Gelato and the Art of Radiator Maintenance

Well, friends, I have just returned from a 9-day journey to Croatia, and I find myself at a loss as to where I should begin my tale. This is going to be a long one… so go ahead and stretch, maybe grab a glass of water. I’ll start when you’re ready.

The trip included 45 people in all: 22 students, 5 teachers, and 18 others including friends, families, and children of the students and teachers involved. Our 15 hour ride began at 9pm on June 17th. The ride was long, uncomfortable, and often awkward due to the fact that most students were afraid to use their weak English skills around Jason and me. Nevertheless, we arrived safely in Istra, Croatia without trouble.

The next 7 days were really great. Most days involved relaxing on the beach, throwing Frisbees, reading books, and slathering sunscreen. Though the trip was advertised as an “English Camp,” there were actually only three sessions of English training over the full course of the trip. As it turns out, the other teachers saw it as an English camp simply because Jason and I were coming, which would then force students to interact with us in English. Most of the time the students were pretty cool about it, but like most of my year in the Czech Republic, there were long spells during which I just kind of sat back and smiled, wondering in my head what everyone was talking about.

For those of you who still (understandably) associate Croatia with the ethnic and religious tension of the 1990s, let me assure you that other than a few tourists trying their hands at a little archery, there was no danger whatsoever where we stayed. There was also a danger of obesity I suppose, due to the over-availability of some of the most wonderful gelato ice cream I’ve ever tasted… Croatia is over course only a hop, skip and a jump away from Italy, where this wonderful dairy sensation originated. But I digress.

The beaches in Croatia are beautiful, though a bit odd in that there is no sand. None. Sunbathers often seek the perfect tan atop cement slabs or loose gravel. It wasn’t until I saw the beaches for myself that I understood why so many of our Czech co-travelers brought inflatable mattresses and foam padding with them. Regardless of my inability to build the perfect “asphalt castle” I had hoped for, the week was relaxing and wonderfully uneventful. Below, you will also find pictures of a boat trip Jason and I took with a bunch of students, as well as a few of the towns we were able to visit.

The real adventure came during our journey home. We left the hotel at 6pm on Saturday aboard a bus called the “Omega.” Around 7:30, this marvelous vehicle got a flat tire. Following a series of uninformed mishaps on the part of the driver and the two guys who volunteered to help change the tire, the radiator was also severely damaged. Don’t ask how it happened. After 3 hours on the side of the road, the driver claimed that he had temporarily fixed the radiator problem using a coil of steel wire and (I’m not kidding) Scotch tape. We then drove to the nearest gas station. Let me pause to mention that this gas station was situated in the middle of Ljubljiana, Slovenia… unimportant to the story, but pretty fun to mention anyway.

By about 2am, the driver was claiming that his quick radiator fix would be suitable for getting us 1 hour of traveling at a time… he figured we could just stop every hour, fill it up with water, and continue on. The teachers, who incidentally had been arguing and calling other knowledgeable Czechs in the meantime, agreed that this was just a bad idea. Despite lawsuit threats from the bus driver and his crying wife who had also come along for the trip, the head English teacher went ahead and called for another tour bus to come pick us up… from 9 hours away. Much to my dismay, it was also decided that a late night hike into the center of Ljubljiana was a bad idea. Those who were able, went to sleep soon thereafter.

For reasons still unknown to me, around 6am, this lame, half-full bus, was escorted to a nearby semi-truck repair facility. At some point, I guess, somebody decided it was a good idea for half of the students and teachers to stay at the gas station, and half to go to the repair facility. I woke up around 8:30 in a bus in a huge warehouse full of dismantled industrial machinery and truck parts. For the next 5 ½ hours, along with 15 or so students I sat, read, and played frisbee on a little landscaped island in this repair compound wondering when we would actually return home. Go figure, the rescue bus from Prague got lost on the way. Why on Earth the bus’s radiator couldn’t be repaired or replaced in those 5 ½ hours is beyond me… but nothing else up to this point made much sense either. I’ll just continue to smile and nod and wonder what everyone is talking about.

A trip that should have taken 15 hours at most turned into a 32-hour ordeal. It was an odd journey… stressful, tense, hilarious and bizarre. But what a cool story.