You will be disappointed today because I don't have a single picture to show you, I took a vacation from my vacation! I left Pula this morning and I had to come back through Rijeka to continue on toward the south of Croatia and instead of having a very long bus ride today, I decided to stop here for the night. The plan was to then take the local bus from Rijeka to go to Opatija (small city 8 kms away that I haven't seen yet) but I ended up having a very late lunch (I finished eating at 3) and after that I was so lazy that I decided instead to have a drink somewhere and do pretty much nothing for the rest of the day.
However, it doesn't mean you will have a boring blog post, not to worry! Instead of telling you about what I did today (which is pretty much nothing), I will tell you about minor cultural shocks I had during my trip that I hadn't gotten a chance to mention yet! Please excuse my ignorance of the ways of the world... Maybe you are already aware of all the things I will describe and I will look like a very stupid person but that's ok, I'm used to that ;)
For my whole life, I thought you could only lock a door, or unlock a door. I never knew there was such a thing as "double-locking". But here it is possible! So when I lock my door, if I turn the key one more time in the same direction, I can double lock the door. Which means that when I want to unlock it, I have to turn twice. It is so annoying!!! Every time I'm trying to unlock my door I end up double-locking it and I then have to turn twice in the opposite direction to finally unlock it. Yes, I am probably stupid because I bet you all the locks here turn in the same direction but I haven't gotten used to it yet and I swear at the door every time I'm trying to get inside my hostel rooms!
I experienced something I had never experienced before when I was in Osijek... When I took a taxi from the bus terminal to my hostel, the taxi driver didn't speak much English and he said something about having to go somewhere first that I didn't quite get, anyways he ended up picking up other passangers and then he drove them where they had to go, then he drove me. In Osijek these things are possible because you always know in advance how much each ride will cost (it was 40 kuna from my hostel to downtown Osijek). But still, it was quite surprising for me to see that you can actually share a taxi with strangers! I think this is smart and it's a cool way to meet people so + 1 for Osijek!
Sometimes I go to the restaurant and I order something, only to be told "We don't have that today". What is that??? In Canada, if you don't have it, you don't put it on the menu at all! But here the cooks prepare only 3-4 dishes and that's what you get... That's quite annoying because I pick restaurants based on the one dish I want and then it ends up being unavailable... Grrr!
Croatian people are super smart. I'm sure this concept exists somewhere else too but here is where I saw it for the very first time in my life! They have light switches for buildings that when you press them, they keep the light on long enough for you to walk to your destination and after a while the lights turn off automatically. For example, the first place I've seen this was in Tamara's apartment building in Zagreb, the lights in the hallway were working that way. That is absolutely brilliant! In my apartment building, the lights in the hallways are on all night, imagine the money and electricity that would be saved if they installed those!
And last but not least... the traffic lights. I swear, you will not believe me! As you know, in Canada, the traffic lights go : Green - Yellow - Red - Green. And when a green light flashes, it means you can safely turn left. Not here!! The order goes like this: Green - Green that flashes - Yellow - Red - Yellow and green at the same time - Green. That's really weird (for me) and I definitely have to take a video of this to show you a proof that I'm not lying!!
Well, that's all I had to tell you for today! I'm sorry that you didn't have any pictures but I hope you enjoyed the post anyways! Tomorrow we are going together to Krk so let's hope there will be nice pictures to take there!
No comments:
Post a Comment