If you have a map of Europe handy, locate Munich. Now find Split, Croatia. Here’s the game: pretend that you are in Munich, and that you have six days before you need to be in Split. What do you do?
No matter what you answered to that, it won’t be what Kevin and I ended up doing. We wanted to go hiking since Zakopane had rained us out of spending much time outdoors while we were there. And I wanted to go to Italy, because it’s Italy and I love Italy, since if you ignore the Adriatic it’s kind of on the way. So we made this plan:
July 21. Take an early train from Munich to Innsbruck and go hiking a little that day.
July 22. Hiking in Innsbruck.
July 23. Hiking in Innsbruck again, and then an overnight train to Rome.
July 24. Do as the Romans do!
July 25. Keeping doing as the Romans do!
July 26. 6:00 am train to Ancona, 11:00 ferry to Split.
So you have probably already guessed that this plan was tweaked a little, since generally when I mention a plan it’s only to make it easier for me to explain the deviations. Everything went okay for a while though. The train to Innsbruck was easy, and hiking was nice. It rained, but it turns out that this time it wasn’t personal-Innsbruck is just like that. It is completely cloudy and rainy until about 12:00, when it becomes partly cloudy and rainy, then at 2:00 it becomes partly cloudy and sunny, and by 4:00 it’s actually pretty nice. But I still get to say that Kevin and I set aside six days of our European tour for hiking and that it rained on every one of them. Other than the hiking, Innsbruck was pretty uneventful. We saw the world-famous tourist-drawing Golden roof, which isn’t even a whole roof but a pretty little protrusion from a pretty normal looking building. Nevertheless, every time we went to the square there were hoards of people taking pictures of it. We took pictures of it too.
Then we took the overnight train to Rome. This was my idea, and I take the blame for it. I can sleep pretty much anywhere and Kevin said he was up for trying it, so we booked a compartment instead of a sleeping car. They came in asking for our tickets every hour or two, our compartment was full of people most of the time, and the Italian guys who weren’t in seats but just hanging out in the hallway had turned it into an impromptu concert hall and spent most of the ride singing. At one point two girls came into the compartment, sat in the vacant middle seats on either side. One of the girls put her head in Kevin’s lap and her feet in another guy’s foot space and fell sound asleep. I was jealous, not really that she had her head in Kevin’s lap (though if anyone had the right to utilize Kevin’s lap as a pillow, I would like to think it was me) but more that she was fast asleep. I felt slightly vindicated when the next time an officer asked for our tickets, he looked at their tickets and started saying, “Verona? È passato. È passato.” The girls looked confused, so I asked if they spoke English. When the said yes, I told them they had missed their stop. I should have felt sorry for them, but I was tired and grumpy and kind of enjoyed it. I feel kind of guilty about that, hence the public confession.
We arrived in Rome exhausted, but after a failed attempt to nap in a park we did Roman things anyway. The Coliseum, Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, Trevi fountain, the works. The next day we went to the Vatican and checked out St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel and the gazillions of works of art they have stored up in there. I’ve been once before but I still think it’s ironic that the most famous and ostentatious display of wealth in the world is in a Church state. I love ancient Roman history even though I don’t know much about it (the unavoidable result of seven years of Latin) as well as how every inch of Rome looks like it was crafted by a master artist (most of it was). But I can’t say it was my favorite part of Italy. That prize goes to the great, the beautiful, the delicious world of…
ITALIAN FOOD! Kevin and I decided that we weren’t going to eat on the cheap in Italy since we were only there for two days. We ate out and had lasagna and carbonara and Bolognese and pizza and gelato and it was wonderful. My stomach may never be as happy as it was then.
So we woke up absurdly early and caught our 6:00 am train to Ancona. Somehow we were chatting about what we would do if we missed the ferry and ended up deciding that we didn’t care. We had these rail passes and we might as well just use them to get to Croatia rather than pay 60 Euro each to ride the ferry. So when we got to the Italian port city, we didn’t even leave the train station. We just caught the next train to Venice, arriving mid-day.
Venice is an awesome city for a half-day stop. We had our last gelato in Italy, went and saw the square with all the pigeons, waved at some gondolas, and were charmed by all the little streets and bridges. What made it so great was that it was a completely spontaneous adventure. A few hours earlier we weren’t even planning on passing through.
From there we jumped on the overnight train to Zagreb, Croatia. Having learned our lesson, this time we booked couchettes and slept until our 5:00 am arrival in Zagreb. We couldn’t get on the early train to Split, so we waited at the train station for the 11:00. What’s nice about traveling with someone is that you have someone to hang out with during six hour waits at a train station, which can be tedious if you are by yourself. I am not a great traveling companion. I fell asleep immediately and woke up at 10:30, just in time for our next train. Sorry, Kevin.
If you still have your map of Europe out, you can see how out of the way Rome was, and how far we had to travel to go up and around the Adriatic instead of over it. But it was worth it.
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