At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.

At that point I had already been on over 40 train rides in Europe and all of them were quite smooth, but this one to Split was a bit difficult for me. I finally had a bit of a taste of Balkan travel. Before I departed I had heard that Balkan travel could be difficult and dangerous. I thought it was about security. However, the air conditioning in the cabin was too hot and the rail tracks were so bumpy along the way which made me feel sick. I almost threw up in the middle of the journey.

Split is the second biggest city in Croatia, located on the coast, the last stop of the Croatian railway. The station was quite run down and small. My host, Marin, came to pick me up with his car and helped me with my suitcase which was very nice. I came to his very minimalistic apartment and he prepared his spare room for me. Marin was working in real estate in Split and had been working hard to build his business in town. He asked me some questions about Chinese investment; too bad I had no idea about real estate and couldn’t offer much help to him. I decided to cook for him the next day.

The next day, Marin dropped me off at the old town in the morning and I waited for my tour guide to show up. This was something else that I booked with Airbnb experience. The tour guide was very knowledgeable about the history of Split and we walked through almost every area of the old town and outside of the very famous Diocletian Palace. I enjoyed the walk-around and seeing the old sites, however, I couldn’t really connect to the stories. It happened a lot on the trips actually; I found I was more interested in chatting with and learning things from fellow travelers rather than learning about many historical details and dates. I remember how uninterested I was in school about history. Even though the teacher was really good at telling stories, I always dozed off in the class. What I learnt through traveling was that everyone has different tastes and interests in what they want to see and do. So I would not probably be hitting the shopping mall in every city, and I might feel a bit bored with the history, but hey, I was where the history had actually happened. For that I was proud.

That evening, I cooked Tom Yum Soup (a spicy soup from Thailand) and Green Curry rice for Marin. His kitchen was not very well equipped but I managed to make them yummy with very minimal tools. Travel really made me realize how capable I was. Give me some Asian ingredients and a stove, I could perform magic! Marin was not very used to spicy food, but he managed to clean his plates and ate the whole bowl of spicy soup with his eyes both watering which I found really adorable.

The next day after wandering around town, I thanked Marin for his hospitality and got ready for the bus to the last stop in Croatia, which was Dubrovnik. The bus route down to Dubrovnik from Split was absolutely gorgeous. It was picturesque and postcard scenery for most part of the trip. The bus was driving along the coast, but we had to stop twice for passport inspection because we were passing through Bosnia. This time I couldn’t reach Bosnia because most of the train routes were not operating in winter. I had to give up the idea of visiting Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. However, at this point, though my mind was broadened from all the visits, I was physically exhausted. Thanks to the low travel season, I’d managed to find myself a very decent service apartment for 40 Euros a night with a great view right next to the harbor. I was ready to have a few quiet days resting before my last destination of this trip, which was Italy.

Stay tuned...there’s much more to come!

In the next episode I’ll be sharing a story that happened in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

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