Britt Lapthorne - that could have been me...

Not to freak anybody out, especially the parents of travelling children right now who I know are reading this, but I've got to voice this to someone aside from my pot plant, Fido. (He's very good by the way, he sits and stays and everything. He hasn't got the hang of fetch yet though...)

I've vaguely known about the case back in Melbourne at the moment of the 21 y.o. RMIT student Britt Lapthorne. Rather, my mum called me in quite a flurry when it broke news about 2 weeks ago. If you don't know, she went missing in Dubrovnik on September 18th. She was backpacking around by herself, but had met a couple of friends in the hostel that she was staying at just outside the walled city (Dubrovnik is in the southern most tip of Croatia, by the way). She was last seen at a club called Club Fuego.

2 months to the day of her disappearance, I was also in Dubrovnik. An aspiring RMIT student travelling through the city by myself. I even know the club that she was last seen it. It was a dirty Latin Club that had themed nights during the week. It was just on the outskirts of the wall, and was a 'before place' that you went before you went inside the wall city where all the cooler, albeit more expensive, clubs and bars were. It was the Lonely Planet hangout if you get what I mean.

Well, I thought that that was scary enough.

Curiosity got the best of me today. I googled the story.

She was staying at my hostel. The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club. She slept in the same room as me on the bottom floor!! The son that they pulled in for questioning I went on not one, but TWO excursions with to Bosnia. I went snorkeling with him! I rode shotgun next to him for 4 hours while we talked about ex-Yugoslavian politics! He took us all out for nights on the town. The mother was the nicest woman I have met at a hostel - she would wake up at 6am every morning to make French Toast for the early risers. The father is apparently one of Croatia's best chess players, and he SMASHED me at games numerous times. There's another younger brother (not the one being questioned) who has learning difficulties but is a sweetie. Then there's a sister that chain smokes like hell and seems to eat nothing but pistachios; a sardonic, funny girl who I got along with VERY well.

Look back on all of my posts. In the first European one, I think there's even an email sent from that hostel! I remember saying it was the best one I've stayed in, and I MAINTAIN that The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club is the best hostel that I stayed in. That family is gorgeous and I'm so upset that this has come upon them.

They have nothing to do with it, believe me. I lived with them for a week! Ivica even offered to send my vest that I left there to me in Denmark...

The whole phone number thing - it was a nice comfort thing. If we got stuck in town and the buses weren't running or something, we could call them and they'd come and pick us up at odd hours!! And the reporters keep on misspelling their names from the articles I've been reading... Plus, I can tell that they're relying on hearsay, because the way they describe the building, it's clear they're putting photos they've seen into words, as they are just guessing which rooms are which.

And the shit about Ivica (we called him 'Ibizia' coz we couldn't get the emphasis right) being suspicious for being in the surrounding countries at the time - THAT'S WHAT HE DOES. HE'S A TOUR GUIDE!!!

Ahh.... It's a little scary, isn't it? But I just wanted to put my two cents out there. The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club and the family who runs it just happen to be place where Britt stayed. I reckon, from what I've read the past hour, that the police should be looking at the backpackers who abandoned her there instead. Not placing blame, but I think that the people that were with her that night will have a lot more information that the people that give her tea in the morning.

Those guys were the closest I came to family in a hostel. Don't lay the blame!