July 12

*to any daily readers out there, sorry for the delay, we've been busy!
After our bus ride where we did manage to get a few hours of sleep, we put our packs in a locker and set out to see Zagreb before we took an afternoon train to Hungary.
As our guide book said, "Zagreb is not very impressive at first glance." We couldn't have agreed more, but our walk to the major buildings was worth doing. Our real goal of the day was to try "struki"- a traditional Croatian dish that Zagreb is famous for. We found a great 5 star hotel to taste struki (described in our book as boiled cheesecake). We split a serving which was very rich, but not very sweet. We were glad to have tried it, but don't think we need any again. Upon leaving the hotel there was a police escort with the Prime Minister of Germany's, Gerhard Schroeder's fourth wife, Doris. We (of course) didn't know who she was by looks, but on our way out I asked the German equivalent of a Secret Service Agent what was going. We was more than happy to tell us all the answers we were looking for and wanted to know where he could find us tonight... (no thanks).
After our day in Zagreb we got on a train to take us to Lake Balaton, known as the Hungarian See, it is 77 km long, the biggest in central Europe. We stopped in a crazy lake town called Siofok. Leaving the station we headed to the lake to find a "zimmer" to crash in. Syd refers to our room as Camp Balaton because it is like staying in camp cabins- screened-in windows, bugs, by a lake, etc.
As we left Croatia I tried to gather some observations of the country:
*Pizza is everywhere and one of the few decent (budget) food options
*the coastal towns are very different from Zagreb
*Many (thousands) of Croatian Americans return to the coast each summer (many of their parents moved to America in the past 10-15 years)
*It rains every afternoon, but blows over quickly
*This could be our own observation, but bug bites are hard to avoid.