 09:00, 20km north of Šibenik, North Dalamatia.

Šibenik backwards phonetically spells out ‘cannabis’. Well, sort of. Anyway, Lena beat me in crazy golf 2 games to 1. Luck had a lot to do with it. The campsite was nice but the sea cold after the preceding evening’s rains. In the evening naked German children ran across our ocean view, and we watch them scrape at the dusty beach with their bare hands, hunched over like prehistoric hunter-gatherers. It reminded me of the final scenes of Tim Burton’s version of Planet of the Apes. At about 20:00, as we tucked into Aubergine and Salami spaghetti and drank our dirty and diluted wine (less than €2), ‘disco’ music flared up from the adjacent hotel, pumping out German equivalents to Agadoo until 23:00. Regardless we went to bed at 22:00, tired from our 06:00 start.

The next day we drove to Zadar, whose old town lies behind old Roman walls that shield it from the surrounding sea. Unsurprisingly, its streets were narrow and winding; the sunlight struggling to reach the pavement due to the abundance of cafe awnings that hung from every wall. We took in the sights – the ‘sea organ’; a series of pipes implanted into the pier wall below the waterline that played dissonant chords as the swell rushed through them, and the ‘sun salutation’; a group of metal circles embedded into the promenade arranged in such a way that they resemble with reasonable accuracy the size of the planets in our solar system and their distance from each other.

Upon first entering Zadar’s old town we saw a scarcity of parking spaces. After scouring the street below the city wall we eventually entered car park bursting with cars. Whilst waiting for the car in front to move (there was a queue), Lena turned off the engine. Soon the car in front indicated that it wished to reverse, and that only by reversing could one leave. It was here, stuck in a queue of cars waiting for us to reverse, that our car decided not to start. As Lena was frantically trying to ignite the engine (by turning the key this way and that), more cars from all directions began to ascend upon us, all gesturing for us to get out of the way. I got out and went car to car telling them that our engine wouldn’t start. The typical response was one of annoyance and condescension. Luckily a nice Croatian man helped me push the car out of the thoroughfare and towards a clear parking spot. As we pushed, a total cunt of a Croatian man squeezed through and parked his car in the spot we wanted! I went over to his car and stood at the door, waiting for him to roll down the window so I could ask him to move, but he didn’t: he sat there pretending I didn’t exist until I walked away. He then got out, locked his car, and walked off in the other direction. We pushed our car in front of his, blocking it in. We then waited, hoping none of the owners of the other cars we’d blocked in arrived. They didn’t, and after 10 minutes the car wheezed back into life. We vowed never to turn off the engine in unsuitable situations again.

In the two or three days previous to our Zadar visit we had been running out of butane for our cooker. The situation became desperate yesterday, and on the way to Zadar and in the city itself we were constantly on the prowl for gas canisters. We tried Ingo Sports in Sterigrad, METRO in Politnik (we were turned away because we are not METRO card holders), Intersport in suburban Zadar and four petrol stations on the way to Zadar. All to no avail: either they stocked the wrong kind of canisters or none at all. In Zadar the tourist information lady directed us to ‘Thomas G’s’, a gas canister specialist shop on the outskirts of town whose sneezing shop assistant (she said ‘I have allergy’, but whether to Lena or I I couldn’t tell), informed us she didn’t stock the required brand. Feeling as though our search would be fruitless, we bought a different cooker/canister combo for €13 and left thoroughly satisfied to be finished with the chase. If a gas canister specialist doesn’t stock the brand we wanted, who will?

We experienced our third thunderstorm in Zadar, and sought shelter in a number of cosy bars, where I drank 3 litres of beer for only €12. Lena drank less for far less money. She was driving: ha! It was dark when we left Zadar and set off southwards down the coast. Unable to see, we stopped in what we thought was a secluded spot. It smelled a bit funny – Lena guessed that it was manure because we’d stopped in a pasture for cows. The morning light revealed that our secluded cow field was actually a rubbish dump next to the main road. Wild-camping tip: find your spot before dark! We swiftly left and breakfasted in an olive grove further down the coast. Today: hiking in the Krka National Park.

