2nd week update – 05

10.9.2012

Finally things are starting to happen regarding my apartment issue. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting at the street corner of my Hostel waiting for my tutor to come and pick me up. Together we are going to look at a promising apartment. The pictures in the ad looked decent, even though the building is quite old. The location is more than perfect, it’s right across the street from our faculty; less than 5min walk to school. The price wasn’t too bad either, as I will be splitting all the costs with my roommate Niklas, who will be arriving in Croatia on the 30^th.

So the total costs of the apartment would be something like this:

• Rent: 400eur/month
• Heating, Gas, Electricity, Water: 50-110eur/month (depends on usage & how cold the winter will be)
• Internet: 10-50eur/month (depends on the connection we’ll get)

Total: 510 €~ / month on average.

So in the end, it’s not so bad when you divide everything for 2 people.

11.9.2012

My house in Croatia

We got the apartment! Yesterday evening we came to an agreement that the contract was going to start on 21.9, which gives me a total of 10 days to travel around Croatia. It’s a little less time than I originally had planned, but it’s quite enough. There’s one problem though. I need to be back here in Zagreb to file all the paperwork at the police station on Friday 14.9, which gave me two options:

1. Start my journey now, go somewhere for 2-3 days and come back on Friday to deal with the paperwork and then continue my journey again

OR

1. Stay here in Zagreb until Friday morning and leave as soon as the paperwork is done

I think you know already which one I chose

I checked-out from my hostel right away and dropped off all the extra luggage that I wouldn’t be needing during my journey. My plan is to go see Plitvicka & the National Park, which according to my guide book is the most visited tourist attraction in Croatia. The guidebook also recommends taking the 2 day ticket instead of 1, which sounds perfect for me time-wise.

I reserved a hostel (recommended by my German friends from last week) for three nights, but “unfortunately” the hostel was almost fully booked and they didn’t have any cheap shared rooms available. Instead they made me an offer for a double room for me alone for 20eur/night, which sounded okay, so I said yes. What made the offer even more tempting was that I hadn’t had a moment of privacy in my previous hostel for a week.

I arrived at the Hostel and the room was amazing! It had all the luxuries of a normal hotel room: satellite-TV, fridge, a double-bed and best of all: NOT-SHARED bathroom! This was my little holiday away from my holiday.

I had planned to see some of the surroundings when I arrived, since it wasn’t even dark yet, but instead I just crashed and slept through the whole night. I was so tired from last week’s apartment hunt that I didn’t even realize it. It didn’t bother me that much though; after all I had a full day of hiking ahead of me tomorrow, so I needed the rest.

12.9.2012

Me in Plitvicka National Park

I left the hostel first thing in the morning to look for the entrance of the park. Luckily it was less than 10min walk away, which again was a pleasant surprise. According to the park map, there are two entrances and you can go through the hike paths from either one. My hostel was closer to the entrance 1.

The park is divided into 5 different main routes you can take.

Some of the paths have parts that you need to go by boat or by train, but don’t worry; they are included into the price of the ticket. I chose path K, which is the longest hiking path and it only has a 5 minute boat ride. I figured I would do the rough hike today and tomorrow take a route that is more about riding the trains and boats.

The park is every bit as amazing as it is popular. I didn’t even know such colors existed in nature. At times it felt like I was walking through some Disney drawn magic forest. You can see some of the pictures that I took on the link below:

Click to see pictures

You need to remember that my 5-year-old camera really doesn’t do justice to what it was really like. I also recommend that you do this park with a friend, not only to get better pictures of yourself, but also because it truly is something worth seeing with someone.

Can’t wait to ride the trains and boats tomorrow!

13.9.2012

For some reason, you can't see the rain properly in this picture. But the weather was bad, trust me

I woke up around 04-05 in the morning to the sound of a rough storm. I was hoping that when I’d wake up again it’d be over, but unfortunately it wasn’t. It rained the whole day and the temperature dropped down to 10-15C. I decided I wouldn’t even leave my hostel unless the weather cleared up. I spent nearly the whole day in my room watching TV and thinking about home, my next week to come and my exchange period. I don’t know if it was the weather, or the fact that I was alone, but this was a truly bad day for me. I suddenly wasn’t looking forward to do anything I had planned.

It’s amazing how much your mood can change in such a short time.

