"Love at first sight - Zagreb" a Zagreb Travel Page by sabsi

While talking to Nikša (diocletianvs on VT) I heard so many nice stories about Zagreb so when I heard that there were great deals with Germanwings I decided to go on a pre-christmas city break in December 2004. It sounded like my kind of city somehow.

I arrived on a typical grey Zagreb winter day and the grey colour would remain. I didn't care that it was grey and cold though - I fell in love with the city straight away. There's so many nice things to do that I was running out of time. The people there are very friendly even though I had some communications problems with most of the locals.

I am quite sure that being a real tourist (without my local VT guides Nikša, Zdenka and Boris) I wouldn't have liked this place half as much and I probably wouldn't even have seen 1/4 of what I saw in my 3 1/2 days in Zagreb. They were definitely a big "part of the experience".

Thanks for everything Zagreb people. I can't wait to come back ... and next time I will bring some sunshine. That's a promise!

Sabs

When I returned exactly a year later for a long weekend I was shocked. Zagreb greeted us with blue skies and I had no chance to show "real" grey Zagreb to Thomas, it was sunny all the time while we were here. cold though. Which doesn't mean that we didn't have a great time. Even in the sunshine Zagreb was as relaxing and nice as the year before ;-) When I read my old intro to this page I had to smile. I even promised to bring sunshine the next time. So I guess it was all my fault...

This time I showed Thomas around town and he immediately was equally enthusiastic about this place as I was. It might have been because of cheap great coffees and the great food though ;) During this trip Niksa had organised a day trip to Opatija at the coast for us. It actually was the first time I have ever seen the Mediterranean Sea at the age of 33.5 years. I loved the Istrian coast but I enjoyed Zagreb even more this time!

Unfortunately this trip ended with an emergency landing back at Zagreb airport after one of our plane's engines exploded when we were on our way to Cologne already. So we turned around and even though I had been in Zagreb only twice I had landed at Zagreb Airport three times. The last time landing felt better than ever, all the panic had disappeared suddenly. We had survived and went back into town to calm down a bit even though it was hard work. It took several sips of the Schnapps I had bought at the Duty Free shop as well as a last dinner at our favourite restaurant, Boban's, before we could relax a bit on the night train to Munich... I had refused to get back on the plane in order to fly home and happily have never set a foot inside a Germanwings plane again afterwards!

We came back 1 and a half years later, this time by car. Where could we start our 4,500 km road trip through Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia better than in our favourite "hidden secret" Zagreb? This time we came in May and Zagreb wasn't grey at all. The city welcomed us with sticky 30°C, sunshine and blue skies. Terraces were everywhere and the city was much more alive than in winter. We weren't. It was a bit too hot for our taste so we spent our day in Zagreb in the terraces of our favourite cafés and in the cool shops of town. A day was rather short so we came back for a few hours after two weeks on the way back. It almost felt like coming home....