We are at the Frankfurt Airport when we realize we forgot the toiletry bag; well, that’s the only thing we know of yet. Our flight to Zagreb, Croatia, is full, the waiting area is sterile and my bladder is filled by that last cup of coffee that is reminding me of its existence. Unfortunately, there is no toilet access in this area, and unless I want to go back through security, I’ll have to wait until I’m on board. I’m a guy; I can do this.

Marlene, the Surface Book I’ve been traveling with for years now, is staying in Frankfurt, where she won’t interrupt us. (Yes, I know just how repulsive it is that I’ve anthropomorphized a computer.) I’m telling myself that we are on vacation while out on the Balkan rivers and that there’s little to no place for connectivity. Instead, I’m playing with ink on paper in the world of words that is organized the old-fashioned way by carrying a fountain pen and a couple of notebooks. For the next thirteen days, I will try to remain as disconnected as possible with limited access to our electronically tethered world while we travel between Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro.

We boarded our Croatian Airlines flight in a race to be first, as I’m often impatient to do, and am now waiting for the rest of the passengers to board. The stresses of dealing with the horde bring out the worst in me; fortunately for my own self-respect, only Caroline must bear witness to my tempestuous personality disorder that veers into my particular type of Tourette’s Syndrome, where cursing my intolerance takes me close to blowing the gasket of civility.

We hung out on the tarmac instead of flying away because the baggage handlers were looking for the luggage of someone who checked his bags onto our flight but failed to board the plane. We are now about 45 minutes late for take-off, and my bladder is nagging me about its capacity. You might wonder why I simply don’t get up and take care of relieving the pressure. For one, I’m way over by the window. Okay, that doesn’t really matter, but the lady who was delivered to the seat on Caroline’s left has cerebral palsy, and crawling over her would just not feel right, so I grin and bear it.

Over an hour late now before we take to the air for our 75-minute flight to the Southeast of Europe. This reality shift from the American desert to the seat of the German government and then to the center of Europe’s economic powerhouse before finally heading into the nature of the Dalmatian Coast feels extraordinarily surreal. While I wonder just who lives this kind of life, the obvious answer is that Caroline and I do. By the way, she’s here next to me, knitting my next pair of socks with yarn from a shop in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Lemon olive oil cookies wouldn’t have been my first guess for what type of snack is served on a flight to Croatia, but they are a pleasant surprise. The drink cart is approaching, and I can see it taunting me to add to the building pressure that is trying to crush my resolve to control the potential leakage right here in my seat. Wetting myself in flight would be a first for me as a grown man, and I would certainly embarrass myself, but what is the price of comfort to my internal organs compared to the cold, wet pants I’d have to endure for the next 45 minutes? Goethe likely never had to pose this question to himself.

We Landed, found the facilities, and then took our places in the longest passport control queue that also qualified as the slowest. Leaving the customs area, we didn’t spot our ride (sorry again, Ivan!) and headed over to take the bus to town instead. Out near the curb, we got our first view of the Franjo Tudjman Airport building and its beautiful architecture. While I didn’t know this as we landed in Zagreb, I quickly learned that Franjo was the first president of Croatia after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Lucky for him and the country, he escaped controversy and criminal conviction and has been able to be immortalized on seemingly everything. The bus released us at the Autobus terminal on Avenija Marina Držića, and after consulting maps, we were on our way to our hotel in the center of town.

Meeting us later today are Bruce Keller and Echo, his partner. Bruce is the boatman we first met on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and has subsequently been on each of our river trips in the intervening years. About a week ago, around the time Caroline was arriving in Germany, Bruce posted a comment about leaving Prague on the way to Vienna. Seconds before arriving at the hotel, Bruce called wondering if we’d missed our flight as the person sent to pick us up didn’t see us or we didn’t see him. In just a few minutes, Bruce, Echo, Caroline, and I were on our way to lunch.

After catching up on their European adventure so far and what we’ve been up to, Caroline and I decided to use a couple of hours before our Balkans orientation meeting to walk around town. While strolling around Zagreb, we ran into two separate passengers who were on our flight from Frankfurt. The second of the two turned out to be from Phoenix, too! Fernanda was her name and she doesn’t live far from us, actually only about 3 miles away. This encounter was at a cafe we’d stopped for coffee at, so we had some time to chat. Turns out that she, too, is visiting Plitvice Lakes National Park tomorrow, known as – Plitvička Jezera in Croatia. Upon telling her that our trip was one that would have us rafting a bunch of whitewater, she didn’t miss a beat and asked if we were traveling with OARS; now we are shocked. Our first trip with Bruce was with OARS and her dealing with them was a whitewater trip to Fiji some years before. This trip, though, is with Wantok Adventures.

