Advertisement
After leaving Sarajevo we headed up to Zagreb for a few days. We’re trying to make it a bit closer towards the top of Eastern Europe (i.e. Hungary & Poland), before our InterRail tickets run out, which sadly means we'll have to give the Croatian coast a miss this time.
The train was an older train. Air-con came in the form of opening the window in the carriage and then opening the window in the carriage hallway, and trying to create a wind tunnel though the train!! I learned that trick on the previous train by watching this old guy! However, this only works when the train is moving, and as we would spend SO MUCH time stopped at stations this knowledge seemed pointless. I share it though with anyone who may find it useful.
The train trip was relatively long. Thankfully I had invested in a new game on my iPhone called ‘Bounce’ - Nicola was green!!
We were hoping to get some sleep along the way but that idea didn’t pan out too well, due to the passport control into Croatia, where we were asked several times by armed police to show our passports to the
authorities.
In Zagreb we stayed in a nice hotel called the ‘The Movie Hotel’ about two miles from the city centre. After travelling for several countries over the last number of weeks, it was time for some R&R!
We spent the next 3 days just lounging around the hotel / city and just taking it easy. So much for adventure backpackers! We went into Zagreb during the week on the tram. Zagreb is a small city with a big main square. From here you can pretty much walk around the city centre in all directions. We spent some time strolling around, stuffing our heads with ICE-CREAM and drinking coffee. Hey, when in Zagreb!!…. That’s all the locals seem to do; every coffee shop, everywhere in the city was full. It was like the entire city was on vacation. Trams would come and go casually, in a way you would expect in a small town. It was like we were at the edge of the city as opposed to the slap-bang in the centre. There were many people sitting around just watching the world go by! - Yes and we joined them on a bright Saturday afternoon.
Zagreb
is pretty easy to get around; there is an efficient tram system, one which even I could follow; though I couldn’t quite figure out when the number 14 (our train) was due…
We have been trying to expand out taste pallets by trying some new food every now and again. We had lunch in a pub in the city, where cold cucumber soup with an ice cube in the middle (yes an ice-cube) was on the menu... Its a good as its sounds !!! and probably the oddest thing we had eaten in a while. The waiter was very shocked when I didn’t finish it. I originally tried to hide this fact by putting my napkin into the bowl (that’s always a neat trick when you can’t eat your food). HAHA... he was too clever for me and called me out… Doah!!
What always amazes me is the taxi-tourist relationship in many of the countries we have visited so far… Arrive at station in Croatia - get taxi to hotel = 80 Kuna (~€11). Then leaving Croatia - taxi from hotel to train station = 39 Kuna (~€5.50); Go figure…!! Capitalism in all its guises is out in force here…
The weather here over the last several days has been mixed; hot but cloudy and frequent thunder storms from the heat. It gave us a chance to wind down before we venture further a field.
Other than that, Croatia was an enjoyable pit-stop to recharge along the way. I am pretty much up to date, so I hope you've enjoyed reading this so far! - Onwards to Budapest in Hungary to see what's in store for us there!!
Some Trivia *Croatia like many other Eastern European countries is steeped in a complex political history.
The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the close of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state.
*Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0448s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb