croatia, serbia, train

after leaving serbia, we drove to Zagreb croatia. the city was sleepy and cold, it snowed off and on and we had a small earthquake. through couchsurfing, we ended up staying with an incredibly nice family of girls. they put us up for a few days, feeding us and taking us around, mostly to the cool dive bars in town. ben gave me a haircut thats sort of like a fohawk, it built my self esteem up a bit. the smallest of the family ,a fifteen year old girl, asked me about the US and how it was, i told her a little bit of what i know then she asked if everyone was fat. i looked it up and the US is only ninth fattest, not bad. i met a girl who told me she was devestated after she met me, because id been all over the world and had nothing to say. it just kind of made me smile, she hadn't asked me anything anyway, and she didn't deserve to know outright. finally i took my leave of my car companions and took a train to istanbul. it took 30 hours with a night layover in belgrade, i spent the night hanging out with tweaky canadians who wouldn't stop talking about getting drugs, when i woke up at six in the morning they were sitting up still tweaked out teeth grinding and drinking beer staring at the wall, it sort of freaked me out. i met a hungarian on the train who really ameliorated the proccess of border crossing and showed me some spots in the city afterwards, if i hadn't met him, i'd probably be in bulgaria sulking right now. as usual i forgot to pack a lunch for the day long trip assuming everything would be fine. i ended up not eating at all the whole day and having to beg sips of water from other passengers like an invalid. i always say i've learned my lesson, but i probably will forget it again and starve. my plan when i got here was to go farther east into iran or syria, but they both don't like Americans having an easy go at it. id had to have planned it six months in advance to go in, and i didnt, so i can't go, drag. i have a little under a month left and i'm wonderin what to do, i'm not going west again thats settled, so i'll probably go explore turkey. leroy says there is a town named Batman, that i can't miss. today i walked around the city a man introduced himself and brought me to his leather shop to show me jackets and gave me some coffee, which wasn't bad. but leather jackets(fancy ones) really aren't my style and when i told him that he was more than dissapointed. i spent the rest of the day looking at the giant mosques and listening to the prayers, chewing on multiple kebabs and watching the fishing boats and barges on the ocean from the terrace of my hostel.