Back to Rijeka

Note: for those that don't know, in every European language I have encountered, except English, "j" is pronounced like a "y". Also, the vowels are pronounced: "uh", "aye", "ee", "au", "uu", very similar to the Maori vowels. So the city is pronounced "Ray-yee-ka". Croatian seemed to be a mix of German (I recognised some words), Italian and Russian.

Anyway, today I woke up at 7am and it was HOT! I tried to keep sleeping for a bit, but ended up getting out of bed. I went and had breakfast with Scott, Roy and Steven (Aussie, and Scotts respectively... pretty ironic really... Scott hanging with the Scotts). After breakie I went for a swim as the day was already heating up.

At 10:30 the boys decided they were going to head to Rijeka, so I scored a lift with them. The journey we went was not the same route as when I came to Pula. It was further inland and along the motorways. The scenery was not as nice, still pretty cool though.


We arrived at Rijeka and checked into the hostel. It was stupidly hot at this stage, 38 degrees! We had a little siesta because it was just too damn hot to do anything. After 2 hours we decided to get up and venture out into the world. Roy found someone had broken into their car (smashed the window) and stolen a bunch of stuff out of their car. They stole 3 bags of clothes, and a receipt which had their credit card details. I felt so sorry for them because it is such a crap thing to happen. They had to get the police down (who didn't speak English) and get fingerprinted etc. I just left them to it and said I would catch up later (a bit stink... but oh well).

At the bus stop I met a bunch of Kiwi's who were travelling. They were obviously kiwi, donning all black t-shirts, hats, greenstone, the works... good on em! One was a newly graduated doctor who was taking her boyfriend and younger sister + brother on a European trip and bankrolling the entire thing. They had been quite a few cool countries and were seeing a lot of Eastern Europe. I thought that was really cool. I tagged along with them while they wandered around Rijeka, finding some interesting sites in the city. It was 5pm now and still 30 degrees!


We went back to the hostel and the Kiwis headed off to catch the bus on their way to Dubrovnik via Split (both in Croatia). The beach was calling me, so I got in my togs and walked down there. Scott was just coming back, but decided to go for another swim. The little beach was packed, but the water was so refreshing and nice. We stayed for just over an hour then went back to the hostel.

We caught up with Roy and Steven who had just got back from town (getting drinks and stuff). We all decided to go out, get something to eat and grab a pint. We hadn't eaten since breakie, but we weren't that hungry. The heat just killed our apatites. A pizza and a beer later, we were shattered. So we went back to the hostel, swapped contact details and went off to bed.