Split, Croatia

Ive had my first cry (and this is a Croatian keyboard so please forgive errors and missing punctuation). After three attempts and a lot of time and money spent at an internet cafe, Ive lost my travel blog entry yet again. I dont have much interest in retyping the whole thing again, yet if I fall any farther behind, I will never catch up. Im trying it in word doc this time and waiting to hear back from the nice people at Travelpod.com. Add this to losing all my photos and I couldnt escape the tears any longer. This will most definitely be shorter and much less interesting than it would have been had it worked the other times. Ive been to Plitvice, Zadar and now in Split since my last entry. But first – Zagreb. Overall impression: Meh. Not a very happy town. The expression “a smile is universal” doesnt apply here. Nor in Zadar. Im in PR – Im not used to this!! I could put on a full-scale Cirque du Soleil production for these people and they wouldnt crack a smile. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the rest of my time in Zagreb. I took a young Australian girl under my wing who had just arrived at the hostel and wasnt having a very good time of it so far…Four days in Budapest and she hadnt met anyone her own age, had $300 stolen right out of her hand, and had about a thousand bed bug bites (she now knows the virtues of a silk sleep sheet and cant wait to get one). Despite the fact that I was double her age, I took her out and showed her the city. Later that night we fell in with some others at the hostel and had a nice dinner out, followed by an even bigger get-together back at the hostel. The young-uns all decided to play drinking games, so I opted instead to head out with 31-year-old Anna from California to help her search for kebabs. Anna loves kebabs. I then stumbled across a chocolate walnut crepe with my name on it…just what I needed at midnight. We arrived back at the hostel to thankfully find the bar downstairs closed (? At 1 am on a Friday?), so it seemed like I might get some decent sleep. And had it not been for various roommates stumbling in at all hours and a frenchman busting into the room at 3 am proclaiming to another roommate, “DUDE!! You TOTALLY didnt tell us you were going to bed!!!!!”, I might have actually succeeded. 6 am Saturday morning and I was outta there and off to the bus station to go to Plitvice National Park. (I never figured out the tram sytstem, as nobody seems to actually pay? Is public transit free in Zagreb? Youd think this would drive up the price of a 10-inch home-made pizza and a glass of wine to more than 25KN, but nope. Nobodys caught on yet I guess.) Too scared to write more for fear I lose it all again…..next entry: Plitvice.