By far, the most random day of my entire life, that inculdes the future...

I don’t even know how to start this story.. This may be a long post, but just stick with it, it’s worth the read.

So we have some American friends, Robin and Carol who have been living in Croatia for a few years now. They are and older couple working with a church in Rijeka, and they lead a youth service for young people. We have had them over for dinner a few times, and they wanted to have us over for dinner, but their apartment isn’t big enough to have all six of us, so they invited us over in shifts. It was Allison and my turn to go over first. We have both never really driven our scary car before, Allison has taken it around the block once, so that’s already a bit nerve wrecking, then we both know the least Croatian on our team, so we have a lot of odds against us before we even leave our apartment.

Carol had given us great directions to her house, but due to the lack of lighting; and by lack of, I mean no lighting in our car, not even to light up the speedometer, so at night it’s always a rough guess as to how fast we are going, it was really hard to read the directions. Luckily Allison and I have the original Nokia cell phones with these cool flashlight things on the end, so I’m trying to flash the dash board so she knows how fast she’s going, and read the directions all at the same time..

We reach the last few directions, Carol described her apartment to me on the phone, but never gave me a apartment number. The street sign that they lived on was parallel to the road we were driving on, my directions said we should have taken one more right and then we would see their apartment, but I just thought we must have made the turn already. I was later informed that someone hit the street sign, to make it not perpendicular to the road we were on, thus telling us we are supposed to take the last right turn, but made it parallel, telling us, “great job, you made it to their apartment!” So, we see an apartment with colored Christmas lights, white lights, there are snow flake decals pressed against the window, I can see a tree inside the apartment all decorated, and if you knew Carol, you would just look at this apartment and think, oh ya, this is her house..

So Allison and I walk up to the apartment knock on the door and this cute elderly Croatian man opens the door. We say sorry, obviously this is the wrong apartment, and turn to walk away. The man is confused, and keeps speaking to us in Croatian. I inform him, in Croatian, that I only speak and understand a little Croatian, that I am from America, and then I say “Where Carol and Robin” in Croatian. I had no idea what I was doing, but knowing Robin and Carol, I thought everyone on their block would know who they are.. So he just laughs, because I am speaking the most broken Croatian ever, and tells us to come in. We keep walking the other direction, and he gets a little louder, still very kind though, and tells us to come in. I start thinking, oh maybe Robin and Carol do live here, and he’s just hanging out with them, and since he heard their name, he knows we are looking for them. That is not really a plausible explanation because Robin and Carol don’t speak Croatian, so there is no way they would be hanging out with this family if there was no one to interpret.

So we start walking into this man’s apartment. It’s long and narrow, and the kitchen is the last room in the house. We make our way to the kitchen, where his wife, who has the most outrageous set of bed head I’ve ever seen in my life, starts taking out plates, cups, napkins, cakes, cookies, cream puffs, ext. and putting them on the table.. We both instantly start laughing so hard, knowing that we are now trapped, I start biting my lip so hard, and pinching my hand so I will stop laughing.. I knew that we were close to Robin and Carol’s apartment because remember I saw the street sign of victory, or at least that’s what I thought it was when I saw it, so I knew we just needed to turn down that road. We had one, no two problems though, this cute man and woman would not let us leave. The husband took the directions out of my hand, and started calling the phone number on the bottom.. It’s not working so he doesn’t know what to do. Allison in the mean time is trying to peer over the mans shoulder, snatch the paper out of his hand, anything to get that phone number because we can’t call Robin and Carol without it..

Eventually, one Rafiello (cocoanut cream cake) and one cream puff down, the man calls this friend of his who knows about 2 words in English to translate what the heck is going on. I start talking to him, his kid is yelling in the background, everything I say in English to him, he translates to Croatian to his wife, we are getting no where, but I manage to tell him that we are looking for our friends apartment, we know what road the live on, we just mistook this apartment for theirs, and we are now 30 minutes late for dinner.. Hoping he would translate this to his friends, so the captives could be set free, he says, “ok super” and hangs up. Thanks for the translation help friend.

While I am talking to this fellow on the phone, Allison is calling every student, friend, anyone of hers she knows who can tell this family that we just need to leave. That we aren’t in any sort of trouble, that we are going to dinner, and just thought this was the apartment we were supposed to be at… Oh ya, and the wife was wearing a giant sweater that said “bears” and “cats” on it, and there were all these pictures of bears and cats on it. Weird. So anyway, Allison finally gets a hold of her friend who lives in Opatija and is trying to explain the situation, “We were going to dinner at a friends house and we had never been there before. This apartment fit the description, so we knocked on the door. It is the wrong house, people are waiting for us, and we need to leave, but every time we try to leave this jolly old man blocks the door and tells us to eat another cream puff.” Ivana’s response, “I’m in Opatija (a town about 15 minutes away) I can’t do anything, and I don’t understand, text me what’s going on.” Ahh no Ivana, you were our last hope..

Then Allison’s phone rings, CAROL! Carol has no idea what’s going on, and thinks we are just late for dinner, so she’s a bit upset, rightfully so, then Allison tells her that we are lost, and that we are very close, that we are just at the end of their road. Carol tells us to stay put, not a problem, and that Robin, her husband will come find us, good luck Robin were in a house! This is all very confusing, Robin leaves, so we know that we now really need to leave because it’s cold, and he will be outside waiting for us.

We make our last attempt to leave., then Allison’s phone rings again. IVANA! “Ivana, can you please tell this family, that we are late for dinner, we were going to dinner at some people’s house, but got lost, thought this was the apartment, but it isn’t. They live at the end of the next road down, and are waiting outside for us. We need to go out and meet them,” Allison pleas. “Ok, no problem,” replies Ivana. The phone passes to the old man, “Indistinguishable Croatian, some more, some more.. Opatija! Some more Croatian, he hangs up.” He looks at us and says, “Opatija!” This is what his face told me, “If you are trying to go to Opatija you are VERY lost.” So we reply in English, so I don’t even know why we were trying, “We are not trying to go to Opatija. We just called that girl so she can translate for us, and we can leave..” We get up to leave again, and then they tell us five minutes. Five minutes for what? I have another cream puff, they were so good, and just relax. In the mean time, this woman keeps showing me all this grass she is growing, some Christmas wreath she spray painted silver.. Then the five minutes pass, and this college student walks in the door. She playfully yells at this couple, and then asks us, “So what is going on?” We explain the story, how we are trying to go to dinner at someone’s house, but we didn’t know the number, this apartment matched the description, we knocked on the door, we saw it was the wrong on, so we tried to leave, but this man kept telling us to come in, we did, they fed us, put me on the phone with some guy, he thinks we’re trying to go to Opatija, I feel like I’m going to throw up because I haven’t eaten since 11, and I just had two glasses of Coke, a piece of Coconut cake, some cream puffs.. As soon as we tell her what happened he starts laughing so hard, and starts telling this couple..

Then she starts asking us why we want to go to Opatija, which takes another 5 minutes to explain, and finally she says, ok I can show you where you need to go. I live on Njemichka (the road we have been trying to get to).. She then asks us if we are meeting two boys, “nope sorry,” we reply. “just a married couple in their 60’s.” She laughs, and tells us that if we ever need a place to sleep this man and woman said we can stay with them…

She takes us to the apartment, there are a few more minor confusions and we make it. Anyway, this girl is so cute and funny, and she’s a college student, so we got her number and we’re going to hang out soon. I’m sure we will visit this family sometime soon, and I bet I’ll have another story..