Croatia You Crazy

I previously alluded to my plans to meet up with a gaggle of my friends this month.  Well, it all came to a big festering head when eight of my closest friends and myself met up in Croatia this week.  The mass reunion took place on Vis Island in one of the most darling villas I've ever seen (not that I've actually stayed in a proper villa before, especially on this hobo trip).  The house is literally five steps away from the turquoise Adriatic Sea, which happens to be extremely convenient when you go late night skinny dipping and you have the kind of friends that will steal your towel.

It has certainly been different traveling with nine people when compared to our meager duo.  It's something akin to herding a bunch of drunk, ferrel cats.  Also, nine loud American girls shockingly draws even more attention than Kelly and I are used to.  After a few days of the villa and convenience beach lifestyle we finally managed to get the whole group out of the house for drinks one night (again, see above cat herding reference).  We were caught off guard when an even larger and louder english speaking group sidled up to the tables adjacent to us.  How dare they out-tourist us.  The group of hooligans turned out to be a cricket team from England who were on the island for a game.  I wouldn't have imagined the tiny island of Vis having a cricket team, but there you go.  Not to be outdone, we were quick to tell them that we all played rugby, a far superior sport.  Nevertheless they invited us to watch the could-be all day long game the next day.  Despite our feelings of sport superiority, we accepted the invite with the stipulation that it did not interfere with our packed schedule of beach time.   

The next day on the way to a beach on the other side of the island, we ran into the cricket field by sheer chance.  They were already hours into the match and were about to stop for tea (this sport is excruciating long like baseball, but with added boringness of being a gentlemen's sport).  They humored us enough to let the rowdy rugby ladies play with their equipment during their tea break.  When they took the field again, we heckled and harassed the other team like good old sport-loving Americans (though I'm not sure who we were yelling at half the time since both teams wear white).  To be culturally sensitive though, we yelled things like "wanker" and "parky".  We stayed for as much cricket as we could handle before we finally "had" to leave for our original destination.  The beach wasn't going to wait all day for us.  

We ended up at an adorable remote beach in a small inlet.  We lucked out in that one of the residences ran a restaurant out of their cliff side house.  This was not the kind of restaurant with menus or timetables or pants.  In fact, the chef was lounging in his speedo out front when we first arrived.  This was explained as a "slow-dining" experience and the crazy-eyed, bearded chef simply told us he would cook us something that was caught fresh and would just bring out dishes as they were ready.  How could we say no to a traditional sea-side dining experience?  Awesome homemade cheeses, olives, smoked fishes and capers...for starters.  And the food just kept coming in-between the bottles of wine.  At one point there was time for a mid-dinner swim and then back to eating once again.  This was simultaneously the fanciest and most casual dinner I've ever been apart of.  After dinner the chef and owner insisted we have some of their homemade brandy followed by some of their homemade grappa and then another round of some other homemade liquor.  At one point during our after dinner swim (if there's a mid-dinner swim, surely there has to be an after dinner swim) they sent shots of grappa out on a floating tray to the swimmers.  I kept having to remind our generous hosts that I was the driver.  Their solution was to give me a "driver" size shot instead.  Croatians, the booze pushers of Europe.

And if there weren't enough reasons to booze on this trip...my birthday was this week.  Like we just learned, the Croatians are booze pushers and the locals were more than willing to buy celebratory drinks.  Come to find out the Czechs are also part of the enable ring category.  A group of guys from the Czech Republic had sailed into Vis Island that day and happened upon the same bar.  After Maggie broke the ice by commandeering one of the guy's wheelchairs and showing off her mad wheelchair skills (no joke, Maggie is actually a pro in a wheelchair and can dance, spin and pop wheelies, much to the crowd's enjoyment).  Like all good birthdays, we closed the bar down and promptly continued the party on the Czech sailboat.  So at 3:00 am we found ourselves drinking boxed wine and listening to a bunch of drunk sailors singing "Happy Birthday" about 527 times in their Czech accent.  The first few hundred times it came out as, "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear I-don't-remember-your-naaaaaaammme, happy birthday to you".  Eventually (and impressively considering the level of inebriation on everyones' part) they got my name right in the end.  I'm sure I can safely say that will be my only birthday I spend on a Croatian island cocktailing on a sailboat with a group of rowdy Czechs.  Now I can die happy.  Coincidentally that is exactly what I felt like doing the next day.  The extra year was acutely evident as I was too hungover to even make it the five steps to the beach the next day.  O.U.C.H.

Shots!