Jenna and I had seen the area around Zagreb's train station very briefly on a stopover between Budapest and Sarajevo, and that brief taste whetted our appetites for a longer stay.  It was balmy, lively, full of elegant buildings, welcoming outdoor café-bars, and cosmopolitan green spaces.  Zagreb delivered on this promise and more.



Transportation in Croatia is, frankly, horrendous.  In addition to the delay that left us stranded in Sarajevo, and the tedious, permanent lateness of the intercity buses, our trains to and from Zagreb both had service interruptions requiring us to change over to a bus at least once, and delayed us both ways.  Luckily, we made it into Zagreb in time to meet our host, Alen, and even grab a quick coffee beforehand.

We met Alen in the city's main square.  If he wasn't Croatian, you'd want to describe him as all-American.  He's square-jawed, bright-eyed, tall, and brawny, with a wholesome, cheerful disposition.  He was instantly likable.  Alen recently got his Master's in graphic design and works as an animator.  We walked about 20 minutes to his apartment, talking about the massive bike tour he and his girlfriend, Petra, took through France, Montenegro, and the Adriatic Coast of Croatia.  This trip culminated in a punishing overland foot race through the rocky, mountainous terrain of Montenegro.  Alen doesn't talk about it with the boastful, challenging machismo I've encountered in extreme sports types.  To him, a few thousand kilometers on a bike is just good, clean fun.  I respect that a lot.

Alen got a phone call from Petra a few minutes before reaching their nondescript apartment block.  Petra graduated from the same program as Alen.  "It's her second day of work," he told us.  "She just got this job.  She says she will be home in a short while."  Moments later, unlocking Alen's door, we heard a girl's voice greet us from the bottom of the stairwell.  A slim girl with a head of gorgeous red hair bounded up the stairs.  However, this was not Petra, but Lucija, Petra's friend and the couple's former classmate.

"I missed my bus today," she said apologetically.  "I'm really sorry."


Lucija (pronounced "loot-SEE-ya") had been staying with Petra and Alen for a few days before we arrived, applying for jobs and doing some freelance design work.  The art-and-design industry is hard to find work in anywhere, but in Croatia, where the overall unemployment rate is around 20%, and even higher among young people, it must be extremely difficult.

It was our gain that Lucija missed her bus, because she became our personal tourguide for our time in Zagreb, making it a much more interesting and memorable experience than it would have been if we'd explored on our own.  The three of us got along great; we had a natural and easy friendship almost immediately.  With her blue eyes, freckled complexion, and red hair, Lucija looks more Celtic than Slavic.  She's frank and funny, and speaks with a disarmingly charming lisp.  When we realized she'd been sleeping on the bed in the living room - where Alen had told us to set our stuff - we tried to offer it to her.  "We have sleeping pads," I said.  "It's no problem at all for us to sleep on the floor."

Lucija politely declined.  She refused, we insisted out of politeness, until she said, "Don't be a jerk.  Someone offers you hospitality, you should take it."  Not everyone could pull off this kind of directness with someone they'd just met, but she hit the right pitch of facetiousness - and, of course, she was right.  We were just arguing out of decorum.

We sat down with Alen and Lucija to decide what to do with the evening.  Jenna and I were hungry, so dinner was our first order of business.  We went to the grocery store and bought some vegetables for a quick stew.  When we got back, Petra had arrived.  Her second day of work had, apparently, been tiring, but she was happy not to have to work late.  "Yesterday," Petra said, "I had to drink Coca-Cola to stay up late to work."

Coca-Cola is enough of a stimulant to maintain Petra well into the night, which is not wholly surprising, given her high level of energy and activity.  Coffee is almost too much for her; it has to be taken lightly and early in the day.  Petra is eager and happy, physiologically elflike and delicate.  She and Alen are a good match for each other.  Physical activity suits them, and they get along very well.  It's fun to hear them banter and playfully argue.  They are obviously very happy together.


As we were preparing dinner, Alen remarked, "I love this word - garlic.  If I have a child, I want to name him Garlic.   It would be so bad ass."

"It's not bad ass at all," said Petra.

"No, it's so badass!  Gaaahrlic!"  He held his hands in front of him to grip and rev air handlebars.  "Garlic - on the chopper!"

