'progress'

Ah i am so ridiculously stressed. i have 10 exams left. in the space of 1 week and 2 two days. i'll let you think about that for a few seconds ...


anyway progress on the adventure-of-a-lifetime. well penny hosted a trip meeting on friday which i sadly could not attend (shocking i know) due to work overloads but Anna and Ri joined her instead and that was it. i personally think its a pretty shockingly low turnout but i cant say i'm suprised. They did vaguely establish a route which is good and Penny has this amazing map of croatia that even tells you where you can get boats to and from. Inspite of this amazing map we still havent fully established where exactly we're going because its very difficult to choose.... we still have time though.

I booked another youth hostel in Zagreb 'Ravnice Youth Hostel' which looks pretty good and although it's in the suburbs it only takes 20minutes to get to the city centre by tram and its 15 euros so thats pretty cheap. Its weird we could only find 2 youth hostels in the whole of Zagreb and i read reviews about the other one 'Hostel Zagreb', and i'm glad we aren't going there.

We're only staying in Zagreb for one night, then we're heading towards the coast but not sure to where exactly. We were going to go to the 'Plitvice Lakes':



its the national park with wolves, bears and wold boar ... and loads of waterfalls. but apparently you cant swim in them so we are considering going to Krka:




which is also nice and you can swim in them but it's not as spectacular as plitvice and you cant camp there ... so i duno.

Then we're going down to Split and possibly staying there for a night but it'll have to be in another youth hostel (u cant camp in split )and i could only find one and the owner doesnt know whether they'll be availability for all of us. We'd only stay there for a night anyway cos then we're going to Bol. I'll post some pictures of that once we've got camping sorted out. I emailed all the campsites there and one wont take any reservations (which is annoying) and this other one will but it looks really quite basic and shit basically so i'm waiting till this other one emails me back which looks nice....


After Bol we dont really know but we'll probably have to go bk to split and get a train/bus towards Zadar. But i have found this resort called Trogir and there is a campsite near it (but on a tiny island just off the coast that basically just consists of a pine forest and beach.) they should email me with availabilities soon.

So anyway least there is some progress ... as it appears there are still availabilities in campsites, it doesnt really matter that we cant book the majoritiy of them until after my exams (next tuesday).

Anyways better go and do some more maths........ i hATE TRIG IDENTITES ... and drawing graphs....stupid f(x)

love, sabina xxx

lake balaclava

Lake Balaclava ..... a homage to Hannah's outrageous reference to Hungary's 'Lake Balaton', one of the destinations we're visiting in our exploration of eastern europe. When i say 'exploration of eastern europe', i really mean our exploration of a youth hostel in budapest, a hungarian lake (that has this slide that goes into the lake!) and the southern coast of Croatia... but thats just because our trip doesnt really last for that long (like 20 days or something) ... .

here's a picture of the famous lake balaton/balaclava (well its more of the campsite we're going to):





now, you're probably wondering why i chose 'balaclava4ever' as the name of this amazing blog ... well i'll explain. basically me and hannah were trying to come up with a name for the original travelling group (me, her, anna and penny) and being that there were four of us and balaclava had to be in the title (and nobody else wanted to join our exploration/adventure) , 'balaclava4ever' was understandably chosen.

i know it probably seems hard to believe but yes, nobody wanted to go with us which, was quite an emotional ... apparently eastern europe was shit (gruff), and alot of people thought they wouldn't have fun if they came with us ( alexandra) and there were the other people who just wanted drugs. but now, quite shockingly the balaclava trip has attracted double numbers! - and it promises to be pretty damn fantastical.

So the people coming are ..... (in order of joining the trip)

sabina, anna, hannah and penny
and
gruff
ralph
ri
(who make up the core 7 who are coming everywhere)
and
rachel m (prob meeting us in split)
gunes (prob meeting us in zagreb, but hasnt booked his ticket yet and really should get his mum to asap- [the istanbul->zagreb one gunes, from the thursday to the sunday])
alex and jenny (prob meeting us in split)
and probably olly, iggy and checkers (dunno wher they're meeting us)

so yea, it should be great. probably better than the other self-discovery trips that are going on at the same time (see links to view their blogs).

i dont have much else to say ... i'll put some more pictures of where we're going up in my next *revision break*. oh yea and i'll put the minutes to our "secret meeting" up when we have it to hehehehehehe.

- sabina xxx