Not Afraid of the Fall

by Kyle James

  7/30/15

  Korčula, Croatia

  Ash had finally reached her relaxation threshold, and she shook me awake at 9:00 a.m. to get to the Old Town. Before we walked outside to start our trek, I noticed something different. My skin wasn’t being roasted, and there was some strange sensation on my face that both woke me up and provided relief. Could it be … wind? There was a breeze on the island, and it gave me that feeling of finishing my last final in college. A breeze might be an understatement; a gust of wind launched our bug spray across the patio floor, making an obnoxious sound of aluminum ricocheting off stone.

  We moseyed around our apartment for much of the day before eventually reaching the Old Town at 5:00 p.m. We took seats at a cool-looking restaurant in one of the alleys that snaked around the castle. A young man strolled up to us like he wanted to chat. We had just looked at the menu and realized we couldn’t afford the food here, but we wanted to be nice to the waiter, who seemed like he was ecstatic to see customers. We each ordered a glass of wine from whom we would soon find out was one of the happiest humans we had ever come across.

  Tadej was a tall, lean twenty-one-year-old spitfire of a Croatian who spent his summer waiting tables here in Korčula. He had no other customers, so he took a seat against a ledge near us and listened intently as we told him about our travels thus far. He then told us about his time spent working with the American Red Cross in Zagreb. Before long, we were talking like old friends (really like his big brother and sister), offering advice on life and commending him on his work with the Red Cross. Then he stopped, smiled, and said abruptly, “Do you guys want try our local brandy?” We thanked him for offering, but politely told him we were taking a break from drinking. Just kidding, of course we obliged.

  He returned, beaming and carrying three large shot glasses full of brandy. He recited a Croatian cheers and we clinked glasses. Then I proceeded to pound my shot in one fell gulp. Ash and Tadej calmly sipped theirs and continued talking. When I realized what I had done, I tried to casually sip my empty glass. Tadej noticed, quickly smiled, and took his like a shot as well. Ash looked confused until she saw mine was gone, and then we all burst into laughter.

  Our conversation continued, albeit slightly drunker at this point. Somehow we got on the topic of coffee, and I told him I probably drank four to five cups a day. He slammed the table and said, “I will make you guys the best coffee in Korčula,” and proudly strolled into his café.

  He returned with large espressos. This was a crucial pick-me-up, as the brandy and two glasses of red wine were trying to take me down. Eventually we came to the realization that we needed to eat, so we told Tadej we were going to head to dinner, because we couldn’t afford his restaurant, but that we would be back tomorrow to see him. He ran inside and returned with the check: six dollars with only one glass of wine on it. Good man.

  We left him a twenty-dollar tip (the equivalent to around one hundred dollars for a Croatian with their cost of living) and felt great about it. We stood up for this first time in hours, and the impact of the drinks was apparent. Instead of taking our usual twenty minutes to decide where to eat, we went to the same seafood shack as the first night.

  8/1/15

  Korčula, Croatia

  Ash woke me up and reminded me with a sad voice that it was our last day in Korčula, which also meant our last day in Croatia. I couldn’t believe it had been three weeks since we had laid eyes on the beauty of the Adriatic. The days had felt slow, but the weeks had gone by fast.

  Before heading out for the day, I decided to rebudget for Italy. We knew the cost of living there was going to be elevated, and we wanted to expand our budget for those days. I totaled all the “money spent” columns on our Excel model and compared them with our bank statements. I found a two-thousand-dollar discrepancy. This can’t be right. I did it again and found the exact same total differential. Shit …

  After digging into each withdrawal, I found the issue. Nineteen hundred dollars was taken out in Vienna from Ash’s bank account. Not only would we never have taken out nineteen hundred dollars for any reason, we had not taken out any money in Vienna. It was the last city that we’d been in that used the euro, and we’d had leftover money from previous cities. Someone must have stolen her credit card information.

