Day 17 - Zagreb ande Osijek, still in Croatia!

Last night, I enjoyed for the first time, a bath. Our four star hotel had a deep bathtub, where, also for the first time since I was 12, I was able to take a bath where more than my butt and feet were in the water. It was lovely. The water was a little cloudy, so I rinsed off after, but it was really nice while it lasted.

In the morning, we wandered around confused looking for the continental breakfast, which wasn't that hard to find, but was down the hallway from the lobby, not by the regular restaurant. Their scrambled eggs were good, but the rest was meh. Mostly just really confusing.

After we had a tour of Zagreb with a really funny older woman, who led us around, showing us the sights. It was pretty fun. At one point, we were up on one of the hills of Zagreb, and she says "Oh, I almost forgot. This tower has a cannon that goes off at noon. It's very loud."

I looked at my watch. 12:00:35. My watch must be ahead. I plugged my ears, and BAM! Everyone screamed, and laughed. I picked up a piece of the "cannon ball" which was made of paper. I dunno why. I suppose it'll be a cool souvenir to throw away. Lol.

Anyway, Meichen and I grabbed kebaps and some fruit from the market. The kebaps were better than the kebabs I had when I was in France, but still, I get creeped out by the giant haunches of meat they shave for the kebabs. In Croatian, its spelled kebaps. Not sure why.

I bought three bananas, but Meichen just wanted a few oranges, and ended up with about 20. I still had 5 from the day before, so we had a lot of oranges! The oranges she bought today weren't that great of quality, so some of them we have to throw away.

The bus trip to Osijek from Zagreb was a little longer than the trip from Piran to Zagreb. At our pit stop, we encountered a man who was standing outside the bathroom, asking 50 euro cents or 3 kuna to use it. Not so legit, but we were desperate. The bathrooms were nice enough, though. I bought some orange juice from the gas station, but the aftertaste was a little pukish, so I only drank half of it.

Our drive today was pretty cloudy. It was foggy when we left, sleety during the drive, and dark when we arrived in Osijek. Same as yesterday, so I haven't had to many good pictures of Croatian countryside yet. It's similar to the midwest, though. Flat and farmed. More populated than Iowa, but not suburban.

Anyway, we then arrived at our accommodations which is a guest house of the Nansen center. 10 of the group had to go to another hostel. It's above a nightclub and they can't lock their rooms. After the bar closes, the entrance to the hostel gets locked, but there are only a couple lockers to put small personal items in. Sketchy. I'm staying in a spacious room with LaVana and Meichen with our own bathroom, right outside of the kitchen. I am glad I am in the guest house.

Anyway, we went for a group dinner. They served us two kinds of soups, beef and fish, with egg noodles. And dessert. It wasn't so great. The fish soup was just chunks of fish. I found the head. Someone ate the tail. My little taste had a few bones. I mostly ate the beef soup. Although, I was one of the lucky people who didn't get a piece of spine or something. Then we got weird desserts which weren't bad but not fantastic.

Hopefully it's sunny tomorrow so I can see Osijek before we go to Vukovar for class. Tomorrow will be a hard day. We're starting to get into the area that was affected by the war. Our restaurant had holes in the wall from shrapnel from the 90s. And this is the town that wasn't very heavily attacked. Vukovar, on the other hand, was under siege for 3 months. And the day after tomorrow, we go to Sarajevo, which was under siege for 43 months. Crazy...!