Aram writing.  On a water-bus, I overheard two American tourists talking about Venice. "How would this city work if you were in a wheelchair?" one asked.

He had a great point. All the bridges have stairs, and you can't go more than a few blocks without crossing a canal. It's not likely to be renovated for accessibility any time soon, either. Historic preservation would preclude it, for one thing.

It's reasonable to wonder how anyone gets around Venice, wheelchair-bound or not. It's an almost car-free city, there being no passable streets in the city proper. Of course, there is the famous canal network, instead. The downside is the cost. Canal buses cost something like $8 to ride. If you buy a pass, you end up paying less per ride, but not much less. There aren't many transportation alternatives: personal boats are expensive and are only feasible if you own a water-front space to park them, and biking through the seas of tourists that inundate the narrow streets would be nigh impossible. Your only recourse is to walk, and even that presents difficulties. Like most cities that evolved over centuries rather than being plotted and populated, Venice is not laid out with efficiency as a prime concern. You might have to walk two or three times the air distance between you and your destination in order to utilize one of the few bridges over the Grand Canal.

This makes Venice probably the least convenient city in Europe, and possibly the world. That said, the culture here transmutes inconvenience into a luxury and a privilege.  Venice demands a slower pace of life.  What it gives is proportionate to what you put into it.  However, we were perhaps not in the best state of mind to appreciate Venice's joys on its own terms.

By the time we came to Venice, the enchantment and novelty of foreign travel had been tempered - but not lost entirely - by its myriad expenses and minor hassles.  Three months is a long time.  In spite of my best efforts, the experience of the cities we've been touring fast and furiously, spending three days in at the most, had begun to run together in my mind, and my anxieties were mounting as my bank balance shrank.

We were in Venice for two full days, just enough to get a taste of it before leaving for Rome.  And taste we did: most of our adventures in Venice were culinary.  We ate well in Italy.  Despite my desire to return from Europe with a little money leftover, we were indulgent in Venice.

Jenna and I made it our goal to enjoy as much pasta and pizza as humanly possible in Italy.  Food is, in general, a little more expensive in Italy than in the U.S., but on the plus side, pasta, whether really good or just average, costs about the same everywhere.  Our choices were limited by our dietary restrictions., but we were able to sample some incredible pasta aglio, olio, e pepperoncino; pomodoro; and all'arrabiata (the latter only when it doesn't include pork).  Neither Venice nor Rome are considered great cities for pasta or pizza.  In the U.S., we're accustomed to southern Italian food.  Venice is more of a seafood and polenta city.  Regardless, even the worst pasta was better than almost any I've eaten in America, and about a trillion times better than the miserable bullshit they served me in Ploče, Croatia,  where, arguably, I should've known better.  A more thorough, scientific comparison of the foods we ate in Italy will ensue in our Rome write-up.

It was in this spirit that, on our first full day in Venice, we ate four meals out at restaurants.  I hope to defend this possibly inexcusable use of money in two ways: 1. the food was all really good, and 2. we've mostly been eating two meals a day, at least one of which often consists of bread and some kind of spread.

We arrived on the afternoon of the 6th.  Once again, we hadn't had any luck with CouchSurfing.  The Venetian hosts were, generally, single, middle-aged men with hurriedly-filled-out profiles seeking female surfers only.  Keep it classy, Italy.  We used the internet at Café Brek, a weird cafeteria-style restaurant next to the train station.  It's nice to imagine wandering the streets of romantic Europe until you find a lovely, quaint little café where some unironically-mustached guy named Marcel or whatever slams out perfect espressos and never gives you attitude if you ask him to reset the router, but realistically, when you're hauling 45 pounds of luggage on your back and you have two hours before hostel receptions start closing, you take what you can get.  Fortunately, Brek wasn't so bad.  It had a lot of organic foods, the coffee was actually decent, and we had really huge salads, with nice olive oil and vinegar, for like $5.50 each, which is a good deal in Venice.