Entry 6
Day 11, 08:00, Otok Cuovo, near Trogir.

Krka National Park is an inland ravine through which the clear waters of the Krk river runs. The Krk is pincered on each side by steep banks from which lush foliage erupts. The waters of the Krk run at a crawl, and over the course of millennia algae had built up on the calcium carbonate crystals deposited in the bedrock, supporting a wetland ecosystem of shrubs, trees, fish and waterfowl.

We visited the park’s most photo-friendly spot, namely Skradinski Buk (or Stravinsky’s Butt as it was more frequently called by us), which is a collection of small waterfalls and miniature lagoons aggregating to a 47m drop in the river’s overall height. In front of the largest waterfall was a small lake, in which the waters were calm enough for swimming. It was here that Lena and I took a dip – hers longer than mine as I only dared venture as far as the edge of the shallow coral shelf.

To wander around Skradinski Buk one must follow an artificial and linear gangway, which, when crowded with tourists, meant shuffling along behind slow families and attempting to avoid ruining a man’s photograph of his wife against the scenic backdrop. This somewhat reduced the organic feel of the area, and the impression that Skradinski Buk was a commercial rather than natural spectacle remained at the forefront of my mind.

This feeling burrowed further when we discovered that one could not hike in the Park; that the attractions available along the course of the river (the monastery on the island, the ruined castle) must be reached by car (which involved leaving the park, driving for miles, and then re-entering it) or by boat (€12 between each attraction). We were being shepherded.

To avoid unnecessary expense we hiked back up the steep hillside out of the valley to the car, which we intended to use to reach another of the park’s attractions, Roški Slap. As we were hiking I began to think about the Sex Pests and devised the start of a new song. At the time I had a melody, guitar line and bassline too, but now only the first verse and chorus remain:

When I die I hope I rot
and fertilise the Brewer’s hops
When I die I hope I might
Come back as an English pint

I don’t believe in heaven, I believe in drinking (x3)
I don’t believe in heaven, I believe in SATAN.

Anyway, Roški Slap was a scale version of Stravinsky’s butt, and although exceptionally pretty, there wasn’t much to do there. We were off again in half an hour. By then it was about 17:00 and we wanted to camp nearby to get as much light as possible.

Upon emerging from the valley we drove across Croatia’s hinterland, which consists of tall dry grasses and small ragged shrubs. Great numbers of the shrubs are dead and the ground parched at their roots: a clear sign of wildfires. We drove though this thoroughly uninviting landscape for 20 minutes before arriving in the town of Drniš. If the Serbo-Croatian speaking world ever wanted to remake Deliverance or perhaps the Wicker Man both could be set in Drniš. This town was a crumbling, bordered-up dustbowl of poverty, boredom and social immobility. Interbreeding must be rife, as every one of the solemn, wrinkled faces that sat by the road and watched our car pass had eyes set so askew their tears must surely roll down their backs.

We stopped briefly in Drniš at an empty supermarket to buy booze and from here we made our getaway towards an area which, on the ADAC map at least, looked inviting: isolated and pierced by a number of rivers that flowed down from the Bosnian highlands to the north-east. What the map didn’t describe was the dusty and wilting hinterland around us. We stopped once to investigate a potential wild-camping spot high up in the hills, which was short-listed but abandoned (spacious but too much debris from fly-tipping). Upon turning back onto the main road, we then noticed a number of signposts placed at 100m intervals on the borders of the land we’d just explored. Emblazed upon each sign was a skull and crossbones and some mostly unintelligible Serbo-Croatian words. One word did stand out however: MINE. We’d been walking through a field covered with landmines!

Not interested in risking it, we made a snap decision to drive coastward to more westernised civilisation. Unfortunately, between the hinterlands and the coast lay only mountains – big, tall, and without lay-bys, dirt-tracks, woods or forests of any kind. By the time we saw trees again it was too late – we were already on the frequently patrolled coastal road in the middle of a town. We drove northwards along the coast and glassed a forested region on a yonder hillside. The map told us it was the island of Cuovo, and that it was boarded via a road bridge in the town of Trogir.

