This is Nantes really happening, right?

I have somehow managed to fit my entire French life in two 50lbs bags, and one extremely heavy “dear God I hope they don’t weigh this” carry-on. Our goodbyes have been long and drawn out- starting with the German assistant in March at the end of her contract, the departure of another of “les filles”, our English friend on Tuesday morning, and finally myself tomorrow. Both the Spanish assistant and the other English assistant have extended their work contracts until at least the end of May. 

It’s unreal, and it makes my heart hurt, to think that this is really coming to a close. This has been an incredible opportunity that has helped me grow professionally, develop my French language skills, and further piqued my interest in the world and all the wonderful things it has to offer us. I did all the things you do when you first move out on your own and a few more- figured out health insurance, transportation, internet, cell phone, set up a bank account,  housing assistance, immigration, doctor’s visits… and I did it all in a foreign language. A foreign language I will miss dearly… it seems so odd to know that in just a days time I won’t be hearing, or speaking, or joking in French with anyone. I had some wonderful vacations with my family, a dear friend, and my fiancé… having spent time in 9 countries in the past 8 months (if you count France and the United States). I’ve made good friends with people who, had I not studied French, I would never have been able to communicate with and know and love like I do now.

While France and America are both western countries, I’m anticipating a bit of a reverse culture shock. Living here, I understand how and why expats are drawn to life in foreign countries. There are times when being an American here has been a little embarrassing… the time Rush Limbaugh called girls who use birth control sluts, the fact that America is even debating the issue of women’s reproductive rights, Gingrich’s campaign ad criticizing Romney’s ability to speak French, the moment Congress declared the limited amount of tomato sauce in pizza a serving of vegetables for school cafeterias… 

There are a lot of things I have come to strongly identify with concerning French life and culture. I love that for at least a short amount of time I got to live in a country that believes in…

• Access to health care as a basic human right
• Affordable access to education… everyone in the country does not finish their studies with thousands of dollars of debt.
• Buying locally from markets and small bakeries, developing a relationship with the people who are growing and selling one of our greatest necessities,
•  Raising cattle and poultry without the use of hormones or antibiotics
• Proper, well balanced school lunches
• Sundays truly as a day of rest. Without the option of grocery shopping or running errands (as everything is closed), it’s hard to feel guilty about sleeping in and spending the entire day perhaps doing nothing but being with your friends and family.  
• Butter. Sometimes I cringe when I think about what the little old French ladies who buy their butter fresh from the cheese woman at the market would think about our “I can’t believe it’s not butter” substitutes.
• 4+ hour dinner parties, different wines specially chosen for each course, and an entire course devoted to Cheese. 
• Paying a teeny small fee for a plastic bag at the grocery store. After forgetting my reusable grocery bags and paying 15centiemes maybe 3x, I got used to the idea of always taking my own reusable bag. So does everyone else. Save. The. Planet. 
• Reliable public transportation and bike paths. I lived for 8 months here without a car. I can’t imagine doing that in America. It would just be too inconvenient and too difficult.
• Les bises. I have come to expect, and to love, the double kiss on the cheek.
• Teaching foreign languages starting in primary schools. Language learning is so so important…

I am of course looking forward to coming home. I can’t wait to see le boy, my new house and be a normal, not long distance and 6 hour time difference, engaged couple… planning our wedding, showing off my ring, and generally just being together. I know that my Dad will make one of his famous brunches on Sunday. I’ll spend a significant amount of time the following week with my dog and my mom, sitting on the front porch with glasses of wine. I get to see my constantly growing up too fast niece and nephews, and I get to meet my new niece Gia who was born the week after I left. I look forward to eating what is always a delicious meal at the DeLiberato’s house, and spending an evening relaxing and catching up. I hope to sit around a bonfire with my siblings and a few beers. I get to hug all my aunts and grandma who spoiled me with cards and packages while I was here. And visit with all my wonderful friends of course. There is so much to look forward to.