We found - to our surprise - a campground nearby for about half the price of a hostel.  It was just across the water from Venice (which is a series of islands.  I didn't know this until I got to Venice; I just thought it was an inland city with an appreciation for canals).  It was a lot nicer than the campground we slept in in Croatia, but it wasn't a wilderness experience or anything.  When the directions to your campground are "cross the street from the Hilton and take a right at the BMW dealership," you know largely what to expect.

Jenna:

Three months is a long time.  It is, honestly, too long to travel with one person.  I'm sick of traveling.  This trip has been a life-changing, unforgettable experience, but part of what it's taught me is how not to travel next time.  In a way, I'm glad we saw so many cities.  Many of them were places I've always wanted to see; some were places I thought to want to see.  Each place has been a unique and valuable experience, but I know now that three days maximum in each place, bookended by 12-hour travel days and hours spent desperately searching for a new place to stay, after having just done the same thing two or three days before, is not how I want to travel in the future.

The parts of our trip that I've liked best have been the looser, more unplanned parts, and times we had a little more time in a city to really get a feel for it, where we could really settle where we were staying and get to know the area.  Berlin benefited from this for me.  I loved working at Henrike and Digny's farm in the Netherlands.  The days we we spent wandering pretty much without a plan in the southern Czech Republic were wonderful.

When I (or we) travel again in the future (when we're not broke, if that ever happens), I want to spend a minimum of four or realistically maybe five full days, not including the day you arrive or leave, in each place.  Aram and I are talking about doing the Lycian Way in Turkey together, and then Greece, Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro - maybe a six week trip, all told.  I feel like we've learned a lot on this trip about traveling in general. Obviously this dream is far away.

I digress.  All of this is not to say that this trip hasn't been fulfilling, fun, and invaluable in countless ways.  Despite our travel-weariness, Venice was beautiful, some kind of strange not-quite-real destination city, and I enjoyed wandering it.

Our first day, we caught a bus in Mestre across the bridge.  It was impossibly crowded.  It was here we gained our first insight into Venice's tourist crowds.  We stepped off the bus in Venice proper and shuffled with the sea of people over a small footbridge.  We decided to head toward the Jewish Ghetto, but ended up walking a bit beyond it, wandering the maze of small streets and alleys, some of which end abruptly in the water.  At some point, suddenly, there were no more crowds.  I guess we had inadvertently left the touristy area.  It was much more pleasant to walk just the two of us.  It was a warm day and we strolled for a while, through mostly empty streets.


Venice is, of course, incredibly beautiful just to look at.  Eventually we stopped and sat outside at a canal-side café to take care of our morning coffee needs.

Afterwards, we continued on into the Ghetto.  There's not too much to see in the small area, but it was interesting to be there.

There were kosher bakeries and Judaica stores aplenty; I admired the baked goods but decided to save my appetite for lunch.


I was glad I did when we got our food at Gam Gam, an Israeli restaurant in the heart of the Jewish quarter which served us, without a doubt, the best hummus either of us had ever tasted.  It even surpassed Byblo's, the Middle Eastern restaurant close to my hometown, which up to this point held the Best Hummus title for me.

We also ate some kind of delicious vegan stuffed eggplant in a tomato-chickpea sauce, drizzled in tahini.  which was also excellent.  We ate well for a reasonable price, and then set off.

Aram and I had decided to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in the Dorsoduro neighborhood.  Our path there would lead us through most of the city.  It's really kind of an amazing place, but one wonders what it's like to actually live there.  As Aram has explained, getting around Venice is difficult.  There are no cars, biking is out of the question, walking is slow, and public transportation is expensive.  Certainly not every resident has a personal boat, right?  I don't know.  It just seems that so many of the things that make Venice so lovely, romantic, and charming to a tourist would actually be a huge pain if you lived there all the time.

In any case, we were tourists, and weren't in a hurry, so we really enjoyed our meandering route through the city to the Peggy Guggenheim.



