Dimensions electronic festival - Pula, Croatia

Friday, September 7th.

"Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness." 

Mark Twain

Looking at the optimistic side of our back-tracking-ferry-mishap situation, the train from Venice to the border (Trieste) was remarkable. We curved around the coast and passed cute towns, big churches and castles, sprawling sea views, so many scenes of beauty and inspiration that I had dreamed of what Italy would be like. We got our tickets to Pula and spent the last of our euros on grocery store salads to eat in the plaza while we waited.

The bus to Croatia took us all along the coast of tiny Slovenia, and while I was very tempted to count that as country #33 on my list, alas, I could not since we spent no significant time there. But the drive through Slovenia and into Croatia was seriously superb – it felt so exotic even though we were just at the cusp of Europe, so drenched in history because of all the villages and churches with their pointy little steeples. Loved every minute of it! If you plan on traveling to any of these three countries (Italy, Slovenia or Croatia) and have more money than we did (won’t be hard) you should rent a vehicle instead of taking public transport. There was about a million times I would have loved to have pulled that bus over to stop and soak it in!

We arrived to Pula and walked to the hostel we’d booked… options were scarce as the Dimensions Electronic Festival was in town for the weekend, which is why we came in the first place. Our place was nice though, seemed to be a large flat that someone stuck about 15 single beds in and called it a hostel. The woman who owned it was super sweet and helpful, her son was the one I had been in contact with and the one who got us our wrist bands for the festival for a fair price (80 euros/weekend).  Met Xavier and Steve (Australia) and headed out to walk around and get some cold adult beverages. Night 1 of Dimensions was super fun, although no pictures exist. Sometimes it’s better that way.

Next afternoon drug ourselves to the beach – there’s nothing better than a good swim to take away a hangover. The chilly and refreshing Adriatic Sea!

Most of the beaches in Croatia are rock beaches, not sand, so we found one that had large, flat rocks to be the most ‘comfortable’ while lounging around.

Night 2 of the festival took a little more motivating, but we pulled ourselves together and got on it. The setup was amazing – an old, abandoned fort/castle, moat, main stage, beach stage, DJ’s everywhere. An electronic music lovers dream!

Steve and Xavier

Kris (Lithuania), Ian (Madrid friend, San Fran), Steve and Xavier

DJ's in the moat!

Ian & Erin (San Fran)

Sunday… ouch. The festival grounds had things going on in the day so we headed over to the beach for a nice, easy day of some reggae and hip hop, great change of pace after all that electronic for two days! We had a good crew of people, swam and drank and danced a bit too! From DJ's in a moat to DJ's in a boat.

reggae party in session