Havianas

Piece.of.GOLD.

As Croatia is an Eastern bloc country and whatever that means, and I was staying on an island off the COAST of an Eastern bloc country, I was not expecting any remotely decent clothes shopping to be happening on this vacation. I expected the stores to be called things like "Sexy Me" and "Hi-Tech" and that they would be filled with rayon and lycra garbage shipped directly from Joyce Leslie. Well, I was wrong, because while the "Fifth Avenue" strip on the mainland had MNG by Mango and Marciano by Guess, neither of which I would ever set foot in despite once buying ONE thing at MNG by Mango by accident, the island of Hvar has NO stores at all. The only thing they do sell, and it was ALL over the island, are Havianas flip flops.

Quite simply, Havianas flip flops are completely boring, normal rubber flip flops that look as if you could buy them at Shop Rite and then wear them to the YMCA pool, with the only difference from regular flip flops being that Havianas cost between $20 and $100 which is completely normal and 100% reasonable. Take, for instance, the "Limited Edition" Tribal Silver moon flip flop for $90. Because it's limited edition, I would assume it would be made out of genuine Native Americans and real silver, but it's actually just a bunch of crappy beads stolen from moccasins and glued to a silver-colored flip flop, which essentially means that you are paying someone to $90 to spray paint a flip flop, rummage through their elementary school closet, find their moccasins, rip the beads off and then scotch tape them onto the flip flop.

And yet, Croatia is bat shit crazy for these flip flops. Every where I went - old churches, medieval towns, wherever - Havianas had completely taken over and EVERY SINGLE store carried them. It was like Croatia accidentally received ONE Us Weekly two years ago and there was a one page spread on celebrities wearing Havianas and the Croatian government decided that these flip flops were the wave of the future and that by carrying them EVERYWHERE the "Dalmation coast" could overtake the French Riviera and become the new St. Tropez. It was actually insane, but it's even more insane to think that in a land where people are angry and poor all the time because they are forced to spend their money on pasta and pizza for every meal, that they would have $100 to spare for Havianas and the country's entire economy would rise or fall based on the sale of flip flops but that appears to be the case here.

The Curious Incident of the Lactaid in the Night-time

Gelato going crazy

As I mentioned in my previous post, gelato is a nationwide epidemic in Croatia. People are literally eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and each one of the 32 gelato places were packed all day long. The main reason for this appears to be because Croatia has only two kinds of desserts, crepes and gelato, and after a while crepes are repulsive so gelato wins out. After I had unpacked my bag at Milan's house, I was congratulating myself on not forgetting my tweezer or fish oil pills but after walking around a bit and people mocking me with ice cream cones and eating these insane gelato concoctions (picture above) I realized that I had forgotten my Lactaid. Let's just say that gelato would be OUT OF THE QUESTION without Lactaid unless I wanted to spend my vacation writhing in pain on a toilet singing "Who Will Buy?" from Oliver! Several attempts were made to go to the one pharmacy in town but were foiled due to their ridiculous hours, such as 10-10:15am on Sunday, 5:30-6:00pm on Saturday.

Finally after harassing Milan for four days for my Lactaid, we made it to the pharmacy during the two minutes they were open. Frankly I should have probably known to abandon ship on this Lactaid acquisition idea from day one because the latest advances in Croatian medicine involve leeches and exorcisms. Obviously the pharmacy was one of these ridiculous European pharmacies with two dusty products on the shelves, one of which helped regulate the sanguine humor and the other one of which was an elixir for carbuncles. Milan explained my problem to the pharmacist in Croatian, as being "illness when she drinks milk." The knowledgeable pharmacist said that she had never heard of such a problem and scoffed at the idea that there would be a magical pill that exists to help with milk and when Milan insisted that there was in fact a pill called Lactaid, she became outraged and said repeated that no such pill existed and that if I had a problem I should just drink soy milk.

I'm BaaAAAAAAAACCKK Vol. II

I am pleased to report that Croatians have been
reading this blog and naming restaurants in my honor

I have just returned from the war torn land of "Croatia" after calling Greg my dogwalker from the plane and confirming Perry would be IMMEDIATELY available upon my arrival in NYC. But first, a brief description of Croatia.

I was surprised to see that these "Croatians" were a peaceful people, and although I know a bitter war may is still going on in Bosnia which sounds like it might be near Croatia, you would not guess it from the docile natives. The coastline is beautiful and the beaches are nice and rocky. The only food available to eat there is pizza, pasta and vaguely stale pastries with a 73:1 phylo dough to nutella/apple filler/cherry filler ratio and there are no gymnasios on the island. Eating gelato is rampant, and the 32 gelato places on the island were filled regardless of the hour and despite the fact that eating gelato every day is absolutely disgusting and also despite the fact that ice cream is the EXACT SAME THING as gelato and people who deny that are legitimately living in Narnia. The currency there is something called a "kuna" which I have renamed the "krooner" because krooners are hilarious. I was the shortest and palest person on the island by a landslide until we saw a woman with some sort of genetic disorder who was smaller. I also met a friendly giant.

Crow Asia

Hyatt Croatia front desk

I'm leaving today for the war torn beaches of Croatia, prior to which I will be stopping at the Soho Calypso to purchase a dress that I have been drooling over and was sold out in every U.S. store and which will increase my beauty by a factor of 30%. In preparation for my trip I bought a power converter so that my hairdryer and flat iron work out there. If they do not, I will be back tomorrow. Milan has promised me that there will be churches with icons and out there and rest assured I will be seeing them all and buying many Jesus souvenirs to add to my extensive collection much to my parents' disapproval.

The War in Bosnia is Over, Apparently

Club Med Bosnia

So this Sunday I was having brunchtastic with my friend Milan and he invited me to go this summer to his family's house in Croatia. Obviously I said yes immediately due to the free accomodations but then I remembered something about there being a civil war going on somewhere over there, so I retracted my acceptance of this vacation idea on the grounds that the last time I checked there was some ethnic cleansing going on over there, at which point Milan informed me that the war has been over since 1995. Um, did anybody else know about this. Since nobody sent me an email about this and apparently they don't broadcast the "ends of wars" on tv anymore, I was unaware that these countries that have been fighting for like 70 years magically came to some agreement 13 years ago that it was time to just stop fighting and live peacefully like nothing happened.



Also, if someone could locate Croatia on a map for me that would be helpful because the last time I checked it was definitely not on there or at least hidden. Milan said the family house is on the Dalmation coast but when quizzed he admitted he had not seen any Dalmations there.