Where We're Going

Where We're Going

Wednesday 4 June 2008

People-watching galore!

On our last day in Split I woke early (5am again) just as the American couple were leaving for the ferry to Hvar. At 7:45, before the girl who worked at the hostel had arrived, two more American girls turned up, and I took it upon myself to let them in. They had reservations, I wasn't just letting in strangers! They had come that morning from Budapest and spoke very highly of it, as well as of Bratislava. A lot of the people we have met so far have said that Bratislava is overrated and unenjoyable, which is a shame since we are planning on staying there for four nights. We discussed castles and Erin mentioned two castles they went to that aren't in the guide books, but are much better than Bratislava Castle. They both sounded amazing, so we'll add them to the to-do list. She also told me about a guy she had met there who was travelling around schools in Slovakia teaching English, and that for his first placement he was sent to a town with no hotel or hostel and had to stay with the town's priest, who on their first night together shared bottles and bottles of the blessed Communion wine with him, and they both ended up completely drunk. Naturally, the conversation moved swiftly onto nuns, and how many of them there are in Croatia. She said it was really exciting to see them as you didn't get many Catholics in Canada, and she'd never seen a nun before coming to Europe. I told her about when we were in Sicily and would see nuns every night eating ice-cream in the streets. We giggled lots about how we should record all our nun sightings and create nun photo albums, and try to have our photos taken with nuns in fun poses.

We walked into town for a final wander before our train and saw Margaret in a cafe. We sat and watched bored-looking tour groups and discussed how if John and I lived here we'd be city guides, but we'd dress up and it'd be way more fun than the tour groups we saw in the town. We listened to a couple of the guides, and even the interesting stuff about the town was given in such a dull manner that it seemed dull itself. If we did give tours we'd split the group up, John would have the adults and I'd have the kids tour where I'd teach them loads of cool stuff and we'd make hats to wear while we're walking through town. Margaret suggested we dress as dinosaurs for the tours and add in sneaky bits of fake history to make everything more exciting.

We ate pizza in a park for lunch and I shared some of my crust with a tiny sparrow. He was like a squirrel, he'd get a bit of crust then hop away, turn his back to us, nibble some and then take it away to a nearby tree before coming back for more. As a final treat we sat on the steps outside cafe LVXOR and people-watched. Some of the steps have cushions on, belonging to the cafe, and when you sit there you are expected to order a drink. I understand why they don't like people sitting on their cushions without ordering anything, but they were really forceful this time, and moved on a little frail old woman with a stick and neck brace. I know they have been told to ask people to move, but no one should be so rude, especially not to little old women. The two guys dressed as Roman Legionnaires were there again, taunting the tourists and turning their backs on people who tried to take photos of them without tipping them. We sat there for a couple of hours and saw dozens of people wearing red trousers (we have been collecting them since Sicily) but as yet no trouser capes. We did, however, see what looked like Emperor Palpatine but with a tracksuit, yellow baseball cap and breasts. We walked through the underground crypt for the last time and noticed some really cool prints by a guy called Marinko Jelača, and now I'm feeling all inspired again.

2 comments:

PH said...

Catching up with your blog for the first time (I'm rubbish).

It sounds awesome, and you both write it really well. "I want to break free from this life," as any self-respecting secret underground Freddy Mercury impersonator would say.

Unknown said...

Yay for inspiration.

I love your blog, it makes you seem less far away and lets me know how much of a cool adventure you are on.

xx