[OnyxCougar]

The proprietor turned some muzak on, and turned it up in the house, which made it background music as we sat and talked about things. Turns out he's german, and since Hrvoje is the only one who sprechened deutsch, he was elected leader of this merry band of wierdos. There were no menus. He came and asked what we wanted to drink, we all chose coke. He went away, came back, brought 4 bottles of coke and a glass with ice for each of us, poured the coke into the glass, and then we had a choice of fish or "beefsteak". Kelle heard the word "beef" and her eyes glazed over. We all knew what we were having. Four beefsteaks were ordered, and I swear Kelle almost had an aneurysm waiting for this food to show up. The guy told Hrvoje that he'd take us on a tour of the castle (that I still didn't see) if we wanted.

The first thing out was a small loaf of sliced, warm bread and a little dish of butter. It was devoured within moments. Then he brought this....cole slaw type cabbage stuff. Now, anyone who knows me knows I despise coleslaw. But I was really trying to broaden my culinary horizons, and really really hungry, so I managed to choke down half of the stuff. Kelle wrinkled her nose and offered it to me with a shit-eatin' grin on her face. The boys seemed to think it was fine. Hrvoje seemed to think I was "making fun of it" or something, and was telling me to be nice, when I WAS being nice, and really making an honest effort to eat the stuff.

Thank Gods the main course came. "Beefsteak" was not what I had thought it was. It was a thick hamburger shaped cut of meat. It wasn't hamburger, but it was very similar. You could pull it apart with your fork, but the texture was that of a steak. It was the weirdest thing. But it was GOOD. You never saw two people rolling their eyes in ecstasy over a damn hamburger as we did. I think Kelle had a "personal experience", but I'm not sure. We sat back after we scarfed the food down and engaged in idle discussion. We got talking about the MUD, and Kelle and Hrvoje got into a "discussion" that resulted in me and Kelle preemptively leaving. The boys followed behind us about 5 minutes. Kelle and I talked and walked around Sutomiscica with the boys keeping behind us, but in sight. They caught up to us at the harbor, and Hrvoje and Kelle kept walking, while Ivan and I sat on the stone/shell/coral wall and talked for awhile. It started to get cold, so we headed back to the flat, climbed that damn hill again, and waited by the Joan Wilder gate. It was about 3pm-ish, and I hadn't brought a jacket with me to the restaurant, so I shared Ivan's jacket with him. We decided to walk again, and find Kelle and Hrvoje. We walked back to our stone wall, and saw them coming out of a bar. Kelle had made a potty break. We walked back to the flat, up that damn hill (I was really getting tired of that hill) and relaxed in the apartment.

Twilight was coming, and we settled in for the night. I got my Croatian language notebook out, and Hrvoje was going over that with me, Kelle was using her art stuff to draw the window, and Ivan was reading my copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". Not long after, it was dark, Hrvoje had corrected all my mistakes, Kelle showed us her window, and Ivan was looking at Hrvoje's corrections and making his own notes in my book. Kelle broke the CD's out and we started listening to Jeff Foxworthy. We were all rollin'. We munched on stuff we had brought with us from Zagreb. It started to rain, and there was some water creeping in the broken windows, and Hrvoje handled that with some blankets he had cleared off the beds. After we listened to both CD's, I remember falling asleep (couldn't have been later than 7pm), and waking up through the night to thunder and lightning, then falling asleep again. I slept till after 8am the next morning.