Trieste — Umag — Rovinj — Pula: 189 km

The three-kilometre climb that took me about an hour and a half yesterday, is now reversed and I race off it within 10 minutes. Today I have breakfast in Italy, lunch in Slovenia and dinner in Croatia. Although I’ve visited The Check Republic and Hungary in the past, Eastern Europe is somewhat a mystery to me. Croatia seems the most accessible mystery of them all. After two weeks in Italy I’m ready for something new.

The cities I visit these first couple of stops seem interchangeable but terrific. All build around similar church towers once build by the Romans next to rocky beaches, they are the pearls of the Adriatic. The houses are painted in lively colours, the streets made of natural stone so clean you can see yourself in them and I wouldn’t mind to eat my dinner off of them. Summer season is ending and the amount of visitors wondering perplexed trough the tiny streets must have significantly decreased. I’m at the end of this year’s holiday-era, and the half full terraces ooze a warm relaxedness. In Rovinj, a beautiful mid-century city I find a tiny terrace, so enclosed by buildings of forgone significance the clientele whispers as if their voices are dampened by the stature, grandeur and history of their surroundings.

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In-between the towns the Adriatic waters accompany me while shifting colours with every difference in depth and change in sunlight. I bike past camp sites the size of small villages; capacity 6000, always available places. The roads change from asphalt to rough gravel and back again. The views of the headlands covered in pine forests are stunning, the weather pretends clouds don’t exist. I spend a couple of hours in each city, wandering around, getting groceries for a tent-meal, or dining in the city when I’m not feeling up for cooking on that tiny stove. After leaving Merit at Lake Como, I’ve been cycling for about three weeks now, exclusively camping, and only a two night stay in Venice. I’m always either arriving or leaving. It compromises opportunities for contact, and, even though I’m very comfortable being lonely, I’m in need of a little more conversation and human contact.

In Pula I decide to book a hostel. It’s time to sleep in a bed, do laundry, meet some people and wait out the expected thunder storms. Pula is pretty much like Umag and Rovinj, albeit a little less conventionally pretty due to the big harbour with the accompanying industry. That makes it also somewhat less touristy. Apparently, James Joyce used to have his favourite pub here for a while, while teaching English to sailors in a nearby school. A statue right in front of it commemorates him. I’ve never read anything of his, but now I aim to do so. The hostel is homely, and I spend my days sleeping in, going at the beach and at night hanging out with a Serbian and a Bosnian guy and two German girls. We see the Marathon that’s on that weekend. The thunderstorm doesn’t come. The day I’m leaving I decide to stay another night. Why not? Being in a hostel, for the first time this trip, allows me to change my perspective from purely to myself to others as well. I meet an American man and a Romanian girl, we exchange travel stories. It’s a little superficial as we just talk about places and itineraries, but it’s nice to spend a couple of hours with others just sitting around. Tomorrow I’ll leave again, and although the hostel experience is one that I hadn’t set my eyes on when I started my travels, it is one that will definitely become a part of my travel repertoire. That last night the rain and thunder come in a ferocity that I’ve not seen often before.