Napoli to Croatia

These are the hands of fate,

you’re my Achilles heel.

This is the golden age of something good, and right, and real.

I’m on a ferry off the coast of Bari now, just beginning my long overnight ride to Dubrovnik. Being the resourceful youth that I am, I found a power point hidden away behind a TV and my computer charger is just long enough to reach up to it from my seat at the front and corner.

It’s not my assigned seat but thankfully, the ferry isn’t full so no one has bothered me and there are a lot of other empty seats.

I’m listening to Taylor Swift and am in just such a euphoric mood. Taylor Swift is like that for me. So expect a lot of lyrics from various songs throughout this post, just because. Today hasn’t been an easy day per se. Travel days never are. I always have 5000 worries, and one by one I tick them off or bypass them, but it’s the part of travelling that requires you to have nerve. People I meet tell me I’m impressive for travelling along so young and mostly I don’t think so, I just do it, but on travel days, I do know what they mean and I do feel like I’m achieving something. It’s mostly dumb stuff, but it forces me from my comfort zone.

This morning I set my alarm for 8am so I could pack my bag and be ready to go early. I knew the bus left at 1:30pm but I didn’t have a ticket yet and I didn’t know if Giovanni would kick me out of the hostel at 10 or something because check out and basically, I just knew I needed to have my shit together today. Thankfully, Giovanni came through, he booked my ticket for me and then all I had to do was walk down to the Tabbachi store and give them the note he’d written and pay for it, and they’d give me a bus ticket.

Except what the fuck is Tabbachi. Like, you can put a dot on a city map and I’ll go to the street but if I don’t know exactly which store, I am hardly likely to just go in to random stores and start waving my paper in their faces, to blank stares and questions in Italian.

Anyway, I did the right thing and asked what exactly a tabbachi store is. He just looks at me blankly. “Tobbachi, tobbachi!’ And then I got it. Tobacco. The cigarette store.

So the first was closed, the second I saw was closed, except for a 24hour dispenser, but then the one that Giovanni had actually rung up was open and being brave (because yes, for me, this stuff is cause for nerves), I went in and asked. One staff member calls another, they tell me no, not today, tomorrow. I am thinking, well, fuck, it kind of needs to be today, I have a ferry to catch on the opposite coast. But then one tells me, go left, go up the road, the other shop can help me.

I’m awful at this stuff, but I say something like ‘I think they’re closed…” and I’m told ‘no, no, no’ and off I go, wandering back to the other store. Eventually, I screw up my courage and go ask again. A lot of travelling is asking stupid questions. Only I prefer travelling with people who have the skill of asking and not sounding stupid and don’t need me to do it.

But I went back and said, I’m sorry, I don’t know where to go.

So she woman comes to the door with me, says ‘go left, barrrr.’ It’s like charades.

“Baaarrrr?” I repeat dumbly.

She is impatient. “Bar!”

Again, I have my moment of clarity finally. Oh, an actual bar. I didn’t know bars sold bus tickets but then again, I didn’t know cigarette stores did either.

So I walk until I find a bar called bar. I go in. They guy says yes, won’t take my card. I have just enough cash. I had to make the last four euros in coins. But I had a ticket.

Then the next trial was getting to the bus station. I was competent enough to get from the hostel with my bags to the metro and from the metro to the Central station and up to the train station. I knew the bus terminal was around somewhere. I was more than an hour early so I wasn’t worried about time just yet. I had factored in my incompetence, see.

I found a sign that said taxi/bus and I didn’t really think that was it, because that seemed more like regular buses that go over the city. I was looking for an actual bus station. I see a sign for information but when I try to follow it, I can’t find it, so I wander some more. I’m getting a tad anxious.

Eventually, on my next circle of the train station, I find the info booth and show her my ticket. I’m trying to find MetroPark. She says, yes, points me left, and the name of a place (street, store, I don’t know).

“Outside the train station?” I ask.

“No, no, no, just down there.” I don’t catch what I’m supposed to do next, but I go the way they say dutifully, and to my delight, the word she said was a store. I go past it, expecting this corner of the station to magically turn into a bus stop. No luck. I wander a bit further, and ask a currency exchange guy. I figured he’d know some English. He said yes, go right (back the way I’d come), mentioned a café. I nodded, thanked him, and wandered back towards the info booth. I wander a lot, you might realise. I ask a few more shops, because I liteally am just in a train station, walking in front of a row of shops. Between the shop the info lady had mentioned and the café the currency exchange guy had mentioned, there was just a beauty/makeup store. But it led to outside, so I went in, and walked out and in and looked like a loser, but they didn’t know what I was talking about when I said MetroPark. “Metropolis?” One asked hopefully. I shook my head.

As I resolved to ask for help at the info booth again, I saw a sign leading to Terminal Bus.