I was so bored and annoyed I decided to go out for a little walk regardless of the storm. I wanted to see if people were still going the park, even with weather like this. To my own amazement, there were even more people lining up to the park than there were yesterday. People were wearing jackets as thick as our winter coats and they had covered themselves with see-through raincoats that the entrance shop sold for a huge profit. I thought to myself that my situation wasn’t so bad after all. At least I had one perfect day in the park.

14.9.2012

The terrible weather continued, now with additional wind. My bus to Zagreb left at 10.30 and my check-out of the hostel was at 10.00. I waited there till the last minute to head out to the rain. My hostel receptionist was kind enough to give me a big plastic bag where I could wrap my backpack in. She also told me that the weather in Zagreb had already cleared up and that the storm was headed south, so I was glad to go back, even if it was only for the paperwork.

I had agreed to first meet Marina (she had my documents), and then my future landlady Davorka in the city and together we’d go to the police station. Unfortunately for us, there was a note on the international desk that basically said “we’re closing at 16 today”. Which just blew my mind, because I didn’t even know it was possible for a police station to do that I thought well fine.. We’ll just come back on Monday and do the paperwork then, but that’s when I remembered that my deadline to return the documents was today, so we had to make sure that I wasn’t in any trouble if I returned the papers late. A big thanks to Davorka here, because we needed to talk to at least four people and they even made us go to another police station few blocks down to make sure it was ok.

So after everything was done with police I booked a bed in the Ravnice Youth Hostel for the weekend. This actually didn’t bother me that much, because the weather was still terrible in the south, so it didn’t really feel like I was losing anything by not going there straight away.

At the hostel I met these two crazy guys Semir and Karoolj (apologies for typos) and we quickly became friends. They were here in Zagreb applying for the same job as a photographer on a cruise ship. They had an early wake up the next day so we didn’t stay up too late, but they told me they’d be back at the hostel after the training. They also told me the lamest Finland related pick-up line ever. It was something like this:

“You must be from Finland!” “And why is that?” “Because you’re so Fineee.. ”

And it’s a pretty well-known line apparently, since they both knew about it and they didn’t know each other from beforehand

15.9.2012

Me and Semir acting tough

I woke up early at the same time with the guys. When Semir & Karoolj left for their training I started to plan for my next week’s journey to the coast. I got a hold of a tourist map of Croatia from the lobby of the hostel and I’m looking up different interesting places to visit. I’m really interested in doing the “island hopping” what quite a lot of people had been talking about. It’s basically just going from one island to another with a ferry or by boat and seeing the coast from the sea. Then again I also wanted to see Split and some other coast cities like Zadar. I told myself I would go to Split, stay there at least for one night and then head off to the island Hvar. Hvar is sort of my main destination, since my mother visited Hvar when she was young and I made a promise to her to go see it and take lots of pictures as well.

I didn’t do much during the day, went to the centrum to pass the time and look for a book to read. When I came back to the hostel we decided to have a little party with the guys. There were other people staying in the hostel as well, for example Emily and Sam, who also who joined in and we had a blast. They were friends travelling through Europe from Britain and I wish that I would’ve had time to get to know them better. They gave me a book called the Night Circus, which I plan on reading during my stay in Croatia. I usually never read anything, so I take this as a challenge.

Karoolj and Semir Good faces

I feel like every time you meet someone new “on the road” you see only the best of the other people. It’s great, but sad at the same time. Everything is new and interesting about the other person and just when you’re about to get to know the other person better, it’s already time to part ways. It was great to meet you all and I hope we cross paths again in the future!

You can check out some of the pictures of the night on the link below:

Click to see pictures

16.9.2012

This was my last day in Zagreb before my long awaited trip to the coast. I couldn’t believe it had been two weeks already since I arrived. The two weeks felt like an eternity and I had had time to do so much and meet so many new people. I hope I never forget the people I met and the time I spent here.

Reading "Night Circus", book that I got from Emily & Sam

For a Sunday, it was a pretty normal day. I didn’t do much. I went to Maksimir Park again to have lunch and read my book. I spent most of the day there, since the weather was nice and I really enjoy the park. Actually, my future apartment is roughly 10min walk away from the park, which is great, because as I mentioned before, this park has become my somewhat favorite part of Zagreb.

But tomorrow my wild adventure to the coast begins. Look forward to it, great new material coming up!