La Cigale, Nantes, France

But for the moment, I’m spending my last few French moments with our little family here. I so appreciate the opportunity to get to know people from all over Europe and I truly loved being the only American in our little group of friends. Of course we are all so much more than our respective countries’ stereotypes…but I still learned organization and planning skills from the German, the value of a good siesta and the importance of staying out until 6am dancing from time to time from our Spanish friend, countless new vocabulary words from my English friends who I am positive don’t really speak the same language as Americans, every gros-mot in the French language from driving with my French friends… 

Merci  à tous. J’ai des trop bons souvenirs de ma vie ici à cause de vous. Il restera toujours un grand morceau de mon cœur à Nantes. Bisous Bisous

Les temps passent si vite

How fast the time has gone since the April vacations and my last blog post! I’ve tried to profiter bien of my final two weeks in Nantes, spending a significant amount of time hanging out with friends, or alone tacking off all the things I felt I needed to do before I moved from the city. 

Having ended work about a week and a half  before my departure date, I had to say goodbye to all the teachers that have given me rides to school, the English staff, my class of teachers, and of course all my students first. I baked about 200 peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies in my small toaster oven all week. My final teachers class took me out to lunch at our normal class time, and then to one of the teachers’ houses when the expresso given at the restaurant at the end of the meal just wasn’t strong enough to get us through the rest of the working day. I spent an evening at my reference teacher’s house, the same house I spent time at before I was able to move into my foyer… things come full circle. We naturally had a 4hour dinner complete with champagne, mussels for the appetizer, beef/potatoes/veggies, and a crumble dessert made from locally grown strawberries. 

In true French high school fashion, my last class of the year just didn’t show up. I wasn’t surprised… It was odd that I worked one full week and one Monday after the April  vacations. Knowing that it was my last week with all the other classes I think they just thought I wouldn’t be there the following Monday. Except I was. And I took the bus all that way just to clean out my little cubbie and give the cookies meant for the students out to anyone on the staff who didn’t get them the week before. 

Clisson, France

I visited the chateau again to dit au revoir, and to check out the museum there. If you want to know anything about Nantes the Chateau Museum is where to go. You could spend at least half the day learning about Nantes as a port city, Nantes’ huge role in the triangular trade and slavery, Nantes during the wars… I probably should have visited at the beginning of my time here, but better late then never. 

 

Short, solo day trip to Clisson. A pretty little city about a 10 minute train ride away, Clisson is nice to visit for about 3 hours. It’s a pretty sleepy little place but the chateau ruins are neat and they have some beautiful gardens. I ventured there alone and simply walked around, ate a picnic, and read a bit outside in the grass by the chateau. Honestly my morning in Nantes visiting the new baby goats at the Jardin de Plantes near the train station was more thrilling. But it’s always nice to get out of town and see what else the area has to offer.

 Spanish soirée at the foyer, complete with delicious paella, sangria, tapas and salsa dancing. It was one of those nights that was just so good, with good food and good company, that it made me sad to think that those nights here are limited. 

 

8 Mai Market. I visited my lovely local market, the one that makes my heart so happy, for final picnic supplies shopping. I ordered my tranche de mizotte cheese and a moldy goats cheese like a pro from my standard cheese lady. I didn’t have to think too hard about how many grams of prawns I wanted for my dinner that night. I splurged and bought a giant brioche. I will truly miss the market culture that seems to thrive in France. 

My haul from my final visit to the market

 

Strasbourg with the Assistants. My little group of friends originally consisted of 2 English, 1 German, 1 Spanish and myself (which then grew to include the French and another Spanish girl). This small original group, sans the German, decided to spend our last weekend adventuring together to Strasbourg, a city on the German border that historically has been both German and French territory. Our journey began far too early with a 7am train. We stamped our tickets and sleepily climbed aboard only to find 4 people sitting in what were our assigned seats. This happens from time to time and we decided to take the group of 4 seats across the aisle from them, until someone came to claim those seats, and we had to confront the people sitting in ours. The interaction went a little like this…

“Excuse me, but you are in our seats”

“Mais non! These are our seats”

“No. Look at our tickets. You are sitting in our seats”

*they give each other some smug looks, do not take out their own tickets, and do not move from our seats

*my friend happens to see one of their tickets and exclaims

“Excuse me, but those tickets are for yesterday’s train. You are indeed sitting in our seats”

“This must be some kind of confusion. We bought tickets for this train today.” “First come first serve”

*They don’t move from our seats, people whose seats we are sitting in awkwardly hover around until they realize we're not moving and then go to sit in someone else's seats.