We had the good fortune to unexpectedly pass a free gallery.  Most of the stuff was kind of strange and stupidly modern (but, of course, this is to me, so take that assessment with a tablespoon or so of salt), but there were some really cool Fernando Botero pieces on display - a number of oil paintings from his Circus series, and some sculptures, which were unbelievably cool.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection was much smaller than I think either of us had imagined, but there were some really interesting works.

Empire of Light, Rene Magritte.  Obviously not my photo, because the light was really difficult in the gallery.  Probably one of the best paintings ever.

Fille au Mannequin, Jean Hélion

Circumcision, Jackson Pollack

Setting for a Fairy Tale, Joseph Cornell

Silver Bedhead, Alexander Calder.  Commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim for her personal use.

In addition to the permanent holdings, there was a featured exhibition of the work of Giuseppe Capogrossi, who, I guess, is a big deal in Italy.  I had heard of him, vaguely,  but didn't know much about his work (I am not very well educated in art!).  The exhibit started with his earlier, figurative work, and followed his progression to the "symbol" art for which he's known.

The Two Guitars

Study of a Window

Surface 137

Surface 636

Surface 600

I have to be honest: when I saw some of these paintings, my first thoughts were quite negative.  More specifically, I thought, "Man, this is some bullshit."  Halfway through the exhibit, I felt that some strange force had caused me to involuntarily change my opinion.  I felt drawn to the mesmerizing patterns of Capogrossi's symbol, and a kind of in awe at how many very different paintings he could create using the same basic visual language. I have to admit that, by the end, I begrudgingly liked his work a lot, though I'm still not sure I understand its artistic significance.

Before leaving the museum, we hung out on the back porch of the museum building, Peggy Guggenheim's former house.  You know, just a regular ol' afternoon-in-the-backyard kind of porch:


We walked around for quite a while after the museum, browsing and window shopping at antique shops and Murano glass galleries.

We ate dinner at a touristy place in a big square outside, enjoying the people-watching opportunities. There was a pair our age blowing giant bubbles in the square, kids leaping around trying to pop them. The food was delicious, as most of our meals in Venice were. We wandered for a few hours after dinner, enjoying the romantic feeling of Venice by night. When you move away from the tourist areas, you can find some lovely little alleys and streets that are mostly empty. The night was cool and pleasant.

Behind my back, Aram succumbed to the romance of the evening and bought me a tourist rose. Predictably, being a sap who is becoming more and more of a sap each year that goes by, I was thrilled by the surprise. After many hours of exploring, we made a very important decision: time for second dinner. To cap off our ridiculously indulgent day, we decided to go all out. We ate second dinner in Canareggio, and it was possibly even more delicious than first dinner. We capped it off with gelato for me and a supposedly "incredible, unmatchable" grapefruit ice pop for Aram, which the gelato stand guy gave us for free. I decided to take this as a sign that our indulgent day was meant to be.

We took the bus back and collapsed easily in our tent. There was definitely something nice about camping in Venice (or Mestre, to be exact). Venice is such an unrealistic, fairytale city; I enjoyed the contrast of camping in a tent just across the river.

Aram here again.  The next day, we elected to take the water bus to Lido on Jenna's dad's recommendation.  Lido is an island a bit further out toward the Mediterranean, just a few minutes out from Venice.  We split a baguette for breakfast and paid the steep bill for the water bus.




Lido is long and narrow, a needle of an island.  The water bus left us in an attractive, quintessentially Mediterranean town at one end.  Lido's primary economic and existential purpose is pleasurable vacationing.  By this time of year, the industry was largely shut down.  We had the island mostly to ourselves, despite the balmy weather.  We tried to rent bikes from an automated rack across from the ferry, but realized we had no concept of how to do that, so we walked.  We went a few blocks and came to the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria, a splendid Art Nouveau hotel.  We walked inside, and were looked at with unfriendly curiosity.






We started across the island's narrow dimension, and came to a beach.  There was a seaside restaurant and wooden promenade.


It was a sort of gray day, so there were only a few people on the beach, and no one in the water, but Jenna wanted to swim.  I couldn't get over how cold the water looked, but she said it was tolerable.

