after spending a beautiful couple of days in the historical costal town in split, croatia, i took the ferry over to the island of Hvar. i was sitting in a seat surrounded by a bunch of open seats when a group of travellers approached me and asked if they could sit. one asked me if i was travelling alone and when i said yes, insisted that i spend my time in hvar with them.
turns out, these people had just met each other 5 minutes earlier at the ferry dock for a "beach surfing" trip in hvar. they had all coordinated this trip through the website www.couchsurfing.com/. in it's simplest form, couch surfing is a website for travellers who need a place to stay while travelling or just want someone to hang out with in the city they're travelling to. sounds sketchy, but there's a really good verification system to insure safety.
anyway, there was 11 of us from 6 different countries: america, sweden, spain, turkey, australia and croatia. so i decide to kick it with these folks and just meet the most interesting people. two of the girls were americans playing pro-soccer (or football as i've learned to call it during eurocup2008) for the swedish women's football team, one guy was from san fransisco and the head of sustainablity for a string of music venues, one was a 40 year old woman from austrailia who had finally decided to follow her dream of travelling the world, as well as several other kids my age travelling post-university.
i had an incredible time talking to everyone about their upbringing and their lives in different countries. it's unbelievable that while we all come from such diverse backgrounds, we all still have that seed inside our hearts ready to burst and grow with every experience and travel we can grasp. we had an incredible 2 days in hvar running around the island, hiking in every nook and cranny we could find and swimming as often as we could.
we spent the solstice together on the beach and applied pagan war paint with cheek stain and eyeliner. they were a great group of people and i'm fully planning on utilizing the couch surfing website and will hopefully be able to be as an incredible host in denver as Jelena was to us in croatia. high fives to my fellow worldy vagabonds. hvala!
this is beautiful split:
my daily cone :)
natalie (the american swedish soccer player) and our amazing croatian host, jelena
this was our oasis of a campsite found among nothing but jagged rocky "beaches"
the view of the ocean from our campsite
sunset on the night of the solstice
the town of starigrad on hvar island where we watched the spain-italy football match
my awesome tanline from the ferry ride. yowwwch
after my unbelievable international experience in split/hvar i took a train back up to the capital of crotia, zagreb where i met up with my lovely new friend Iva. I got into contact with Iva via my danish pal Bruski :) Iva graciously offered me a free bed to sleep in for the night and while i was a bit nervous about staying with someone i had never met before, Iva ended up being the most wonderful little ball of enthusiasm ever! she was such a fun person to talk to and giggle with. this little lady had so much enthusiasm about life and passion about everything she loved. i was greeted by her smiley mom who made me an incredible traditional croatian dinner paired with unbelievable wine. Iva's family was so amazing and so welcoming, it was nice to have a home cooked meal and just be around a family. high fives to Iva and her family for the warm welcome :)
well that's it for croatia, next up copenhagen...maybe if i have another couple of beers i'll rock a joint blog with heather and bruski :) yeaaah we'll probably make that happen.
ps. no idea why my pictures are huge/cut-off, but they took so long to upload i don't really feel like fixing it.
cheers!
micaela
3 comments:
hey sissy,
miss you muchos!
xoxoxo
fun fun fun!!
-jes
I'm glad you had a nice time :)
see you soon
Iva
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