[OnyxCougar]

Day Eleven (Wednesday)


The mood was pretty somber all day as we prepared our hearts and our bags to leave. The clothes we had washed 2 days before still weren't dry and hanging them over the radiators overnight had only dried one side of them, so we flipped them over and basically moped around the lair. Kelle and Hrvoje really had no privacy, so about 4pm, when it was dark, (and FREEZING cold) Ivan and I went to a little cafe down the street from Volovcica Trg and had some hot chocolate. It wasn't as good as Tolkien's, but it was warm, and we got a window table, and we talked about him coming to the States and future plans and the possibility of opening a business, like Tolkien's. We talked for hours. Finally, with time pressing us on, we went back to the Lair and packed the rest of our things.

For some reason I fell asleep for a few hours, and Ivan woke me up at 9:30pm. 'You haff an hour,' he said, and I got up and rechecked over the things I'd be taking on the plane. I left my pillow with him, and a few odds and ends that I thought would be better off in his hands. Kelle and I were alternately crying and the guys were just quiet, for the most part. At 10:15pm, we left the lair and entered the cold night. Tiny snowflakes fell as we crossed the street to the Borongaj tram station. Took the tram from Borongaj to Glasni Kolodvor and we figured out that Hrvoje had bought Kelle a one-way on the bus from Vienna, whereas Ivan had got me the round trip. So we needed the remainder of the money for Kelle's bus ticket to Vienna. Ivan covered it. So on the bus we went, after final hugs and lots of tears on all sides.

We rode through the night, crying almost all the way to Slovenia. We had to actually get out of the bus at the Austrian/Slovenia border, where they ran our passports through a little machine and then we got back on the bus.