In order to make travel within Europe easier for EU citizens, many of the countries in Europe signed into something called the Schengen Agreement. Basically, this agreement opens up borders between countries that are part of the agreement and eliminates border controls, passport checks, etc. For European citizens, this means less hassle while traveling between countries - and since the countries here are so much smaller than the United States, it's easy to do lots and lots of traveling. HOWEVER: when doing research for our trip, we kept reading that U.S. citizens don't need a visa if they are traveling within the country for less than 30 days. We got this same information when reading about every country we made plans to go to on this trip: Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary. So, awesome, we aren't staying in any of those countries for more than 30 days. But then about two weeks before our flight date, we stumbled pretty much by accident on this information about the Schengen Agreement. And one part of the Schengen Agreement says that U.S. citizens can only be IN THE SCHENGEN AREA FOR 90 DAYS WITHIN SIX MONTHS. Ah, crap! Our original trip plans meant we would be in the Schengen area for about 115 days, and we read/heard about people getting in trouble when exiting the EU and having to pay huge fines and being banned from the EU for ten years, stuff like that. Luckily for us, Ukraine is not part of the Schengen Agreement, so we were able to change our travel plans so that we were only in the Schengen area for the allotted number of days. Our original trip plans included another WWOOFing endeavour in Austria, but we changed that so we would be back in Ukraine, working on a buffalo reserve.
Well, plans changed again later on in our trip: we have been under budget for most of our trip so far, so rather than spend three weeks shoveling buffalo dung in Ukraine, we decided to go have ourselves some fun in Croatia (also not part of the Schengen Agreement). Whoo!
To subsidize our Croatian vacation, we did set up a stint volunteering at a backpackers hostel on the island of Korcula. In exchange for a room to sleep in, we are expected to work a few hours in the morning changing linens, doing laundry, cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen, etc. So that's what we've been doing for the last few days. The hostel has eight private rooms and a dorm room (pictured below) with twenty beds available for those who are looking for a really cheap place to sleep. The first couple days we were here, only about half the beds were filled, so we didn't have much to do, but last night TONS of people showed up. Tons as in, the hostel was overbooked and about six people who showed up without reservations slept in lawn chairs on the balcony, and Steve and I were relegated to sleeping on the couches (which actually turned out to be sofabeds) in the upstairs kitchen. It was crazy. Imagine fifty 19-year-olds all cramming into one house. That was what we came back to after dinner out.
On the bright side, we get done with playing Cinderella around noon or 1pm and have the rest of the day to explore the island. Dragan, the owner of the hostel, offered to take us and a few other guests out to the beach at Lumbarda, a little beach town about ten minutes away from the hostel. We spent the day floating around in warm, shallow, blue waters and getting lots of sun.
Down the street from the hostel is Saint Anthony's Church, which is very small, very old, and up a huuuuuuuge flight of stairs.
What a view, right? Croatia has a bunch of little islands along its coast. The one we're staying on, Korcula, is so beautiful - I thought that kind of blue only existed on postcards. The climate here is a Mediterranean climate, so as I think I've mentioned before, we've been seeing a lot of things that remind us of California, like pine trees, vineyards, and a lot of other plants we recognize.
I wanted to rent a tandem kayak, as I've never been kayaking at all, tandem or otherwise, so Steve and I went to a small pebbly beach about a fifteen minute walk from the hostel and rented one out for an hour.
Let me tell you, I did not realize that rowing on a tandem kayak would be so hard. Maybe it's because Steve is much stronger and much more coordinated than I am? If I had been left alone, I may have ended up just going in circles... You can see more of our kayaking endeavour here.
Other than cleaning and hitting the beach to work on our tans, we've been eating a lot of seafood. Like shark steaks! An huge prawms with their heads still on! And.... also a lot of ice cream (there are stands EVERYWHERE) and a lot of pizza (Italy is just across the Adriatic....).
So far? Life is good. It's nice to settle down in one place and sit back and relax most of the day. This is a vacation, after all....
Croatia looks awesome! Definitely going on my list of places to visit. I'm glad to see you two having some fun and relaxing! :)
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