We boarded Cuovo, drove to the southern tip of the island, found a beautiful olive grove and stopped for the night. By now it was 19:30 and the light was fading. We ate swiftly and sat in the dark for a while, Lena with a blanket over her knees. We could hear a group of teenagers around the corner (which explained the abundance of opened but unused condoms strewn along the dirt path) but turned into bed before they left to get out of the cold wind that had blown in from out on the Adriatic.

Entry 7
Day 12, 08:30, Stobreč, 6km south of Split, South Dalmatia.

After leaving Otok Cuovo (Otok = ‘island’) we journeyed to Split, Croatia’s second largest city. I was okay on the way to Split, but once there I came over with an unshakable exhaustion. A mix of terribly cheap wine and a number of nights of poor sleep I reckon is the culprit. Consequentially, I trudged through Split like a zombie – not appreciating its unique and beautiful roman architecture at all. To be frank, I doubt I would have appreciated yet more tiny, winding alleyways and crumbling mortar – it’s becoming a bit old. Lena, as patient as ever, led me to a park where we rested for a few hours. Unfortunately no sleep visited me here, though the lie-down was still restorative. In this park I was stung by a wasp. Whether this is worth documenting is questionable.

After some walking we coffeed and boozed and I perked up a little. We had our first and last restaurant experience in a bistro by the promenade, which was full of Englishmen. I was unimpressed by my choice (I randomly chose ćavapčići, which turned out to be kebab meat and chips) but Lena’s mixed fish platter looked delicious.

It was dark 21:00 when we left the bistro, and so we drove back to Otok Cuovo and capped in the same spot as the night before. Although shattered – barely functioning – I was not asleep by 04:00. Lena awoke and found me at the point of tears and turned the car around so we were no longer sloped bootwards but bonnetwards. This solved my sleeping problems and I slept until 06:00 when the light and heat of daybreak awoke me.

Feeling very tired and completely unadventurous we continued past Split to Stobreč, where we set up camp in a paid campsite. I tried to sleep for a while but the light and traffic from the main road 50m away prevented it. We then left at 13:00 for Omiš and river rafting. We were bused 9.5km upstream and paddled back down it. The rapids were meagre – something one could predict by the fact that none of the instructors wore helmets. At one point where it could have gotten bumpy we were told to alight and walk along the riverbank whilst the skipper careened the rapids solo. Further down the river we stopped and Lena jumped from about 5m from a rock into the freezing river.

We returned to the campsite, barbequed some pork and went to bed. Sleep was punctuated by the usual annoyances; light, sound, gravel under the tent. I awoke this morning at 07:00 still feeling tired, but not dysfunctionally so. Today, we shall begin our journey northwards towards the Plitvine lakes and, eventually, homeward. We have decided to skip Dubrovnik (gasp! Horror!) due to financial constraints. We also think that finding wild-camping spots will be difficult further south as the country tapers away leaving only the coast, as inland = Bosnia.

Entry 8
Day 14, 10:45, Slovenia, 23km east of Krško.

Just listened to ‘Der König Der Löwen – das Broadway musical im Hamburger Hafen’ – an experience I wish never to repeat. We’re currently undertaking phase I of our homeward journey, which takes us from the rural Croatian town of Slunj (a mere 20km east of Bosnia) to somewhere north of Munich in one ten-hour driving stint. We entered Slovenia at a non-descript border village called Jurovski Brod (translation: Jurassic Bread (?)) and have already traversed Novo Mesto, heading north-east towards Maribor, a city which someone – I forget who – once described to me as the most boring city on Earth. Upon this subject we must withhold judgement, as we will only experience its inherently boring outer ring-roads. From Maribor we will head northwards towards Graz, Austria.

