working the system

We were greeted off the boat with strong winds and heavy downpour.  We ran into the bus station to buy a ticket, only to realize they only accepted the local currency, “Kruner.”  With the extra money we sat in a coffee shop for the next 3 hours trying to avoid the rain and smuggle our way into the expensive bathroom. We met up with Matthew, Kyle, Kyle, Joseph, David and Peter (who we had met on the ferry) and took the nearly 4 hour bus ride on the windy roads around the side of the mountain and ocean.  Although raining, it was a beautiful site.  I was a little bit nervous when we stopped at the Croatian/Bosnian-Hersgovina boarder, but it went smoothly.  When we arrived at the bus station a man approached us offering a taxi to our hotel.  He was a little shady but we didn't want to walk in the pouring rain to try and find our hotel outside the city, so I said a few prayers for safety and we climbed into his car.  Our hotel was farther out of the center of the town than we expected, but we had a nice room.  One of the owners, Mario, greeted us but he didn't know any english.  So he gave us a phone to call his brother, Dijo, in case we needed anything.  We worked out a system for the next couple of days where if we wanted to get dropped off into town or picked up, we'd call Dijo, he'd call his brother Mario, and Mario would come get us. It was a...unique system.   An hour later Mario dropped us off at St. James church in the center of the town so we could check it out.  The church was very packed with pilgrims, so we squeezed in the back.  We remained standing there as we prayed the joyful and sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, then had croatian mass where everyone responded in a chorus of whatever language they spoke, followed by more prayers.  Afterwards we grabbed a surprisingly delicious meal at "Columbus", complete with a huge fried omelette, fries and a salad.  It was nice to sit and have a nice meal after the rough travel and pouring rain we had experienced for the last 36 hours.  Mario picked us up and we crashed in our beds after a quick round of bananagrams and some market wine.  We had no idea what to expect for the next day.