V Luv Banana

- A Series of unfortunate events.

Chapter 1) Read the offer document carefully before investing.

Dheeru and myself saw DJ coming to S-bahn station from far off.. as usual he had forgotten something and had gone back to get it. But this time we could not miss the train, hurriedly we reach and enter the train. Munich S-bahn's are unusually quiet during office hours. We were just trying to find a comfortable place to lean against when - "Please turn left in 200 mts, into Fasanengarten strasse" - the voice of female Lara from the Navigon GPS device alerted us, rather loudly. I switched the GPS OFF hurriedly. Suddenly there were smiles on everybody's faces and we were LOL ! .. Nice and funny start for the road trip, we thought. We were still in train to get the car .. There were no ends for our excitement since BMW was waiting for us to be rented out for the trip. We hurried to the rental company,
finished up all the formalities. I just casually asked the guy, "Does this car have insurance covered for Croatia ? ".
"No Sir, You should have asked for that before u booked the car. And you cannot take a BMW to Croatia." he said.
Then, the excitement came down as fast as it had gone up. We took the Opel Insignia and took off..
First time we tried planning a trip to Croatia, we landed in Budapest, Hungary. This time trip was meticulously planned to start at 4.30, we left at 7.30 sharp. Ahem.. by DJ's standards we were on time.

Chapter 2) Always try and speak to Bade Saheb.

Driving along the way, crossed Germany border, Austria, Slovenia Borders.. All part of the great EU. Don't know what's great about it, except the country borders are seamless, small boards "Welcome to Austria" and like. Then you know you are no longer in the "No speed limit" Autobahns of Germany to 130 Kmph Austrian roads. By that time Sandeep and Dheeru had managed to burn some hindi numbers into Audio CD's. And we were blasting off to the music of bollywood. Filling up whenever we felt hungry with "ein burger" understood as hamburger by the McDonalds guy, when another south Asian guy frying Pommes, "recognizes" us, would turn up for help with translation.

It was 13 Deg C outside and raining, when we reached Croatian border. This was the point where we would have a memory of a lifetime when we were returning..
We handed out a bundle of passports of all of us. The guy checking them could hardly pronounce our names, comes out and says " You cannot enter Croatia, You need Visa. You have to go back. " - Yeah, like hell. By this time Sushant was plotting our road trip, alternate trip we would take incase we HAD to return. We drive for 8 hrs, and all hotels booked to meet this Police guy at border to turn us back ! .. Then when we tried to convince we were German residents, he asked to park aside and come inside to Bade Saheb.

One thing about developing countries strikes me, the hierarchy of Bureaucracy. The "show off" of power is inversely proportional to actual powers. The Police man takes me inside the office where the Bade saheb was seated. He just saw our passports and gave a look to the policeman "just let em go, its valid and they just wanna have a good time". Nevertheless the Policeman still was trying to show off his powers, and asked us to return to Germany by the same border checkpoint. And we nodded our heads in chorus.

Chapter 3) Enter Croatia

Was time fo fuel up the car, in Croatia. Saw a huge sign which said "PETROL". We had double confirmed with rental car guys that our car was petrol and not diesel engine. We pulled up in front of a petrol pump, with Petrol written all over it. One of us tries to fill up the tank, nozzle doesnt enter the tank ! .. was already midnight and we had had enough, just get over with it. Somehow managed to put some 4 litres into the tank when someone noti

ces a small tag which said "DIESEL". Shit.. did we just fill up

Diesel in a petrol vehicle ? .. I go and ask the store keeper and he starts laughing.. yeah ok, laugh it out. But can u just point me to the PETROL pump ? .. it was just the next one. How the hell should we know that the station's name itself is PETROL

! ..

Amazingly, the petrol engine car still moved with 4 litres of Diesel in it.. hope the car rental guys dont read this .. ;)

Away we fled, into the Croatian country side where we got a glimpse of India, broken car, roads with a bit of craters, and one lane road but homely and lovely feeling. We reach the Plitvice Lakes, a world heritage site, at 2 AM. Could not find the address for our hotel, we found a information centre. At this time the amazing leadership qualities of everybody comes out, just that there is nobody to listen to them. Five people, 4 different ideas for every situation. 1 Guy was busy worrying about where to find Vegetarian food, thank god. First time in last couple a years we got scared of stray Cats, more than Dogs. Finally mustered up enough courage to cross it, and enter our hotel. Slept like a log.. as they say.

