We’re back. Back from our one-week Croatia diploma trip. The town of Umag, more precisely the Stella Sol Maris holiday resort, fell victim to our shenigans. The Digital Media class of 2006 said goodbye to each other … in a big way!
Since we were driving to Croatia – renting a bus seemed too expensive and flying wasn’t really an option – we had to deal with the very unpleasant traffic jam situation in Austria and Slovenia. The 6.5 hour trip could easily turn into a 20+ hour odyssey if we weren’t careful, because the weekend of 15 July was the beginning of summer vacation for half of Germany, which meant that half of Germany was driving through Austria in the same direction we did. So we decided to drive at night, leaving Hagenberg at midnight in the night from Friday the 14th to Saturday the 15th of July.
I shared a car with Max, Hammer, and Steffi and was the designated second driver. Since Max has seen me drive to Aerodrome ’04 two years ago he said he would be comfortable with me driving his car when he got tired and so we decided to share the driving responsibilities. That meant for me staying up for the whole drive – not a very pleasant thing to do and not easy, even though I slept late Friday and tried to get as much rest as possible before the drive. The drive turned out to be a 9 hour trip with two traffic jams at the Tauern Tunnel and at the Austrian-Slovenian border. Max drove the whole “Austria-part” (5 hours), we switched at the border and I drove the remainder of the trip in Slovenia and Croatia (4 hours). Moreover, Max was brave and drove his part during night – by the time we switched it was light outside which made it very comfortable for me to drive.
The one week in Croatia was just awesome. The resort was breathtaking and very much above what I expected. Our time was spent with drinking at night and sleeping during the day, with occasional card or water games. I think none of us would mind staying a week longer. However, soon the time came to drive home and so we decided (again to evade the traffic jams) to leave Croatia at 4 am. The trip went smoothly until about 60 km for Salzburg, when Max’s car broke. The wheel bearing of his left rear wheel broke and was making strange noises, so we had to stop in Bischofshofen and try to get it fixed. That proved futile, however, and Max was forced to leave the car there, get a rental car from ÖAMTC (the Austrian Auto-Moto Club), and drive the rest of the way in an almost brand-new Peugeot 407.
With the exception of the car trouble at the end was the trip smooth, but still took 10 hours – one hour more than the other way around – to complete. Now I am sitting here, very tired from the lack of sleep and trying to keep awake during the trip to be able to drive. Tomorrow I will dismantle my computer and sound system and move the remainder of my stuff from Hagenberg. The apartment will be painted by a professional painter Monday, Tuesday is my graduation and then we’ll clean up after the painters and give the keys (and the apartment) officially to the next tenants. And that will conclude my 5-year stay in Hagenberg. But more about that later, now I am way too tired to proofread this … Night.