The last week I was in Croatia (July 24 to July 30, 2010)I had occasion to fly from Zagreb to Split in order to take a ferry to Korcula Island to visit my Croat friends Paulina and Antonio. I had somehow managed to get rid of numerous nice publications I wanted to keep because they weighed down my bag an extra 12 pounds and I wasn't willing to haul that much around.Smirking to my self that I was really smart I decided I'd just check my bag since I had a nice bottle of Grk wine it and knew I wouldn't be able to take it on board.
I arrived at the airport, walked to the counter, and handed the woman my passport and told her I was flying to Split and had a bag to check. Of course, I smiled and spoke in the best Croatian I could muster. She checked me in within 60 seconds. No kidding. So I was only left with my carryon daypack that had my netbook computer, some snacks and all my electronics stuff like cell phone, digi camera,ipod nano and a plethora of chargers and European plug ins so I could use my stuff there.
Even though it was only 9 a.m. I went and grabbed an expensive Karlovacko beer and waited before going to security.
Zagreb is a really small airport for a city of 800,000. Basically it's like Boise's though as you can drive right up front to get dropped off or picked up. It's international but you'd never know it. After the beer I figured I better get to security since with a foreign passport I thought it might take a bit. To my surprise I didn't have to take off shoes,or jewelry or my belt. In fact, I pulled my netbook out of the backpack and was set to take it out of it's netbook bag and they just put it right on the conveyor belt. There was no one in line and at least 6 Croat police officers at Security with little to do. I walked over to go through the "security open doorway" just like we have in our airports and realized my passport and boarding pass were in my backpack on the x-ray conveyor. But did security care? I guess not, because they never even asked to see my passport, let alone a boarding pass to get on a flight. I mean, anyone could have walked through there with bags and whatnot hassle free. Which was actually nice in a way, because American are made to be paranoid fearful freaks of the travelling world by our government and media.
I walked through the body scanner and no beebs, so picked up my stuff and put the netbook back into the backpack and went to sit down. Then I watched to see how they checked everyone else coming through. It was pretty much the same routine. I don't recall them checking passports or boarding passes except on two rather dirtbag looking young punks from who knows where. I never heard them speak so never knew. They weren't to pleased and the police didn't seem too impressed with them either.
Now here's where the funny part is. There are no bathrooms on the other side of security and I really needed to pee because our flight was delayed for two hours. I motioned to one of the security police that I'd like to go out to the bathroom. No problem she indicates and waves me through. I come back and they don't even make me go back through security. She just waves me back through the line and lets me walk around. You can bet that TSA in America would never do that. Ever. You know what else? I have never felt safer than in Croatia. I could be out a 5 a.m. and not be worried. It didn't matter if I was in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Korcula or Zelena Kut on Mrzenica River. Other than the Serbian mafia in Zagreb, it's a really safe place to be by and large.
No comments:
Post a Comment