The results for the German elections for the European Parliament are coming in with the Greens doubling their seats, CDU losing seats, as did SPD, while AfD gained some. Today was election day across Europe, and Caroline had to sneak a peek. Dissatisfaction with the status quo is clearly being voted on today. For those who don’t know, CDU (the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) has been the leading political party in Germany for over ten years, with SPD a close second. The Greens were a fringe party when I first got to Germany in the mid-’80s, and AfD was nonexistent. Alternative For Deutschland, or Alternative for Germany to us English speakers, is a far-right political party that is now the third-largest party in the Bundestag and took just under 11% of the vote for the European Parliament today.

Time to make our way back to the luxury hotel for orientation. Turns out that this was simply our meeting point before making our way to a local restaurant for a taste of Balkan cooking.

Seriously, a Museum of Broken Relationships? I will never visit that place, and fortunately, the sister location in Los Angeles is permanently closed. On second thought, maybe we could learn something or other about what led to the demise of those hopefully once successful relationships and thus avoid the pitfalls they made.

We are inside the Zagreb Cathedral, which is the tallest building in all of Croatia. Short of visiting museums, the churches of Europe are great locations to get a quick view of art and culture, at least as far as Christianity is concerned. Everything is essentially in one room where we need not dwell, taking in hundreds of details and reading about their history. In this sense, it’s kind of like our loft apartment in Phoenix, albeit with an amount of Gothic ornamentation we’ll never come close to replicating in our tiny place.

This is an example of the Glagolitic alphabet in the Zagreb Cathedral, which almost became the official alphabet of Croatia after 1991 when the country gained its independence. Interestingly enough this language that was first created in the 9th century to translate the Bible for the Slavic nations is also the basis for the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia and Serbia.

Years of neglect during the Soviet occupation wreaked havoc on many of the historical buildings behind the former Iron Curtain, especially regarding religious buildings. The renovations are still underway over 30 years later. It’s amazing to see a cathedral in the condition of how it might have looked in the first years after it was built some thousand years ago.

Oops, forgot to note which church this was. While not as ornate as the cathedral, it still has an ambiance of tranquility that will hopefully remain this way for centuries to come. The reason I say that is it was just a little more than 20 years ago that this region of the Balkans was at war, and far too many buildings were damaged by the stray and intentional bullets that were being directed in every direction in order to create chaos and fear. More about that later.

Renovating private dwellings in an economically compromised region is not always easy or profitable for the property owners. Raising rents is not always an option either. While it adds to the rustic appearance and history of an old town, I’m fairly sure that the occupants would prefer that their walls weren’t falling off.

Sometimes, things are lost in translation as you move from one culture to another. I liked this T-shirt enough that I just had to stop the guy and ask for his photo. I’ll wonder for some time just what this meant to him as I’m not 100% sure what it means to me, but a unicorn flipping you off while telling you to unfuck yourself was too great to pass up.

Crone meets old Crone as the respect for the woman who knows hard work is immortalized in bronze, with Caroline stopping to give homage. Knowing my wife is aware of the handcrafted bread that would be in the handmade basket atop this woman’s head and the clothes that would have been woven and sewn by her own hand hints to me that, in some sense, Caroline is standing with a kindred spirit. This is just one of the myriad of qualities that endears me to the woman I love as much today as I did 30 years ago when we met.

Is it my pre-trip jitters or social anxiety, but here I am in the first minutes of meeting the group, and my general feeling is one of disdain for almost everyone here? I hadn’t considered prior to the trip that after three weeks of immersion with Germans, I’d be ill-prepared for coming back into contact with people from America.

I feel that when these river groups come together, the first encounter has everyone putting up their peacock feathers and preening in the pride of where they’re from, what their careers are, or what their previous adventure travels have been. I’m looking forward to day two or three when I hope group cohesion starts forming. On the other hand, I’d like to believe that if I were able to isolate myself in my writing, I could be as happy as a clam no matter what.

So I focus instead on our dinner at the Restaurant Stari Fijaker, which translates to “Old Coach.” Caroline nudges me to point out that the horse-drawn carriages in old town Vienna are also known as Fiaker, so “Fijaker” is somewhat of a linguistic “souvenir” from the Austrian Empire. At the Stari Fijaker, we have our first encounter with the local food groups which are basically bread, meat, potatoes, and, if you are so inclined, alcohol. Our guide, Petar, points out that the bread is baked “under the bell,” which at this time didn’t mean much to us, but we’d soon learn more about this traditional baking and cooking implement.

Finally, listening to the details of the trip, I’m happy that drive time shouldn’t be more than about two hours a day, followed by two or three hours on a river mixed with some quality time in various historic cities such as Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Mostar, and Sarajevo. The rivers will see us traveling on rafts, canoes, and kayaks. Let the adventure begin.