I hope you’re ready for a story about Hvar
I have struggled with this post for a long time because my friends and I were concerned about our safety. We were also afraid of looking stupid or of people putting the blame on us. I would get so mad at the thought of people thinking that we could be the cause of what happened to us. At what point does it start being the victims’ fault as opposed to the fault of the offender? Where do you draw the line between constantly having your guard up and actually being able to live or be yourself?
Finally, I came to the point of not caring about what you think. You weren’t in our situation. You don’t know how you would’ve reacted or what you would’ve done. Think what you want. Say what you would and wouldn’t have done. Who knows what you actually would have. Hopefully, by telling this story, it will leave some sort of positive impact or even save others from being put in a similar situation. Sit tight.
Hostel Helvetia
Wow. We lucked out with this place. Our hostel in Hvar is in the absolute best location in the center of the action of Old Town, around a few corners of teensy streets. The owner of the hostel is the sweetest man ever. He gives off a fatherly vibe, greeting us with such a warm welcome and some of his homemade wine. He is also so proud of his hostel—it’s his pride and joy and he treats all his guests like family.
There is another older guy, Eric, in our four-bedroom. He’s this huge muscular guy (his bicep is probably the size of my waist) covered in tattoos from head to foot but is also super friendly. He has been in Hvar for a while and says he can show us around and take us to the supermarket (which was super necessary after realizing how much we spent in Dubrovnik). Bring on the ham and cheese sammies!
We return to the hostel, and Eric shows us his Instagram. Turns out he’s a famous Instagram photographer with some pretty awesome pics. He shows us how he does his editing and says when we walk around and explore tomorrow he can help take pics for us.
When you’re staying in hostels, you talk, get close, and hang out with the people in your room. Eric was super talkative and got along with all our other hostel mates. Eric had not done anything at this point to make us think that he was dangerous.
First night out in Hvar
Hvar is cool. There’s multiple shops, cafes, and restaurants lined up on the promenade against the water. They all have their own vibe. At night these places turn into straight up dance clubs with people flooding out onto the street. You can hop from one to another and carry your open drinks along with you.
Katie stays in because she’s not feeling too hot, so it’s, me, Sarah, and Eric out for the night. Eric tells us he will be our bodyguard for the night and to let him know if any d-bags are bothering us. We leave the hostel and Eric immediately takes out a bag of drugs and takes what he claims is ecstasy. To each his own. You do you, but Sarah and I both thought this was a little weird since we had stated before leaving that we wanted to have a more chill night just checking out the scene.
Eric takes us around to a few different bars and clubs and makes a point again to let us know that he can beat anyone up if they’re creeping us out. Thanks, dude, we get it.
I could try to tell you all the names of the bars we went to, but I can’t even remember. There’s just so many to choose from, and like I said before, you can go the whole night hopping in and out, finding just the right music and the right vibe for you. We head back at a decent time and go to sleep.
Things get weird
We wake up and get ready for what we think is going to be a day of exploring the town, where we get decent pictures together at some of the different tourist destinations of Hvar. We soon find out this isn’t the case as Eric starts jumping around, snapping pictures at different angles of us sitting on steps and rocks and even asking some yacht owners docked at the harbor if he could “shoot the girls on deck.”
He keeps telling us how beautiful we are. We are getting a little weirded out at this point but we’re still thinking he is harmless. We ask if we can actually go explore the town and stop with the photoshoot. That’s not what we wanted to do today. Eric says that’s fine and to just let him know when we want him to take pictures for us. We’re feeling more relieved—this was just some classic miscommunication. We’re on the same page now.
In the heat of the day, we decide to forget exploring and try to ditch Eric by saying we want to go to the beach instead (but of course he comes along). We try to get a second away from him so we can just talk and devise a plan, but we can’t. At this point, we just feel like he’s a lurker, someone who won’t go away but that will eventually take a hint that we want to have some alone time.
We get to the beach and he’s still taking pictures of us. Now in our bathing suits. He keeps saying how beautiful we are, and we respond that we have boyfriends and that it’s making us uncomfortable. Dude, we just told you to stop. We are now just annoyed and completely over the day. We leave the beach with no intentions of hanging out with him anymore.
Even weirder
On our way back, Eric starts telling us about his tattoos and their meanings from when he was in the Navy and how these represent how many people he has killed. He then tries to show us one on his lower abdomen that he needs to pull his pants down for. I legit scream, “What the hell, what makes you think we want to see that!”
