Croatia

My first real weekend off is this weekend. Before writing this I changed my mind on where I was going and what I was going to do half a dozen times. It was borderline crazy frustrating and stressful, before slipping into a free spirited "whatever happens, happens" mentality.  Part of it has been out of my control and the other part, well, I just didn't know any better.

Now that I'm back from going to the train station, my roommate and I now have a one way ticket to Zagreb, Croatia. Within the past two days I thought I was going to Szombathely, Hungary to catch the last concert of the Bartok Festival followed by a trip to Vienna. After my roommate found out her plane ticket to Paris got canceled, we regrouped and decided to take our next weeks trip to Croatia, now. Flexibility is the name of the game. And might I add adaptablity sprinkled with courage?

The first obstacle was trying to find transportation. Since coming here, everyone has said cars were far cheaper than traveling by train if you could split them with other people. Seemed simple enough. Simple enough until actually driving them. Aha... Yes, apparently in Europe, all the cars they have are manual. A slight problem for your average automatic driving american such as myself. I have driven a manual all of 5 times, and that was last summer. Maybe a max of an hour behind the wheel. As much as I would like to tell myself I'm a quick learner, I don't think traipsing across European countries where you don't speak the language, in a vehicle you don't really know how to operate, is a wise idea. Yeah, probably not. The manual cars are close to 100 euros a day with rare availability, verses manuals which are a welcoming 30 euros a day. Mental note: Learn to drive stick when I get back to the states.

We moved on after calling over a dozen car rental places just trying to find an available automatic that wasn't 400 euros for the weekend. This was the part where I was stressed.

We regrouped. Again.

Time for me to look at this picture of this beautiful forrest I hiked through last week. See, better already.

We have since found a train that will take us where we'd like to go: A little time at the beach in Pula and then some time in the city Zagrab exploring Roman ruins and the like.

I feel like at the end of all this, I will be a guru european travel master. Or maybe I'll just be the ultimate zen master from learning to let all of this travel stress just slide off my back. Either way, I will become a master. Of something. I know it.

Which by the way, in Graz the European Choir Games going on right now. I sit by new people from all over Europe everyday at lunch. It's really cool, actually. Yesterday, I sat at a table with a guy and a girl from Latvia. They both knew Latvian, Russian, and English. Most people seem to know 2 if not 3 different languages. I think it's about time I start really learning a language. Like yesterday.