So Close, Yet So Far

If you were to look at a map of Europe you would think that one could travel from the south of Italy to Croatia with ease. You would, however be dead wrong if you thought that. The journey from Ischia to Split, Croatia takes a minimum of fourteen hours, not including down time between busses, trains, and ferries, and a sleepover if necessary. For this particular trip, I left Ischia at 10am and arrived in Naples at 11:15am, to catch a 12:30pm train to Rome. Arriving in Rome at 1:45 (I took the fast train), I had to wait for the next train to Ancona, which left Rome at 4pm and arrived in Ancona at 8:40pm. Once in Ancona I stayed in a hostel and waited to catch the fast ferry which departed at 11:30am the next morning. So there I was, 25 and a half hours since I left Ischia, exhausted, and finally boarding a ferry only to wait another five hours to arrive in Croatia. On the train from Rome to Ancona, I began to get a bit nervous. Not quite sure why, just one of those uncomfortable feelings you feel deep in your gut, that somehow whispers to your heart that it should start beating faster, which tells your brain that it should think more than it normally does, which in turn screams back to your gut to be more uncomfortable, setting the whole cycle in motion, annoyingly once more. Yeah, that one. That was what I was feeling on the train to Ancona. Unfortunately, arriving in Ancona, a dirty, dodgy port town didn’t make me feel any better. I quickly made my way to my hostel, checked in and went to bed, hoping that a good nights’ sleep would make me feel better. I awoke feeling refreshed and a little more at ease, ate something and made my way to the port, which turned out to be mission all on its own. For some reason they thought it would make sense to have to catch a bus, from the train station to an office, near the port, but not quite at the port to check in, before you catch another bus to the actual port where you then have to wait two hours before you can board the ferry. At this point it didn’t even matter, I was just happy to be on a boat, knowing that when I stepped off I would finally be at my destination. I found a nice couch on the ferry, relaxed and opened my Lonely Planet: Croatia. I had ordered this book almost nine months and eleven countries earlier, having heard great things about Croatia and knowing that I wanted to see it for myself, but had yet to even look past the cover. As I sat there, flipping page to page my excitement for this tiny country on the Adriatic just kept growing and growing. All that nervousness and anxiety I had felt just a day earlier had suddenly turned into curiosity and excitement. Suddenly, I had my pen and paper out and was jotting down notes about different towns I wanted to discover, activities I wanted to do, national parks I wanted to visit, and islands off the coast I wanted to travel to. It seemed as though Croatia was this hidden gem right smack in the middle of Europe, and for some reason no one knew about it. I found myself picking up the book again and again just to look at the pictures, and kept saying to myself this place is going to be amazing, and before I knew it the boat was pulling within view of the shore. I grabbed my things and rushed out to the deck to see this place that I had been reading and studying about for the last four hours. Here it was… Croatia.