The food was simple and filling.  Our Croatian hosts are omnivores, but enjoyed our vegan meal anyway.  After dinner, Lucija took us out with her downtown.  She wouldn't be leaving until the late afternoon the next day, she told us, so she volunteered to take us around the city.  She asked us what we wanted to do in Zagreb.  Honestly, we didn't know.  I had expected Zagreb to be little more than a rest stop between Split and Venice.  We named some museums for which we'd seen signs earlier in the day.  We had only the most bare-bones ideas, but I could see the gears turning in her head as she formulated a plan of action.  "I will have a surprise for you tomorrow," she said.  "There's a special place that I will take you to see."

We took a tram (for free; ticket control in Europe is pretty lax in comparison to the States, and especially so in Zagreb) to meet Lucija's friend Ana, who was hanging out at the bike syndicate.  The syndicate is what we in the U.S. would call a co-op: a volunteer low-cost or free bike shop created to promote bike awareness in the community and teach people maintenance and repair skills.  Ana looked at home in this radical community - a no-nonsense vegan girl in a punk festival t-shirt and square glasses.   She's quietly confident in her skills and ingenuity, a true DIY spirit.  She doesn't seem like the type of person who needs instructions or outside corroboration to begin a project.  For instance, the morning after we met up with her, she took a 200 kilometer bike sojourn, unaccompanied, into Slovenia.  Having passed through Slovenia by train, I can vouch for the impressiveness of this feat.  Slovenia is mostly vertical.

We left the bike syndicate and headed to a bar whose Croatian name I can't remember, but it translates to "Wrong Way."  The seating was mostly outdoors, which was lovely on such a night.  It's a social hub for Zagreb's alternative youth.  We sat together and talked until about midnight.  Ana persuaded Lucija to stay the next night, offering her her couch, which meant that Lucija would be around the whole next day and evening.  We all decided to meet at Ana's house the next night, after Ana returned from her ride, and cook dinner before going to a punk concert.

We woke up fresh and ready for the day at 8:30.  Jenna and I had grapefruits and coffee with peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Peanut butter, as I may have mentioned before, is unpopular in Continental Europe.  It was available in Berlin, but this might be because of its large immigrant population.  Elsewhere, it's only available in health-food and Asian specialty stores.  Lucija had never had peanut butter before.  We talked her into trying some.  "It's really unhealthy, right?" she asked.

"Well, it's kind of fatty, yeah, but you don't use very much of it, so it's okay.  It has a lot of protein," I said, amazed that we were about to introduce a grown woman to an American staple.

"I thought it was kind of a junk food, because in American TV people are always eating peanut butter sandwiches, like a snack."

Her initial reaction was surprise at how sticky it was, but the verdict was positive: she had seconds.

We got back on the tram downtown.  Lucija had taken our meager ideas from the night before and woven them in with her own favorite places in Zagreb to make a very carefully planned, awesome schedule of things to see and do in the city.  It was amazing how smoothly the day went, and we saw much more than we would have without her, but never felt rushed.

We began the day walking through Zagreb's promenade, stopping at one of the city's most prominent cathedrals.




Lucija pointed out one of the inscriptions on the wall inside the church, explaining that it was written in an ancient Croat script used prior to the adoption of the Roman alphabet.


Croatia was the frontier of Christendom, bordering the Islamic Ottoman Empire.  Catholicism is traditionally important to the Croats, and partially defines Croatian national identity in contrast to its former Yugoslavian confederates, the Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians.

We passed by St. Mark's Church.  Its appearance is unique, to say the least.  A newspaper clipping we saw in a museum later in the day describes it as "Legoland Gothic," which is about right.


Lucija then led us to an overlook providing a panoramic view of the cityscape.



The surprise she'd mentioned the night before was near here, she told us.  "You have to wait a few minutes for your surprise," she said, grinning mischievously.  We walked and waited for ten minutes or so.  We were perplexed, but happy to wait and look at the spectacular view.  Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion.  I ducked.  There is a special quality about weapons fire that makes it hard to mistake.  A backfiring car or dropped plank of wood can make you wonder if a gun was fired; a close-range gunshot leaves no doubt in your mind.  The sound is compact and physical, felt as much as heard.

Of course, this was Lucija's surprise.  Every day at noon, a small cannon, barely noticeable poking out of a   window in a tower behind us, is fired to mark the hour.

Do you see the cannon sticking out of the top window?  We didn't either.

