Dubrovnik-->Split-->Zagreb-->Budapest-->Pápa: 36 hours home

Woke up at 8, ate breakfast alone on the balcony in the glorious sun. Packed up, arranged a ride to the bus station from our hostel guy, (who ended up being late and we missed our bus by seconds... i’m tellin ya...) BUT the ticket lady said to run across the street and flag down the bus, because it would be pulling around, so we made it on! Phew! Lol. We got back to Split, ate lunch, and wandered around... it really is a pretty boring city, in my opinion. I don’t get what the big deal is.

Diocletian's Palace--sorry its sideways.

sticking my feet in the Adriatic!

We wandered through the palace, attempted to do some souvenir shopping, but that was actually rather hard—and any place that souvenir shopping is difficult must not be a cool place... right? We still had hours til our train, so we  returned to the same restaurant and passed the time by ordering wine, beer, and chocolate crepes. We picked up pizza and this cheese bread thing we’d been saying we needed to try all week... which was just about as untasty as I expected. We headed to the train station and unpacked the locker (my mad packing skills had all three of our packs in one locker, every time) and boarded the train... only to find we were actually joining a circus. I wish I had better pictures of our sleeper cabin, but it was verrry different from the one I took in Egypt. I’ll let the pictures do the talking here.

I took a Tylenol PM but did NOT sleep very well at all. Unfortunate. The train also stopped a million times, which was weird. We were woken at 6am with tea/coffee and pre-packaged croissants—the same things I had been eating for days. We got to Zagreb at 630, stuffed our packs in lockers and headed out to find breakfast... but, being Eastern Europe and a Sunday, virtually nothing was open. We finally found a café that had food, did some souvenir shopping (found one store open) and headed back to the train station. We got on the train (after avoiding Brazil) and headed back to Hungary. The Border Guards in Hungary were intense, and our residence permits seemed to be confusing for them. it took foreverrrrrr.



Lake Balaton, Hungary



Overall, it was a good trip. I had fun, travelled with some cool friends, saw some great places, ate some delicious (and not-so-delicious) food, got souvenirs, took tons of great photos, and had a nice time. I highly recommend Slovenia and Croatia (you can skip Split) to anyone in the region. Probably tried to do too much--spent a lot of time on trains and busses, but I think it was worth it, and we DID do it all. :)

I am actually quite unhappy about crossing the border back into Hungary. I’m hoping the home-sweet-home effect lasts a while, and that I don’t revert to the I-wanna-go-home-now mentality. I am so looking forward to skyping with my family—it’s been so long!—but of course retelling these tales in person would be better. I am not prepared to teach this week, and I have tons of photos to go through and upload and type up this journal mess into blogs. I also need to figure out what I am doing with Amy in Budapest next weekend!

We ran into Brazil at Keleti, but the three of us were off to our trains home. Angie and I stumbled through the doors of our flats after 9pm on Sunday, utterly exhausted.

I am closer to going home now—past the halfway point, and I have plenty more travelling to plan and look forward to.

“If I make it through December, I’ll be fine.”