Eastern Trek Part 4: Croatia

A month and a bit ago, B and I set off on an epic train journey through four different countries: Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. Here's (the very long overdue) part four of the trip blog! The Croatia photoset is up on Picasa as well.

Picking up where we left off, we caught a train from Ljubljana, across the border to Zagreb, where we took a short walk up the street to the bus station. The train to Zadar is very infrequent, most Croatians travel everywhere by bus, so this was the only bit of our journey that wasn't by train. We had a bit of a hectic morning, since we had to figure out a new currency, buy bus tickets, get something to eat, and get on board a bus all within about 10 minutes. After that though, it was a laid back ride and a few hours later we arrived at the bus terminal in Zadar.

Since we'd been spending the last week and a half doing all sorts of busy-like things, we decided that the final four days in Zadar would be the rest period of the trip, so we really had nothing planned. In that sense, checking out the photoset will probably do a better job of telling the story about our time there than I could writing about it, since mostly we went from café to café, wandering around Zadar and taking photos.

There are some very cool things in Zadar though worth mentioning here. The coolest by far is the sea organ. As the waves crash against the shore, it pushes air through a series of pipes in the marble steps, making this really haunting series of chords that I could listen to for hours on end and never get tired of. We tried making a recording or two, but it didn't work out too well so I've borrowed this clip instead (from oddmusic.com). Press play to check it out!



Right next to the sea organ was the "Greeting to the Sun" - a big round disc of solar panels. During the day it doesn't look like much (although it's quite warm and people like to wander over it) but at night it uses it's stored power to generate a really neat light show. Even neater is that there are "planets" as well, further down the shore, whose sizes and distances away are all to scale with the sun. Anyway, we spent quite a bit of time here one night trying to get some insane photos of us on the lights - I think these are some of the best ones.

The full sun, with Mercury, Venus & Earth trailing away...

Awesome colours...

B strikes a pose!

Anyway, that's about all I'll say about our time there for now. Like I said, check out the full photoset for more photos of Zadar itself, and a trip along the coast through Kornati national park.


After spending five days in Croatia, we were reluctantly off on a flight back home again, concluding our two week adventures through Eastern Europe. I'm really glad we decided to go by train, that is definitely the way to do it. Now I really want to plan another epic train adventure! (Suggestions are welcome!)