Plitvice lakes will have to be most beautiful site i have ever seen until now (US, EU, India included), but only if it was sunny. We wake up to find the rain gods pouring with blessings, we just did not need them that day so bad. Again everybody's brains started working, (because we were outside office) and decided we continue our journey to Dubrovnik right away. This for a change turned out to be good decision..

Chapter 4) Getting UP to the hotel, Villa Banana.

We reach Dubrovnik, with some beautiful scenes and drives along the way. We had covered around 400 kms, reached the centre of city Dubrovnik. GPS showed only 1 Km for our hotel. Lest we knew, 1 Km would turnout to be one of longest journeys of the trip. The city is full of mountains and steep roads, either up or down, never straight. I had not walked up anything that steep, let alone drive. But still managed to reach the top of a mountain on a rainy night. My buddies were already scared hell out of their A**. Car revving up in first gear, and only I knew where the next turn would be, and that too until it was just about time. Finally found a bit of flat land, and handed over the vehicle to DJ before engine got switched off for 5th time in 4 minutes. Each passing vehicle would honk and make me nervous, and the honks felt like "get out of the way you .. whatever" ..

We reach the hotel, and here lies the secret which gave the blog its name. The Owner of the hotel was a Banana merchant near Mumbai 30 years ago. And he did not know english. "Banana yougoslavia, Banana Maragova.. 1 kg Banana.." he went on with his stories, and we went on trying to hide the burst of laughter. People still took turns to go out of his site, laugh their heart out and come back again. His hotel too was named after it "VIlla banana". Ofcourse we understood only "banana" of whatever he said in an hour...

Chapter 5) Respect the local store timings.

We drive to split after Dubrovnik, reach around 11.30 to hotel. Freshened up, went out to have dinner. Every restaurant which looked colorful and yummy when we were driving in were now folding up their last chairs. One small sandwich shop, we just hoped we could atleast get a slice of left out bread, but no.. god had planned something else for us. With hunger raging, we decided to take the car out again and go on highway petrol bunk to eat. After half an hour, we find a petrol bunk and grabed as much frozen sandwiches as we can.. could'nt wait until we reached hotel. This is what it looked like when we started grabing sandwich packets , right on the street...

Chapter 6) Perfect team work, but turned out to be ....

Was perfect holiday, finally got a good day at Plitvice lakes which were the star attraction. Crossed few villages, where probably we were first Indians to step on its soil. Every passing car used to slow down, people in it look at us like aliens. Not only the driver, he used to tell and show the rest of people in his car, pointing his face at us. I now perfectly understood the state of a foreigner wearing their "usual" clothes in a country side in India.. well, atleast most of it.. ;)

On our way back we suddenly realize we just had few cents in cash with us. Five NRI's and may be 4 or 5 Euros in cash, did'nt look good, atleast to pay for the road tolls. We reached Slovenia border, cleared the passport check and other formalities. Parked just beside the border, and 2 guys in front seat left to washroom. I decided to withdraw some cash, went to ATM. Other 2 guys were still in the car, and the car keys too. By the strike of brilliance, the guys felt they needed to eat grapes. And worse, they felt like washing them before eating (may be first time), so they take the bag of grapes to washroom. Meantime, I return from ATM where my card didnt work. Saw the open doors of car and nobody inside closed the doors and walked to washroom as well.
2 mins later we returned together to car, but car was locked, keys inside on driver's seat and our jackets too. It was may be 15 degrees outside.And it took 15 seconds to realize that we were "locked out", middle of road, on a transit country, on a cold evening, without jackets and a bag of grapes. As usual, we started to find out who did it... but yeah, turned out to be team work.. everybody was spared. Somehow god was a bit helpful that moment, and we got a emergency number. We called up a mechanic.

For 2 hours those grapes were our companions, each grape was savoured as long as it could be, slowly biting off first half, and then half a minute later the second. There was no coffee, no food, just washroom nearby for which we did not have enough stocks..

That guy took 2 hours to come to the spot where we were stuck. After his usual cursing to us for not knowing deutsche, and 140 Euro bill.. the magical sound of car unlock was heard. We started clapping our hands, which made that mechanic think he can easily take 10 Euros as Tips without we offering.

- After all things getting screwed up, was still one of best road trips of our lives... ;)