The sour mood underlying my last entry dissipated almost immediately after I’d written it. Upon leaving leaving Stobreč the sun began shining: a promising start. On the northern side of Split we found a Baumaxx and bought screws with which to permanently fix the ski box. We drove inland again – I was driving and thoroughly enjoyed imitating Croatian drivers by going needlessly fast around hairpin corners and recklessly overtaking trucks on blind corners. Somewhere before Drniš my recklessness bought us very close to a head-on collision. We’d dipped into a canyon with sheer cliffs on either side the single carriage road. Following the road I turned 90 degrees to the left, and found myself behind a tractor. A Croatian car had been following me, and, rather than slow down, the Croatian driver sped up and overtook us both. Seeing only 50m of road ahead of me before the next blind corner – retrospectively an insufficient amount – I whispered ‘fuck it’ to myself and shifted into third gear and followed the Croatian car onto the other side of the road. Lena suddenly started screaming ‘James, no, James, no!’ as a car came from around the corner towards me. I remained silent but floored it, and snuck in just in front of the tractor before the oncoming car (which had slowed down to prevent the impending accident) swished passed. Though Lena swiftly returned to her reading, my t-shirt remained stuck to the seat with sweat for a long time afterwards.

We skirted the ghost town of Drniš and travelled north-east to Knin, a town whose roads are in desperate need of resurfacing. After we passed Kosovo (the Croatian town, not the self-declared independent Balkan state) the landscape changed – the grass became green again, and spindly malnourished shrubs gave way to forests of birch. We steadily ascended to about 800m, where the air was cooler. Here we found wide valleys of pastureland; sheep, hay-bails and cows. We camped on a hillside near Korinica overlooking an ungrazed meadow of wild grasses and ate vacuum-packed fruit de mer with spaghetti. I drank a whole load of Croatian supermarket own-brand booze (called ‘K-plus pivo’ for the adventurous out there) and had to forfeit a game of chess due to being too drunk to concentrate (James 1 – 1 Lena). The cloudless sky provided the most stunning view of the night sky I have ever witnessed; as my vision flittered in and out of focus I got the strange feeling that the heavens were fit to burst with stars and supernovae. The line of the Milky Way tore across the sky and disappeared behind the distant hills like a rainbow.

Because the night was exceptionally cold we slept fully-clothed in the tent. The morning arrived abruptly, bringing the landscape a thick layer of mist and me a stinking hangover. Had my head not been so devastatingly ruined I would have been scared of the mist, having seen 2006’s The Mist (horror, aliens, gore) a few weeks previously.

That day we drove to the Plitvice lakes, 20km north of our hillside camp. Although the same descriptions of the fauna and flora apply to the Plitvice as the Krka National Park (see entry 6), the Plitvice was far more spectacular; more lakes, higher waterfalls, footpaths for hiking. We took a ferry across the lower lake, which ambled along slowly enough to be mesmerizingly pleasant. To enable visitors decent views of the cascades the authorities have built a network of gangways through the shallows and marshlands, which between 12:00 and 16:00 become congested with hordes of Japanese girls and German OAPs. Consequentially, the natural marvels contained at the Plitvice cannot be appreciated at one’s own pace buy at the speed of the traffic. This is hardly a problem though, as the visual splendour of this place should be appreciated at leisure, and will no doubt be unsurpassed on this holiday.

We messed around a bit in the late afternoon, firstly trying to find the hotel car park in which we’d parked our car to avoid the €1 per hour official car park (and ignoring the ‘nur für gäste’ signs – we don’t know any German guv!), and secondly finding an internet cafe in which to check our emails.

We drove northwards from the Plitvice and discovered all the decent potential camping spots used for growing corn and wheat. We drove in vain for a long time, but eventually found a clearing down a dirt-track in which some corn had been dumped and left to rot. I set up the tent while Turkish music drifted into the clearing from the forest to east. Just as the tent was pitched it began to rain, and consequently the tent was cleared away again. Lena and I sat in the car as the rain poured and thunder reverberated above us – sitting until bedtime (22:00) through our fourth and final Croatian thunderstorm.

Entry 9
Day 15, 08:35, a few km east of Nürnburg, Deutschland.

Jimi has just told me that castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually. Nice observation, Jimi.

We’re undertaking phrase II of the homeward journey today – from a lake in a forest near the village of Hofdorf near the larger village of Wörth an der Donau, which is on the Donau river, which flows through the apparently picturesque town of Regensburg (on a par with Freiburg according to Lena) 20km to the east.

