Yoga drama. Yes, I know, it's an oxymoron. But i caused it during my yoga retreat in Hvar this past week. I got expelled. Yep, kicked out. Told to leave and that my money would be returned. Of course, it worked out that I got to stay as I begged forgiveness the next morning. I pleaded and groveled. The women who runs the retreat is so sweet that she didn't have the heart to follow through with her after midnight frustration. I knew I had done wrong. I had promised to be home at 1030pm so that she wouldn't lose sleep waiting up for me. But the stars in Hvar were so bright that night, and the Grand Marnier at the seaside cafe was begging for another round, and I had a key to the house and thought I could silently sneak in and everything would be okay. The real reason I couldn't leave the cafe is my new friend, Helena from Sweden, said something that I knew meant we'd be friends for life. The conversation was intense (maybe the Grand Marnier was talking) and we were heavy into a political discussion on either American or European affairs and we both had many opinions of the topic. Helena has a calm, quiet strength about her and I like how she would not back down on an issue if she felt she was right. Her quintessential line to me was, "Jene, if you let me finish, you'll understand what I'm trying to say." I sat back and smiled. I can always tell a true friend when they oh, so politely tell me to shut up. They get my passion but they also get that I need a little coaching in order to listen. I got it. And she got me. And she did have a very good point once I 'was given' the opportunity to hear it. The next morning when I was apologizing for my tardiness I made it quite clear that it wasn't really my fault that I was late. It was Helena's because she kept me out. Not taking responsibility was not looked on with favor. I was moved to a new bedroom at the house next door, far from the ears of our lovely leader.
So how did I get here?
In a very circuitous way, actually. It began on my seventh day hiking through Hungary along the Iron Curtain Trail. I had begun the European Peace Walk in Vienna. For the next seven days i hiked 25km a day along the Hungarian boarder. On day number seven I stopped dead in my tracks and did a 180 degree turn. Nope, I wasn't going to walk another foot (meter here) of the 28km hike of the day on the flat, blazing hot, mosquito infected path only to spend the night at another soviet era gymnasium with showers and plumbing also from the soviet era. Nope, that was it. I backtracked and found the taxi guy who was ferrying backpacks for the ten others in my group who didn't want to carry 20lbs for 28km in 95degree heat.
I asked him to take me to the nearest train station.
I'd go anywhere.
The train in Koseg only went to Szombathely. Fine, I said. I caught a train from there to Sopron. In Sopron I decided on Ljubljana, Slovenia (I'd heard it was beautiful). But thirty minutes later the lady from the information desk found me in the waiting area and said for a euro more i could go to Zagreb and then I wouldn't have an eight hour layover in another town I couldn't pronounce. Okay, I said, Zagreb it is. Croatia has always felt like a second home to me. It would be my fourth visit to this lovely country. In a way I was still making up for the one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life when I bagged out of a semester abroad on the Yugoslavian study group in college.
Two interesting women sat in the compartment I chose for my eight hour train ride. As the ticket guy was shooing me out of first class seven minutes later the women mentioned over their split of champagne that they were on their way to a yoga retreat on the Croatian island of Hvar. I typed the name of it into my iphone and bid farewell to first class.
There was one room left at the retreat when I emailed them the next morning from my bunk bed at the hostel in Zagreb. I'm on my way, I wrote. An eight hour bus to Split and twenty minutes to make the connection to the ferry to Hvar (I think it was meant to be) and by 8pm I arrived with the thunder and lightening that was as excited as i was to be in Hvar....one of the ten most beautiful islands in the world according to some magazine.
And so here i am. George Ezra has joined me. I listened to his cd somewhere between one and two thousand times on the Camino in May and June. And as i sit at my cafe by the water late into the night he is serenading me from the speakers above. It's good to be back with an old friend.