  We had always heard about the high risk of identity theft in Europe, but we never imagined we would be victims. Numerous painful phone conversations left Ash extremely agitated with each clueless transfer. We’d had quite a scare. My fantasy football keeper player, Odell Beckham Jr., was not participating in scrimmages. Oh, and our credit card information had been stolen in Austria. Thankfully, we got our money back right away. Disaster averted.

  We left for the Old Town to say good-bye to Tadej, but we could not find the alley where he resided. Just before we were going to give up, we heard a cheerful “Americans!” echoing down the alley. We turned to see Tadej, his arms open for an embrace. We said our good-byes and found each other on Facebook so we could stay in touch. We also made him promise that if he ever came to the US to let us host him. I know we will see Tadej again someday. Our lives wouldn’t be nearly as happy if we didn’t. He is a special kid.

  We wrapped up our Korčula experience the same way we wrapped up most cities—depressed and face deep in a pizza. This had been the best part of our trip thus far, and Croatia was a country that would hold a place in our hearts forever. It was very visceral; it brought out the rawness of our emotions. Every person we’d met—from Neil, Bryony, Foz, Millie, Diane, and Stephen in Kolocep, to Withers, Laura, Metka, and Svets in Mljet, to Tadej in Korčula—would forever be in our hearts for making these three weeks special for us. These weren’t just people we’d spent time with; they were true friends. Croatia had given me the peace of mind I needed to cope with this trip and leave the life we’d known behind. Central Europe was still a bustling empire of economies and rat races of their own. Croatia, on the other hand, was simply a land of peace.

  8/2/15

  Korčula, Croatia → Dubrovnik, Croatia

  It was the first time this week we were woken up by anything other than a splash of 10:00 a.m. sun sneaking through the blinds.

  When Darinka’s husband dropped us off at the port, I shook his hand and thanked him for the hospitality and sharing the apartment above his home with us, but he didn’t speak a lick of English. The language barrier was fierce between us, but I think he got the message; smiles and handshakes are a universal language.

  When it was time for boarding, Ash and I walked to the back of the boat where there were a few seats outside. The area was in the middle of the sun with no shade, but the seats were the only two together, and after the hellish trip here, we preferred fresh air. We sat next to one of the guys we had been chatting with in the waiting area.

  “Long time no sea,” I said, chuckling. Then I realized he couldn’t hear how I was spelling sea in my head and felt like an idiot.

  Mark was a Dutch sailor from Amsterdam. He was down in Korčula working as a skipper for a family on their yacht. When he told us he was trained to be a skipper on freighters that traveled around the horn of Africa, I asked him the obvious questions.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve had a run-in with pirates.” He said it didn’t get as crazy as in the movies, but he was out near the African coast around Somalia when a boat with a small light on suddenly came out of nowhere in the middle of the night. The boat was not on the radar that documented registered vessels, and it came closer and closer toward them. Mark turned on all the ship’s floodlights, as well as all the fire hoses. He said the hoses were now completely covering their freighter, and if a small boat got anywhere close to it, it would surely sink the boat in seconds. He told us that when the hoses turned on, the light on the small boat turned off and they didn’t see it again. I was almost upset the story didn’t end with some sort of gunfight.

  Our flight was early tomorrow morning, and rather than stay in Dubrovnik, we figured we would spend
thirty-five dollars to sleep a mile from the airport. The bus driver told us two dollars for both of us, and we happily boarded a bus that was probably from 1955. Our quality standards for transportation had plummeted.

  When the bus driver announced Konavle, we looked out the window at the desolate land before us and asked him, “Are you sure?” He smiled and nodded as if he found it humorous that we’d ended up here. Konavle was a one-horse town. It had one residential area, one restaurant, and one gas station. It also had one Airbnb. We’d booked it for proximity to the airport, but we were now second-guessing our decision.

  We sat down in the restaurant, ordered beers, and messaged our host, Sunshine, to let her know we were here. She told us someone would be there shortly to pick us up in “either a black Mazda or a white car.” Again, our standards were so low at this point that she could have said, “The next car that shows up is yours,” and we probably would have gotten in.

