Yes, in almost a year of hosting couchsurfers, and close to 30 guests from over 12 countries, this week and for the first time ever we hosted guests from another ex Yugoslav republic. You'd think we'd get more of them - after all, we're all in the neighborhood, the culture is familiar, the region is not that expensive to travel around but no, so far, we hadn't had anyone from any of the other 5 (or 6, depending on how you look at it) ex republics of old Yugoslavia.

All that changed Tuesday with the arrival of Maja and Elena from Croatia (Istria and Rijeka region respectively, both stuyding in Rijeka). We got excited from the moment we received their CS request and in the excitement at some point I exclaimed "That's the closest destination we've ever had guests from!!!" But silly me, I didn't think that Istanbul (yes, the city at the edge of the continent) is, by a straight air line at least, closer than Rijeka. Oh well,
closest Balkan destination then! And oh, did I mention, first ex-Yugoslav:)!!!

Elena and Maja are just completing their studies - Economics at the university in Rijeka - but have decided to travel a bit before plunging into grown-up life. Their love for Turkey is pulling them towards Ankara this time (they had been to Istanbul a while ago) but will be making a few stops before reaching it. And yes, Skopje is the first on that list, seeing that it is only a full day's train ride away from Rijeka (via Zagreb and then Belgrade). Once they arrive, we head to a local restaurant in our neighborhood where we gorge on food and engage in loud (they pass the test for being Balkan) conversations in a weird mixture of Macedonian and Croatian with obvious overtones of our once-official, but now non-existent, common SerboCroatian. Even with their heavy local Istria/Rijeka dialects, very few things are lost in translation and it feels immensely unusual to have couchsurfers we don't need to speak English to. Even more unusual is the thought that 20 years ago, the 4 of us lived in the same country.

Years of separate living have made us somewhat oblivious to each other's national/political/social/economic realities, so we spend quite a bit of time covering both Croatian and Macedonian issues; from the relationships with neighboring countries to economic development, stanards of living and the influence of the Western world which affects us in varying degrees. We're happy to hear Maja and Elena say that they do feel Balkan, even with the obvious proximity to Italy and other EU countries.

Rijeka (meaning "River" in Croatian), Croatia's main port city, is known for its shipbuilding and maritime transport. Here's an interesting fact: if you were born in Rijeka 1913 (or before) and lived to see 1991 you would have lived in 6 different countries (AustroHungary, Free State of Rijeka/Fiume, Kingdom of Italy, The Third Reich, Yugoslavia and most recently, Croatia). We've never been to Rijeka, but it seems gorgeous, both in its past and its present.