Croatia, Day 1 - Lift up the iron curtain... we're comin' in.

Since Friday was an Italian National Holiday, we had no class - horay!

A group of us decided to go to Croatia, since we heard it was beautiful.

Abbey found a company on the internet that rented sailboats, so we booked on - but, the trouble was - how to get to Split, Croatia, where the boat and skipper were waiting?

The trains were super-expensive, and took literally forever to get to Split; we realized that it would only be about a 6 hour drive if we rented a car - so we did!

On Thursday, right after class, 5 of us - Abbey, Jen, Lauren Patten, Chris Tomlinson and Kevin Potere - headed to the airport for our rental car.

It was an extra 100 Euros for an automatic, so we decided since Kevin knew how to drive a stick we would take the economical approach -- we were actually pretty thankful for saving $20 a person because we now have all the wonderful stories of stalling the car at eastern european borders, riding first and having the engine smoke (literally), and all other sorts of fun mishaps... but more on that later.

Kevin (who without question wins M.V.P. of the day for driving our asses around) figured out how to put our little VW Golf in reverse, got us out of the parking lot - we only stalled twice!

(Note to reader: Kevin is really a fantastic driver.  The following snide comments are made out of love -- and make the story of our trip more interesting).

We headed for Croatia - and, to our utter delight, we got to cross through Slovenia as well... knock another country off the list!

We had heard war stories (no pun intended) about crossing the Slovenian border with rental cars - we made sure to rent from Avis, who gave us special paperwork to be able to cross the border.

So, after 2 hours of beautiful Italian countryside (very Tuscany-esque), we arrived at Trieste - and the Slovenian border.

We prepared our passports, our "permission slip" from Avis, and some money just in case -- we got to the border.

The guard said: "U.S.A.??"  We said "yes" and cooperatively handed over the passports.  Abbey, holding the oh-so-important permission slip (which was just a zeroxed piece of paper saying "ok to drive in eastern europe" -- very official indeed), tried to hand it to the border gaurd.

He could have cared less -- he barely glanced at the passports and looked at Abbey, clutching the permission slip, like she was crazy.

He waved us through.

So much for the iron curtain.

We drove through Slovenia, which was pretty, but uneventful.

We did enjoy the national radio station of Slovenia - all-American-country, all-the-time -- as well as the rest of the European radio stations (the country had a strange love for the Village People, Cher, Journey, and -- of all people -- Dolly Parton).

We finally reached the Croatian border, bracing ourselves for meaner guards (since Slovenia is in the EU, we thought they may be nicer... but, for all we knew, Cro-ats were still fiesty commies with guns).

So, we pull up to the guard - Kevin tries to show him our passports but he was too busy waving us in to the country to look.

Good thing we worried so much about that damn permission slip.

There was a second little man in a uniform (or, "costume" as Abbey smartly referred to them -- blonde moments at their finest on this trip) but Kevin blew right past him.

Afraid that we just skipped the border without showing anyone our passport, we all (laughing hysterically) told Kevin to gun it and just keep on driving.

Instead, the car stalled.  40 feet from the border that we just blew through.

Lovely.

We got her going again... but, just to make sure we couldn't make a quick getaway (and to improve the story), the car stalled again.

We love our little golf.

Finally, Kevin got her going, and we sailed in to Croatia - the country was beautiful!

We were going to have to drive on a toll-road, and only had Euros, so we pulled over to exchange some money.

The currency exchange (read: little shack where they probably hand out home-made monopoly money to unsuspecting/stupid American tourists) gave us 180 "Kunas" for 40 Euros - a giant rip-off, we later came to learn.

Sidebar: during the course of the trip, we called the Croatian currency the following -- kunas, kahunas, kenos, things, and our personal favorite (and the one that stuck for the weekend) - KRUNKS.

Manned with plenty of Krunks, we ventured in to Croatia.

We drove through Rijeka in northern Croatia, a beautiful city on the coast of the Adriatic.

There was a beautiful castle built up in the hills, overlooking the water and the entire city.

As we got closer to the apartment buildings and houses, we could definitely see the remnants of the Civil War that ended only about 10 years ago - but, it was still a beautiful city.

We found the highway, which was possibly the nicest highway we had ever been on.  Though it was expensive - it cost us 230 krunks to drive the entire thing - it was nice because it was pretty empty (according to our Skipper, who we would meet later, the locals couldn't afford to use it).

We drove for a while, until it was almost dark, through about 100 tunnels - they got a little old.  One was 6,000 meters long - Lauren dozed off twice and woke up saying, "what the hell, we're still in this same tunnel?!?!"

We were getting hungry -- and cramped -- from being in the car for 5 hours (the 6 hour estimate turned out to be a little low, with traffic).

We stopped at the only restaurant we could find - a truck stop.  Nothin' but class for us.

We all changed some more euros to krunks, as we learned that Cro-ats don't take credit cards (note to reader: the term "cro-at" is yet another ethnocentric vocab word that we made up, in the same vein as krunk.  Don't use it in conversation with real Croatians as they tend to get a little testy.)

We were all starving -- so the Pork Cutlet with greasy fries for 90 krunks a piece didn't seem so bad (though, Abbey wanted to know why the hell these crazy cro-ats can't get some damn Heinz ketchup).

We hit the road again, heading for Split.  Another 100 tunnels later, we finally reached the end of the highway - and arrived!

We called the number provided by the sailboat rental company -- after about 15 wrong tries with the country code (thanks to Lauren for letting us use her incredible international phone!) we finally got through -- to a fax machine.

Visions of a "sailboat scam" ran through our heads - however, Abbey tried the "emergency number" for the rental company and woke some poor man up (it was already 11:00 when we rolled in to town) who gave us the correct number for our skipper... JASKO.

Sidebar: during the course of the trip, we called our Skipper the following -- Jasko, Jacamo, Skip, Jacko, Yakamo, Yosef, and the correct pronunciation - Yasko.

Jasko gave us directions to the marina where we should meet him - after driving aroud for a bit (when in doubt, head back to the center and start again), we finally found it.

We waited in the parking lot for a minute, and then saw a car take a turn on two wheels, screeching in to the marina, like a bat out of hell.

We could only hope this was the man who would be operating our sailboat, and holding our lives in his hands.

We drove to catch up to him - he rolled down his window and said:

"You are looking for me?!?"

Not even thinking to ask if this indeed was Josko, we shouted "Yes!" and started following him (Abbey was pretty sure he sounded like the guy on the phone).

Luckily, we were right - we drove to the area where our boat was docked, and parked our car.

As we had been driving in the mountains, the weather dropped from 21 degrees celcius (about 65 degrees) to 17.  Then to 15.  Then to 14.  Then to 10.  Then to 8.5 -- it was about 40 degrees outside when we arrived in Split.

We all piled out, like it was a clown car, unfolding our legs that had been cramped for 7 hours - he took one look at us, dressed for summer sailing, and said: "Usually in June it is summer; this week in Croatia it is Wiiiiinter.  I hope you have better shoes."

Abbey, Jen and Lauren all glanced at our flip-flops, realizing how freakin' cold we were going to be!

We walked to our sailboat - which we had to reach by crossing a gang-plank (Lauren was ready to get back in the car and drive to Italy to avoid walking over this skinny piece of wood with a giant crack down the middle, carrying all of her stuff, over water that was probably 30 degrees).

We all made it on board safe (and dry) and collapsed in to bed.  It was certainly a long day!