Croatia & Italy, IX.2013

– Welcome, my name is Heinz Guderian, general of Panzergruppe.

What the hell? A middle-sized, dark-haired man about 25 years old and with left arm in a cast approaches us and greets me with his right hand. When he starts to speak again I gather all my croation powers on trying to understand what is he trying to tell us. He points on our beers, from which I conclude he wants us to buy him one. I refuse, ’cause in the end we have little kunas ourselves. He shakes his head in disapproval and disappears in the bar.

To our surprise, he appears again holding two bottles of beer and hands them to us. He stutters a bit, but we manage to understand him.

– You see… you see, what kind of man would I be, if I wouldn’t agree my fellow man with a bottle of beer… – he explains. What is this all about? He points at my eyes.

– You and me, you see… You and me, we are arian race, we’ve got blue eyes. We’ve got to help each other. – if introducing himself as a general of a Nazi army hasn’t convinced me that he’s nuts, his dark eyes has done the job. – You see, I am Adolf Hitler. – he salutes us. In this moment Dani is really scared, taking into consideration my polish nationality [as well as her dark hair, eyes and skin – Dani] – We’ve got to help each other for the sake of german race. – he turns back and marches into the bar. In just a moment he returns carrying two more bottles. And then comes the awaited question to me (he ignores Dani all the time):

– Where are you from? From Germany?

Possible consequences of the answer are running through my head, but what the heck.

– No, from Poland.

He thinks about my answer for a bit, but finally salutes me, gives me one more “we’ve got to help each other, what kind of a man would I be if I wouldn’t buy you a beer” and returns to bar. Right now all we want is to empty our bottles as soon as possible and find a place to spend the night, cause the dawn begind to fall, but we haven’t even started on the second bottle.

Heinz/Adolf looks from the bar’s door and asks me from out of the blue:

– Do you want to kiss me? – from inside of the bar we hear the laughter of Krapina inhabitants, who probably provoked him to ask this. It all turns into some grim absurd… I kindly refuse, we grab the unfinished beers and rush away to find a place for the night.

We head up the hill, in the direction of a forest, a bit lost on the streets. Finally, we get out of Krapina, we pass a small chapel, a cementary and in the edge of a forest we put out the tent. I’m cooking some pasta, Dani arranges the tent. In the morning, when we look out of the tent, it turns out that in the dark we haven’t really passed the cementary…

 

 

Trying to get out of Krapina we find communication problems again, by foot we get to another village. Luckily, from there a friendly driver takes us all the way to Celje in Slovenia. We leave our luggage at the train station and for the first time we go out to the city without backpacks and in the full sun.

 

 

 

 

We decide not to take risks of hitchhiking and to Ljubljana we go by a cheap train. About what interesting is there to be found in Ljubljana – Metelkova Mesto – I’ll try to write later. We sleep in the city park, which freaks out Dani again, and in the morning we continue with public nad private transportation. First – to windy Trieste:

 

 

 

… with Trenitalia to Monfalcone – next “in the end of the world” type of place, where even the touristic information they don’t speak in english, starting every sentence from a friendly “Alora”:

 

 

 

 

… and with the help of Blablacar and wide metro system we reach well-known Milano. Here we find our peaceful haven at Fabio’s place, who’s helpful as always. Great thanks, man!

 

 

 

Full of new optymism, energy and aperitivo-food, with washed clothes, after a hot shower and night in comfort, we decide to give hitchhiking one more chance – in the end this is what we wanted to do in this wandering. We get out of Milano accoring to Hitchwiki only to find that the described spot is taken by road police patrol… so we go a bit further, in the end spending hour and a half holding sign TORINO like idiots on the side of a road in totally other direction. A search for internet place, good mood fades away, feeling of being lost and frustration return.

Slowly a thought appears – maybe we can look for cheap flights to Barcelona? There’s probably no chance for that, but we can take a peek…

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