We landed in Zagreb the capital of Croatia. For a city with over 1 million people the airport is tiny. Apparently communists didn’t have any need to fly anywhere because the airport was about the size of your standard Greyhound station. We took a taxi to our hotel since I didn’t want to figure out the bus system. We stayed at the 4 points hotel which is one of those modern highrise hotels. I have a theory about them which is why I avoid them like the plague. The theory goes like this – the taller the building the more money they’ve made which equates to the more money you’ve lost. If they were giving you equal service to a smaller hotel they couldn’t afford to build a big building. This hotel proved my theory once again. I paid $225 for one night because there wasn’t any other places with rooms on short notice. This rate didn’t include breakfast. If we wanted to purchase the continental breakfast it would be 8 euros ea. That would be $41 total for juice and croissants! Yes the building is paid for. They had a full American breakfast with eggs for $60 total for all four of us. That is eggs, bacon, croissants and juice for $60. I kept the sixty dollars and we ate at a kebab place for $15. The walk to the city center was about 30 minutes and at first we weren’t very impressed with what appeared to be a large product of communist rule. Everywhere bland concrete buildings, simple parks and places for statues of communist rulers. I knew Zagreb was an old city but I didn’t know if the pre-communist buildings survived.  That question was answered as soon as we got to the center. Everywhere there were beautiful baroque and art neuveau buildings. Unfortunately the graffiti artists don’t appreciate the natural beauty of these buildings so the add their own touches to everything you can see. They really need to crack down on this because graffiti is everywhere in this city. I took some pictures of the communist era cyclop trams that wandered around the city on rails. They were entertaining to look at but Zagreb does have modern trams as well. We headed for the main city square and started the climb up to the upper city called Gornji Grad. I have to stress that this is a very different place than the Croatian coastal towns. The people here look one step closer to being Russian, there are zero tourists and much fewer people speak english. There are Sladoled (Gelato) shops everywhere so it’s clear the eastern Croatians love ice cream as much as the Dalmatians. The pastries have also changed and there’s much more strudel and filled croissants here. I’m starting to get the Croatian language figured out and can read some signs. I relate them to French words because that’s what I know best. Pekarna is boulangerie (bakery) which is very important to us because of our hunger for croissants. They’re different here than in France but still a million times better than at home. Overall I was impressed with Zagreb because I wasn’t expecting much. The people have been nice and we’ve been a bit of a spectacle to them much like we were to the Mexicans in Mexico City. It doesn’t look like they get many tourists. Even though accommodations are expensive our food was not. All four of us ate kabobs for $12 and the next day we stopped at a sit down eatery and ate for $15. We got twice as much food as we could eat and I felt bad when we left because we wasted a lot. Piper ordered the mini pizza which was $2.50. If figured this was a Pizza Hut style 4 inch pizza but just a bit cheaper. It was actually about 14 inches. That’s the mini, the regular is about 22 inches! Natalya hot a seafood risotto that was piled about 3 inches high on her plate. We really could have ordered two things and split them. Had we done that we would have eaten for $7.50. Later we went to the train station and got our tickets for the train to Ljubljana. The train station pre-dates communism and is a very beautiful place. I think it’s larger than the airport too. Our tickets to Ljubljana cost about $40 I think. It’s a little comical because the ticket guy got out a pad and wrote down the relevant data on it with a price and that was our tickets. The train should have taken a little over 2 hrs and get us there by 8:30, more on that later. We needed to notify the guy renting us the apartment to let him know when to meet us so we found an internet cafe. I emailed him and found an apartment in Krakow too but didn’t reserve it. I printed the info on the Krakow apartment and the directions to our Ljubljana apartment out and we went for our train. We waited for our train which was going to be late. I guessed anyway because there was a 15 after our peron (platform) number. I didn’t know what it meant but since trains don’t come in 15 minutes early I just guessed. I noticed that the arriving train on that platform was 45 minutes late. I couldn’t figure out how the arriving train could be 45 minutes late and the departing train was only 15 minutes late unless they were really optimistic about how fast we could get on the train. We also found out pretty fast that the ticket man didn’t reserve any seats since he didn’t know which ones were available which meant we could spend the entire trip standing up. Thankfully after getting bumped twice we found seats that weren’t reserved and rode sitting down all the way to Ljubljana.
A word about this countryside. It’s green everywhere here and even though the land around Zagreb is fairly flat (Piper called it green Texas) the land between Zagreb and Ljubljana is very pretty. There are small mountains, deep valleys and nice rivers. All the way there were little hill town nestled in the ravines and everyone had a bright white church in the center like the old west towns in America. We arrive in Ljubljana 45 minutes late so we were just hoping Peter the guy waiting for us went by the train station and new that. We rushed off the train and out of the station. After we got to a place where we weren’t going to get run over I dug through the daybag looking for the directions to our apartment only to find they were on their way to Zurich with the train. Apparently Jade and Natalya had taken a bunch of stuff out of the bag and Jade put it in the back of the seat in front of him. Since we didn’t have the address or Peter’s phone number we couldn’t even call him. I remembered the general directions so we started off hoping Peter would see us. I remembered in my mind the address being 24 kotnikova so that’s were we went only to find there is no 24 kotnikova. Also in Ljubljana the street signs are backwards. In the states the sign parallel to the street you’re on is the name of your street. The sign facing you at an intersection is the name of the cross street. In Ljubljana it’s backwards so we spent a little time wandering down the cross street thinking it was kotnikova. There wasn’t a 24 kotnikova there either. A couple of Americans came wandering by wanting to know if I knew where there was a place to stay. They had the Lonely Planet guide which didn’t list the hostal two blocks away. I looked in my Let’s Go guide and told them where it was. After reading the description I realized that they had internet so I could go to the hostal and possibly convince them to let me use it and contact Peter. It worked, I followed the two guys to the hostal and got on the interenet. I was able to get the real address (34 kotnikova) and Peters phone number. The hostal wouldn’t let me call him as they insisted it was a Croatia number so I sent him an email hoping he’d read it. I then went back and waited, and waited and waited some more. It was 10:30 and becoming quite clear that Peter doesn’t check his email often or thinks I have a cell phone and would call him. Those of you know me know I despise the blasted things and would never own one. I stopped a couple with a baby on the street and asked them if they spoke English. Of course they did because they were Slovenian and most Slovenians speak it better than I. I explained to them the situation and they volunteered to call him with their cell phone. Peters wife answered and I told her we were here and 20 minutes later Peter showed up to let us in. It was now 11:00 and we were tired. The apartment is small but will do fine. If I were here a month like I originally intended I’d want a bigger one. We have a clothes washer (yeah) which has become the deal clencher these days but no internet (booo). Peter agreed to let me pay him the following day so I went to the bancomats to withdraw my daily maximum. In order to have enough I’d to do the same in the morning too. The money here is ridiculous. One dollar is equal to 200 tolar. They are quite large in size too so they take up a lot of space in your wallet. Rent is about 120,000 tolar. Slovenia is preparing to convert to the Euro though so everything is in both currencies and I think you could probably pay for most large items with euros here.