DAYS 228 - 234: CROATIA
When we look back on our travels, there will be certain things that stand out from the rest. And I'm sure some of these will be the beautiful places we’ve seen. Take for instance Dubrovnik, Croatia, where we walked the city walls of the most perfect, almost make-believe, castle city that overlooks the Adriatic Sea. Or in Split, Croatia, where we strolled through dungeons and sundial rooms of ancient Venetian-themed palaces.
But I think - perhaps most vividly, it will be those situations that pushed us way outside of our comfort zones that we'll remember most. Like the horrifically long South American bus rides, contracting some sort of unknown virus in a Thailand jungle hut, or developing altitude sickness in a cold Himalayan teahouse. The stuff that makes for good stories. The stuff that you don't need a photo to remember. In Croatia, it will be the time that we thought that we had fatally poisoned ourselves with cyanide.
While still in Bosnia, we had decided to stock up on snacks before a long bus ride into Croatia. This particular Bosnian grocery store had a pretty robust nut isle, which we liked because it is not always easy finding healthy snack-food options on the road. I wasn’t very concerned by the fact that we weren’t able to read the packaging. In a rush, I grabbed an assortment of nuts - ones that appeared to be peanuts, some macadamia nuts, and these tiny looking almond things. Almonds are our favorite.
Fast forward two days to when we were sitting in another bus station around mid-day. We pulled out that bag of tiny almonds. After skipping breakfast, each of us took a few healthy handfuls, quickly consuming the entire bag. They were indeed almond-like, but definitely not almonds. They were smaller, dryer, a little bitter and had an peachy flavor to them. We then boarded our bus, proud of ourselves that we opted for the healthy snack over the really good smelling pastries across the station.
As I sunk into my seat catching up on a podcast, a look of horror overtook Kenze’s face as she sifted through her phone. She had just translated the Bosnian packaging of the tiny almonds to be apricot kernels, and out of curiosity googled them. It turns out that the sale of apricot kernels is quite controversial in Europe, and that they are often used as a method to treat cancer. Even taking 2 or 3 kernels a day comes with strong warnings. By this time, I’m reading along starting to share some concern when we read that "eating 50-60 apricot kernels would deliver a lethal dose of cyanide, but that cyanide poisoning can occur at much lower levels."
We quickly did the math, figuring that we both consumed upwards of 100 kernels each. And here we were, stuck on a bus.
You’d think that images of my life would have started flashing by and that I’d have started pouring out my love to my wife, with my last breaths. Instead, the only thing that I could think was, We were going to die on a fucking bus from eating apricot kernels!
We quickly ran through options. Should we make ourselves sick? No, no bathrooms. Should we ask the driver to pull over and get off? Could this actually be that serious? We had to do something quickly - it's already been 45 minutes since we consumed the kernels.
Thankfully, after a closer look and what seemed like forever but was probably more like 5 minutes, we discovered that we ate “sweet" apricot kernels, as opposed to “bitter” apricot kernels, which don’t contain nearly as much risk. We sat back in relief once we found the ones we ate had previously been sold on a Trader Joe’s website.
Regardless, we still tried to puke them out at the next stop. And have been translating more grocery store purchases since.
In-between Dubrovnik and Split, we camped and climbed and relaxed on empty beaches from a small town of Omis on the Adriatic Sea in southern Croatia. So long as Game of Thrones spinoffs continue, we'll remember all these places as well.
-Brad
