The long road to Zagreb

I thought the drive to Prague was bad, but had no idea what I was in for on the way to Zagreb. All of the driving in Austria was painless, and actually quite nice. We bought some "heavy metal" compliation in Vienna which provided a nice soundtrack to the drive. Unfortunately only about half of the album is actually metal, but it's so cheesy it works. Once we hit the border with Slovenia, things started to get ugly. A side note about border crossings within the EU, they suck. EU borders are nonexistent, there is no passport check, no car searches, no visas, and worst of all no stamps! The welcome to New Jersey sign from Pennsylvania is at least 4 times larger than those of the border crossings in the EU, if you're not looking you will miss it. Anyway, after crossing into Slovenia we came upon what looked like a toll booth. It turned out to be a station where you buy a pass to drive in Slovenia, called a "vinjetta" or something like that. The women at the window said in heavily accented English, "You need vinjetta for drive Slovenia!". About halfway through the country, which is tiny, I needed to urinate really really badly. We stopped at some gas station, I went in and looked around and didn't find anything. The cashier yelled something in Slovenian at me and pointed to the next building. So I then walked over to the next building, a bar full of people who didn't speak English. Couldn't find a bathroom, or anyone who could tell me where it was. I tried "Toilet?", "WC?", "Bad?", and "Bano"! I ended up just peeing in some bushes on the side of the road hahaha.

Crossing into Croatia was awesome. The only non-EU country on the itinerary, is also the only one with a real border crossing. We had to wait in line for about 15 minutes, but got our passports checked and stamped with no problem. Next was security, which was a bit nerve racking. The guy in front of us had his whole car searched, bags taken out and everything. When our turn came we were asked something In Croatian, which we obviously didn't understand. The woman saw American passports and switched to English, asked us if we had anything to declare to customs(we said no), and let us through without any search. Apparently Croats like Americans, finally found someone! Across the border we hit all kinds of problems. The GPS couldn't find our hostel, the main highway to Zagreb was closed, and the route we were detoured to led us to a road that was unfinished. We asked a cop for directions and one spoke English and told us, which was very helpful. The other spoke to us in German, which Sarah and I understood but Randall was very confused. The car we rented has German plates, and a ton of Germans vacation in Croatia, so he thought we were Germans. We stopped to get gas and I paid, the woman spoke some Croatian to me and then switched to German. I responded in broken German and she clearly thought I was retarded. Her German was better than mine, and I'm driving a German car, which means I'm a really stupid German. We did eventually make it the Hostel with the help of Sarah's Croat friend, Ante. Ridculous drive is ridculous.