It’s wonderful to speak both languages in this kind of situation. They heard our accents and thought we couldn’t understand them… uhm yes sir we can hear you, and no, these are reserved seats, so they are not first come first serve. And now we are going to talk about you as much as we want in our own language because you have no idea what we’re saying about you. Unfortunately my friend didn't get to use his prepared "Avec respect Monsieur!" phrase that he had prepared for what we thought would be an inevitable heated debate. The conductor eventually came and made them move from our seats, after some of the other clients rallied with us because they wanted us to move from their own seats.

Tired and in a silly mood, my two friends were reading in French with a dictionary between them to look up unknown vocabulary words. We had a few discussions about some of the words, and were enlightened by a French woman listening in on our conversation. Indeed the word cleavage in French does not mean the same thing as in English…

At this point my friend said “We can only ever be two things here: a novelty, or something that pisses people off. In the last ½ hour we have managed to be both.” That about sums up the train ride. 

Strasbourg is lovely. Really lovely. There are loads of half-timbered houses, cute cafés to grab an expresso (which we had to do often), a river boat cruise, the European Parliament Building, a massive cathedral with a tower you can climb, and German/French food .Some of my favorite foods being the choucroute (sauerkraut) with German sausages I had one night for dinner, loads of gingerbread, and some spaetzle. We also some WILD STORKS. Neat huh.

 

I had the great luck of being in France for the presidential election, which just so happened to pass on our final night in Strasbourg. While walking to dinner we heard the roar of a crowd and entered a large square to see people gathered around a small tower in the middle, dancing and waving flags to celebrate the election of France’s first socialist president in 30 years. We decided then and there to stay and find somewhere to eat within the square in order to enjoy this fun atmosphere… while we were waiting to order the thumping of bass and a large car/truck with balloons rolled up to the tunes of “le changement” which was happily greeted by the crowd in the square. The truck stayed there until about 11:30pm, where the crowd of people danced and sang along, waved their flags, climbed up onto the small tower (at one point we saw a man in just his underwear dancing up there). We of course joined this dance party after dinner. Hands down one of the neatest things I have experienced while living here… a spontaneous street party, complete with a conga line and air horns, to celebrate a presidential election. 

The following morning we had another early train ride home, the last time I was to be “coming home” to my home in Nantes.

I FEEL sLOVEnia

April travels with Megan Part 3: Slovenia 

We made a lot of jokes about Slovenia as the promised land… people will probably hug us as soon as we get off the train clucking “Oh I know where you’ve been”… we’ll cross the border and a Pegasus will fly across a rainbow in the sky etc etc. 

Triple Bridge, Ljubljana

But here’s the thing, it IS a wonderful magical land of happy friendly English speaking people, where you feel nothing but love and warm happy feelings about your life. Outside of my adopted “I wish” homeland of France, it may be my favorite country I have ever visited. In fact, Slovenia’s slogan is I FEEL sLOVEnia. How darling is that? It’s true! You DO feel love there! 

We had ½ day and 1 night in their capitol Ljubljana (pronounce the j’s like y’s and your life is a lot simpler). We walked through the old town and marveled at the pretty architecture. We were stopped outside an Argentinean restaurant where a young man attempted to persuade us to eat there. When we explained it was our first night and we wanted to eat traditional Slovenian he got his friend to translate “we are having a big party here later tonight, come back and you can eat and drink whatever you like!” Then, I kid you not, he gave us a hug and his friend gave us les bises, and they didn’t even try to steal anything from us during the whole exchange. Our joke “Slovenia is so lovely, people just hug strangers on the street to make them feel welcome” turned out to be reality. That evening we had our first hot meal in 3 days and a few glasses of wine. In the film version of our adventures, our mothers were cheering. 

Hungarian Goulash.

 Slovenia is a tiny little country, so if you situate yourself in Ljubljana (dead center) day trips are quite simple. The following morning we checked out of our campsite/hotel and when the man at the desk realized we would miss the complimentary breakfast, he pulled out two packed lunches and asked us if we wanted them. Uhm yes, kindest people on earth, we would love those lunches. Then his coworker, who had helped us out the night before when we had a bit of a problem, offered to take us into town to the train station. Uhm yes, kindest people on earth, thank you for the lift. 

