"Zagreb - the Capital City (2004&2005)" Zagreb by edwis

The city of Zagreb is divided into three parts: the thousand-year old Gornji grad (upper town) which contains the Presidential Palace, the historic church of St. Mark's, the Croatian parliament, and the many museums and galleries which are all set in cobbled streets lit by gas lamps; the 19th century Dolnji grad (lower town) with its shops, restaurants, cafes, theatres, parks; and the modern area which is full of high-rise buildings and basically has nothing to offer us tourists.
Zagreb has been called a city of museums as there are more of them per square foot than any other city in the world. It seems like you always start out your exploration of Zagreb from the main square which is named “Trg Bana Jelacica”. From there you will be within walking distance of all the major attractions.
On our first trip over, we finally flew into Zagreb after the unplanned stopover in the Czech Republic. Now arriving in the capital city, we have to have a one-day / one-night see-it-all visit. Our taxi driver from the airport turns out to be sincerely nice local fellow who speaks pretty good English. Along the way from the airport to the city center, he shows us the new American Embassy building complex. The place was under construction for quite a while and now has barbed wire high fences all around it. He says every one thought it was going to be a new prison during the past year from the looks of it. We laughed with him and agreed. He was a good guy, agreeing to pick us up the next morning at 4:45 am, for a trip back to airport.

We do a Joan/Ed afternoon walk of 4-5 hours from the Sheraton to the city’s main square, then into upper town, and then descend a thousand or so steps to check out lower town’s shops and cafes, and all the sites in between. Along the way we grab a walking cheese burek from a street deli. The counter man assumes we are Germans and starts speaking German to us. I guess that there are not many “Amercains” around here. We visited the 1000 AD very gothic Katredrala, which has Cardinal Stepinac entombed in glass right on the altar. Joan kneels down and lights a candle remembering her Catholic upbringing. We found lots of steps; it seems like we were always going up in this old town. On the way to find St. Marks which is the old church with the famous red and white mosaic roof tiles in the design logo of the Croatian flag, we come across the country’s parliament building (Kaptol). There were a lot of black suits standing around (secret service types) and several new large model BMW’s with blue lights on their roofs. We later saw that the regular police drive Volkswagen Polos. I thought that was a nice contrast.

old buba in Zagreb

After wearing ourselves out on our self-guided city walk, Joan goes to the Hotel’s health club. We find that it has a drinking and heavy smoking bar right at the main entrance leading into the “health area”. Smoke fumes seemed to part of the workout, but didn’t bother anyone except us. I get a massage from a young drill sergeant lady who put me into a lot of pain (really). I moved my arm once which I thought was going to be helpful to her, and sternly told me “I’ll tell you when to move”.

We were chatting with the main hotel guy who recommended an authentic Croatian ‘Restuaracija” for dinner, which we really enjoyed. To get there, we had to walk back to old town and we sat at an outside table in “the garden” under the umbrellas and trees. There were two older guys playing live music, and we finally communicated to the waiter that we would order the specialty of lamb, veal and roasted potatoes simmered for hours under the iron bell. Fantastic! Our waiter also recommended the Croatian salad which we then had everyday somewhere in Croatia – 1/2 shredded cabbage 1/2 vinegar soaked red cabbage, topped with cucumber slices and fresh tomatoes. None of that American waiter’s BS asking you which salad dressing you want – it just comes the way it is supposed to be; just shut up and eat it. All this great food plus a bottle of good Croatian Pos’ip wine and the bill comes to $46.00 US + no tipping. When the cab driver came for us very early the next morning, we heard live music playing from the main ballroom of the hotel lobby. There we found a wedding party with about 10 folks still leftover from night before singing and dancing at 5:00 am!

Another time in Zagreb, we had a nice Tagliatelles (pasta) with shaved truffles at a restaurant that was set in a park-like area, complete with a little creek and a walkover bridge get into the place. This is where I did my grandfatherly duty and taught Luca how to spit into the water from up on a bridge. Here you sit outside amongst all trees and listen to live old time Croatian music in the courtyard. I wondered how come I saw Tagliatelles on most menus in Europe but never in the USA.

Museum of Natural History

We booked a room at a fairly nice hotel in Zagreb, partly based upon it having an indoor swimming pool. When we got there, we found out the pool was under renovation, as was the parking lot auto-pay mechanism and several other features. But the nice room did had a shower that actually had 2 shower heads, side by side, coming out of the wall. And there was free internet connection in the business center so that got them some plus points. I took a cab from the hotel to the airport one morning, and the cab driver charges me about $4.00 US extra special fee because it was a holy day (Feast of the Assumption). I fell for it and paid.

Croatia’s famous discovery was the invention of the necktie for men. Evidently some Croatians dignitaries visited Paris in the early 1600s andn there silk neck scarves became the rage and resulted in today’s ties for men. They sell silk ties everywhere in the Croatia shops many of them with ancient designs.

We know that in our Polish heritage, our family name ‘Wisniewski’ (say Vishnefsky) means ‘from the land of the cherry trees’. In Croatia, we found that there is a sour cherry pie called a ‘vishnef’; then later in Brussels, I ran into a young cashier who saw my credit card, and came out to tell me she was from Poland and that our name is very common there.

And what is it with these countries? After 10pm, there is some pretty graphic porn on several of the TV channels. Since I couldn’t sleep well I had to stay awake until after 2 am on several nights, just doing a little extra research and study of European late night TV. One memorable show was a German sex-talk, call in type service. The ads were live girls doing their explicit stuff right there. Even though it was in German language, I seemed to understand most of what they were trying to sell.….. Also, being with little Luca a lot, I got to watch several of the German daytime cartoon shows - Mickey Mouse is Micky Maus, ‘Bob the Builder’ is Bob Baumeister. He loved them all, with the language not being an issue.
“Volim Hrvatsku”