A Blizzard in Zagreb

"...they will let no drop of pleasure go to waste. It is good to wear red and gold and blue and green: the women wear them, and in the Moslem bazaar that covers several acres of the town with its open-fronted shops there are handkerchiefs and shawls and printed stuffs which say 'Yes' to the idea of brightness..."

And so I made the bus to Zagreb, a very long, very slow journey, but a beautiful one when there was light. I watched Sarajevo trickle away, the buildings shrinking, the groups of houses becoming more sparse, and then nothing. The white mountains.

It was another winter paradise. Clumps of snow clinging to fence posts, ink-black trees draped in frosty ermine robes. I plowed through Shardik, getting close now to the end and feeling very personal about it. I read some marvelous essays in a book called Winter by Adam Gopnik. I had packed it hoping to read it in the snow, and I got my wish.

I played a little "hidden picture" game on my Kindle.

Many peaceful hours spent reading and dozing. I slumped low in my seat and let my legs straighten out in the aisle. Others did the same. We ate our almonds and drank our water. We made one of those corrupt little rest stop breaks where the driver gets a few lipa for every kuna you spend. He drank coffee and watched us over the rim of the mug to see what we were buying.

I bought a bag of nonsensical chocolates and some potato chips shaped like chicken legs.

The border was one where you have to get out of the bus and face a grim dude. This one was particularly tight, though nothing like the Serbian border, and they isolated us from one another and searched the bus. No problems, though. It was late in the evening.

We got to Zagreb around 9pm, and I stretched my weary legs and got a cab. No ripoff this time, just nice and easy. My host was nowhere to be found, and the snow was really coming down. I was sure I was in the right place, but he wasn't there.

Once again, my bags and I were alone. But this time, it was perilous to be outside. Harsh, cold wind. Heavy, wet snow. More coming down all the time. Huddled in a stairwell waiting for my host. And then... like a doorway in the side of a mountain opening to reveal a procession of the fair folk, a massive wall-sized entrance slid back and there stood salvation. 

Salvation had Coke-bottle lenses and fingerless gloves. He let me in, showed me the space heater, and went back to Whoknowswhere. Strange little apartment in the back of a pizza place. Interesting little walk through a courtyard with a Pepsi sign buried in snow. 

There was a bowl of fruit, but it was fresh when Cato was a pup. Is that an expression? There's an expression like that. Dusty, dry apples. Hard, shriveled orange. No worries. The plan was just to crash here, so I had gotten the cheapest place. 

Early bus in the morning scheduled for Pula back on the coast. Running out of days, so I was really trying to max everything out. Showered in the little airlock-sized bathing tube and crashed. There's nothing like doing nothing on a bus for nine hours to tire a man out. 

Woke up to the sound of bells. Zagreb loves them. They're mad for bells! Considered running out to take a few pictures. I was right in the heart of the action, but the bus to Pula just a few hours away, and it was sooper cold. Still snowing hard. 

Figured I'd make coffee, but no electric kettle. Maybe I could use that mummy fruit as kindling. 

I remembered the old ways, found a pot, filled it with water. There was an electric stove, but the dials don't indicate which was the front or the back burner. It was just a bunch of circles, like a child's guide to shapes. 

The dials just said 1, 2, and 3 on them. Is 3 the hottest? I require the hottest for boiling. Placed the pot on a burner, turned the dial to 3. Waited. The other burner groaned. That meant it was the one that was on. So I turned the other dial. LOUD popping sound, and I was in total darkness.

In retrospect, I should have just moved the pot to the burner that was working. But, why would I assume a blackout if you tried to cook two things at once? No windows, so no light. Or, rather, there was a window, but a giant Ikea closet has been placed in front of it. Slowly felt my way back to the bed.

My laptop had some charge in it, so I used the light from the screen to see. I held it up and swept the room looking for a fusebox. High on the wall, I found one. Old. Plastic. A few holes in it. No exposed wires. Used the laptop to find a chair. Stood on the chair. Plunged my hand into the Soviet-era fuse box and flipped every switch. Nothing. Stood on the chair with the laptop. Found a secret switch. Flipped it. Light!! I earned myself some coffee, but I don't dare try to make it now.

I felt like all the training I'd done with my "find things in pictures" game had at last paid off!

Went out to find a cafe. I thought I'd seen one through the hoarfrost the previous evening. My vision was true. Fought through the snow, and made my way in. People were stamping snow off their boots. 

There was an interesting bit in that book of essays where it said the Russian government in the 1950s had to put out propaganda saying that Russian soldiers had beaten Hitler and not the Russian Winter. There was legitimate concern from the government that people were giving the snow too much credit. 

On a day like today, I could see why. What I couldn't see was that it was going to have a serious effect on the rest of the trip. I was like, "Oh, sucks for photos!" and not, "Wait a minute... is this going to... make it hard to... drive?"

Snagged my bags, threw the key under that giant wall-door and grabbed a cab. There was one right there. He took me right to the station. I saw so many statues clothed in snow. Beautiful, really.