The night was spent next to a private lake (a glorified pond) of some Bavarian barley farmer who lives on Waldstraße, Hofdorf. Yeah Herr Friedrich, those tyre-tracks on your freshly mowed lawn, that was us!

It’s much colder this side of the Alps. We spent the twilight hour drinking the last of our supplies and discussing my inability to empathise with people and how it is symptomatic of the majority of the male race. We ate linsensuppse (a thick, lentil-based soup) and undertook some light reading (Lena: A Brief History of Time, me: The Philosophy of the Mind) before turning in at the late hour of 22:00.

We set off this morning at 06:30, coffeed in a lay-by and spent 30 minutes trying to shut the ski box (whose locking mechanism was jammed due to the morning’s frost) without snapping the key off in the lock. Lena attempted to pour cooking oil into the ski box’s gears via a funnel fashioned out of a Jaffa Cakes box. Rather than lubricating anything, the oil formed a glossy pool in the box’s bottom. Brute force eventually shut the sodding thing and we set off on the Autobahn northwards to Hannover. We should arrive at about 15:00 I reckon. Perhaps 16:00.

Yesterday’s journey:

Slovenia is a beautiful country. Hilly but not mountainous and lush with pine forests and hilltop castles. Its towns are wonderfully crafted using a tasteful mix of Bavarian, Mediterranean and Bohemian (i,e. Holy Roman Empire style) architecture. It would make a fantastic holiday destination for nature lovers, hikers and mountain bike enthusiasts. It feels more welcoming for western Europeans too – EU membership has afforded Slovenians a comfortable number of shopping malls and policeman.

Austria is not a country for passers-through. They rip you off at every opportunity. The general toll (or ‘maut’) for using their motorway is €8, and additionally to this one must pay extra for using their tunnels, an unavoidable experience. Between Ganz and Linz we paid an additional €12 in tunnel toll. This aggrieved the hell out of me, and as I drove (I did Austria yesterday) I continually muttered under my breath utterances such as ‘fucking Austrians, money grabbing bastards’ or ‘fucking yodeling wankers, goldbricking motherfuckers’ or ‘strudel sucking tossers, using my money to fund their shitty winter sports’ and various profane combinations thereof. The tunnels aren’t even fun to drive through – if they are long ones (3km and above) one suddenly loses perspective regarding whether the road is straight, ascending or descending. At one point I went mental and thought we were plummeting straight downwards, and as the white lines flittered past I got a bit overwrought about the heat we would experience as we passed through the centre of the earth.

So, that was Austria. A country I would recommend only to those who enjoy getting robbed during the daylight hours. They have the cheek to give you a receipt for the tunnel toll – like you can ask for your money back if didn’t enjoy driving at 100km in the dark with headlight after headlight whizzing past, each oncoming car trying to blind you!

Tonight we shall eat something non-spaghetti-based; a prospect I greatly anticipate. I can also wash my greasy hair – unwashed for three days. Bring on the creature comforts!

Entry 10
Day 16, 16:41, my bedroom in Leiden, the Netherlands.

We arrived in at Lena’s mother’s house in Scharrel at exactly 16:00. We hit a traffic jam on the way to Magdeburg a few hours previously. When we arrived we used the screws we bought from the Baumaxx in Split to properly fix the ski box. It took a lot of bashing and a pair of step-ladders, but it’s fixed. We cleaned and emptied the car. We ate and drank some real coffee. We slept in a real bed: one you can’t drive away!

Today we woke at 06:30 in order to get me to Neustadt for my train back to the flatlands. Thus phase III of the homeward journey (me on a train from Hannover to Schiphol) began and ended without event. Journey over.

Conclusions

Wild camp only if you are a heavy sleeper. It’s certainly a cheap way to holiday. Plan your route through Austria. Visit Croatia: it’s much prettier than wherever it is you live. Don’t buy cheap booze in EU-candidate countries. It’s not safe. If you got this far, thanks for reading: hope you enjoyed it. It was an eventful holiday which I thoroughly enjoyed. At times I wanted to get back to Leiden, but, now I am here, I wish I was away again. I guess the grass always seems greener and what-not.