As soon as I realized what was going on, I show Lucija - who was very pleased with herself - a mock dirty look.  It was a great surprise.

Shortly after getting off our train the day before, we had seen a municipal sign indicating the direction of the tantalizingly-named Museum of Broken Relationships, along with other city attractions.  We asked Lucija about it, and she mentioned that she had never seen it before and would like to.  The Museum of Broken Relationships is an archive of mementos of failed relationships that were too sentimentally precious to throw away, yet too painful for the sundered parties to keep.  Some objects were donated cathartically, to bid good riddance to a miserable pairing, others still hold the pain of unhealed heartache.  Each display has a note from its donor explaining the meaning of the object.  Some were humorous - a bottle of "intimate shampoo" is labeled, "After the relationship ended, my mother used it for glass polishing.  She claims it's absolutely great."


Others are angry, like the axe used by a jilted lover to destroy her girlfriend's furniture.


There are remnants of one-night stands and decades-long marriages.  The most heartbreaking selections were from those mourning the death of a partner.  Especially touching were two poems, one by the wife and the other by the daughter of a man dying of a hereditary disease.

Can of Love Incense.  Label: "Doesn't work."

A clock, set nine hours ahead.  A remnant of a long-distance relationship.

After the museum, we were peckish, an eventuality Lucija was, of course, prepared for.  Our route took us through Zagreb's fashionable see-and-be-seen shopping district, near its central square, where we'd met Alen the day before.  The sun was shining; the day was perfect.  We ate at a vegetarian fast-food place called Green Point, where seitan sandwiches were under $4.00, and "hot dogs" even less.  It hit the spot.  I was jonesing for coffee, so Lucija took us to an out-of-the-way subterranean jazz café called Bacchus.


We sat on the terrace beneath an umbrella and enjoyed our espressos in the company of the café's resident cats.

Then we were off to Zagreb's free botanical gardens, which we strolled through at a leisurely, talkative pace in the warm afternoon sunshine.





We grabbed a bus back to Petra and Alen's neighborhood to see a contemporary art gallery called Lauba House, but it was, unfortunately, closed for a fashion event.  "Sorry," said the slim, horn-rim-wearing girl at the reception desk.  "At least it's a nice day outside.  Go enjoy the sunshine.  Get some pastries," she suggested.

It seemed too good an idea to pass up.  We caught a bus back into the center and to a restaurant called Vegehop, where we had stunningly good vegan pastries.  I had something called, I think, a Schwartzwald Cube (or something like that - I remember it sounded more like a geometric paradox than a dessert), which was a heavenly combination of tart maraschino cherries (the kind we rarely have in the U.S.), vegan whipped cream, and fluffy chocolate cake.


Jenna had a "Danube Wave," which was more or less the same as mine, but more chocolate-y.


Thoroughly indulged, we accompanied Lucija on a shopping errand, then to Petra and Alen's, where we hung out with them for a bit.  After Lucija had gathered her things, we got some ingredients and went to Ana's apartment to cook dinner.  Ana wasn't home yet.  She had sent Lucija a text message saying that she was still in Slovenia, but she'd left a key for us to get into her room and cook.  The sunset was just fading behind the skyline.

We had a great time cooking and talking over Thai peanut rice noodles.  Ana seemed less and less likely to make it home, and finally texted Lucija that she was going straight to the punk show without stopping in for food and would meet us there.  The three of us whiled away the time hanging out on Ana's couch and listening to music (something I've hardly done since leaving Philadelphia, I realized).  Lucija is great company.

Unfortunately, the only train that we could take, reasonably, to Venice left before 7 AM, so we had to opt out of the punk show, which didn't start until 11.  We said our goodbyes to Lucija and walked back to Alen and Petra's apartment.

After we packed our stuff for the next morning, Alen showed us two short "trash films" he'd made with his friends.  Entitled Pink Carrot and Pink Carrot 2: Party Time, they pitted four gay spandex-wearing ninjas against a six-foot-tall murderous rabbit (actually Alen in a rabbit suit) in a gory, no-budget fight to the death.  They also showed us their photos from their bike tour, which were incredible.  Petra is an extremely talented photographer, who recently had an exhibition at a gallery in downtown Zagreb.  The photos, depicting mind-bogglingly beautiful scenery, were also well-composed works of art.  Alen shot and edited a short video of their journey, and I will end this post with their astounding footage.