Got my ticket to Pula and waited. Bought some more burek. Cheese and onions this time. It was good, but I was trying to think of what it would be like back home. I was deliberately chowing down on bus station food, the equivalent of old pizza and wrinkly hot dogs. But, since it was new to me, it was all wonderful. 

How I would laugh at someone coming out of the Greyhound ticket office raving about the delicious nacho cheese they'd just eaten. 

Gypsies were really swarming here. Target-rich environment, I reckon, and the cold had forced everyone inside. 

A reminder of the plan: I had a ticket to Pula, roughly four hours away. I was going to explore it for two hours and take a two-hour bus to Rijeka where I had a room booked. I wanted to sleep in Rijeka, because in the morning they were having a massive children's carnival. Costumes, parades, wild crafts and singing. 

Wiped the burek grease off of my lips, rolled over to the platform, and a very powerful looking driver person with a NASCAR-style jacket covered in bus logos was like, "Cherry orchard rack of lamb," and I was like, "Sorry.. Pula?" and he was like, "Camptown racetrack miss congeniality," and I was like...

And a cool dude in sunglasses and a fur-trimmed jacket was like, "Bus late. No problem." 

So I waited in the warmth. The same gypsy cruised me twice, until the driver was like, "NAY!" and she fucked off miserably. Pigeons were loose in the waiting room and there was bird shit on the seats.

Eventually, without too much delay at all really, the bus pulled up and we boarded. We took off dreaming of Pula's famous amphitheater. 

I finished Shardik! 600 dense pages of fantasy philosophy! I ended up loving you, you dear old brick. You old bruin. Never speak to me again. 

Slept as the hours ticked away. Woke up in Zagreb. Record scratch! How could this be? Was it maybe just a station that looked exactly like Zagreb? Noap. Apparently while I slept, we turned all the way around and came back. The blizzard had closed the interior of the country.

Holy shit. They gave everyone all their money back, but... I wasn't getting a refund on the four hours I'd lost. In the confusion, I even left Shardik on the bus and couldn't give it a proper burial. 

So... I went back to the ticket office, and I was like, "Where can I go?" and he was like, "There's a city called Noplace. Let me teach you a Croatian word, it's "Highwayclosed."

So... I was just... in the bus station waiting to see what would happen. I was there for hours. Reading, writing, drinking fancy crafted coffee, and waving off gypsies.

There was every form of begging imaginable. There was the scam where you come up crying, there was the scam where you just glare with your hand shaped like a cup, there was the scam where you drop off a sign-language alphabet card and come back to collect it. Has that one ever really worked? And, of course, there was that same lady who had been buzzing around the station since the early early morning. Her thing was to wave a religious post card at you and croak. 

The one that got me was a little kid. He was wearing a cheap 70s-style Halloween mask and sang in a "duh duh duh" voice, like it was the laziest recital of some old tune. Coming out of that plastic freak mask, though, it was legitimately scary. It was something my senses couldn't ignore, something truly weird. 

It was like something out of that old Donald Sutherland movie, the one where he chases a dwarf through Venice. 

After he finished "singing," he just stared at me. Eyes moving behind the mask's eyeholes. Then he yelled "MONEY!" in high-pitched English, and my hand was in my pocket and the coin was out and in his hand as quickly as possible.

After many hours, snow falling outside the large windows of the bus station, they reopened some roads, but not to Rijeka or Pula. Only back to Split. And so... I took what I was offered. The other alternative would be to stay the night in Zagreb, but that could mean being stranded again. So, I pretended the lyrics to the scary clown child's song were:

Go back to Split, sleepy Yankee

Give me a coin, and I'll thankee. 

I also decided he would count as the children's costume festival. I sure know how to make myself feel good. I recognized that the days of get up and go were behind me now. Made peace with it and boarded the bus. 

Off to Split. The roads were terrible, and the driver skidded more than once. Would we turn around again? Noap. We would stop at another ripoff road stop, though. I bought expensive almonds, and the driver beamed at me. We got stuck in the driveway, the wheels just spun in the snow. They figured something out. We switched buses in the dark. 

I read a marvelous book of short stories by James Salter. I read a weird collection of fragments by James Kelman called Greyhound for Breakfast. The title story was awesome. Arrived in Split, a very very familiar bus station. I was able to book a little room near a statue of a golden donkey. 

I had seen it a few days ago. It felt good to know it. It was "my" donkey.

The host greeted me with homemade crepes filled with local honey from the hills. It was late. I slept. Warm and weary.

And then I spent a very restful, very beautiful final day in a city I felt I knew.  Made cherry tea, did laundry. Bought a sweater from a soldier. Bought some oranges and lavender from an old woman in the market. Ate risotto and zucchini in a small cafe. Read short stories and napped. Drank more cherry tea and read some essays. 

And that was it. That was Croatia. A really great trip full of surprises and emotion. I won't forget the way I felt in Mostar or Sarajevo. I'll treasure the rare opportunity I had to run the walls of Dubrovnik alone. Another inspirational visit to Eastern Europe. 

Thanks for reading, fools.