[OnyxCougar]

Got back to the guys, and I gave Kelle some money, we decided to "go shopping" in the market. We walked down from Hrvoje's little stall and found these guys selling leather jackets. Man, they wanted to sell em, too. Kelle tried one on that had roses on it, and I asked how much. 1000 Kuna. Kelle only had 500 Kn that I had given her. She took the jacket off. When they heard us talking, they asked if we were American, I said yes, and we started to walk away. "No, no, 800 for the jacket," they said. We shook our heads and tried to walk away again, "Nonono, 700." I grinned at Kelle. "All I have is 500 Kunas," she said, "and I'm not spending them all here." We started to leave again. They held us back. "How much do you have?" he asked. "500," she said. "OK. 500 Kunas." I did some quick math in my head and told her I could give her more Kunas the next day, before we left for Preko. She left with the jacket. They swarmed me next, I told them no, I'm happy with my jacket. "750 for both jackets..." "No, no..." And we escaped back to the boys. We were pretty proud of ourselves, getting a leather jacket for 500 Kunas, which is less than $75, and actually bargaining them down 50%. Hrvoje wasn't so pleased. "HOW MUCH??!!" he nearly shouted. We told him and he became very upset. Kelle managed to calm him down and our enthusiasm was kinda muted, but we still shared a secret triumph between us. Later on in the trip, Kelle was DAMN glad she bought that jacket.

We waited at the flower stall for Hrvoje's brother, Goran, to get there, so that we could walk down to the police station. Kelle hadn't been registered yet, either, so we were gonna do it together. On the way to the police station, Ivan and I realized we had walked WAY out of the way to get to the market, almost twice as far as we had to. That was ok, though, if we had taken the shortcut, I wouldn't have heard the kids singing.

We arrived at the police station and Hrvoje became the spokesman of the group, since he was registering us girls. They took our passports and we waited. Apperantly the lady didn't quite know what to make of us, and likely this was the first time she had seen Americans in real life. Kutina is like 10,000 people, and one of the bigger villages. She came back from the back office, and handed Hrvoje some forms, which he filled out and returned to her. She took the forms and our passports and walked behind the counter to a different part of the station. We waited 10 minutes and she came back, instructing us to to go out and wait by a different door of the police station. We did. A detective-type person arrived 20 minutes laterand took Hrvoje into the building. Ivan, Kelle and I waited outside for 20 minutes and talked about MUD stuff.

Hrvoje came back out, not looking happy, and we had to go back to the original counter in the first part of the police building. Miss Thang typed up and printed out our registration papers and we left. Keep in mind no English was spoken throughout this process. Soon as we walked out of the police station, Hrvoje started cursing. Turns out that because we had been in Croatia longer than 24 hours before he brought us to be registered, they are going to sue him. Sue as in prosecute. I'm still not quite clear on what they are going to do, exactly, he's not even sure, but he plans to be in the US before they realize he is gone. More than likely it's just going to be a fine. The detective that pulled Hrvoje into the building told him that as long as we were registered with the American Embassy in Zagreb on time, it was foolish to get us registered ANYWHERE if we were registering late. Basically, if we wouldn't have registered, they would never have known we were here, and there would have been no problem, but since he registered us LATE, he's getting in trouble. "You shouldn't have even come," he told him. Greeaaaaaaat.

We were all hungry, so we went to a little cafe for lunch and had more Cevapi. It was Kelle's first taste of it, and she didn't warm to it nearly as much. It was right about this time, Kelle got a hankering for beef. "BEEF!" she would say anytime she was asked what she wanted. Apperantly, there aren't many cows in Croatia, but there sure are alot of pigs and lambs and sheep and chickens. But mostly pigs.

We talked things over, and Hrvoje had started to calm down when Goran called from the flower stall, wondering when he was getting back. Hrvoje, still pissed at the police station and now being rushed, gulped down his food, and left. We were to follow after we finished. After he left, the three of us discussed plans on when we were going to Preko. When Kelle and Hrvoje left for Kutina on Monday afternoon, they had only planned on staying overnight, mostly because Kelle had been so nervous about meeting his parents and staying at their house and such. She only took stuff enough for an overnight trip, and didn't have a bunch of clothes. We had planned on Preko on Friday night, and they had planned on taking the train to Zagreb, picking up Kelle's clothes and going back to Kutina that night. (It's a two hour train trip one way.) I reminded Kelle that the next day was Samhain, (Halloween) and as it's the Wiccan New Year, we wanted to celebrate it together. So we left the restaurant and found Hrvoje. We explained the situation, and he called his mom, and told her they were leaving from the flower stand, and to send Goran to watch it. There was some arguement with his mother not wanting him to leave, but they ended up coming with us back to Zagreb. At the Kutina train station, we sat, looking at the view across the tracks. The sunset was stunning.

We got back to Zagreb about 8:00pm ish, and they went back to Hrvoje's apartment, with a promise that they would come over the next night for Samhain festivities. Ivan and I went back to his house, and I studied some croatian while he did some cryptograms. Slept like the dead.