I’ll admit, I probably sound stupid but word order is important. Terminal Bus made me think of like, a shuttle bus that takes people between terminals at the airport, not a bus terminal. But I hurried down this corridor, because surely.

Hurray, I found it. With over 30 minutes to spare. But then the next challenge was finding which bus was mine. I looked at my ticket (in Italian) for words that could match up to the buses around me. Like, the company or something. I actually nearly missed the obvious, but got on the right bus eventually.

For 3 and a half hours, I was happy. We were following the right signs to Bari, I was going to get there. I got some sleep.

But then we got closer. I had a weird ticket. I was supposed to get off at Bari Porto, but then get another bus from there immediately to Bari Port (add more words here). So I was nervous about that. But we made it to the port and I was like, okay, I think this is it, I’m getting off. So I grab my bag, go down to get off when the driver tells the two girls in front of me who are showing him their ticket to get back on. I half say ‘oh, so this isn’t right, okay—“ and I just go back up, shrugging.

But then I start feeling anxious. I had seen signs saying Bari Porto. Maybe I should ask again— but they all just spoke Italian, when the guy had checked my ticket, he’d had to grab a passenger to translate identification for me, so I could pull out my license. So I put on my worried face, hoping one of the people around me would be kind and look at my ticket and say that I was fine, it was just one more stop.

But they didn’t, so I held in my tears, as we drove further away from the port and I was furious at myself for being stupid. How the hell was I supposed to get back to the port? Thankfully, the next stop was Bari and everyone got out, including me. I got my bag and just stood there for a minute, as people cleared away. I hadn’t given up hope or anything, I knew I’d just have to struggle my way back to the port.

But then a guy talking to the bus driver says ‘taxi?” and I shake my head automatically, but I still look quite distressed and he asks where I need to go. I tell him the port and he asks if I’m going to Dubrovnik and says the name of the ferry I’m catching and I say yes and he says 15 euros and he’d take me right to the gate I need to go.

So I nod and I get in. I have a 50 euro note, so I can pay and 15 euros suddenly feels like nothing. Even though the whole bus ride, which was expensive enough, was only 24 and this was only a 5-10 minute drive.

When I get there, and give him the 50 nervously, he asks for smaller notes because he doesn’t have change and I’m terrified he’s just going to take the whole 50, but he just tells me to wait, and goes into the Kebab store and gets change. He gave me back 35 and I say grazie and then he gave me a bottle of water he must have just bought. I walk away thinking he must have been an angel encounter. It doesn’t sound like much, but he’d seen I was upset and he was kind.

And that was the end of my struggles for the night. I pull out my journal with my ticket details written down (I hadn’t been able to print them so that was another stress, that they wouldn’t accept just the numbers) but there was only one woman at the counter, and she was also waiting, because the counter didn’t open until 6pm and it was only 5:30pm. She’d had her own travel traumas and had been there all day, so she was determined to get her ticket first. Even if you book online, you still need to exchange that at the office for an actual ticket.

So even though I was starving (hadn’t had time to eat all day), I stayed and talked with her. Her husband was there as well, and they’d made friends with a young American guy. They personally were from South Africa.

When we’d got our tickets, we all went for a long explore of the old town. Our goal was to find a butchers shop that apparently sold cheap sandwiches but it was nice. We killed time until about 8:30. I finally got a kebab for dinner. The three people I had attached to were lovely. We just talked and talked and got through finding the ship and immigration and all of that.

Once we were on the ship, we were all sitting in relatively the same area but we just found seats we liked. Tony, the young US guy, wanted to be in front of a TV with good signal to watch the end of the football. Speaking of, I STILL DON’T KNOW IF THE NETHERLANDS WON THE PENALTY SHOOTOUT. From the food stand, we watched some of the game but left before the end of the penalties. I’m supporting the Dutch this year so fingers crossed they beat Mexico.

So since then, I’ve just hung out, charged my laptop, typed my story. I’m at 45000 words so basically, all I’ve learnt is that if I want to succeed at NaNoWriMo, I just need to backpack during. Not that my story was inspired by anything I’ve seen backpacking, I started it in the last week at Exeter and it’s just about home and my family and friends really, but I’ve just wrote it like a Trojan since I’ve been travelling. Unfortunately, I’ve started to fun out of stream a little bit. Hopefully, I can find a way to take it in a new direction. It’s set over a very long period of time so I’m sure there is a lot more I could add. So far it’s very much in the first stage of ‘the author telling the author what happens’. Once I’ve finished doing that, I can start putting in more dialogue and showing, rather than just telling.

Tomorrow I still  have to make it to the place I’m staying and I don’t have a map just yet. If I could just get wifi, I could google map it. If not though, I’ll just bite the bullet and get a taxi. I don’t have any Croatian money, but I have been told (by TripAdvisor) that they accept Euros. At least until I can get to an ATM.

Looking forward to seeing Mia immensely.

I said remember this feeling, I passed the pictures around.

Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines, wishing for right now