Slovenia - Croatia - #55HT

Novo Mesto just gave me nice experiences. I had memorable 24h there that I could experience to be in a relaxed place full of friendly people around having a fun nightlife. I didn't need anything else. If you want to have similar experience you should go visit there.

Again, it was time to move, not just the city, but also the country. In this Easter eve we were going to Zagred, the Croatian Capital. 

The hitchhiking trip started really well this day. Leaving from Novo Mesto was kind of easy. Once the city is really small, the access to the exit of the highway was easy to reach. After few minutes waiting there a guy just picked us up offering to drop us in a city close from border between Slovenia and Croatia. He was a really friendly guy that in the middle of the trip just stopped for few minutes to offer us a beer. That's what I love in traveling by hitchhiking, he was already helping us without expecting anything back and in his generous way just wanted to hang out and spent longer time with us.

After this cool experience with fan beer's driver, he dropped us in another spot that we could find easily another ride.

We spent around 40min with this guy, he seemed to be nice, but Cris was kind of worried during the trip and she told me afterwards that this guy looked like to be high with drugs. In fact I didn't feel any fear during the trip that we crossed the border to Croatia, where some cops were checking the documents of everyone.

Croatia is still European Union, however it's not in the Schengen area. In this area in Europe, people from the member’s states don't need to carry the passport in other member’s states. Once Croatia wasn't part of this group, they were checking all of passports.

Nothing happened in this moment, gladly and our guy just dropped us in a gas station in the exit of Zagreb. We could see the city from there, but it was still far away to walk. After waiting 1h we just realized that this spot was a really bad one and maybe it would be better to talk 12km to reach the city center.

He we were, crossing a footbridge above the road, afterwards walking in the border of the Highway, not safe at all, until finding a spot where we could jump a gate to arrive in field with few houses around and a small river. Google maps wasn't showing a path to reach the city center, because these small streets aren't registered in the map.

It was a nice walk in this wild place. We spent 1h30 until with some stops until finding the "civilization".

I believe that almost none traveler knows this part of Zagreb ;)

In the "Civilization" we planned to take a bus to go to the city center that was still 5km from this spot, but we faced a problem, we didn't have the Croatian currency. The Croatian Kuna gave us a small problem. We were far way from the city center and then there weren't any ATM machines or place to exchange our Euros around.

The bus that was costing just 7 Kunas, around 1 euro, but we couldn't pay it. They also didn't accept cards. We were exhausted trying to finish our 12km of walking, seeing the street full of people carrying painted eggs and food in a basket going to the church for the Easter celebrations. 

Without so many expectations we were walking and holding the paper signal written "Zagreb" until the moment that an old couple just picked us up.

Super friendly they were. They seemed to have 70 years old and they just let us entering in their cars, being really friendly talking a lot and so many asking us questions. They were really interested to know what 2 Brazilian were doing in Zagreb and after few minutes they dropped us in the city center giving us 2 painted eggs making us feel welcome in the Capital of Croatia, Zagreb.