Zagreb

I am endeavouring to catch up so will stick mostly to photos for latter part of this post.

I took the the train from Ljubljana to Zagreb which was pretty straight forward. I was stuffed into a cabin in the carriage with some locals and young French chap who didn’t speak. Haven taken in some views through the window I took the opportunity to catch up with some Netflix on my phone, a nice escape from the sticky heat. The train was supposed to be air conditioned but it was roasting (about 10 minutes before the end of the journey I looked up to see a temperature control which was set heat rather than cool!!)

Three quarters of the way through the journey a Croatian man in his 60’s tried to strike up a conversation. He looked a bit like an unemployed Father Christmas who’d fallen on hard times. Enormous white bushy beard and rosy red face. You’ll have to imagine the Balkan accent but he opened with: ‘Internet…..why?’ Which he reiterated a few times. A profound question I wasn’t entirely sure I was equipped to answer. He had me stumped and I didn’t really have a response. In between some incomprehensible Croatian words he kept then repeating ‘people’. We continued to engage in some limited discourse where upon I worked out that he was essentially telling me off. I think his issue was that I should have been enjoying the ‘beautiful movie’ out of the window rather than on my phone, a fair point indeed but I had window-watched, read my book and it was a lengthy journey.

He later directed me to his cargo that he was guarding between his legs:

It was an enormous flagon of some sort of presumably homemade concoction, the only thing he had with him. Clearly on his way to a party

Arriving in Zagreb I’d booked myself into an unusual Hostel, an actual train carriage on platform 6, convenient as this just meant crossing the station upon disembarkation. It was cheap and looked like a novel place to stay.

The only down side was that it was hotter than the Sun, as you might imagine sleeping in essentially what is an enormous tin can. There was a primitive cooling system:

This did keep part of my little toe cool in the night but wasn’t entirely effective in any other regard. Despite being very basic, and losing several litres of sweat overnight it was definitely a great place to stay for a night but I sought cooler accommodation the next morning.

In Zagreb I explored the city and tried to learn a little about the History both recent and going back further. The city was originally two rival towns situated on hills overlooking each other separated by a ricer which was the cause of occasional conflict. They later made peace and merged to form modern day Zagreb that sprawls out from the two hills. A few highlights:

St Mark’s church in the old town

Zagreb is one of the few cities which still has gas powered street lights, around two hundred which are individually lit each evening by understandably grumpy men.

The main Cathedral – still under construction and has been for decades. It was built in Limestone which eroded and so is being slowly renovated with sturdier stone.