After Jenna swam, we started walking the length of the island.  We passed a street vendor playing Depeche Mode, which pleased us both.  Lido was gorgeous.  The houses were idyllic, and the salt-smelling breeze wavering along the wide, palm-tree-lined avenues relaxed me.



Jenna and I wandered for a couple hours, figuring we might have late lunch on the other side of the island.  We imagined what it might cost to rent an apartment in Lido a few weeks a year.  As appealing as it was, the houses were getting sparser and sparser as we walked, so we unfolded our Venice area map and saw that we were walking into a nature preserve.  I'm sure it would have been incredible, but we were both getting hungry, having eaten only a small breakfast.  We turned around and walked back toward the town we'd arrived at on the ferry.  It took us a while to get back.  We stopped at a few restaurants, but they were either closed, closing, or served nothing but seafood and meat stuffed with seafood.  We walked into another grand hotel, the Excelsior.  It was even more luxurious than the Ausonia, although I liked the architecture and style of the Ausonia better.


The Grand Hotel des Bains, setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, was closed for renovations.  Back in town, it was approaching dinner time.  Rather than try to eat in Lido, we decided to get coffee and eat back in Venice.  The café's patrons were uniformly tanned, carefree, and fabulously wealthy.  It felt comfortable, easy, and exotic, sipping espresso in the company of these fortunate few, watching the warm colors of the sunset begin to blush across the horizon.  I realized how petty my concerns about traveling were; and loved, totally, for a moment, where we were and what we were doing.

We took the water boat back, and got lost in Venice trying to find a pizzeria hidden away in an alley.  I'd found it recklessly Googling "best pizza venice," and come across a testimonial on the blog of a self-described "foodie."  Actually, it was our second choice, since the Internet was almost completely univocal in its slavering promotion of a pizzeria which was, unfortunately, closed on Mondays.  So we settled on Ae Oche.  It had a bizarre atmosphere which seemed to take a page from the Cracker Barrel school of interior decoration, and most of the customers were Americans.  The pizza menu was long, with lots of odd, but tasty-sounding combinations.  Being pretty limited on our options, we had two cheese-less pizzas and pasta aglio, olio, e peperoncino.  It was pretty good, but not amazing.

The day had been good: full, with lots of exercise, in a beautiful place.  I was glad to get out of the insane bustle of Venice for the day, as well.  How could you not like Venice?  It's unlike anywhere else in the world, and that is, in itself, special - tourist-driven and busy as it is.  It's impossible to effectively navigate and it floods all the time (more recently, because of rising ocean levels, but it's always been pretty vulnerable), but its cheerful unwillingness to make sense is most of its appeal.  It breeds inconvenience and accident of the highest order of enjoyability.  We had fantastic food, saw some great art, got lost in the uniquely attractive streets, and experienced the weird and romantic trials of life in the city of canals.  By the time we checked out of our odd campground the next morning to convey ourselves to Rome, I was sad to leave Venice's slightly crazy bubble of unreality.

Jenna and I had seen the area around Zagreb's train station very briefly on a stopover between Budapest and Sarajevo, and that brief taste whetted our appetites for a longer stay.  It was balmy, lively, full of elegant buildings, welcoming outdoor café-bars, and cosmopolitan green spaces.  Zagreb delivered on this promise and more.



Transportation in Croatia is, frankly, horrendous.  In addition to the delay that left us stranded in Sarajevo, and the tedious, permanent lateness of the intercity buses, our trains to and from Zagreb both had service interruptions requiring us to change over to a bus at least once, and delayed us both ways.  Luckily, we made it into Zagreb in time to meet our host, Alen, and even grab a quick coffee beforehand.

