I had planned to spend a month in Split. I was feeling ready to have a bit more stability compared to the very nomadic life I had been living for the past few months. So I booked an AirBnB near the Old Town (Diocletian’s Palace) which was quite overpriced for what it was. The apartment was newly remodeled but dark and cold inside, which I think had a negative effect on my mood. It also rained almost every day I was there.
I was surprised by how hard it was to stop riding my bike. I felt depressed almost immediately when I got to Split. I was alone in a dark apartment with cold wet weather outside. I realized that all the riding I had done the past few months were simply distracting me from just being alone with myself and my thoughts. Riding provides enough distraction and shiny/new objects to look at that you don’t actually get as introspective as one may imagine. Riding requires you to focus on the road, drivers, logistics of lodging, routing, cadence, power, heart rate, nutrition and anything else. It all adds up to a diversion from yourself.
Split was a medium sized city that felt like a skeleton of itself because it was offseason. Exploring around town felt like looking at an already harvested farm; you could imagine what it looked like in full blossom, but that wasn’t now. I don’t know what the right word for this is, but it’s some form of FOMO (Possible-FOMO? PFOMO?)
Anyway, Diocletian’s Palace is the place to explore when you’re there. It’s an ancient palace built as a retirement home for the Roman Emperor, Diocletian. I loved the sense of history you could feel when walking around. It was built around 400 AD and here we were, almost a millennium later hanging out in it. I spent a lot of time in an American style coffee house, D16 and another American style bar/restaurant, Daltonist. The ground was made of well-worn stones from all the tourists walking on it over the years. In fact the city hired people to etch lines into the cobblestone to make it grip better/safer.
There were also a TON of stray cats in Croatia, especially in Old Town Split.
A few days after I got there I thought I might try out Tinder, just to see what would happen. I was feeling lonely and was going to be there a while, so it seemed to be an easy way to meet people. A few days later I matched with someone named Nora. We met up for a beer and I thought we had a good conversation. She was from Dana Point, California, but had been living in abroad for years and was currently in Split. She spent five years as a bike tour guide in the area, so we had bike touring and California in common. The next time we met up she took me to friendville and invited me to go to a soccer game: Croatia v Russia.
I was happy to have a new/local friend, and I’d never been to a professional soccer game before (or professional American Football game for that matter!), so this was going to be an experience. Of course it was pouring rain the day of the game, but that couldn’t hold us back. We found some ponchos and bought some Croatian flag apparel to blend in. We drank a lot of beer too, which is probably the only reason we were able to stand in the cold rain for several hours. Croatia beat Russia, 1-0. The crowd sang national anthems very loudly. The energy was incredible, but we bolted out of the stadium before the mass exit and ran down the street in the rain singing “We Are the Champions” (We Are the Champions was the song my classmates and I sang in 5th grade whenever our team won the soccer game at recess; that was the “reward” for winning) on to the best Ćevapi place in Split that Nora knew of. It was a super-fun day.
Another reason I wanted to spend a month in Split was that I needed a shipping address to receive a few bike parts I wanted. It’s really quite logistically challenging to not have a mailing address. I wish there were a good mechanism for travelers to receive deliveries to a network of addresses throughout the world. Anyway, my bike bag setup was in shambles because the zippers on my Apidura framebag broke, so I decided it was time to upgrade to the Tailfin bike bag system. I also wanted to change my gear ratio to make it easier to do ascents, especially with a loaded bike. So I got some gear for converting my bike to the Mullet Drivetrain. I tried very hard to get a replacement SRAM shifter but the COVID supply chain issues hit the bike industry hard and the part was just not available. So I resorted to disassembling my brake lever and super-gluing my busted shifter back together, which was scary but seems to have worked out well so far! Finally I ordered a bunch of cold-weather bike gear in anticipation of all the cold/wet winter riding ahead of me.
While I was working on my bike, I managed to cut my hand with a razor blade. I needed stitches, so I went to the local hospital. That was an experience compared to the American hospitals I’d been to. I walked into the emergency room and talked with a nurse who asked for my passport and wrote my name down on a list and asked me to sit down in a waiting room that was full of cigarette smoke. I waited about 45 minutes and then doctor called me in. They looked at my hand and stitched me up within the hour. The overall cost was $45, which just blew my mind. That may have been the best care I’ve gotten before because it was so fast and cheap.
On one of my last days in Split, Nora invited me to join her to go to a Expat/Co-Working Space Meetup. While we were there, a couple of women from a hostel nearby showed up. One of them, Jessica, I thought was very pretty and sat down across from me and looked right at me long enough to make me uncomfortable. We only barely talked due to the table arrangement and then she went off to another bar. I was bummed I couldn’t get her contact info before she left because she was going to be traveling in same general area as I was soon. I told Nora about this and she was like, “dude she was totally into you, I could tell!” Nora the sleuth got her contact info for me through some mutual friends and relayed it to me as I was riding south from Split.