Dragon Babies

We took a bus for about 1hour to Postojnska Jama and Predjama Castle. Postojnska Jama is a massive cave system, and while a bit touristy, thoroughly enjoyable. We felt it worth every penny of what we paid for the tour. You start out on this little train like you are entering Gringotts to get your wizard gold for Hogwarts. Then you have an hour walking tour of incredible awesome stalagmites and stalactites, ending with an exhibit of blind dragon spawn cave creatures, and a final train ride back to the surface. We then got a taxi the 11km to Predjama Castle (again, our mom’s were cheering for our decision not to hitchhike as is recommended by Rick Steves). 

Spaghetti Hall, because these baby stalactites look like pasta

 Predjama Castle makes my list of one of the Top 5 most Impressive Unbelievable Things I Have Ever Seen in the Entire World. It’s a castle built into a cliff with an extensive cave system underneath. The knight that once lived there was under siege for over a year… instead of dying from starvation as his castle was surrounded he simply used a route within the caves out to a neighboring town, and then returned. He was finally killed when a money-hungry servant signaled to the enemy as the knight went to an exterior portion of the castle to do his business. A cannon was fired into his bathroom and that was that. Now you can scramble all over the castle enjoying the juxtaposition of cliff/cave and living quarters. 

Photo Credit: Megan

 Back on a bus to Ljubljana, where we picked up our packs from the convenient and cheap luggage storage at the train station and hopped on a bus up to Lake Bled for two nights of blissful camping. 1½ hours later we are kindly dropped off at an Alpine Lake surrounded by snow capped mountains, swans, clear blue water, pletna boats… is this real life?

Photo Credit: Megan

 It started sprinkling when we arrived at our campsite and the ever so kind Slovenian working the front desk asked us if we needed a bigger umbrella to set up our site. At dinner that night, I not only got to eat trout with its head still on that I am almost certain came from the very lake I was currently looking at, but we were also treated to free blueberry mead “just to warm you girls up”. Slovenia is seriously home to the nicest people in the world. 

 

Our full day in Bled involved morning cappuccinos on the terrace near the lake, a leisurely stroll, a hike up to a viewpoint near the castle, traditional Slovenia desserts and savory lunchtime pastries, Cockta (the communist era version of Coca-Cola),a bottle of wine said to have healing properties, and a rowboat to an enchanted island where if you ring the church bell 3x it’s said that all your wishes will come true. Quite frankly I'm not sure the people of Slovenia even have any wishes, because they live in the greatest place in the world. We weren’t really ready to leave… ever. 

 

But back to Ljubljana we went for a day of exploration before catching an overnight train to Munich, Germany and then another train onto to Paris, where flights and trains back to the real world were awaiting us. We got rid of all our leftover Croatian Kuna coins making wishes in various fountains throughout the day. My favorite sites in Ljubljana were:

     1.       The Dragon Bridge (a dragon is said to have been slayed near the city so it’s the city mascot. I have no doubt that if magical creatures do/did exist, it was in Slovenia).

    2.       The Library, the only building damaged during WWII from a plane crash. The Slovenians didn’t want to lose their book collection and formed a human chain to save their precious books from the flames. The door handle to enter the library is shaped like a Pegasus head... to soar you into enlightenment. You enchanting little beautiful darling place Slovenia you.

Before our late night train we enjoyed a few communist-era Slovenian Beers and said Hvala for a truly wonderful end of our trip…

Which turned out wasn’t the end of our trip at all, since our overnight train didn’t arrive on time to Munich, making us miss our connection to Paris, making us miss our flights/trains home. It says a lot about a friendship when you can spend 2 straight weeks together, go through a mini transportation crisis, spend the night drinking beers from McDonalds in the Paris airport and pushing chairs together to make a “fort” to sleep in, but still be terribly sad to have to say goodbye the following morning. Nonstop adventures since the ages of Four and Five. 

The best part about Croatia was the Slaps

April Travels with Megan Part 2: Croatia

 

This fountain depicts an orgy

There’s a lot you could say about Zagreb, Croatia… but what I’ll say here is my impression: it’s apparent there was a war there about, oh 20 years ago. They have a lot of growing still to do. The thing about Zagreb is that on a 10 minute bus ride throughout the city we saw multiple people just peeing outside, kind of like everyone was camping… but in the capitol. People speak English, but gruffly and with a lot of eye rolling and shrugs. Based on my limited experiences, I’m not sure people smile in Croatia. They use KUNA, instead of the euro, which involved far more math than this linguistical mind could really handle… and there are about a million Kuna involved in every transaction (when I exchanged 56kuna for euro in Slovenia I received 6 euro). We went to the market because fresh food is neat in any country and Rick Steve’s guidebook took us on a nice little walk through a small part of town. We also saw this odd orgy fountain in front of the National Theatre. Our one day was plenty in Zagreb, and I had no problem leaving the nightlife there a mystery to instead venture to the entire reason we came to Croatia, Plitvice Lakes National Park. 

