Zagreb

After some thought i figured i would head to Zagreb. The train ride to Zagreb ended up being a really good experience, the train was running an hour late and i ended up speaking to this young guy who was from Croatia, we got on quite well so on the train ride there him and a girl who was in our carriage filled me in on a few interesting facts about the area and the people, like how Croatia and the surrounding areas were once called Yugoslavia and filled me in on the Bosnian war. it was a little hard to take it all in but it was all really interesting to hear it from a the point of view of someone who lived here and had friends that grew up amongst it. he was saying that now Slovenians and Croatians don't really get along he was saying its quite common to get group emails telling them not to buy Slovenian products and when Croatia tried to join the EU Slovenia protested to slow down the process, well that's what they believe anyway, crazy huh!
it was funny, i was asking them what they were doing while in Ljubljana and it turned out the girl was visiting her boyfriend who is Slovenian. i asked her if it is hard to date someone that's A) in an different country to you and B) is technically her enemy. she said it was hard especially because she is a bit torn as to what she wants to do. she wanted to stay in Croatia and help rebuild her home with the knowledge shes gained from studying but then on the other hand she wanted to be with her boyfriend and earn the EURO so she could get ahead. by the sounds of it Croatia is in a strange situation of 'there damned if they do, and there damned if they don't' because there currency is pretty weak but if they join the EU they have to close 4 of there 5 ports because of an agreement in the contract which means the loss of many jobs. i think interesting times lay ahead for Croatia. another little fact they told me that i like was the currency they use here is called Kuna which i think the rough translation means fur because that's what they used to trade in. on there 2Kuna coin they have a little weasel kind of thing which is the animal they used to skin to trade with.
they asked me where Ive been traveling, so i told them about where i had been and what my plans were, they couldn't get over it and said that they couldn't even dream of doing a trip like that. it wasn't until then that i realized how lucky i was to be doing this trip and that i shouldn't really be complaining about how tired i was from traveling, because so many people don't get this opportunity. anyway, they were both really lovely and helpful, the guy even walked me to my hostel. i didn't think of it at the time but i didn't even catch there names.

the security at the border was a little over the top, both Slovenian and Croatian border police checked our passports and it was all very serious, i was a little surprised, through out all my traveling around Europe hardly anyone had checked my passport and now they were being really thorough but i suppose this was an exception, it was the first border to and from the EU.

first observation was how religious Croatians are, they had a small church kind of area inside the train station! while i was walking around i found a little spot under a bridge that had a fresco of the virgin Mary with candles all around it and people praying, because it was dark and it was only lit with the candles it was quite an interesting place. there was another church that had the Croatian coat of arms in the tiles in the roof which was quite interesting and there was a big cathedral, but i didn't really rate it much.
second observation was there are so many Museums here, they seem to have a museum for anything and everything its a bit ridiculous really.
third observation was how they park there cars here. they don't have any parking so they just drive as close as they can to the side of the road, stop there car and put the hazard lights on.

there's not really a hell of a lot to do here in Zagreb so i just wandered around and saw a bit of the town. the area starting from the train station up to the main square is nice, the majority of the buildings were quite old but still well looked after but in parts are a bit run down and have graffiti on the walls. it was nothing to rave about, i felt it wasn't until i went behind and beyond the main square that it started getting interesting. there was a mix of really old and really new. the old buildings were better looked after and it looked like they had just built a big shopping centre with all the big names in it, like Chanel, Dior etc. i was a little bit shocked in some ways, after what i had seen before, i didn't expect to see brands like that at all. the neighborhood seemed to be in a transformation, i wouldn't be surprised if i came back here in a couple of years time and they had converted the old factory's into apartments, it could potentially be a different city, which i think is a good thing, but i hope it doesnt change so much that it loses its idenity.

the second day i was here i found out that Croatia were in the final for the European Handball Championships against France. the streets were buzzing and there was a sea of white and red checked shirts (the same as Croatian flag) in the main square. the place was going off, over night they erected a huge screen and stage, it was nothing like the place i walked through the night before. so a few of us from the hostel braved the snow and watched the game on the big screen. there were a couple from Brazil who were really into it, the girl actually used to play professionally for Brazil. part of the group were 2 girls from New Zealand that have Asian background, i get the feeling Zagreb doesn't get too many tourists from Asian because everyone stared at them, it was quite incredible (more about the two girls later). the atmosphere was really amazing, the crowd were jumping up and down and chanting stuff that sounded a little bit like this. unfortunately for us Croatia lost. it was strange because to me its just a game, sure it would've been nice to win but it wasn't the end of the world, but to the Croatian people it must have been, i spotted a few people crying and everyone was really silent. a bit extreme don't you think?

Zagreb is built at the bottom of a mountain range and because of the weather at the moment a couple of us from the hostel went up to check out the snow. we originally wanted to go skiing because its pretty cheap to do it here, but we couldn't find a store that would hire out wet weather gear. it didn't really matter, we found a toboggan when we got up there so had heaps of fun falling off that. i couldn't get over how white it was up there, there was a huge dump of snow and everything was covered, it was really pretty. up the top of the mountain was a little restaurant where we had lunch, we found out later that the place we went its one of the best places to get really good Croatian food, which was lucky for us. we asked a local guy who was sitting near us what to have and he pretty much ordered for us, the food was brilliant! we had a sausage thing that was wrapped in cabbage with a sour sauce with mashed potato. it kind of reminded me of the food i had in Hungry, which is not really surprising considering how close the two countries are. as some of you may or may not not know, before this trip i used to be a Vegetarian, but i decided that while i was overseas i wanted to try foods from all over the world so i unvegetarianised (is that even a word?) myself. im actually glad i did, especially here, mainly because i think i would've been hard pressed to find a food without meat in it.

now i mentioned the two New Zealand girls before, i have never met anyone with this much bad luck. while they were traveling in Spain one of them got there wallet stolen, so they canceled her card and used the other girls card until they got there new one. but then on the over night train to Vienna they both fell asleep and the other one, the one that had the bank card, had her whole bag stolen. so they ended up getting stuck in Zagreb because that's where they had to change trains to go to Vienna. so they have been stuck here in Zagreb for a week waiting for there cards to turn up. luckily for them, they arranged with the hostel that they would pay for there stay once they get there cards, which were being sent to the hostels address.
but then one night the guy that was working her got incredibly drunk and i believe, even though he denies it, ate some of our food that we had all brought together for dinner and threw a lot of it in the bin, we asked him what happened and how it got like that, and he had some pretty lame excuses (at one point he kind of sounded a bit like Vicky Pollard from Little Britain) because he was drunk he totally lost his shit and told the girls that they had to leave in the morning because he thought they said that he did it (even though we all thought he did it, we never said that he actually did) at one point i thought it was going to get violent, thank god it didn't but it put a whole dampener on the evening and the time we had spent there, up until that point it was a pretty fun place to stay because the other owner of the hostel was really cool, but after that i was kind of glad i was leaving the next day. anyway, the next morning the guy apologized to the girls and told them they could stay on, obviously after that instance they didn't really want to stay but did anyway because of there bankcards.

before i got here i heard that Zagreb was voted 'Europe's most boring capital' and i could see how it could be normally, but Christ, after everything that happened while i was here, for me, Zagreb was far from boring. Next stop Belgrade.