Bed bugs in Croatia

Coincidence level: 3/10 Category: Fucking weird

This one’s a short one, but amusing. I’d spent a while in Split, having met up with three good friends of mine on separate occasions.

One night, Nina, Edward and I were trying to decide where to go for dinner, and made a last minute decision to go to a tiny little Italian place. It was quaint, cute, had decent American marketing behind it (so it was clearly owned by someone foreign with money), and unassuming. It was charming really, and kind of out of place for Split. Not the usual Balkan twist or the lovely crustacean fanfare.

The one thing about that place that struck me as interesting was that it had artwork of various insects on the wall. For example, one piece of art (framed and all) was of ants. Another was of spiders and bees or something of the like. They were cute, really, just black and white prints. But the ants were seared into my memory.

The next day, I woke up with bed bug bites all over me. My friends, who were sleeping in the same room, were left unscathed. It was very similar to what had happened to me when I got bed bugs in New York – I was absolutely torn up while my roommates never received so much as a single bite.

Like a strange foreboding, I’ll never forget the meal that brought the bugs.

. . .