Day 11 -- Pula

Charlotte: Today we visited the beautiful ocean city of Pula (pronounced Pool-LUH). Upon arrival we went straight to the coliseum, which is the second most intact coliseum in the world taking second to the coliseum in Rome, Italy. The architecture was amazing and to see it almost completely intact over thousands of years was unbelievable. We then went on a walking tour of Pula where we observed other beautiful buildings and arches. On completion of our walking tour we went to a lecture held by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Pula, on tourism. We learned that Croatia has many sites on the World Heritage list under UNESCO Protection a few of these sites include: the city of Dubrovnik, Plitvice Lakes National Park, the Cathedral of St. James in Sibenik, and Diocleation’s Place in Split just to name a few. Their main tourists population is made up of people from Germany 22.7%, Slovenia 11.2%, Italy 10.2%, Austria 8.9%, Czech 8%, Polish 5.4%, Dutch 4.8%, and Slovakia 4.0%. Their main tourist months are June through August and their main tourist locations are located on the Dalmatian coast. At the end of this informational lecture the University of Pula presented each and every one of us with a welcome gift, a leather bound, full size planner and journal, a pen and an informational packet on tourism and the University of Pula.

Our professors like to go to new places every year they do this trip and this year we were the gunnie pigs for probably the most unique experience ever! We went to Vodnjan, where we went to see mummies of the Saints! I truly thought this was a hoax and that it would be some tourist trap on the side of the road but it was actually at the local Catholic Church in Vodnjan. We took a tour of behind the alter, where the mummies are kept. We saw 4 whole mummies and body parts of other saints. This experience was truly eerie and one of my most memorable experiences of this trip. We were told the stories about why each of the 4 mummies was a saint and what made them famous, but it was really interesting to find out that they were not mummified. Their bodies were dug up from the grave and they their bodies were fully in tacked, two of the bodies even had elasticity left in their mummified skin. One of the nuns who was a saint had, an MRI six months ago and it was determined that her internal organs are still fully intact and that she is still giving on an energy. It is also said that she heals people with health aliments who visits. We were told of stories when a blind woman miraculously regained her vision by being there and praying and couples who were having difficulty getting pregnant have said that they were able to get pregnant after going to this site and praying to this saint. Maybe these events are miracles or merely hoaxes but it was defiantly and experience of a life time no matter what higher power you believe in!

After our mummy experience we went on the hunt for vampires! Well kind of… There was a legend of a vampire cursing a near by city for decades and we went to the location of the grave yard where he had been buried and explored. This stop on our trip was a bit disappointing. We could not see his actual grave because they keep building up the grave yard level after level when they get full and his level was near the bottom, so there was nothing really to see except for some really cheesy, Vampire Café Bar signs. After leaving we drove on a very scary, curvy road out to a country farm in the mountains where we had a very traditional dinner that was 7 courses! The food was unbelievable but the food just kept coming!