All right, before I get into the trip details, I think I should finally state that I have now started classes. One month into Europe and now I start! I am taking five classes here over the course of three months until I leave and they are: Corporate Finance, International Management, International Strategic Management, Global Branding, and Global Marketing Research. So far I have only had three of them, and I will be starting the next two within the coming 2 weeks. This is a very different style of academics than I am used to because my class schedule is different every week: my rooms change often and the meeting days/times constantly change so no week is the same. That can be kind of frustrating to plan things, but I actually like it because it prevents me from forming a routine (which I like). Most of my classes have the same structure: mandatory attendance, two projects/essay, and a final exam. That's it! No homework and few quizzes (if any). Definitely different, but I like it so far!
And what's a better way to finish off my first week of classes than to go to Croatia! Our destinations were chosen based on travel time because we didn't want to spend our whole life on busses and trains (yet that is basically what we ended up doing anyway). The three places we visited were, in order: Zagreb, Plitvice Lakes National Park, and Rovinj. Myself, Will and Alan left Wednesday afternoon after my last class for the week. It was a 6-hour bus ride to Zagreb where we stayed for two nights. Unfortunately I didn't spend too much time in Zagreb itself except for the evenings and dinner because of the long bus rides. On Thursday we woke up bright and early to catch another 3-hour bus ride south to Plitvice Lakes. Thinking about it now, this could easily be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. I never knew Croatia had such beautiful nature, but then again I didn't really know what Croatia had to offer to begin with since I didn't do much research about the country beforehand. This National Park is a combination of 16 lakes that are all cascade down into each other through rivers and waterfalls. So basically, I have never before seen so many waterfalls in one place. The water was a gorgeous, incredibly clear turquoise color, and all the trees and vegetation around were in the transitioning phase of autumn so we got to see so many different colors of the surrounding forests. We arrived at the park at 11am and had five hours until our bus picked us back up to go back to Zagreb so we decided to take the second longest hike around all the lakes since we had the time to spare. You'd think after seeing the 6th lake and the 20th waterfall that we would be sick of the sites, but every body of water was different and absolutely beautiful! We took a ferry ride across the largest lake to continue with our hike and by the end of three and a half hours we finished our five-mile hike around all the lakes. I cannot even begin to describe or portray through my pictures how beautiful it was there, so I'm just going to have to say that you need to visit it! Croatia is known for their National Parks and lakes so I'd put it on your list. And luckily, Croatia is incredibly cheap. The conversion rate from the Kuna to the US dollar/Euro is not in their favor so you can go a long way with a little money. It can be easily explored on a college student's budget... That night we got back to Zagreb and met up with another friend of ours, Arvid, who took the bus while we were at the park. Again, we only ate dinner in Zagreb and then got up early on Friday to leave to Rovinj. So we didn't get any time to explore Zagreb, but from rumors, the non-existent and slightly sketchy nightlife, I got the feeling that I wasn't missing much. Maybe I'd have to visit again during the day.
Friday morning we took - guess what! - another four hour bus ride to Rovinj, which is just about as far west as you can go in Croatia. It is an adorably small harbor town where we spent way too much time. The four of us spent the rest of our Friday afternoon and evening wandering around the town in the rain. Because it is a coastal town, I made sure to eat only seafood and I was as happy as a clam (pun intended). If you know me well, you'd know that I can eat my bodyweight in seafood, and Vienna doesn't have any so I made sure to get my fill. On Saturday we were graced with a beautifully sunny, cloudless and hot day so we went to the beach! We took in the sites from around the harbor and went down south to the peninsula to check out a few different pebble beaches (Lone Bay, Golden Cape, Beach Zlatni). We took way too many photos, played in the water, and had rock skipping contests, but eventually made our way back later in the afternoon to pick up another friend who was meeting us here, Carl. Now that the five of us were together, we went to the Church of St. Euphemia and the bell tower attached to get an aerial view of the town. Now this was a part of the trip that could have easily ended in disaster... The stairs, or more like planks, to the top of the tower were some of the most dangerous, yet exhilarating stairs I have ever seen. Not exaggerating, each step was a thin, small wooden plank barely taking up half the length of your shoe. With both your heel and toes hanging off the edge of the steps we could have one miss step and have your whole leg go in between the planks. It was not safe, and I'm sure people have gotten seriously injured doing this, but it was well worth it. At the top we got a beautiful 360-degree view of the whole bay and the surrounding islands off the coast. Well worth the danger. But the way down was a million times worse. I'm very impressed no one tripped or fell through, but I did get the heel of my feet caught on the stairs too many times to count... To finish off our trip with a hurrah, we took a sunset and dolphin spotting boat cruise. And yes, there are apparently dolphins living off the coast of Croatia (220 bottlenose dolphins to be exact). It was slightly sketchy because the tickets were only 10 euro each, but even though we didn't see any dolphins, the sunset was well worth the price. There are quite a lot of smaller islands off the coast of Rovinj that we can't go to so it was nice to sail around them and see what each one was like.
And I held my promise to myself of only eating seafood at main meals because I ate a bucket of mussels and clams, shrimp scampi, sea bass, and black risotto. Black Risotto is a staple Croatian seafood dish that I had to try before I left because it is squid risotto dyed black from the squid ink. I heard that it turns your mouth black when eating it, but unfortunately mine did no such thing. Rovinj really knows their seafood and I might be able to say that I had some of the best fish ever while I was there.
Sunday morning and early afternoon we ate a late brunch and walked aimlessly around the town for a second time because we didn't have much else to do. Since it is such a small town of only 15,000 people, we really did all there was to do on Friday and Saturday. We eventually took the four-hour bus ride back to Zagreb (where the guys are all staying for two more days) and I continued on back for another seven hours to Vienna because I had classes on Monday (today).
The people of Croatia were simultaneously some of the nicest and most grumpy people I've met in Europe so far, and I believe the population of cats is equal to the population of people. There are cats everywhere and I made sure to pet every single one (sorry everyone I was with). Croatia was not some place I thought I would be visiting when I first arrived here in Europe but I would go back a second time in a heartbeat to visit Split, Dubrovnik and Krka National Park. Maybe I'll go back in the future...
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