The main Prague railway station is a huge beautiful building with three intimidating globe shaped clock spires at the intersection of a massive number of railroads in the center of a bustling city surrounded on all sides by fast paced highways. It also happens to be a block away from our friend Megan’s beautiful apartment we have been staying at and the street I walked down on my morning commute to preschool gave a grand overview of the whole thing. The only problem is that because it’s surrounded by highways and railroads, it’s practically impossible to get there on foot! And since Chris and I are prone to risk taking and danger our method of choice was walking down the incline from the vantage point on the side of the highway with cars wizzing by about 2 feet from our shoulders. 

  
To be honest, it’s probably safer than the first way we attempted which was underground, took us in circles and was full of hobos and sketchy drug deals. But once you enter this grand building, it’s eerily quiet. The vaulted ceilings are painted with beautiful frescos but there seems to be no one there. When you go out onto the train platform the scene is still just as deserted but more derelict. Ceiling tiles missing here and there, broken doorways leading to rotted stairwells or no stairwell at all. After feeling like we’re in some sort of weird communist dream sequence we finally find an escalator down to the basement. Where we discover a bustling metropolis of commerce. It’s like a gorgeous shopping mall down here and it’s FULL of people. And there are three levels of underground surprises down here!

So, after peeking my head into Sephora, as an excuse to get change for the 2,000 dollar bill the ATM gave us, we got lost for about an hour before finally making our way to the car rental place! We thought our lost days were over until the friendly clerk handed us a tiny map and said we should go outside, turn left, then right, then take an elevator to the -2 floor and then just use our car keys to click around until we see the headlights blink. This was just as confusing as it sounds. But somehow we made it out and got our car and just used our keys to buzz it out of the lot. Without any other human being actually seeing us leave.

But, We’re on our way!! 

  First stop: The Sedlac Ossuary. A small church about an hour from Prague that houses the bones of thousands of plague victims & victims of the Hessian wars that a blind 17th century priest placed meticulously into pyramids and also created adornments for the church out of. Including this giant chandelier which is comprised of at least one of every bone in the human body. 

   
    
 After visiting the Ossuary and getting photos for my first annual Madlaw Halloween Card, we went to eat at a Czech restaurant straight out of the middle ages. Complete with strict meats/goulash/dumpling menu, big wooden benches and old wall paintings. I got a beer sampler (one of my favourite things!) And we had one of the best meals of our entire trip! Chris had the foresight to also order a side of grilled veggies. Probably the only veggies we’ve had since arriving in Prague.

   
 
Then, it was on to Croatia! We stayed the first night in this teeny tiny town on the border of Austria. Vineyards on all sides as far as the eye can see. The place we booked on priceline was this little hotel run by a woman and her daughter who happily drove to greet us as we arrived late at night. The young daughter was in her 20s with dreadlocks and when she forgot how to say something in English she just shrugged and pantomimed and said “I mean, you get it.” The mom just smiled in the background, was probably in her early 50s and had adorable braces. The next morning we went down to have breakfast and had more delightful but confusing interactions because the daughter wasn’t there but the mom was leading us around and just pleasantly speaking to us in Czech even though she knew we didn’t understand anything. At one point she turned to me and said something which, I realized was basically “So, you don’t speak ANY Czech? None at all?” I felt proud as I looked at her and said “ne.” haha At least Max the 6 year old had successfully taught me Yes & No in Czech. And that’s about it. 

   
The next day, we headed through Austria. On the way to Vienna, we got stuck in the wooooorst traffic that stopped and started abruptly. After years if driving down roads in Colorado with one way construction and pilot cars, I assumed they were doing some kind of serious construction. After an hour and a half of being in this stopstopstopgogogo traffic, I had successfully painted my nails, complete with complex nail art, all while being the one in the drivers sear, but we still weren’t getting anywhere. I decided not to complain, though, when I looked to the right and saw a beautiful castle on a distant green hill with fields and vineyards in the foreground. 

   

  

 Especially when remembering LA traffic, I realize, there are much worse places to be stuck.  But when after 2 hours of being stuck we realize that the entire debacle is just due to a single traffic light in a small town the highway passes through, I decided that maybe I do miss the foresight of a sometimes overly efficiency focused country. But my nails did look pretty bomb.

  
That night, we spent an uneventful night in Zagreb other than trying to get food at an allnight joint called American Donut which was out of burgers, fries & donuts. False Advertising! 

