OSIJEK, CROATIA

2015-10-25, 20:30, THORIN

STAY: HOSTEL TUFNA

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For our second tour of the Balkans, we entered the area with the cheapest flight possible - a brand new £17 flight to Osijek, Croatia. We landed mid-day on October 4th, 2014, into the single terminal airport. And when I say single terminal, I mean that there was a single building, with only one or two runways. We took a chartered bus from the airport (the ONLY mode of transport) into Osijek, which was another hour or so of travel, and were dropped off at the ancient bus station.

Osijek is on the far east corner of Croatia, only an hour or so from the Serbian border. Right now Croatia is very hot, but that is coastal Croatia (Dalmatia, Split and Dubrovnik amongst others). East Croatia is NOT seeing the same tourist interests as its western counterparts. Nowhere was this more apparent than Osijek! The town centre is nice enough, with a cute little square. Small, but with a river that they are trying to build a Balkan style river culture around, it was quite cute. We made our way to the old town (which was strangely not in the city centre), where we were surrounded by buildings 200-300 years old. Pretty cool architecture, although very simplistic. We found our hostel, which was inside a nightclub.

Inside a nightclub.

To be precise, our hostel was on the top floor of the two storey nightclub. We met the owner (a 50+ bloke telling us about his 20 year old sexual conquests) who had the bright idea of opening a hostel in the attic of his club. He gave us some free drinks (best part always about the Balkans) and told us that we were lucky - the second floor would not be open that night so we won't hear the noise.

We had read reviews of the hostel (obviously) but since it was only one of two in the city, with the other ALSO above a nightclub, we decided to suck it up. We were shown up to our dorm room, which seemed cute, until we turned the lights on. A swarm of fruit flies had decided to nest on the mirror. Literally hundreds of the bastards. We chose the beds on the opposite side of the room (undeterred or poor, I can't decide which), and went out to see the town.

I won't lie to you, dear reader, there ain't much to see in Osijek, but what there was to see was cute. We went to a local restaurant recommended to us for traditional food, and did have some very tasty food and wine, before walking along the river. When we returned, the nightclub was beginning to get going, but we told the bouncers we were guests and made our way up the staircase at the back of the club. Our room (seemed) now fly free, and we began to get ready for bed.

Another person had checked in, who it turned out had just been deported from the UK. Charming. A yank, she had told the British authorities that she was 'woof'ing in the UK (working on organic farms). When they asked her for a work permit, which woofers dont have as they are basically volunteers for a few week, getting room and board, she was deported to where she had just arrived from - Croatia! She was in the process of trying to contact the British embassy in Belgrade (which is in Serbia, couldn't figure that one out), but faced the prospect of not being allowed back into the country! Unfortunately we don't have any pictures from that day as Jason's phone weirdly lost all battery, but we took a few as we left.

The next morning we left at the crack of dawn, only to open the door to three Croatian policemen. They thought we were drunken students or something leaving the nightclub, and briefly asked us what we were doing, but when we explaine that we were trying to get the hell out of their city they kindly allowed us to go. Found ourselves on a bus to Novi Sad, Serbia, within the hour. Quite a first 12 hours!!