A not-so-unicorn-driven vacation
Sun shines brightly, rays twinkle on the sea waves, the wind gently blows in the green of the cypresses – and I’m sitting in the car bending over the wheel.
Epic fail.
I might feel just a little bit better if I could read posts in travel blogs about something that not worked out. But everybody is happy all the time, visiting the place of their lives, feeling the vibes of their lives and taking photos (and maybe even eating?) the best dishes on Earth.
Every single creature succeeds in everything, everywhere. Well, not me. I’m sitting by the shore on the second day of a holiday that went wrong, hopelessly trying not to think that there’s some serious problem with me.
‘And, did you enjoy your beach holiday in Croatia?’
‘No.’
‘WTF?’
And you can start to explain yourself. Although, somewhere deep inside you know that the other won’t believe you. You are simply not allowed to feel bad at the beach.
Because you must love tropical heat.
You must love hordes of people sitting and lying way too close in each other’s intimate zone.
You must love all the scams in parking places, bars and restaurants.
You must love the houses built uncomfortably close to each other, but at least without any concept, you must love your neighbour putting out her red bra to dry, you must love the unceasing smell of the canal in your room.
You must love the big crowd cruising in the old town every night like there’s no tomorrow, you must love the shops that offer all the useless souvenirs.
You definitely must love mass tourism.
And you must love the endlessly fighting families of your own nation as well. You went there. You enjoy it.
‘Good morning, how much is the parking fee here?’
‘ 50 kunas (approx. 7EUR)’
‘For the whole day?’
‘Yes, alles tag, alles tag!’
‘And what if we only stay for an hour?’
‘That’s 20 kunas.’
OK, Meli, well, you don’t really like hot, crowd, tourists and scams. Why on Earth did you decide to go to a place where there are hot, crowd, tourists and scams?
The ten thousand dollar question.
And I only have one answer to it, apart from optimism, certainly. When your friend tells you about her short beach holiday and she finishes with the sentence: ‘If only I could go back…!’ there’s only one move left on the chess table: ‘So, why not?!’
And then it’s all the same: you need to reach the bottom, let go of everything and then and only then you can start climbing up again.
We found two tiny seats for our asses in the bar, sit down, order a beer for Szilvi and a macchiato for me (the beer at 11AM and the coffee with milk, OMG, what a rebel behaviour!) smoke a cigarette (neither of us is smoking) and start to laugh at ourselves and our weird situation from the heart.
Magically everything starts to be OK.
You can not necessarily choose your circumstances or what happens to you. You make mistakes and from time to time you happen to be wrong. You have preconceptions that obviously let to disappointment. Human.
But you can always choose how to react. And if something, that counts. Banal, but true.
No, our holiday doesn’t turn to be a unicorn-driven fairy tale, not even after this deep, understanding laugh. Smell of shit still sticks in our room and the crowd is still the same. But we consciously try to find the moments we enjoy.
And after all, that is just a click somewhere in the back of your mind.