  But we had a weird ham, chicken & cheese burger with Croatian Beer and hit the hay. The next day, our eyes were locked upon Chris’ grandfather’s hometown Punat! On the Isle of Krk in Croatia, Punat is a quaint seaside fisherman’s village turned tourist hot spot in the last 20 years. 

 We had another amazingly lucky Priceline experience when we booked a little apartment near the marina. When we arrived the lady came out to greet us so warmly and when we told her Chris’ grandfather grew up here in Punat before moving to Chicago during WWII, she told us, “OOh! Punat?! Really? Look! I have bumps! (pointing to her arm) Maybe we are long lost cousins?!”.

The little apartment was attached to her home. As she left to go on an errand she told me “This terrace is yours! But the cat is mine.” I thought we were having a translation issue until I peeked around the corner to see a lazy orange tomcat sleeping in the wrought iron patio furniture in the garden in front of our apartment.

We changed clothes and headed straight for the beach. The city is long and skinny and made up of small one way streets heading sharply up the hill from the coast. At the end of the coastline is a little swimming area where Chris and I felt our first rush of cold water from the Adriatic Sea. I balanced my iphone rather precariously to get this shot of us watching the storm clouds roll in overhead. 

  We brought our cat-shaped umbrella but didn’t end up needing it. A little pebble beach was beautiful overlooking a larger part of the sea betwen Croatia and Italy.

 

 
That night we went to a special type of Croatian Restaurant called a Konoba which are basically adorable little cave restaurants. We had been warned about booking ahead of time in the busy season but on this tuesday night, we were the only ones in the restaurant. I got the Surlice with goulash, a very special pasta dish specific to the town of Punat. And Chris had one big Octopus tentacle that I found especially creepy and he found especially delicious. 

   

  

 That night we talked on the phone for a while to Chris’ mom and found out some really interesting facts about his family including that his grandfather’s family had fled during WWII and his brother had died from Fascist gunfire in the town. His great-grandfather went to the US to get a place for them to move but didn’t send for them in time and Chris’ grandfather and great-grandmother were forced to flee over the mountains into Italy and spent a year in a refugee camp in Italy before being able to immigrate to the USA. Especially in light of the current refugee crisis happening just miles from where we are now, this was especially poignant. We went to visit his grandfather’s old house and a plaque on the wall above the address reads “Trg Zrtava Fasistikog Terora” because the Square in front of the house is now dedicated to the Victims of Fascist Terror. And on the other side of the little square is a beautiful tiny chapel.

   
   
When we went to go check out of our apartment, our host didn’t want us to leave! She invited us to sit on her balcony and told us about the town and about her life and her daughter she missed so much living in Canada. And she told me, with a tone of admonishment how to make Surlice! “Your husband is Croatian, you must make this Punat dish.”

We left feeling blissfully connected and excited and drove around the island trying to get the perfect souvenir. Driving in and out of small and confusing one way roads, we ended up at the mouth of this teeeeny tiny road heading up the hill. In my giddy excitement, I said, let’s go! And Chris was skeptical. “I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s really narrow.” With my typical disregard for any kind of naysay, I just said “Dooo it Do it Do it! It’s going to be awesome! I’ll film!”

I saw tire marks along the road and a couple of different little parking spaces every once in a while along the side. It only makes sense that this street is just deceptively small and must be appropriately sized just enough to allow a car through. Well, folks, I’m here to say, I was wrong. So wrong. This lane got smaller and smaller like the hallway from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice & Wonderland. Staring with a foot on either side and then progressively getting to where we had to pull in the side mirrors and finally squeezing to the point at which both sides of our rental car were wedged into the historical houses bordering the lane on either side. Did I also mention that we were on an incline and our car was a standard transmission?

  
As if this nightmare situation couldn’t get any worse, an old Croatian woman emerged from her house and started yelling at us. Literally wedged into rocks and hard places, we just looked really pathetic and sad at her until she came down and tried to help us with big hand gestures and speaking intensely in Croatian. And lots of shoulder shrugging. By some kind of miracle, she managed to help guide us into a little opening she had in her Olive/Grape grove and we did about a thousand point turn to turn around and go back the way we came. But we emerged feeling still terrified and defeated with big yellow and tan scratches along the sides of our car as battle scars.

Alright Punat, you win this one! But Croatia hasn’t heard the last of this little purple/brown station wagon! On to Dubrovnik!