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11.08.2004 Zagreb (CROATIA)

[Luca]: We're on the train, heading to Zagreb, a destination chosen at the last minute almost as if to say "I'll go anywhere as long as we get away from here...!"

The train goes... it carries on regardless of everything and everyone... Whatever happens, it goes! Each of its passengers, at the window, watches the resting nature, lost and astonished! The barefoot gipsy kids gathered by the tracks cheer us and wave... it slows a little... but then goes on... I admire the Slavic world scrolling past me, it looks like an old film, an old reel whose simplicity moves you...

Sometimes I think how lucky we are to have the opportunity to live these moments, feelings that will be forever carved into our hearts, our minds, our souls! Travelling is feeding on ever new and exciting experiences... only this way can I give meaning to this life! And then I get angry: how can you squander something so precious, dazzled by futile things... when I see those young people who, despite having the same "economic opportunities" as us, think only about having the most modern mobile phone or the most powerful car or the most expensive clothes only because they're by that designer... and then they give up on life...

We share our compartment with three medical students from Madrid; they're doing the interrail with fake tickets...

[Luca]: We've gone from the Macedonian third world to the little Croatian Switzerland... how on earth did they all manage to stay together before? It was madness to make all these populations, so different from one another, live together under the same flag... and indeed the bomb eventually went off! The 17 hours of train from Skopje to Zagreb passed pleasantly, also thanks to the company of three other medical students from Zagreb: Ivan, Iva and Silva, chatting about everything: from the former Yugoslavia to alcohol, from assisted fertilisation to women... [Fiona from Madrid]: Es curioso como ocurren las cosas, conocer a personas con quieres normalmente no establecerias relaciòn y estar aqui conpartiendo bebida y comida. Es un cumulo de experiencias y impresionas que me alegro de estar viviendo.

(How curious it is how things happen, meeting people with whom you normally wouldn't establish a relationship and being here sharing drink and food. It's a heap of experiences and impressions that I'm glad to be living.)

Now we're in a nice hostel in the centre; I adore hostel life, in here everyone seems like an old friend... you get to know each other even just because we're staying in the same place... and so it happens that you meet in the corridor a lovely Anglo-Indian girl who smiles at you with a friendly "good morning!" as if we'd been together all day!

12.08.2004 Zagreb (CROATIA)

These Italian spaghetti that bring together all these people so different from one another... A pot of skinny spaghetti was enough to gather a table of people from various nations: Spain, England and Australia, with orange juices topped up with vodka that had already claimed their first victims after a short time but which warms up the atmosphere for the game of drink cards... a game suggested by the Australian Kate that consisted of drawing a card from a deck and according to it you discovered your alcoholic fate... What a blast... After recovering, we meet in the centre with our Croatian friends Ivan and Silva to have a few dances at a nightclub (on the lake) after admiring an elegant Zagreb by night!

13.08.2004 Zagreb (CROATIA)

Silva told me the legend of Dora: About 400 years ago, the king's son fell for a courtesan: Dora. A humble, poor girl of the people. The two soon fall madly in love with each other, but on one hand the king (the boy's father) flatly forbade this marriage because the heir to the throne could not marry a girl without "blue" blood, and on the other the king's personal secretary (unbelievably ugly) had in turn fallen in love with the beautiful Dora and did everything to put a spoke in the wheels of the two young people! Taking advantage of the fact that at that time the prince was fighting a war against the Hungarians, the wicked secretary had Dora accused of being a witch, and she soon ended up at the stake. When he was informed, the prince arrived in the city only a few days later and could not save his love... not all fairy tales have a happy ending!

At Ivan's house we watch the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics... Moments of emotion as the sporting delegation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel passes, and stadium-style cheering for the wild Italians!

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