Amy & Wim

When I think of Croatia, I always think of beautiful beaches, touristy resorts, and Victorian era houses. This is not the Croatia that we went through. Since the war, they have had to replace almost everything. In the bigger cities near the border with Serbia, you can see a lot of the destruction yet.

Houses and buildings are crumbling and full of bullet holes. You see this on TV, and somehow it just doesn't touch you like it does when it's staring you in the face. The houses are either brand new, under construction, or full of bullet holes.

We carefully stay on the road, as huge areas have these weird signs against wild camping.

The landscape is becoming hilling, and it is really fun to discover a cute sleepy town when you arrive at the top of a hill. Everyone has a damn rooster though, so it's hard to sleep. You would think in the past thousands of years that people have been breeding these obnoxious animals, that they would have developed a breed of quiet roosters.

Each day, we buy lunch supplies and find a nice grassy spot to eat lunch. In Germany, this was often a problem, because the grassy spot often ended up being owned by someone, who would pass by and tell us to leave, and that it was not meant as a "picnic area". Fair enough, I wouldn't want any bums snacking away on my lawn either. But In Croatia, it is different. Many people have a bench out in front of their house, and we have been using these for our lunch breaks. Each time we do though, some old guy comes out, offers us coffee, vodka, and then starts picking fruit from his garden to fill our panniers with.

This always takes a long time, but often proves to be interesting, even though we can only communicate in grunts and gestures. People brew their own schnapps, and are very persistent in sharing it with us. This guy gave us a one liter Coca Cola bottle filled with schnapps for on the road. According to him, it would make us strong for pedaling up the hills.