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The Disaster in Zlatibor

Serbia

We went to Zlatibor for the weekend for Ella to learn how to ski.   Zlatibor in a tourist destination in the mountains of Southwestern Serbia. With less than 3000 full time residents Zlatibor primarily for outdoor sports with skiing and sledding in the winter and hiking and biking in the summer.  They have several ski and sled runs, especially designed for beginners and intermediate skiers.  Later in the week more of a review of the ski facilities so stay tuned.

Lake in the center of Zlatibor

We stayed at a lovely just finished apartment building that I am going to withhold the name for now.  They had just opened the week before and they obviously had some issues to work out which led to the disaster.  So, I am going to give them a break.

The women who ran the place was not around at check in so we called, and she said she would be right down.  She came quick and found us a room after some discussion.  They had not had a hotel.com reservation before so she was a little unfamiliar if we had a reservation. 

The room was great.  A little small and the beds were really sofa beds that pulled out, but it had a great shower, lovely view from the balcony and a small kitchenette that would let you have snacks and beer in the room.  And it was just blocks the ski school with lots of highly reviewed restaurants nearby.

By the Saturday morning however we had now run out of toilet paper and had no soap or shampoo.  We found later that morning the one staff person we would see the rest of the weekend, no one was ever at the desk or answered the phone and got a five-liter bottle of soap for a pump soap bottle that did not work and a half-used roll of toilet paper that she must have borrowed from another room.  At the time we figured we could work with that for now, but we wanted Ella to take a shower and wash her hair that night. 

Finally, with no one in sight after dinner I went to the store, bought toilet paper and shampoo.  Ella started to take a shower which was when the disaster started.  After getting the temperature right for her (she still does not like to take showers) everything seemed fine until it was time for me to check that she had rinsed her hair.  It was then I saw the shower was flooding! Water POURING out onto the bathroom floor and spilling out onto the tile throughout the apartment, under the door and into the hallway.  Ella could not turn off the water fast enough and I had to wade in and get everything shut off. 

The big problem was the tile in the room was not the same as the tile in the bathroom which was made to be wet. The tile in the living room was now like an ice skating ring.  I slid halfway across the room and landed on the bed.  Everyone tried our best to wipe up the water, but we only had three towels.  There were large sections of the room that was just going to have to air dry, hopefully overnight so we did not kill ourselves.  We imagined a night trip to the bathroom would be fraught with peril.

Everyone did survive unscathed; the room was all dry by morning and the story of the disaster is now added to the Conley folklore as a very funny tale.  More on the ski school and restaurants in Zlatibor in future posts.

The picture above came from By Ванилица – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61123789