Goodbye Croatia

Time to move on to Slovenia. I still had too many kuna. They couldn't change my kuna into € at the station but told me to go to a money changer in an underground arcade. I got 150€ from the exchange with 25 kuna left over. With 4 kuna I bought a bun as a snack and had a 20 kuna note as a keepsake.


The information board said that the train to Ljubljana was actually a bus in front of the station. So I wouldn't get to ride a Croatian train after all, sigh. Was it because of trackwork or all the time? The bus took us to the last railway station in Croatia and then Croatian customs frog-marched us over the border. No no, just kidding. Actually they put an exit stamp on our passports and then loaded us on the train. So it looked like a regular arrangement.


We travelled a few km to Dobrava station where Slovenian officials stamped us in. Slovenia looked neater, and they proudly flew the EU flag. Time to swap guide books.

Night train to Bari

This Modena hostel is the tidiest Italian hostel that I have stayed in so far. But there is one drawback: there is no refectory and hence no breakfast. I left my backpack with the hostel to collect on my way out. While at the counter I overheard an English-speaking hosteler ask about tours of the Ferrari plant. I thought about it for a few moments then decided that I wasn't that interested in fast cars, beautiful to look at as they may be. It amuses me to think that every time that I am passed by a testosterone-fueled driver in a Ferrari, he is putting pasta on a Modenese table.

The plan for today is to enjoy a few more hours in Modena, and in the late afternoon, catch the train to Bologna where I will have dinner, and check my email, until the night sleeper to Bari departs around midnight.

After having an alfresco breakfast of fruit nectar, muesli, cheese and strawberries, I explored the markets, open this Monday. I like looking at produce, smallgoods and baked goods.

At a cafe I had a snack of a fluffy pastry called orfella (if I read my handwriting correctly). I can't find any reference to this, so maybe I have misspelled it or it was a local appellation. Maybe someone in Modena might read this and enlighten me?

I like colourful flowers too.

Balsamic vinegar is about as expensive as wine.

There are many cyclists in the city and car traffic is discouraged in the centre. All in all, Modena seems a fairly decent city to live in.

I arrived in Bologna around 1700 and put my backpack in storage for a few hours. While walking around the centre, I bumped into Lorena and Nicolo, out shopping. I told them where I had been and where I was going. They wished me a good trip.

The station got seedier as the hour got later. However the platforms were crowded with passengers waiting for trains so there wasn't any danger at all. The train was a little late as expected, but no matter, we had all night to trundle down the east coast to the port city of Bari, in Apuglia, in the heel of Italy. I would be bypassing the less visited regions of Le Marche, Abruzzo and Molise. A pity, maybe some other trip.