Well. Someone hearts Zagreb. It's just not us

When it comes to transportation, here’s how things work in Croatia… not very well. We had to get a bus from Zagreb to Plitvice, costing us approximately 10 euro I believe, so like 85Kuna, add on the unforeseen 7Kuna charge (like $1.20) for us to carry a big bag onto the bus. (3 currencies in one sentence, is your head spinning yet? You can imagine trying to think in Kuna, Dollars, and Euro for a few days. Yikes.) We told the driver's co-pilot where we needed to go and he reassured us that he would tell us when it was time for us to get off the bus. It conveniently started raining as we were dropped off at a tiny hut in the middle of nowhere with the instructions “You go here”. We braved the question “umm where is our campground” and were pointed in a general direction after which we did indeed find a sign for Camp Korana. 

You Go Here.

 One of our favorite games throughout the entire trip was to stop and think, if our parents and our significant others were watching this adventure as a film, what would they be screaming at the tv right now?

Thankfully we had the foresight to purchase at least some bread, cheese, and wine when we were in Zagreb.  After setting up camp in the pouring rain we enjoyed our meal and a game of travel battleship before tying up our plastic food bag tightly and throwing it as far as possible away from our tent into the “woods” because I was afraid of bears (there is one depicted on the Plitvice Lakes National Park sign). A bit of research from le boy assured us that while brown bears exist in Plitvice Lakes National Park, they are rare and instead of dangerous are rather interesting to see. In my opinion a bear is a bear, whether rare or not, and I was not sleeping with any kind of food near me if there was the slight possibility of one of those interesting beasts paying us a visit. (The only wildlife we saw the entire time was some cats. Our food bag went untouched every night.)

It is possible this bottle instead says poison. We have no idea.

 The next morning proved to be yet another small transportation struggle to get from our campground into the actual National Park. We were told by the campground staff that a shuttle would arrive, surprise surprise at the little hut out front on the road and that we were to flag it down and it would stop and take us to the park. We accidently flagged down a bus instead that was not the park shuttle, they told us they would drop us off at the park, but then I got nervous and saw a sign for the parks and after a 2 minute ride determined that we should get off the bus. There we realized we were indeed not yet at the park and still had about 9km to go. We found a dog and played for awhile just to regain some confidence and then decided just to walk it until we saw the park shuttle. A small car with the national parks logo drove past after about maybe ½ hour of walking, so we screamed and jumped up and down and ran after it, they stopped, crammed us into the front seat and laughed a lot at Megan who was wearing sandals, telling her with pointing and gestures that she would only have 2 toes left after the end of the day. 

Here is why this entire saga was worthwhile. You walk for maybe about three minutes into the park and this is your view. Stunning. We spent the day exploring about 7000 waterfalls and a small cave, hiking and generally enjoying the unbelievable beauty we were surrounded by. 

Photo Credit to Megan

 Only about 3 busses drove past us before one picked us up that evening to drop us off at our campground. I’m fairly certain the man who we paid for the tickets just made up a number for the cost of our journey, which was like $2USD. 

Now that we had seen Plitvice we were ready to peace out of Croatia. Another dinner of bread, cheese and wine straight from the bottle and we set an alarm to catch the bus from our hut at 6:40am (another wasn’t coming until 10ish). These busses that we had to flag down from the side of the road were all coming from Split, in the south of Croatia and traveling all the way to Zagreb. I’m fairly certain this is the only road in Croatia. If the bus is full it simply doesn’t stop. We finally got onto a bus at about 7:20am and settled in for the winding ride back to Zagreb, where we made the short but sketchy trek to the train station and treated ourselves to a beer at 11am before getting onto a train to take us to Slovenia… 

Wondering about the post title? Waterfall in Croatian = Slap

Champagne Showers

Cou cou! Finally a (series of) blog post(s) of adventures from my final 2 week paid vacation of the year- which involved a visit from a wonderful lifelong friend, during which we naturally made wonderful lifelong memories.  It’s a whopper, so I’ve divided it up for easier reading.