We met Alen in the city's main square.  If he wasn't Croatian, you'd want to describe him as all-American.  He's square-jawed, bright-eyed, tall, and brawny, with a wholesome, cheerful disposition.  He was instantly likable.  Alen recently got his Master's in graphic design and works as an animator.  We walked about 20 minutes to his apartment, talking about the massive bike tour he and his girlfriend, Petra, took through France, Montenegro, and the Adriatic Coast of Croatia.  This trip culminated in a punishing overland foot race through the rocky, mountainous terrain of Montenegro.  Alen doesn't talk about it with the boastful, challenging machismo I've encountered in extreme sports types.  To him, a few thousand kilometers on a bike is just good, clean fun.  I respect that a lot.

Alen got a phone call from Petra a few minutes before reaching their nondescript apartment block.  Petra graduated from the same program as Alen.  "It's her second day of work," he told us.  "She just got this job.  She says she will be home in a short while."  Moments later, unlocking Alen's door, we heard a girl's voice greet us from the bottom of the stairwell.  A slim girl with a head of gorgeous red hair bounded up the stairs.  However, this was not Petra, but Lucija, Petra's friend and the couple's former classmate.

"I missed my bus today," she said apologetically.  "I'm really sorry."


Lucija (pronounced "loot-SEE-ya") had been staying with Petra and Alen for a few days before we arrived, applying for jobs and doing some freelance design work.  The art-and-design industry is hard to find work in anywhere, but in Croatia, where the overall unemployment rate is around 20%, and even higher among young people, it must be extremely difficult.

It was our gain that Lucija missed her bus, because she became our personal tourguide for our time in Zagreb, making it a much more interesting and memorable experience than it would have been if we'd explored on our own.  The three of us got along great; we had a natural and easy friendship almost immediately.  With her blue eyes, freckled complexion, and red hair, Lucija looks more Celtic than Slavic.  She's frank and funny, and speaks with a disarmingly charming lisp.  When we realized she'd been sleeping on the bed in the living room - where Alen had told us to set our stuff - we tried to offer it to her.  "We have sleeping pads," I said.  "It's no problem at all for us to sleep on the floor."

Lucija politely declined.  She refused, we insisted out of politeness, until she said, "Don't be a jerk.  Someone offers you hospitality, you should take it."  Not everyone could pull off this kind of directness with someone they'd just met, but she hit the right pitch of facetiousness - and, of course, she was right.  We were just arguing out of decorum.

We sat down with Alen and Lucija to decide what to do with the evening.  Jenna and I were hungry, so dinner was our first order of business.  We went to the grocery store and bought some vegetables for a quick stew.  When we got back, Petra had arrived.  Her second day of work had, apparently, been tiring, but she was happy not to have to work late.  "Yesterday," Petra said, "I had to drink Coca-Cola to stay up late to work."

Coca-Cola is enough of a stimulant to maintain Petra well into the night, which is not wholly surprising, given her high level of energy and activity.  Coffee is almost too much for her; it has to be taken lightly and early in the day.  Petra is eager and happy, physiologically elflike and delicate.  She and Alen are a good match for each other.  Physical activity suits them, and they get along very well.  It's fun to hear them banter and playfully argue.  They are obviously very happy together.


As we were preparing dinner, Alen remarked, "I love this word - garlic.  If I have a child, I want to name him Garlic.   It would be so bad ass."

"It's not bad ass at all," said Petra.

"No, it's so badass!  Gaaahrlic!"  He held his hands in front of him to grip and rev air handlebars.  "Garlic - on the chopper!"

The food was simple and filling.  Our Croatian hosts are omnivores, but enjoyed our vegan meal anyway.  After dinner, Lucija took us out with her downtown.  She wouldn't be leaving until the late afternoon the next day, she told us, so she volunteered to take us around the city.  She asked us what we wanted to do in Zagreb.  Honestly, we didn't know.  I had expected Zagreb to be little more than a rest stop between Split and Venice.  We named some museums for which we'd seen signs earlier in the day.  We had only the most bare-bones ideas, but I could see the gears turning in her head as she formulated a plan of action.  "I will have a surprise for you tomorrow," she said.  "There's a special place that I will take you to see."

