7/11/15
Budapest, Hungary → Zagreb, Croatia

Before we left for Zagreb, we had to make a pit stop at a flea market to get paprika for our families. Apparently, Hungarian paprika is a highly coveted spice for chefs around the world. This was news to me. In my mind, paprika is just the red horns for deviled eggs.

With the red stuff in hand, we started the trek to find our BlaBlaCar driver, Christine. Ash had been communicating with Christine via e-mail, and it was by far the strangest line of communication we’d had thus far. This was her last e-mail to Ash twenty-four hours ago:

Hello, Ash!

Please meet me around the Népliget metro station at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday. I will be renting a Toyota car to drive us to Zagreb. If I am not there by 11:00 a.m., please wait for an hour, and if I am still not there, I apologize. Something must have gone wrong with the rental.

Thanks,

Christine

This was far from reassuring, but we had no other way to get to Zagreb without spending a few hundred dollars. This BlaBlaCar ride only cost us fifteen dollars.

Within the last twenty-four hours, Ash had e-mailed Christine numerous times, trying to get a better description of the car or a more specific pickup location. With nothing other than that last e-mail from Christine to go off of, we arrived at the station at 10:55 a.m. We had no idea what Christine looked like. Her only description in a previous e-mail was that she was a “blonde looking forty!” This was extremely ambiguous, because she could be a young-looking fifty-year-old or an old-looking thirty-year-old.

We stood at the corner, trying to look as noticeable as possible to someone looking for two travelers. After thirty minutes, we were losing hope. Ash went to try to find Wi-Fi to see if she could somehow reach Christine by e-mail, and I stood on the corner like a drug dealer, making intense eye contact with each female driver who passed by. Ash returned fifteen minutes later—no luck. It was now 11:45 a.m. Christine didn’t show up, but what had we expected? She hadn’t even responded in the last twenty-four hours.

There was little time to sulk about our situation; we had to find a way to get to the capital of Croatia. We’d already paid for our Airbnb in Croatia that night. I went to do some research on trains. Ash refused to leave the corner until 12:00 p.m., but it was 11:57 a.m. and we didn’t even know what we were looking for. Ash hates giving up on things. I walked to the corner where she had found Wi-Fi earlier and began searching for plan B transportation. We’d missed the day train an hour earlier, and our last option was an overnight train that arrived in Zagreb at 6:00 a.m for 175 dollars a person. Missing our BlaBlaCar ride, it turned out, was a costly blunder.

I began the booking process for two train tickets and was moments away from clicking “Confirm Booking” when I heard my name being yelled down the street. I turned to see Ash running at me. “Kyle, I found her! I found her!”

We excitedly hurried back up the block to the metro station where Christine was waiting for us. She eagerly shook my hand and apologized for being late. Apparently, she’d rented the car at a Romanian rental company and had had trouble with the translating.

I assured her we didn’t mind and that we were just glad we’d found her. I sat in the back of the Fiat, and Ash took BlaBla-ing duties. Christine explained to us that she did not have a cell phone, which made communication difficult. I was in complete awe that someone could succeed in the twenty-first century without one.

As we left the streets of Budapest, Christine handed Ash a piece of paper. “Here is our map to get to Zagreb,” she enthusiastically proclaimed. I looked at the map that was hand drawn with what looked like an erasable pen. You know, that obnoxious light blue that always looked like the pen was on its last drop of ink.

The two of them went over the map together in the front as I sat in the back, shaking my head, knowing failure was imminent. To say Ash is directionally challenged is a huge understatement. If Christine was relying on a handwritten map to travel the three and a half hours to Zagreb, she might be challenged, too. They agreed on the first few steps and high-fived as we pulled out. We were off to Croatia, I hoped.

Christine was an eccentric French woman currently living in Berlin. This instantly made me like her more. Berlin had a gold seal of approval in my book. She was going to Rijeka, Croatia, on holiday, traveling by herself and couch surfing to save money.

I began writing to kill some time and couldn’t keep my journal pages from flapping in the wind and bombarding me in the backseat. Christine must have heard the flapping paper and told us she didn’t use air conditioning because it was bad for the environment. She stated this proudly and smiled at us. I was both appalled and impressed. I was appalled that in the one-hundred-degree heat, and in a car with black leather seats, she was willing to sacrifice the relief of AC. I was even more impressed that she believed in saving the environment enough to put two passengers, who would be reviewing her later on a ride-sharing app, through such harsh conditions. I had to respect her dedication to the third planet.

It became apparent that we were lost when we saw signs for Graz, a city in Austria. The highway was packed with traffic, and we came to a standstill on the road. Christine came up with the bright idea to ask someone for directions. (Finally, I thought, a great idea from the Blond Brigade.)

“Yeah, that sounds good!” I said, thinking we would pull over to a gas station. Christine, on the other hand, had other plans. She parked the car in the middle of the highway exit and left the vehicle. Meanwhile, Ash and I felt like the two young kids in Jurassic Park when the tour guide runs from the green jeep. Christine ran to the car behind us, leaving us perplexed in the roasting Fiat. After fifteen seconds of deliberation, she returned, running into the car, and excitedly told us, “I figured it out!” We exited the next ramp and took the highway back the way we came. A short time later, we arrived at the Croatian border.

Croatia was the first country we had entered with certified border control. There were signs advising drivers to slow down and get their documents ready. As we rolled into what resembled a tollbooth in the US, I imagined Christine just speeding through and blowing through the barrier, confessing that she was actually a drug smuggler. My daydream zapped back to reality as the stern Croatian guard asked for our passports. Christine handed him all three and smiled enthusiastically. I thought about how odd it must look to have a French woman driving two Americans in a Romanian rental car. The Croatian guard must have felt the same way, and after careful analysis, he told us to pull over.

Christine pulled to the side of the border station, where the vans full of drugs probably parked. They told us to stay put until told otherwise. We sat in a small patch of shade and waited, leaning against the trunk of the car. I couldn’t help but feel like we were doing something illegal.

The border officer returned and handed us our documents.

“So we are free to go?” I asked.

He nodded and looked disappointed that they had not found anything suspicious.

Although safely in Croatia, we still had an hour and a half of driving to go before we reached the capital city of Zagreb. I finished my writing to the sound of Ash’s snores.

I woke Ash up to give her the news of our arrival, but somewhere in the celebration, we missed the exit to the city center and had to turn around. Christine dropped us off at the train station, hugging us both, and then sped off to Rijeka to surf on couches. We wished Christine Godspeed.

As Christine pulled away, Ash and I looked at each other, exhaled, and started laughing. There was never a dull day when taking BlaBlaCars across countries, but this one might have taken the cake for the strangest yet.

Our next Airbnb host, Natalija, drove us the short distance to her place. As she explained her loft, she was distressed that someone had once given her a four-star rating due to the pillows because they were “too hard.” We assured her she would be getting five stars from us. We give everyone five stars. She gave us recommendations for food and things to do with our time here, and then left us to enjoy Zagreb.

We drank a bottle of wine to assist in the sleep we were looking forward to getting, and headed home, buzzing through the streets. I had been anticipating this moment all day. We were more than ready for rest at this point.