Kumrovec: Small village that produced big leader

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There was a moment where Yugoslavia was once a big power, and within that moment there was this big leader who made it happened: Josip Broz, as we know more as Tito. As I usually would argue with Kiki or Ginger-head or any other friend about Tito's political view or something like that, I would not now. Not this time. This is going to be just the place where the big leader came from.

It was late October Kiki and I hit the road on Sunday morning, had decided the day before for a trip to Kumrovec, a small village in Zagorje area. I've read a night before about this museum we were about to visit, it's called Muzej Staro Selo, literally means Old Village museum. The idea is that the whole village is now serving as an open museum, providing visitors with visual description of how the old life in the village was. One of the houses in the museum is the house where Tito was born and raised.

We arrived around 11, and we had 3 hours to wander around the village since the museum closes at 2pm on weekends. The ticket cost around 20 kunas if I am not mistaken. When we passed the main gate, the first thing caught our eyes was this big house on the right side that happened to be the Tito's house. There was a statue of him in front of the house, which was full of bouquets and candles from the visitors. Inside the house, there were lots of pictures of Tito, his furniture, and clippings of papers about him back then. There were also photographs of him with other famous leaders. This house provides a guest book that visitors can leave comments or anything.

We moved on and start to visit other houses in the village. I was pretty amazed of how they pay attention into so many details in the museum. Every house here represents different kind of house in the era. For example, there is a baker's house, complete with the pizza oven, old baking equipments, and replica of different kind of breads. There was this potter house with all the ceramics making tools, the carpenter house with the workshops and artworks, the bride's house with the wedding ceremony and buffet dinner party, the farmer house with the barn equipped with replicas of fruits, wheat, and vines, and many other things. By the way, not only each house represents certain activity and fully equipped with the tools and decorations, but also there are mannequins or dolls in every houses modeling what the real people doing their jobs. Lovely, and very educative with all the explanation in English and German about every activities.

Done with all the houses, we decided to take a walk around the village one more time. Kiki made sure that we didn't miss any single house to visit. He is way more into history and museum than I am, so he had to make sure he gathered every information the museum gives. I do love the stuffs in the museum, but I have to admit that I loved the village atmosphere itself more. There was small rivers flowing with few bridges above them. You can just take a walk, breathe in fresh air, and listen to the water falling on their little streams. It's just so damn peaceful and tranquil. It was a bit cold because we came in October, but we promised we'll come back during spring.

To end the trip we decided to try a local cuisine in the restaurant right at the entrance way. We ordered a boiled strukli for each. Strukli is this local Zagorski pastry that has fresh home made cheese in between the layers. Usually the strukli I've tried before was baked. This time we decided to order the boiled one. It took a while for the order because they made sure the meal was freshly served from scratch. We had coffee while waiting (I don't know why we didn't have beers as we usually do), and when finally the food came, it was just so fresh, smoking, and smelling delicious. The boiled strukli has smoother texture than the baked one, very creamy with the cheese half melting, tastes buttery and little bit salty from the cheese. It was served in the cooking pot, some kind of ceramic pot for making a stew. It was lovely!

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Photos

For Tito
The flowers and candles lighted by visitors under Tito's statue, in front of his house

Zagorski Wedding
In the bride house, there was a dinner party of a traditional wedding model, serving traditional foods and musics

Tranquility
Even if you hate museums, coming for a walk and a cup of coffee is a great refreshment for the busy week