We took a tram (for free; ticket control in Europe is pretty lax in comparison to the States, and especially so in Zagreb) to meet Lucija's friend Ana, who was hanging out at the bike syndicate.  The syndicate is what we in the U.S. would call a co-op: a volunteer low-cost or free bike shop created to promote bike awareness in the community and teach people maintenance and repair skills.  Ana looked at home in this radical community - a no-nonsense vegan girl in a punk festival t-shirt and square glasses.   She's quietly confident in her skills and ingenuity, a true DIY spirit.  She doesn't seem like the type of person who needs instructions or outside corroboration to begin a project.  For instance, the morning after we met up with her, she took a 200 kilometer bike sojourn, unaccompanied, into Slovenia.  Having passed through Slovenia by train, I can vouch for the impressiveness of this feat.  Slovenia is mostly vertical.

We left the bike syndicate and headed to a bar whose Croatian name I can't remember, but it translates to "Wrong Way."  The seating was mostly outdoors, which was lovely on such a night.  It's a social hub for Zagreb's alternative youth.  We sat together and talked until about midnight.  Ana persuaded Lucija to stay the next night, offering her her couch, which meant that Lucija would be around the whole next day and evening.  We all decided to meet at Ana's house the next night, after Ana returned from her ride, and cook dinner before going to a punk concert.

We woke up fresh and ready for the day at 8:30.  Jenna and I had grapefruits and coffee with peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Peanut butter, as I may have mentioned before, is unpopular in Continental Europe.  It was available in Berlin, but this might be because of its large immigrant population.  Elsewhere, it's only available in health-food and Asian specialty stores.  Lucija had never had peanut butter before.  We talked her into trying some.  "It's really unhealthy, right?" she asked.

"Well, it's kind of fatty, yeah, but you don't use very much of it, so it's okay.  It has a lot of protein," I said, amazed that we were about to introduce a grown woman to an American staple.

"I thought it was kind of a junk food, because in American TV people are always eating peanut butter sandwiches, like a snack."

Her initial reaction was surprise at how sticky it was, but the verdict was positive: she had seconds.

We got back on the tram downtown.  Lucija had taken our meager ideas from the night before and woven them in with her own favorite places in Zagreb to make a very carefully planned, awesome schedule of things to see and do in the city.  It was amazing how smoothly the day went, and we saw much more than we would have without her, but never felt rushed.

We began the day walking through Zagreb's promenade, stopping at one of the city's most prominent cathedrals.




Lucija pointed out one of the inscriptions on the wall inside the church, explaining that it was written in an ancient Croat script used prior to the adoption of the Roman alphabet.


Croatia was the frontier of Christendom, bordering the Islamic Ottoman Empire.  Catholicism is traditionally important to the Croats, and partially defines Croatian national identity in contrast to its former Yugoslavian confederates, the Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians.

We passed by St. Mark's Church.  Its appearance is unique, to say the least.  A newspaper clipping we saw in a museum later in the day describes it as "Legoland Gothic," which is about right.


Lucija then led us to an overlook providing a panoramic view of the cityscape.



The surprise she'd mentioned the night before was near here, she told us.  "You have to wait a few minutes for your surprise," she said, grinning mischievously.  We walked and waited for ten minutes or so.  We were perplexed, but happy to wait and look at the spectacular view.  Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion.  I ducked.  There is a special quality about weapons fire that makes it hard to mistake.  A backfiring car or dropped plank of wood can make you wonder if a gun was fired; a close-range gunshot leaves no doubt in your mind.  The sound is compact and physical, felt as much as heard.

Of course, this was Lucija's surprise.  Every day at noon, a small cannon, barely noticeable poking out of a   window in a tower behind us, is fired to mark the hour.

Do you see the cannon sticking out of the top window?  We didn't either.

As soon as I realized what was going on, I show Lucija - who was very pleased with herself - a mock dirty look.  It was a great surprise.

