“Hello, do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Great, I made a reservation over the Internet for a room tonight.” It had been a long, long day and evening driving through Sisak, down to Krapje, through Bosnia and arriving at Plitvice Lakes;
“What’s the name?”
“Kevin Blake”.
A quick glance to her colleague behind the counter, and a few raised eyebrows. “Can we see the confirmation?”
My suspicions were raised as I smugly showed her the iPAQ with said confirmation. Another look to her colleague. Big smile. Uh oh.
“Yes, that’s Hotel Jezero in Slovenia. This sort of thing happens all the time. They have the same name as us, even have a lake of their own”.
Shit.
Anyway, this was all after… and there’s a lot of before to get through as well.
I think I left the last entry at Zagreb. We have since rented a car from Hertz to explore some of the area between Split and Zagreb that we missed on the train journey north. The first of these, The Lonjsko polje wetlands. Home to a village made of wood, the Posaljve horse, the Turopolje pig, as well as a large group of nesting stork (though they leave around 24th August to spend the winter in South Africa). As with the mongoose, we didn’t see any of that. The guide books are full of false promises and false hope. Actually, we did see some wooden villages – some of them have started to be replaced with newer and more permaneant structures, but there were plenty of the more sightly wooden houses and farms too.
We drove almost the entire length of the national park from Sisak down to Krapje, which left us in a bit of an awkward position to get to Plitvice Lakes National Park. If you don’t know the geography of this area, Croatia is shaped like a mirrored upside down L. We were at the top right of that L. We wanted to be about 1/3 down on the big stick-part. Fortunately it’s not sea in the way, but Bosnia – so we were in better shape having a hire-car to get across that area, than say, a boat.
Or so we thought.
It was starting to get dark as we got to the Bosnian/Croatia border. But we still thought it was worth it at this point, as we’d just got another stamp in the passport 🙂
The first gas station we came across, we filled the car with petrol. Wouldn’t want to get stuck in Bosnia without petrol after all. Not with all those mountains in the way. About halfway through the guy filling the car we realised that without the petrol station accepting credit cards, we had no way of paying for the petrol. Either the guy had to get a straw and suck the petrol back out, or take our Croatian money. He took our Croatian money.
Next, we stopped off at a Derby Football Club café (though not the UK Derby FC) where the people were again extremely friendly, and served a damn good coffee! This town was also the first time I’d seen such a extravagantly lit-up mosque. Is this done every evening, perhaps? Or especially for Ramadan? There’s another mental note to not be so ignorant, I think! I don’t remember the towers being quite so awe-inspiring in Cyprus.
Other than that, the drive remained reasonably uneventful. I sent a message to Sandra of Cyprus fame, to find out if the speed limits were in miles per hour or kilometers. Whilst she couldn’t understand my SMS-english and wasn’t able to answer the question, it was at least a welcome reminder that we had someone just at the other end of a phone as a translator / local – or who might be able to explain to the police that we’re really nice people and should be let out of jail after all.
Until we got to a town that I am temporarily forgetting the name of, but will fill out here soon. We were looking for the turning towards Novi Grad, Croatia. It had to be around there somewhere because we had been driving around the city for ages. But it was also really dark and we didn’t know where we were. To make matters worse, all of the road signs were in Cyrillic script and I hadn’t yet grasped any concept of how those names might match up to the very different looking names on our map. So we stopped and asked for directions.
After a few minutes of map pointing and frantic waving, “Novi Grad, yes, yes”. Our guide started to look thoughtful as he thought about the best way to show us where to go. Neither of us speak Bosnian. He didn’t speak English. If he had spoken English, he might have been able to tell us “right, right, then left, two roads on, right again, then left, go straight until you get to the big church, and turn left again. Next right, and take that road to Novi Grad.” It’s quite likely we would have been nodding and smiling at this for some time, maybe scribbling illegible characters on some paper. Maybe we would have followed them to a degree, and ended on a dirt track before wondering “maybe he meant, right back there at the church”.
None of that happened though. Instead, he climbed in the back and pointed at things and directions we should go. We stopped outside the block of flats where he lived, he got in his car and he led us out the city onto the road we wanted.
So this is where the title of this entry comes from. The Kindness of Strangers. If we hadn’t come across such a person we could still be driving around Bosnia now. It’s a lesson to us all to help the people who need it and ask it of you instead of falling prey to the world where criminals work the roads, taking advantage of the Samaritans who help to stop. Be careful, yes – but stay human.
We have the guys address and intend to send him a proper thank you once we can find a willing translator 🙂
Anyway, that’s all a bit emotional and attempting to be quite deep isn’t it. It’s not what you were expecting, is it? You wanted more comedy perceptions of the holiday and these great countries, didn’t you? Well. Tough. Croatia, Bosnia, and now Slovenia (where I am finally getting around to writing this up from – they’re all fantastic parts of the world, and I hope everyone living here realises just how lucky they are 🙂
So to cut a long drive short, we traversed the mountains, we crossed the rivers, we overcame all odds, and left Bosnia.
A short drive away and we were at the Hotel Jezero, looking forward to a nice warm bed. That was when we were told we didn’t have a room of course. The room we had was some 150km or more away. It was sitting abandoned in Slovenia and undoubtedly had no friends. This Hotel Jezero, the real Croatian one, was also full. The Hotel Plitvice just down the road was full. The Hotel Bellevue next door had plenty of free rooms. But it was closed for renovation. We were looking a bit screwed really – and all ready to spend the night in the car. “Hotel Grabovac is slightly cheaper, do you want me to phone them for you and see if they have any rooms?” the nice lady exclaimed. The Croatian goddess of a woman picked up the phone and confirmed we could stay there. Rooms.
A Bed. Sweet heaven.
Everyone laughed at me when I claimed that Squirrels in the area of Russell Square were armed, and meant business. Nobody took me seriously when I claimed that one had followed me home, and had been waiting on a tree stump outside all night.
It’s the more convenient way to pay for your coffee. A huge hit across the world – America