Private Rooms
Get off any inter-city bus in Croatia, and you are in for a shock. There will be a phalanx of grey-haired little old ladies waiting for you, their eyes hungry and narrow. As soon as they see you, they start shouting "Zimmer, Sobe, Accomodation" and walking towards you. These are the dreaded private room ladies of Croatia. Retired women or maybe couples who have converted one or more rooms in their house to guest accomodation, they are everywhere in Croatia. If you aren't defensive enough, one of them will latch onto you and that will be the end of it. But even if you've faced them down before and know how to play the game, forget about the hostel that you saw in the Lonely Planet. You are going with one of these ladies and that is all there is to it.

After communicating across several languages (German, Italian, Croatian, whatever) you will get the price of the room (usually $20 or so) and be repeatedly assured that the room is only five minutes walk away, so what the hell, this one will do. And besides, the second you agree to stay with one of them, she will protect you from all of the other private room ladies. And THAT is worth $20 in itself. Then she starts off towards her house at a cracking pace, and it begins to hit you: I am following a stranger to their home from the bus station. I am so sure that my mother warned me about this, and hang on a minute, I haven´t even got any sweets!

The couple in Pula were real charmers -- Sylvana was her name, never got his name. I had arrived in Pula a few days before the Jamiroquai concert and one day before Daniel and Louse, and I had to get some accomodation for all of us by the time they arrived. If that sounds a bit stressful, well, it was. Unlike most other towns, I had to go to a travel agency to find a private room. They rang up Sylvana and she sent her bloke down to the travel agent to pick me up from the agency. He arrived in ex-communist Croatia's finest chariot -- the Yugo. About the size of a Barina, with all four gears and the take-off power of a lawnmower, the Yugo is still surprisingly popular in Croatia. I can only imagine they haven't been relegated to the great parking-lot in the sky because they are cheap to run and have even less re-sale value than a 1990 Camry.

Normally, a private-room is take it or leave it, but this one was a little more complex. It was a little out of the way, so I had to use my burgeoning charades and map-pointing skills to extract information like where the buses ran, whether there was a supermarket nearby, and how long did it take to walk to the city. Surprisingly, my attempt to convey "I like the room but I'm a little concerned at how far out it is, and I can't make a decision until I talk to my friends" was ultimately unsuccessful. After that, we all quickly agreed that Mr Sylvana would drive me back to the tourist agency so they could translate. Once there, I took a little more reassuring about the room, but when he offered to pick me, Daniel, Louise and their luggage from the bus station, I was convinced. Not just through the generosity of it, or the aplomb he demonstrated in miming the offer, but just at the chance to ride in the Yugo once more.