Croatia

by M K

Songs and soccer in Broatia

After our whirlwind tour of Rome, we were ready to turn down the tourist and crank up the bro. The shift was swift and terrible.

Day 1: Shifting gears into ULTRA mode

We landed in Split and we immediately cruised out to snag a quick bite 'n brew at Plan B where we watched Brazil choke on some suffocating Belgium D(efense), and otherwise engaged in witty sports banter with the bros back home.

Names have been modified to protect Soph's and her friends' identities

The game ended around 10PM. As this is universally considered to be too early for an electronic music festival, we bought a few brews to go and posted up at a park outside of the festival grounds for some quality people watching.

At one point Soph ducked out into the nearby bushes to see if the plants needed watering, and popped up just in time to scare the living piss out of an unsuspecting walker-by. Much lolz were had by all.

At 10:30PM we decided it was late enough to start the music festivities. Welcome to Ultra Europe, Split Croatia edition!

That first night we saw:

All artists played one after another on a single epic stage in the middle of the Split soccer stadium, more or less non-stop until about 4:30AM - 5:00AM.

Jandro was stoked to discover there's a musical genre outside of jazz

Eric Prydz was, in my humble and objective opinion, the best of the batch, and was absolutely crushing it when Soph and Jandro started hinting they were getting old. I mean, tired.

Don't! Fall! Asleep! Don't... fall... asleep...

Early hints of sunrise accompanied us on the walk home, and we fell asleep to the taunting tunes of Eric Prydz, mocking me from miles away.

Day 2: Beach time and IDEMO HRVATSKA!!!!!!!

The next day we mosied our way over to Bačvice Beach (referred to by google maps as "super public bath" - both readings makes sense).

We crushed some water frisbee and spent way more time than I'm willing to admit getting the perfect slo-mo. Nailed it.

We briefly entertained our lingering tourist tendencies and paid our respects to the historic landmarks of this great country...

If paid "paid" you mean "did" and by "our respects" you mean "silly shit"

... and walked over to Caffe Bar Sanctuary to watch the Croatia / Russia world cup semi-finals.

Bored douche-bro morphs into rabid fan-bro

The game was INSANE. Both teams scored in overtime, and it came down to the wire in penalty kicks. When Croatia finally won, the bar went nuts. All of Croatia went nuts, really.

The walk over to the festival grounds was wild: hundreds of cars were honking, hordes of folks were hollering, and general jubilant chaos reigned supreme.

The only downside to the chaos was that we ended up missing the entirety of Galantis, but the long wait in line was much improved by Croatian victory chants.

Soph's expression is eerily identical in both photos

That second night we saw:

Chainsmokers in particular crushed it, though they DIDN'T PLAY #SELFIE, which is INSANE. More like Chainchokers. Harrumph.

Day 3: Exploring town and winding down

We spent the bulk of our third and final day exploring Split. Turns out the town is absolutely gorgeous. I guess we'd been too busy broing out to notice?

Stealth photo capturing Jandro's resting (hungover) bitch face

We had a crazy dank meal at Uje Oil Bar, where I tried some jet-black cuttlefish (hold the asparagus). We then proceeded to explore the winding alleyways...

Here Jandro does us a kindness by covering up his face

...the gorgeous waterfront...

I think we were starting to run out of bro-poses at this point

... and finally succeeded in our week-long quest to find Jandro a brotank.

Below-the-nipple armholes were non-negotiable

The third and final night we saw:

Marshmellow absolutely crushed it, and made a strong bid for best set of the weekend.

Yea, yea, so we might have done a bit of sitting on night 3

Thus we bid Croatia adieu and began our week-long hangover.