Frustrations!

Friday, Aug. 12, 2016--Zagreb to Osijek

We headed to the bus station after having breakfast, packing, and cleaning up the apartment some.  When it was time to board the bus, we discovered that Wes' seat back was broken.  When he leaned back, the seat would go into full-recline position which put it in the lap of the lady behind us.  There was a crowd on board.  But when it was time to depart, we asked the lady behind him, who speaks English, to ask the conductor if there was an empty seat where he could move.  He said there was one seat available, and Wes went there.

It was a 4-hour bus trip getting here.  Croatia is a BIG country, and we are now in the far northeast corner of it.

We walked the 5 blocks or so to our new apartment, 3 bedroom apartment, where the owner was waiting for us.  She showed us around the apartment, drew a map of the city to indicate where we should go, showed us how to operate the TV, etc.  The apartment is large, but basic.  The one we had in Zagreb was much better.  But this one is cheaper.

Just before we started to go explore the city, the picture on the TV froze.  I just turned it off and thought nothing more about it.

We headed off to see the center of Osijek first.  Then to walk down Europa Avenue which is lined with grand and old, but mostly unrestored, houses and buildings.  Next, to explore the Old Town which is quite large and has some impressive buildings itself.  And, finally, to walk along the riverfront promenade back to the center of town.

Osijek is much smaller than Zagreb with only about 100,000 residents.  But it does have some large, impressive buildings.  What's more interesting is the number of old, unrestored buildings that have bullet holes in them from the war here in the early 1990s.  Many buildings are scattered with many holes.  Some have huge chunks of corners missing where there must have been lots of bullets shot or maybe a blast from a tank.

When we returned home in the late afternoon, the TV still had the frozen picture.  We couldn't get any channels.  The owner's husband came over and spent about 1 1/2 hours and could not get it to work.  Eventually, we just gave up.

The final frustration for me came when I couldn't get my computer to connect to the Internet here.  My phone did and Wes' computer did.  But my computer kept saying that wi-fi was disconnected.  After a long bout of research using Wes's computer and several attempts at solutions that I found, I finally came to a webpage which gave me a solution.  By then, it was already late at night!!