Sarah WallockWhile my classic tone on where’s wallock is one of wonder, awe, play and joy, this piece will take you in a different direction. I forgot to write about this new-to-me magnificent country, Croatia. The trip was such a quick whirlwind that I almost forgot I’d been there!
I went on a work retreat bike trip to Croatia in 2024. I had a seizure, booked the earliest flight home, and was out thousands of dollars. How’s that for adventure travel!? It was an adventure indeed.
My commitment to travel writing is sharing my travels with you like I would with a best friend. Not an influencer on a brand’s dime. Not a journalist with an objective stance. But an opinionated storyteller, committed to sharing what travel really feels like for the good moments, bad, and the life-threatening.
In 2023, a few weeks following my brain surgery to get my brain tumor resected, I headed on a work trip to India. While there were some moments of awe, the truth is: physically and physiologically, it was a difficult trip for me. Though I wanted to give this 500-person bike work trip another try in Croatia, a country I’d never been to and a culture I’d never experienced. And some of the India trip had a lasting impact on me, so much so that I used it as the climax in my memoir chronicling my story before, during and after brain surgery.
Day 1: Hello Dubrovnik
Before Croatia, I was hanging in London with my mum in-law and dad in-law, beating jet-lag, before I was to meet my coworkers for the annual work trip. Though I hadn’t been feeling great, travel is the ultimate privilege, so I felt compelled to give it a go and push through any discomfort.
I headed on a flight to Dubrovnik and cozied up in my hotel by the seaside, chosen for its proximity to the work events. I checked into my room, changed into a swimsuit for an afternoon dip in the sea, and boarded the public bus to the old city center.
I grabbed a meal with a few coworkers. We walked through the quaint old town and down to the beach where I went for a swim in the glistening blue waters of the Mediterranean and floated under the sunset. We watched the sun slowly set over the sea from our room’s balcony, before nodding off to bed.
Day 2: Bike 40 Miles, Ferry, Sleep
I walked a mile from my hotel in my biking outfit and followed the flow of hundreds of coworkers into a grand meeting room. Then 500 people loaded onto a caravan buses winding along the cliffs of coastal outskirts of Dubrovnik. We had a wonderful lunch catered by a local distributor and went to bike staging afterward.
Unlike India, this year, I had the option of grabbing an ebike rather than a traditional one, I opted in! The year prior, I pedaled through a dust storm, intense heat and smog through the countryside of Rajasthan with barely any past biking experience.
While biking, like snowboarding, hiking, running, I enjoyed myself. The wind billowed through my hair and the sun-soaked Croatian coast glistened in the distance. The environment of hundreds of people on bikes abroad felt overwhelming. Though I’d done this once before in India, I was a bit beside myself there from having just survived brain surgery.
After ferrying from Luka Orebic to our hotel on Korcula, I checked into a room with 3 coworkers. I jotted down to the Med for a little swim, ate dinner and fell asleep.
Day 3: Bike Again, Now in a Circle!
“Bike. Don’t bike. Bike. Don’t bike,” I ruminated.
I woke up on the third day thinking I would sit by the sea, go for a walk or try to engage with Croatian culture in a deeper way than coasting through rural villages on a $4,500 bike. I had so much curiosity. Biking was the main aim of the retreat, so I got back on my bike to see more of the country and remained hopeful I could experience something uniquely Croatian, maybe without the tunes of the Taylor Swift speaker someone carried beside me.
While as a younger traveler, I yearned for taking the chicken bus solo around Bolivia or sleeping on islands of the coast of Vietnam, I now love my creature comforts and reminders of home too.
We finally rounded a corner to a support stop where lunch was supplied. We paused and returned to the hotel for night festivities. Luckily, a friend of mine and I ferried across the sea to old town Korcula early and ascended to a memorable rooftop bar, Massimo Cocktail Bar. I found on my work trips that these unscripted moments to explore were always much more pleasurable than the scheduled corporate activities. They left more room to explore and get lost.
We bopped from an awkward company-sponsored happy hour to a restaurant that was fully booked out for us to enjoy dinner. Here, I had a nice time chatting with a group of coworkers who led a collection of trips across the American West that I wrote and edited. It was nice to connect my desk job with the real-world experiences from the travel guides.
It smells like travel. It tastes like travel. It sounds like travel. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like travel. This large group travel abroad sheltered me from potential richer, more intimate experiences.
Day 4: Bike 50 Miles, Ferry Along the Adriatic
I woke up at the crack of dawn to ensure I got to the ferry stop before the designated departure time. It was a bit odd and disorienting to have to bike a certain speed as not to miss a ferry in Croatia, while on “vacation,” or to get home before dark, with the risk of getting hit by kids with sticks in the streets of Rajasthan, India (yeah, more on that another time…). One of my colleagues in India kept getting irritated with me calling biking through the country a “holiday.”
That day in Croatia, we biked on a skinny shoulder along a treacherous highway with lorries whipping around the corners at 70 kilometers per hour. It was intimidating and scary. Some of my coworkers sped down at Tour de France speeds and others awkwardly swayed side-to-side like me. “Okay, Sarah you got this,” I tried to encourage myself.
Survive brain surgery? Easy! Survive this bike ride? Keep pedaling, keep hydrating!