  Sure enough, a black Mazda showed up, and a tall smiling kid maybe twenty years old got out and shook our hands. We drove up a hill and arrived at our place. We told him we were leaving at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, and asked about some sort of taxi service.

  He smiled and said, “I will be your taxi,” and offered to take us for ten dollars.

  This was definitely more than we had been paying for public transportation, but the ease of having our ride waiting that early in the morning and not having to find a taxi was worth it. We agreed and planned to meet at seven. He seemed overly thrilled, as if we had just agreed to pay him one million dollars instead of ten.

  Our place was awful, two stiff beds in a room with a bathroom. This was why it was thirty-five for the night. It reminded me of the dorm rooms at my basketball camp when I was a kid. The AC worked and the Wi-Fi (sort of) worked, so we had three of our essentials. The amazing part to me was how nice they’d made this place look on the website. I was thoroughly impressed.

  8/3/15

  Dubrovnik, Croatia → Rome, Italy

  When we woke up in Croatia for the last time, our backs were sore from the wood with four-inch mattresses and we were more dehydrated than we preferred to be. It felt right.

  We left our Airbnb at precisely 6:40 a.m. and walked down to where the smiling kid lived. I expected that he would not be awake to drive two strangers to the airport, but lo and behold, there he was, perched on his Mazda, smiling from ear to ear and slapping the hood of his car to commence the trip.

  As the ‘96 Mazda stick shift exited the residential area and reached the airport in fifteen minutes, the kid told us about how Konavle had been rebuilt after the war only twenty years earlier. For a once war-torn country from the Soviet Bloc, it seemed awfully peaceful now.

  The customs officer stamped our passports with the Dubrovnik seal, and soon after they called the flight to Rome over the intercom. The passengers raced to line up to board the flight. It was assigned seating. Why the hell are these people so eager to board? I thought. But when I laid eyes on the overhead space that might fit a fifth-grade lunch box, it made sense. Fortunately for us, we’d checked our backpacks and were free-bagging it. Ash was asleep before they finished the seat belt demonstration, and I put on T. Swift and cranked out some writing for the entire pond jump over the Adriatic.

  When we landed at Fiumicino Airport, it was a culture shock. Our last three weeks had been spent on island time. The Rome airport reminded me of an American airport, and it was packed with international travelers either ready to get their holiday trips underway or to get home and face the depression of returning to work.

  It took us two hours to get through customs and get our bags, but we didn’t mind. The free Wi-Fi and AC were enough for us to be complacent.

  With backpacks securely in tow, we boarded the train headed to central Rome, along with damn near everyone else in the airport. I sat down at a window seat, and when I felt the weight of the cushion shift as someone sat next to me, I turned to talk to Ash and saw it wasn’t Ash but an old woman beaming at me. I smiled and turned to see Ash three seats behind me. Ash had the directions on her phone, so I told her to let me know when we got there.

  After half an hour or so, our stop was next, so I put on my backpack and turned to ask Ash where we went from here, only to find her asleep on the window, snoring and probably dreaming about pasta carbonara. Shit, I forgot this was a moving vehicle!

  “Ash,” I said, trying not to make a scene. She didn’t stir. I was going to say it louder, but the old Italian man next to her smiled at me and pointed at her as if to say Want me to wake her up? I nodded at him and thanked him, and he tapped Ash’s shoulder until she awoke, embarrassed. We stepped off the train into the gorgeous oven that was Rome, Italy, and walked up to our apartment.

  To use any word but perfect to describe our Airbnb would be doing it a disservice. We were located in the middle of arguably the best neighborhood in Rome, with a large AC unit in the bedroom of our apartment. I always put an emphasis on the AC part because of the nights we were without it. The spacious apartment had a glamorous decor and possessed a large bathroom and a shower with great water pressure. At this point in the trip we needed the pressure to dispel the dirt and sweat. We had forgotten what luxury felt like since being in Croatia for so long. We even had a washer and dryer in our place. Our clothes smelled like sweat and bad hand soap.