Shortly after getting off our train the day before, we had seen a municipal sign indicating the direction of the tantalizingly-named Museum of Broken Relationships, along with other city attractions.  We asked Lucija about it, and she mentioned that she had never seen it before and would like to.  The Museum of Broken Relationships is an archive of mementos of failed relationships that were too sentimentally precious to throw away, yet too painful for the sundered parties to keep.  Some objects were donated cathartically, to bid good riddance to a miserable pairing, others still hold the pain of unhealed heartache.  Each display has a note from its donor explaining the meaning of the object.  Some were humorous - a bottle of "intimate shampoo" is labeled, "After the relationship ended, my mother used it for glass polishing.  She claims it's absolutely great."


Others are angry, like the axe used by a jilted lover to destroy her girlfriend's furniture.


There are remnants of one-night stands and decades-long marriages.  The most heartbreaking selections were from those mourning the death of a partner.  Especially touching were two poems, one by the wife and the other by the daughter of a man dying of a hereditary disease.

Can of Love Incense.  Label: "Doesn't work."

A clock, set nine hours ahead.  A remnant of a long-distance relationship.

After the museum, we were peckish, an eventuality Lucija was, of course, prepared for.  Our route took us through Zagreb's fashionable see-and-be-seen shopping district, near its central square, where we'd met Alen the day before.  The sun was shining; the day was perfect.  We ate at a vegetarian fast-food place called Green Point, where seitan sandwiches were under $4.00, and "hot dogs" even less.  It hit the spot.  I was jonesing for coffee, so Lucija took us to an out-of-the-way subterranean jazz café called Bacchus.


We sat on the terrace beneath an umbrella and enjoyed our espressos in the company of the café's resident cats.

Then we were off to Zagreb's free botanical gardens, which we strolled through at a leisurely, talkative pace in the warm afternoon sunshine.





We grabbed a bus back to Petra and Alen's neighborhood to see a contemporary art gallery called Lauba House, but it was, unfortunately, closed for a fashion event.  "Sorry," said the slim, horn-rim-wearing girl at the reception desk.  "At least it's a nice day outside.  Go enjoy the sunshine.  Get some pastries," she suggested.

It seemed too good an idea to pass up.  We caught a bus back into the center and to a restaurant called Vegehop, where we had stunningly good vegan pastries.  I had something called, I think, a Schwartzwald Cube (or something like that - I remember it sounded more like a geometric paradox than a dessert), which was a heavenly combination of tart maraschino cherries (the kind we rarely have in the U.S.), vegan whipped cream, and fluffy chocolate cake.


Jenna had a "Danube Wave," which was more or less the same as mine, but more chocolate-y.


Thoroughly indulged, we accompanied Lucija on a shopping errand, then to Petra and Alen's, where we hung out with them for a bit.  After Lucija had gathered her things, we got some ingredients and went to Ana's apartment to cook dinner.  Ana wasn't home yet.  She had sent Lucija a text message saying that she was still in Slovenia, but she'd left a key for us to get into her room and cook.  The sunset was just fading behind the skyline.

We had a great time cooking and talking over Thai peanut rice noodles.  Ana seemed less and less likely to make it home, and finally texted Lucija that she was going straight to the punk show without stopping in for food and would meet us there.  The three of us whiled away the time hanging out on Ana's couch and listening to music (something I've hardly done since leaving Philadelphia, I realized).  Lucija is great company.

Unfortunately, the only train that we could take, reasonably, to Venice left before 7 AM, so we had to opt out of the punk show, which didn't start until 11.  We said our goodbyes to Lucija and walked back to Alen and Petra's apartment.

After we packed our stuff for the next morning, Alen showed us two short "trash films" he'd made with his friends.  Entitled Pink Carrot and Pink Carrot 2: Party Time, they pitted four gay spandex-wearing ninjas against a six-foot-tall murderous rabbit (actually Alen in a rabbit suit) in a gory, no-budget fight to the death.  They also showed us their photos from their bike tour, which were incredible.  Petra is an extremely talented photographer, who recently had an exhibition at a gallery in downtown Zagreb.  The photos, depicting mind-bogglingly beautiful scenery, were also well-composed works of art.  Alen shot and edited a short video of their journey, and I will end this post with their astounding footage.