At this point, he can tell we’re feeling uneasy after finding out he was not only a murderer but proud of it since he has kept tallies of his victories in permanent ink on his body. Eric gets close to us and says not to worry. He won’t hurt us. He has only hurt people who have done him wrong. And we won’t do him wrong, right?
WTF
Yeah, at this point, we’re terrified. We can’t do him wrong or piss him off. We can’t go to the hostel and get him kicked out. Our only option is to put on a happy face and pretend to have a good time with him.
He tells us again how beautiful we are and asks if he can post pictures of us on his Instagram. We obviously say no and repeat ourselves for the upteenth time that it makes us uncomfortable and that our boyfriends would not like that. He grudgingly agrees and says he won’t post them.
We go back to the hostel and try to get the pics off his camera onto our Google drives and delete any of the pics off his computer of us in bathing suits. It takes hours, and we have to log into our Gmail on his computer. During this time, he keeps lying around in his boxers in our room. Please stop.
The scariest dinner of my life
We try to go to dinner to get a second of time away from Eric to plan how we’re going to go out tonight without him. He immediately invites himself into our plans, and we’re all silent. I tell him we think we want some alone girl time. Sarah approaches me in the kitchen and says she’s scared because her Gmail is open on his computer and that if we piss him off, he could easily gain access to all her accounts and essentially ruin her life. So we invite him to come in order to keep him away from his computer.
At dinner, Eric once again threatens to beat people up if the workers in the kitchen don’t make his meal right. While we desperately try to enjoy our meal, he starts telling us some crazy story (still not sure if it’s true or not).
Many years ago Eric made his own drug (described it like Adderall). The business was going so well, and he sold so much of it and made so much money. He also told us about one of his drug deals that went wrong. The people Eric was selling to retaliated, beating him up with a baseball bat so badly that he had to crawl into the street where he laid there until someone saw him and called 911.
While in the hospital, Eric pretended he was in a hit and run accident. AND to prove all of this, he pulls up a newspaper article on his phone from when he was in the hospital with his name and picture explaining the whole car accident.
Eric says that he grew stronger over the next few years following the incident, tracked down the people who hurt him, and “put them in the ground.” We are close to tears at this point. He reassures us by telling us over and over again that not to worry—as long as we don’t do him wrong.
Trying to make a plan
We are scared shitless. Regardless of if any of that’s true or not, you have to be some kind of crazy person to even make that up. We have no choice but to pretend to like him and keep him happy. We go back to the hostel for a second, and Sarah is thankfully able to log out of her account.
Carpe Diem is Hvar’s infamous club on a private island. You have to take a taxi boat from their location on the mainland to get to the club on the island. Everyone who’s been to Hvar raves about it.
We go to catch the taxi boat to the island and are luckily able to join a table of people away from Eric. We have a slight glimpse of hope that we might be able to play off being ‘super drunk’ and ‘losing’ him. As we try to sneak past him to get to the boat, we see him showing pictures of Sarah to a bottle server and asking her if she would be interested in doing a photoshoot too. Ew, ew, ew. He literally goes around asking innocent girls to do this.
Eric finds us in line for the boat, and it’s pretty obvious to him at this point that we are blatantly not trying to talk to him or be with him. He still tries taking pictures with us on the fucking boat over there.
Carpe Diem
On the island, Eric will not leave us alone. We can’t go anywhere without him following us or jumping in on our conversations with people. We try going to the bathroom, going to different bars, talking to other people, and he never fails to find us or wait around, breathing down our necks.
At one point he gets inches from Sarah’s face as she is talking to someone, and she asks if she can help him. Eric responds, telling her she’s so beautiful (once again). She asks him to stop because it’s making her extremely uncomfortable. He responds saying no, he can’t help it.
Sarah tries to escape by announcing she needs to go to the bathroom. Eric ferociously declares he will take her! Sarah bursts into tears, and we all walk away trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Out of nowhere a sweet, angelic, VIP savior comes to our rescue and asks us if we want to join a table in VIP. We say yes, yes, yes, please!
The three of us follow her as fast as we can as we see Eric’s beady eyes realize what’s happening and where we are going. We almost make it in, but he is at our heels. I grab our savior’s hand and look at her pleadingly and whisper “no,” sending telepathic signals and facial expressions saying get him the fuck away from us. She looks back at him and says, “Sorry, the girls only.”