  With our travel day safely behind us, we ventured into squares that were filled with energetic people wrapped up in romance, and old buildings sporting tan, beige, and red outfits. A place with great seating caught our attention, and we proceeded to study the menu. Ash smiled at an older gentleman near us who was seated with his large family, and he could probably tell we were contemplating whether or not to eat here. He said, with an elegant Swiss accent, “The food is amazing,” and smiled.

  We thanked him and sat down at the only available table, which happened to be near them. We ordered a bottle of Chianti and took in the view around us. I was gazing at a cathedral across the street when Ash started chatting with the daughter of the gentleman who had convinced us to eat here.

  Siofra was a Swiss woman traveling with her three kids and her father in Rome for two nights before heading to Zanzibar for holiday. Siofra seemed to take life as it came, and she exercised the parenting style we hoped to one day have as she truly listened to her kids instead of shoving screens in their faces.

  They finished eating well before we did. On the way out, Siofra took Ash’s phone number and told us that if we were ever in Switzerland to call her and come stay with her and her family. (That was an offer we were clearly going to her take up on.)

  After dinner, we were too drunk and energetic to go to bed so we decided to grab one more bottle of Chianti and drink it on the Ponte Sisto Bridge over the Tiber. The bridge hosted amazing street performers and painters who had set up camp for the night. Feeling rather drunk and creative myself, I took pictures of how beautiful the glowing lights made Ash look as she perched on the ledge and pretended to gaze off into the distance. After our second bottle of wine, we contemplated one more.

  “When in Rome,” I said jokingly, realizing this was the first time in my life that this sentence made sense. We laughed harder than we should have, and drowned the night in the dark-red Chianti.

  8/4/15

  Rome, Italy

  I had a feeling that every time we woke up in Italy, I would experience a slight headache and a full stomach. (That is what you do in Italy: you eat until you are sick, and then you chase that feeling with Tuscan wine.) I was surprisingly not as hungover as I would have imagined. I think this was due to the quality of the wine.

  With no room for breakfast in our gastro chambers, we settled on espresso and geared up for a day of sightseeing. We were strapped for Roman time and had only booked two full days here to make room for the rest of the Italian cities we wanted to visit. Our unplanned trip to Croatia had really put a time constraint on our Italian journey.

  Our Airbnb was conveniently a mile from Vati
can City, so we started off to chat about worldly issues with ol’ Pope Francis. Eventually, we had no need for our Google Maps; I had a hunch that the dozens of tour groups all wearing matching shirts were going to the same place we were.

  We arrived at the Vatican, and I instantly got goose bumps. Walking through the gate to St. Peter’s Square and staring up at the basilica was an awe-inspiring moment for the two of us. I am an un-apologetic Dan Brown fanboy, and Angels & Demons is my favorite book after the Harry Potter books. I often compare myself to his main character, Robert Langdon, despite the fact that we share no discernible similarities.

  Suddenly a Swiss guard approached me standing in the square and told me in a thick Italian accent that we had to leave the square immediately.

  “Excuse me?” I replied, confused and looking around to see if I had done anything illegal (always a possibility).

  “The Pope is coming to speak to a private group at 6:00 p.m.,” he responded sternly. “We need to clear the square by 1:00 p.m. You need to leave immediately.”

  Long story short, we were kicked out of St. Peter’s Square by a Swiss guard for the Pope’s safety, almost identical to a scene out of a Dan Brown book. I suppose Robert Langdon and I have more in common than I thought.

  Next up, the Pantheon. It was hard to get to the Pantheon from Vatican City. It wasn’t the distance that made it tough; it was the tourists. There was no city we had been to yet, or that I had been to in my entire life for that matter, that had more tourists than Rome did in August. You would have thought there was a one-million-dollar prize for the best selfie taken in Rome today, and everyone there was competing.

  Once we escaped the area outside of the Vatican that was littered with tourists and vendors selling mini St. Peter’s Basilica magnets and fake purses, we reached the area of Rome we fell in love with.