When traveling, relying on the kindness of strangers not only saves time, potential embarrassment and/or confusion, but also reassures my belief that people are inherently kind.
Sure, there are the rude, unhelpful clerks around the world but the teen to early 20s student types, the urban professional, and the well dressed elderly are almost unfailingly willing to try their English, all types of hand gestures, and their patience in trying to understand and respond to my helpless look and request. I often venture out on a day trip with only a vague itinerary, a sketchy map and info from a guidebook that is out of date before it is even published, and the address where I’m staying. I always get safely back to my room and usually with at least one if not five requests for help behind me for the day.
Sometimes I get help when I wasn’t even asking. When I checked into the Dubai airport at 12:45 am, the kindly clerk asked me if I had my “gold card” with me so I could get into the VIP lounge. Luckily, I was prepared for this potential request because I had my United Airlines Premier Executive gold colored card with the year 2000 (its validity) clearly marked. In truth, that was the only card I could find while packing but what the heck? So, my 8 year old card was my entry ticket into the oh-so-plush lounge in Dubai and the oh-so-utilitarian lounge in Istanbul, Turkey where I lolled about for 5 hours waiting for my connecting flight to the capital of Croatia: Zagreb.
Twelve hours after leaving Dubai, I arrived in the tiny, 1950s style Zagreb airport after a detour through neighboring Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana. When booking this flight using my frequent flyer miles (only spent $250 on taxes and fees for my Seattle-Bombay roundtrip and Frankfurt -Dubai trip!), they didn’t mention that the flight was going through Slovenia first. I only figured it out when I couldn’t find Zagreb on the departure lists in Istanbul.
Anyway, back to my arrival in Croatia when I was operating on about 2 hours of sleep in the previous 30 hours or so. By phrasing my question just so, I finally got the answer from the information desk about a Croatian Airlines shuttle that leaves once a day for a two hour drive to the Adriatic Coast’s transit city: Rijeka. No signs posted anywhere but by watching the interaction of a stranger with a kindly looking young guy in a white button down shirt, I hazarded a question to the same guy about this shuttle bus. Lucky me, he turned out to be the driver for it and he promptly scribbled “Gulia” on the reservation list. His good English smoothed my way to find the bus stop to get to my final destination of Opatija when we arrived in Rijeka after driving through pouring rain. Lucky again, the rain held off its downpour every time I needed to get around that day.
My lucky streak, kind strangers, and reliance on my gut got me off at the right bus stop in Opatija and helped me find the one and only open travel agency at 6:30 pm. In Croatia, hotels are very expensive (starting at about US$75) and so cheap, unemployed travelers like me rely on the private rooms that can be arranged through travel agencies or through the old ladies who own the rooms and come out to greet incoming buses to advertise them. The rooms generally are about US$25. Adelia, the room owner, even came out to the main road to guide me to her place two blocks up the hill. I didn’t know what was going on as all I knew was this woman was coming up to me and seemed to be saying “92, 92” in a questioning way. I finally figured out who she was although I still don’t know what she was saying. Our conversations are a bit spotty as Adelia speaks halting English and I don’t speak any Croatian, German or Italian which are her preferred languages. Even still, we get along and communicate the important stuff.
I’m enjoying a spotlessly clean room, an attached bathroom with a hot shower with better water pressure than I have at home, and I’m learning all about satellite TV at night. There are more than 500 channels to choose from but there only appears to be four channels in English: BBC news, CNN, Euro News, Bloomberg Financial, and oddly enough, a tele-evangelist one. There are a lot of channels which are in German, Italian, and I assume various Serbo-Croatian dialects. There are many Arabic ones helpfully marked by the various emirate or country names. Lots of sports channels too. Even with all those, more than Bhalf of the remaining channels seem to be cover pages for various x-rated telephone sites or maybe they are pay-per-view sites. I don’t know if this is the same on America’s satellite channels as this is my first experience with it but I’m not going to be buying satellite services anytime soon!
In closing, I don’t know how often I will be posting here – wireless places are few and far between here. There are internet cafes but they have strange keyboards and cost about U$3 for 20 minutes. The y key is replaced by the z key, the @ symbol and the exclamation point don’t exist. I’m in a free wireless zone in Rijika on this sunny, beautiful Sunday. I was going to head to Rovinj via Pula today (see may in Croatia ramblings) but realized that since it was Sunday, all the travel agencies and many restaurants are closed, the buses are few and far between and just getting around might be more problematic. I’ll keep writing on my laptop but I’ll have to master how to use my jump drive – probably have to rely on the internet cafe person. So, yep, back to travelling by the seat of my pants, relying on the kindness of strangers, and trying to maintain a sense of serenity through it all. Coffee helps!
