Zagreb

Zagreb was on our top priority list of places to visit while we are living in Slovenia. And no, not because it is a nice city for sightseeing, I actually didn´t have too high expectations about the city itself (knowing it is not a famous touristy place such as some of the towns on the Croatian coast, for example), but there was one thing I NEEDED to see – the macrobiotic centre called Makronova with its chain of health shops, own publishing house, organic label AND a gourmet macrobiotic restaurant, all located in one street in the centre of the city! A couple of friends recommended me visiting this unique place as it is an institute with a pretty good reputation and the restaurant was supposed to be quite awesome as well. Unfortunately, all the classes that the Makronova offers are held in Croatian, yet I wanted to see what it´s like there.

It´s a great thing about living in Slovenia that in the morning you can just get up a bit earlier, grab a little backpack, head to the train station (by bike), travel something over two hours by train to Croatia, see the city for a day, and in the evening go back by train and bike home, arriving around midnight 🙂 Pretty cool I´d say! It´s so close everywhere from here! During the trainride there were some magnificent views of the Slovene countryside (and it was an area we were not familiar with at all, south-east from Ljubljana) and it was bright sunny weather, great for a trip. The only irritating thing were the numerous ticket and document controls, by both Slovene and Croatian train conductors and border police. But we actually managed to go abroad just with our ID cards, to my surprise. Croatia is not yet in the EU, but in many ways everything is arranged as if it already was a EU member – there are also EU flags all over the city, strange!

In Zagreb we headed immediately to the macrobiotic centre – first we visited the shop which carries quite a lot of macro items (besides your usual organic shop goods), we purchased quite a nice unyeasted bread there for a good price and a few other small things.  Then we went for lunch to the upstairs restaurant, which is really fancy looking, I even dare say – it looks pretty damn posh! We were actually really really lucky, because a couple days later we found out that in about a week the restaurant is closing due to relocation and will open in autumn!! We had a very tasty lunch menu (“macroplate”), which was definitely NOT a small portion (as is quite common in more fancy restaurants), followed by some very decadent vegan desserts (which I would not classify as very macrobiotic-style, but they were close to that, anyway). Let´s say we felt very well fed when rolling out of the restaurant!

Then we headed to the tourist information centre on the main square – the very busy Ban Josip Jelacic square with a rider statue of the famous count. At the infocentre they gave us a free city map and also a brilliant little pocket guide, also for free, with very good descriptions of all the interesting places to visit, with some more detailed maps included. Also the system of signs for tourists, throughout the whole centre, is incredibly well done. So thumbs up for that Zagreb! We visited lots and lots of local attractions – the main city cathedral (destroyed numerous times in many ways, but always rebuilt, even now they are reconstructing the building…), a bunch of other churches (which were mostly closed, unfortunately), we saw the parliament and government buildings, the very famous Stone gate – the only preserved gate leading from Lower town to Upper town (which is an important place of pilgrimage, as there is a little Virgin Mary chapel inside the gate with many people praying at any hour of the day), Zagreb´s medieval (and still functioning) pharmacy, the renaissance defense walls built against Turkish invasions, the Lotrščak tower (from which a cannon fires every noon), the Strossmayer promenade with a beautiful tree alley, the funicular leading from Lower town to the promenade (with is 66 meters it´s the shortest passenger cable railway in the world, it was out of order though :-p) and many other smaller sites. Among them was also the Dolac marketplace which is pretty huge with its fruit and vegetable, fish, meat, cheese and other sections, but it was unfortunately closing down by the time we managed to get there. Still, Nardo bought a little woven basket for his sourdough bread rising process 😀 It was a day of long walking and absorbing a lot of information, so in the late afternoon we sat for a while in one of the pubs along Tkalciceva (the most picturesque and touristy street), with a local Karlovačko beer – refreshing, but the beer itself is not too great! 😀

Since we knew we won´t get to Makronova anytime soon (if ever again) we also chose to have dinner there, this time from the regular menu, and again it was very good! After dinner we had a bit of time, so we spent part of it observing people from a bench in the beautiful old Zrinjevac park, contemplating what a great day it was. We are so lucky we can travel, in such moments you can fully realize it… Zagreb was definitely beyond my expectations – I can´t speak for the city as a whole, as we didn´t have time to see that much of it, but the old centre is truly charming. And the pace seems very relaxed, not too busy, which I like a lot. Would be nice to go there once again…

Meanwhile, I am preparing for a trip to Czech Republic next week, to see my family and most of all to check out some apartments in Brno, the city we picked for our future life (hopefully at least for a year or two). There are some that we would really like to rent so it´s better to go see them and possibly reserve them if they are to our liking. I am going on my own, using the Prevoz website again (going by carshare from Ljubljana), as Nardo will be travelling to Holland just two days after my arrival. I am only going to be away for five days. Wish me luck with the flat hunt!!