After a lovely American style Easter brunch (during which my French friend tried to eat his English muffin, apparently in England only called a “muffin” with a knife and fork) and chocolate egg hunt chez moi, I jumped on a train for a night in Paris. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t really know what to do with myself in Paris anymore… so I hit up the café in Montmartre, one of my favorite parts of Paris nonetheless, made famous by the film Amèlie, before then wandering out for a solo beer to watch a bit of the Paris Saint-Germaine futball game at a bar. The best part was that no one spoke English to me the entire day, a very small personal victory as big cities are used to tourists and generally switch to English upon hearing an accent. I have a terribly strong accent unfortunately, but at least the Parisians deemed my French competent enough to stomach my American pronunciations of their beautiful language. 

 

 Megan arrived the following morning, and we spent the day strolling around a bit of a rainy Paris, checking out the Eiffel Tower, the lovelock bridge and eating my favorite Macarons from la Durée on les Champs-Elsyées, which we paired with a lovely white wine in a small café just off the main drag. 

Nantes Castle Picnic

Back at home I got to see Nantes through the eyes of a tourist, and knock off a lot from my “to-do before I leave” list. The city did not disappoint. Really Nantes is such a neat place with pretty architecture, delicious regional specialties and odd quirky things to discover. We ate pastries every day, visited a small art gallery, bought fresh food and moldy delicious cheese from the market, rode bikes, spent some tranquil moments in the various gardens, enjoyed crepes, RODE THE ELEPHANT, and naturally spent some time walking around the castle, lounging by the moat enjoying a bottle of wine and a picnic lunch. 

We rode the elephant, and then took a million pictures with it

Three beautiful days later we found ourselves on part 2 of our adventures: the Champagne region of France, to the city of Reims (pronounced like “Prince” without the “P”, and with that throaty “R” French is famous for). It’s hard not to feel fancy when visiting Champagne caves, learning about the different types of grapes used to create each type and how the drink is made (1 vine of grapes to make 1 bottle of champagne!) and finally tasting the delicious bubbly beverage ourselves. Champagne can only be considered Champagne if produced from this region; there’s a special chalk in the soil here that makes the grapes extra fancy and magical.

 Reims is also home to the cathedral where the majority of the kings of France were crowned The cathedral is immense, equally impressive as Notre Dame de Paris, and has a stained glass window celebrating the region’s most famous beverage, and others created by one of my absolute favorite artists Marc Chagall. I had started a “Travel Wants” list around New Years with Champagne-Ardenne region as a definite doable at some point this year (unfortunately other cities like Prague and Budapest etc were not so lucky), and I was quite pleased when Megan agreed to the idea to check it out. 

Champagne Stained Glass

As difficult as it was to say au revoir to our fancypants hotel-living Champagne-drinking lifestyle, we continued via train back to Paris to find… the bus stop. The following week was taking us to Croatia and Slovenia, and the culture shock was a slap in the face the minute we stepped onto our eighteen hour bus ride… and no one spoke English, or French. It hit me then just how comfortable I have grown with France in general. It’s always good to be a bit cautious as a traveler, to recognize when you are out of your comfort zone and how it makes you feel, how you can grow from respecting whatever differences you may encounter. But the thing is, travel within France doesn’t give me that nervous anxiety “Oh boy what kind of idea was this?” kind of feeling anymore. It was an odd realization, and it made me feel good about how I’ve integrated into French life. I am truly confident in myself and my explorations within the country. But maybe my general level of comfort in France should have been apparent when I explained to le boy that I was going to Paris for a night alone, and my constantly lovingly worrying about my general well-being fiancé said “Oh I’m not worried about you in Paris (one of the world’s largest cities…) You’re great in Paris”. 

 

But oh my, we weren’t in France anymore. Thankfully, the gesture of tapping someone on the shoulder and holding out a box of cookies is universal, and perhaps one of our greatest ideas… feed these bus drivers treats so they will always make sure we are on the bus before it leaves the rest stop, since we have no idea how many minutes are announced in Croatian at every stop. Overall the bus ride wasn’t terrible, but it was an 18 hour bus ride all the same. We were happy when we finally arrived in Zagreb, Croatia the following morning. Perhaps we celebrated a bit too soon though…