The past couple of days have been so weird.
For the most part, I have been left alone on my trip. I've gotten some weird looks (especially in Budapest) and a few cat calls, but nothing major. But not the past couple of days.
It all started when I was sitting in the train station in Ljubljana, Slovenia. There I was, half in my pajamas since my laundry hadn't finished drying, with a couple pairs of pants spread out over my back pack in hopes that they would dry before my train came. My hair was up in a librarian, no fun and no nonsense style bun, and I had, as has become my custom on this trip, very little make-up on. Who do I have to impress here anyway? In short, there was nothing about my appearance that would suggest that I was in any mood for any monkey business.
Anyway, I must have inadvertently made some hand signal that means "Hey! I'm a prostitute! Come and get it!" Because I was suddenly approached by a man. I didn't understand Slovenian enough to know exactly what he was saying, but enough to know that he was trying to strike up a conversation, not just asking the time or something. I smiled and sweetly explained that I didn't speak his language, but that did not discourage him. I then ignored him and read my Nook for a while before he finally gave up and walked away.
Just then, a little boy who couldn't have been more than 14 sat down beside me. He started muttering to me, with his eyes cast down. At first I thought he was apologizing for the creepy man who had just left, but he just kept going. Again, I tried to explain that I didn't speak that language, and went back to my Nook. The muttering continued until I looked over and asked, "Are you talking to me?" I couldn't be sure, since he wasn't looking at me. That's when I saw the vile hand gestures he was making at me, and I stuffed my still-moist pants into my bag and left to go get some lunch.
When I came back, I sat on the other side of train station, and for some reason that little pervert was still there, and somehow he found me. He started his creepy muttering and tried to grab my butt, so the pants went back in my bag and I left again. Creeper.
In my "flustration", as my dad would say, I'm ashamed to admit that I got on a train going the wrong way. But that's another story.
Then today, I was again innocently sitting in front of a church when a sweet old man came and sat next to me on the bench and started talking to me. Again, I smiled and sweetly tried to explain that I don't speak Croatian. My Russian skills might have made a short conversation possible, but I just wasn't in the mood. He persisted. "What the heck," I thought, "why won't people just stop talking to me when they find out we don't speak the same language." I tried ignoring him and pulling out my Nook to read a bit, and he kept talking. Then he put his arm around me.
Could somebody please tell me what I am doing that makes people think I am a prostitute? Because I'd really like to stop doing it.
And what made any of them think that they could afford me is beyond me.
P.S. When I showed up at my hostel here in Zagreb (a few hours late because of my train-going-the-wrong-way adventure), the girl was showing me up to my room, when out of the next room came a bunch of girls that I had met in Austria. We greeted each other warmly, and the hostel girl gave me the weirdest look. It was as if she were saying, "So, you just walk into a hostel in Zagreb, Croatia, and you know people here?" It was awesome.
That is awesome! Not the prostitute part... but that you ran into people that you had already met before. You are too funny!
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