Memorial Day was spent in Croatia with 21 of my closest friends here in Germany. Actually there might have been a FEW people that I didn't know going into this trip and a SMALL amount of skeptism on my part that this trip was going to be incredibly chaotic traveling with that many people. But I left meeting some really great people and the whole weekend was nothing less than amazing.
There was one bad part... we will call it the low of the trip. The ride home on the airplane. Now I am not a terrible flyer... I have settled down over the past few years but I don't like turbulence or take off. And I found out this weekend that I really don't like turbulence DURING take off. Shortly after we took off the plane started shaking really bad and it dropped a few times. Then the engine started making odd noises. Now I really don't understand why during these times people feel the need to scream. While I was trying to reflect silently on my life and how at least I had a grand weekend before I was part of a plane crash, people were screaming. I am going to go out on a limb and say that screaming in this situation doesn't really do much. But I really shouldn't judge because about 15 minutes after all this happened and we were in the clearest of air and no turbulence was to be felt the rest of the trip, I started silently crying. I couldn't stop which shocked Gretchen and Josh and I then informed Josh that he definitely married the more sane Kirschling. My mom would have just told me that I must have been tired since that is what she says anytime I get silly emotional. Which she would probably be right that I did need some sleep since here was our weekend in Croatia in a nutshell...
There were 22 people that ventured to Croatia: 11 males, 11 females. We got there on Friday and stayed at a beautiful little villa. We then went out to a long dinner in the harbor and had a lot of fun. Gretch, Josh, Patrick, Lydia, and I went home to get some sleep since the next day was the big boat ride.
We had rented a boat driven by a local for the next day. And it was an awesome time. We got to see the land of Zadar and go swimming in the Adriatic Sea. It was beautiful weather and everyone had a grand time. That night we went out to dinner again and then went to a Croatian disco. They definitely like there there techno music. It was a very different experience and very enlightening.
The next day we went to a waterfall in Krka national park. It was absolutely gorgeous and amazing because you could swim into the waterfall. I am pretty sure in the US they would rope people off from the waterfall but in Croatia they let you fully experience it. After the waterfall, we went to a city called Split. The city lived up to its name because it managed to split the group up a little bit since we were staying at different hotels. Then when eight of us went looking for the others we got split into two groups of four due to one crabby taxi driver. Then the four of us which was me, two of my female coworkers, and an optometrist tried to track down where the other four (Gretch, Josh, Patrick and Lydia) went to dinner... we had a run in with what I think was a shady character.
We were walking on this pier near the harbor and the places were getting shadier and shadier. I was pretty sure from talking to the locals that the restaurant was on the harbor just further down. One of my coworkers and I were standing together and we saw this guy approach Louie, the optometrist. Louie then said the name of the restaurant that we were going to and the guy said he knew exactly where it was and that it was down this dark alley and he would be happy to walk all four of us there because he was meeting up with some of his friends down nearby. Louie and the other girl start walking with this guy. I turned to Hattie and asked her if she got a bad vibe from all this and she said, "Yes, especially since the guy approached Louie" so we made some excuse on how we didn't want to eat seafood anymore or go to that restaurant and parted ways. I am not sure if there were bad intentions but I feel good in this situation erring on the side of safety. So the four of us just found another restaurant and had a great meal of wine, seafood, and pasta.
We then met up with all of the rest of the group. They had a rooftop terrence on the top of their room so we went there for a short period of time to see Split at night.
The next day was back to Baumholder.... with a lot of new facebook friends :)
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