Once we curved around a bend for another catered lunch in a seaside fishing village, then we biked on a more protected route. Here, there were some pretty majestic moments biking through vineyards and rolling hills.
I rocked up to the ferry an hour ahead of schedule to ensure I made it on time. I sat soaking my feet in the Mediterranean sea. We finally boarded the privately chartered ferry and my world began to spin. After what felt like some of the longest hours of my life, I had to get back on my bike and park it in the Hvar town square. After biking 50 miles that day, with no offered alternative, I walked a mile to the hotel and my world was swirling. Though I was curious to see the town and try the seafood, I was certain I’d be in for the night.
Knowing I needed to eat, I mustered up the energy to head uncomfortably into the hotel lobby and see who was around. Solo travel was entirely predictable that everything would be an unknown. But this, was a whole new ball game of unspoken social rules I didn’t understand. I joined a group of coworkers headed to old town Hvar. I remember having conversations about the day’s events, eating a big meal, and then everything went blurry.
“I have to go.” I said. “Oh yeah I bet they’ll be back with the check in a minute.” A coworker I had never met said. Minutes kept passing, in true European-style fashion. Then maybe half an hour.
My eyes couldn’t stay focused on a single thing for longer than a millisecond. My world didn’t have defined lines and shapes. It was fuzzy and hard to see and my ears went warm, mouth went warm. I threw 50 euro in the middle of the table and ran as quickly as I could downstairs, overheating.
I have to get out of here
While having a seizure, I sprinted across Hvar, Croatia back to my hotel room, that I was sharing with a coworker. I was terrified. Luckily, I hadn’t lost consciousness, but I knew at any second I could go into a tonic clonic seizure. I’d be on the ground in a foreign country, where I didn’t speak the language. Luckily, I had my seizure rescue medication, but like a bandaid, that was just a temporary fix.
On the mile-run from the restaurant to the hotel, I dialed my mom and dad back in California to ask for help. They stayed with me on the phone while I went as fast as my legs would take me back to the hotel. They helped get me the hell out of there as swiftly as possible.
“Let’s get you back to Nick’s mum and dad’s in London ASAP,” they consoled me as I lay in a dark room in a foreign country with my brain not working. I couldn’t have felt further from home and more unsafe. It was the scariest night of my life. I wouldn’t recommend having a seizure in a foreign country without your loved ones nearby. It’s the worst. I booked the first flight back to Heathrow in the morning to stay with my parents in-law.
I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds in Morocco from contracting typhoid. I have hiked mountains in Ecuador with a herniated disc. I’ve cycled across India with a freshly patched up brain. This was different.
Day 5: Someone Please Help Me
“Just act, Sarah. You know how to fake a smile and say ‘good morning’ at breakfast. You got this.”
After a seizure, my body virtually rejects any overwhelming sensory input. And after the boat ride, excessive heat, and social and environmental stimulation, I wasn’t even able to sit in the breakfast room at the hotel without feeling ill.
I told my roommate that I was going home and he was very understanding. I packed everything up. And had to revisit the walk from the night before, now carrying my luggage. I bumped into multiple coworkers on my way out, trying to process the overwhelming past few days and figuring out how to move forward.
They shared their sadness when I told them I had “food poisoning and was leaving early—a white lie I created to get out of having to answer any questions about my brain or reassure them that I was okay. Food poisoning would’ve been much preferred to a seizure. And it wouldn’t leave me with brain damage.
I sat on a bench waiting for the ferry to the airport, then ferried across to Split. A few other coworkers were leaving early for various commitments. One invited me to share a taxi with him. We ascended up the escalator to Split Airport and my plane couldn’t come soon enough. He and I sat together eating snacks. Though I had never met him, I felt like I really needed him. Or anyone with a working brain for that matter.
That’s the unfortunate thing I kept realizing through my healing from my brain tumor: when your independence gets stripped so distinctively from how your old life used to be, it’s a real shock to the system. This couldn’t quite get through to me.
I was holding onto the way I used to live so freely. Clutching it for dear life.
I felt so awful in Split. I didn’t know if I was going to pass out in the airport. Eventually, I boarded the plane. When I landed at Heathrow, I ran as fast as I could to my mum in-law and dad in-law in the UK. Tears welled in my eyes and I nearly jumped into their arms. I was so happy to be home in a predictable environment.
I’m embarrassed to say that I went to Croatia and learned virtually nothing about Croatia or Croatians. Now, 2 years later, with a quick Google search I know that Croatia is independent from former Yugoslavia and is at least 2,500 years old. With a lifetime of war, power, invasions, rich culture, freedom and a desire for peace in the region, I have a ton to learn from this small yet mighty country. From extra-virgin olive oil, fresh fish and breathtaking beaches to ornate churches and renaissance architecture, the small bit of Croatia I experienced, I liked.
I’d love to return to Croatia one day with an open heart and curiosity to learn and most likely, without a bike. And when I do go back, of course you’ll be the first to know.
And as for now, I’ll be reading about Croatia from the Boulder Public Library, and prepping for my upcoming travels to snowboard in Japan. This time, my husband will be right by my side every step of the way. And hopefully, we’ll be able to accommodate more of the differences I need for my beautiful new brain.
