I Lost My Voice in Croatia

It’s my own fault more than anything. I booked this trip for a certain date and nothing was going to stop me. I was determined. It’s probably due to this that I lost my voice in Croatia. 

See a couple of days before I left Austria I was suddenly struck with a cold. By suddenly I mean I was feeling great one moment then 20 minutes later I felt like absolute garbage. Not like “ Hello, thanks for checking in I’m still a piece of garbage” garbage. No…. More along the lines of the garbage someone left in the garage for way too long garbage. I felt disgusting.

Yet I bit my tongue, grabbed a bunch of medicine from the drug store, and powered through the things I needed to do to get ready. Two days later I left for Croatia.

Hopped Up On Cold Medicine While Crossing Two Borders

I made sure to get tested before I left. Having Covid would probably be the only thing that would have stopped me from going. Luckily the test came back negative the day before I left. Even so, I made sure to triple down on cold meds before getting on the bus.  I didn’t want them to have any reason to turn me away. So no cough was acceptable!

Getting on the bus was no issue, but shortly after I left I had a realization. The Austria-Slovenia border would be no issue since it’s part of the Schengen Zone, but the Slovenia-Croatia Border might be an issue. Sitting on that bus I had a hazy recollection of the last time that I tried crossing a border doped up on cold meds. The Canadian-American border to be exact.

Segue: My Attempt to Cross the Canadian-American Border at 18 While on Cold Meds

I was young. Just a baby that had barely earned his adulthood. Less than half a year after my birthday I was off to visit my grandparents in the states and I was supposed to be bringing them some stuff that they had left in Canada. Therefore I was driving.

Before I left I got sick. Like really sick. I had some boxes and pictures in my backseat covered with a blanket and was attempting to drive from Calgary, Alberta down to Raleigh, North Carolina. Since I was trying to make good time I was chugging cold meds like it was beer.

It made me look stoned. Just completely wrecked. Glassy, red eyes, red nose, and droopy eyelids. I was the perfect storm. Yet I drove across Alberta and Saskatchewan to try to cross the American border. I was immediately stopped.

They had me pull over my car, take off the blanket so they could look at the boxes, and they threw me in an interrogation room to wait. Instead of stewing in my own worry, I fell asleep…… I fell asleep in an interrogation room on the border. There’s no way they didn’t think I was stoned. 

I remember them coming in to wake me up and ask a bunch of questions. What those questions were and what I answered I have no idea. I don’t even remember them letting me leave. All I know is I was sent back to Canada.

 I am so glad that didn’t happen on the way to Croatia. It was as easy as them looking at my passport and Austrian Visa and letting me through with no questions asked.

Getting into Split

Much to my relief, I had no issue on the 12-hour trip from Vienna to Split. There was almost an incident where I had almost gotten off at the wrong stop, but I was able to get back on the bus and make it to Split. I immediately booked it over to Hurricane Hostel where I would be staying and helping out.

Upon my arrival at Hurricane Hostel, I was greeted by the owner, shown my bed, and we immediately started drinking with the other people staying there. My job of taking people out in the evening was to already begin and I was ok with that.

Losing My Voice in Croatia

Over the next couple of weeks, I took people out to drink every night. Partying it up and enjoying myself. My voice slowly went from sounding kinda sickish to hoarse to gone. I was in the middle of a sentence, pushing my raspy, hoarse voice when all of the sudden my voice cut out. 

Oh, the joy. My voice was completely gone and I still had the obnoxious cough. It was either super lucky or rather unfortunate that one of my exes had taught me some sign language cause the next five or six days were a combination of sign language, dinner party charades, and lip-syncing (mouthing my words) like I was in the backstreet boys.

I’m pretty sure the owner and employees of the hostel almost killed me they were so annoyed with my not being able to speak. I have learnt never to play charades with Aaron. His team will lose.

Other than that though I believe it went pretty well. The pantomime oddly made it easier to connect with people for some odd reason. I ended up finding people in a couple of clubs that I had full conversations in sign language with. 

On the other hand, it made most things a lot harder. Trying to find people willing to put in the effort to communicate with someone who couldn’t talk was rough. Forget about ordering drinks or food. Hell, I couldn’t imagine trying to flirt. That would be a nightmare.

I’m Glad I Experienced Losing My Voice in a Foreign Country

Now I have a better understanding of what mute and deaf people have to go through. The pains of trying to communicate and live in a world where the vast majority of people aren’t willing to slow down long enough to try to understand what you are trying to say. Having to communicate using alternative methods that end up leaving you behind in conversations. Very few people are willing to talk with you, much less help you.

Hopefully, this will lead me to have a deeper level of compassion for others in a way that I couldn’t have had otherwise. 

Now my voice is at 80% of what it should be and I am able to speak again. It’s weird how much different people treat you when you can or cannot talk. I think it is unfair to those who aren’t able to talk.

Some people truly don’t care to the point where an American girl who thought I was mute and/or deaf mocked me and was very demeaning since she thought I couldn’t talk. It was atrocious.

We can do better. We need to do better. Be better. Be more inclusive.

Travel authentically. Travel Nomadically. Be better. We are all just travellers that should leave a better mark upon the world than it leaves upon us.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes.

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Which was later paraphrased as:

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”