We pretend not to have noticed what happened. Still, we are so afraid that he is going to be mad at us for leaving him so we decide to message him on Facebook, pretending to be upset that he’s not allowed in there with us. We tell him we’re having so much fun though and want to stay so we will probably see him back at the hostel. He responds saying that he will wait for us.
Are. You. Fucking. Kidding.
Seconds later, we see him appear at the railing of VIP. He stands there, watching us. We literally have no idea what to do. We can’t leave without him seeing us. He is leaving tomorrow morning so all we need to do is just make it through one more night. Katie and Sarah want to go home and we agree we think we’re safe/ on good terms with Eric after our fake Facebook message. I decide to stay out with some people that I met but hear from Katie and Sarah a few hours later: do not come back to the hostel.
The escape of Sarah and Katie
While I am still out, Sarah and Katie are going through hell. They try escaping the island without Eric, but of course he finds them within the crowd and comes home with them. Along the way, he keeps touching Sarah’s arm, asking what’s wrong. She fakes a smile and tells him everything is great! Back at the hostel, they are getting ready for bed with their pajamas on and their stuff locked up in their lockers.
Katie gets a text from Sarah saying they need to leave immediately. It’s 4am and they have no idea where they are going to go, but Sarah says they have to. He is looking at her and grabbing himself. They can’t just announce that they’re going because by the time they get down from their top bunks, Eric would be all ready to go with them.
They devise a plan to have one of them say they’re going to the bathroom. As Katie climbs down the ladder, she sees an erect penis and starts shaking. She says she’s going to the bathroom. At the same time, Sarah says that I am texting her and asking them to come meet me.
Katie is already outside the room, and the door is slammed shut with Sarah trapped inside. Eric is between Sarah and the door, and he shouts, “Tell her to fuck off!” Sarah says no and somehow makes her way around him and out the door. Sarah and Katie run together, down the hall to the main door, struggling to unlock it because they are both shaking with fear.
Back to safety
The two of them run barefoot in tears to the square to find me. I’m with two British guys who have an Airbnb with extra couches on their porch where we can stay. We walk back with them at sunrise and sleep for a little until we can call Rino, the hostel manager. We ask him if Eric has checked out, and he responds yes and to hurry home.
When we get back, he tells us that he heard the door slam at 5am and that he went up to see if everything was okay. He realized we were gone and waited up all night to see if we would come back. Eric had left, and he realized we had not returned all night. He tells us that he thought we were all good friends from what he could see but that if something was wrong we should’ve told him and he would’ve kicked him right out.
We try to explain to him that we were just too scared that he was going to hurt us if he had found out that we were upset with him, but there’s a slight language barrier and I don’t think Rino fully understands. Rino gives us all hugs and promises us more homemade wine.
We go and get lunch and try to relax (for the first time in days) at the beach. We get amazing Gorgonzola gnocchi from this place called Mizarola. Later that day, we find out Eric has blocked us on Facebook and Instagram. We have friends check it and are told he has posted pics of us.
Time to split and head to Split
Katie and Sarah get the ferry early in the morning the next day to catch their flight out of Dubrovnik. As they pack, Sarah finds a Starbucks gift card underneath her pillow… We destroy it.
My ferry to Split is later in the day, so I decide to hike up the old fortress to get a view of the island. The ticket is 60 kuna but the view is absolutely worth it.
I feel slightly uneasy splitting up with my friends after this incident. If I had to go through that alone, I can’t imagine what I would have done. I have traveled alone before, though, and know that this was just a one-time, freak situation.
Unfortunately, most of my memories of Hvar are stained by such a horrible experience. It hurts to know that I will forever associate my time there with those memories. Hvar is beautiful, Carpe Diem is dope, the nightlife is a party, the food is incredible. Hopefully next time I’m there, I won’t be followed around by a murderous lunatic.
Lessons Learned:
- Trust your gut. Always, always, always trust your gut.
- If you don’t feel comfortable in your room, tell the hostel manager ASAP (before it’s too late/you’re too scared to).
- If it looks like a weasel, smells like a weasel, it’s probably a fucking psychotic maniac.
- Hugs from a parental figure, homemade wine, and dank gnocchi can really help you heal.
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