Chillin' in Zagreb

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Zagreb, Croatia
When we left Germany, it was somewhere around 23:00, and the trip to Zagreb was going to be about 8 hours, which meant we had two choices - sit up in chairs all night or pay extra for a sleeper car. We'd sat up in chairs before. We paid extra. I had never slept on a train, so I was excited to see if it was as cool as everyone had ever told me. 

Now, there are two types of sleeper cars. There are the ones where you can have a private room, and then there are the ones where you have to share with others. I've never been one much for sharing sleeping space with strangers, so we paid for a private one. Except.....when we got on the train, we found that somehow our private space had morphed into one designed to sleep six that we were sharing with two other people. Now, that was bad enough, but remember all that luggage we had? There was absolutely no way it was going to fit in that small room with two other people and their stuff, minimal as theirs seemed to us. 

We all just stood there looking at each other, and I can just imagine what the other two were thinking about all that junk and that small room. It's like we had all suddenly become paralyzed.

Finally, breaking the awkward silence, one of the other pair, who were not together by the way, pointed out that ours was the only room on that entire car that was occupied! That's right. All the others were empty. 

Try to visualize this. Four people and their luggage all standing in the doorway of a room about the size of a bathroom staring into said room, no one wanting to go in, luggage piled everywhere, while every other room in the car was empty. Get the picture?

Finally, one of the others went to see the conductor about doing something about it who said that after the train started that maybe he could move us into separate rooms. So, into the room we all crammed, with Bill and I leaving our stuff outside blocking up the whole aisle. What else were we to do? There was no way it was going in that room. 

Well, the train started, and we discovered that the "maybe" part of the conductor's statement revolved around us each paying him 7 extra euros to move us. Hmmph. Extortion it may have been, but we gladly paid it and moved next door where we had an absolutely heavenly night's sleep. The rocking of the train and the click-clack of the wheels rolling along was like being rocked in a cradle and hypnotized at the same time. Just as wonderful as I'd always heard. Never again will I sit up in a chair all night if I have the option to sleep in a bed.

We arrived in Zagreb at 7:00 and had a layover of about 6 hours, so we stored our luggage in a locker and set out to explore a little of the city and find a cafe for coffee. Sort of an aside: as much as I liked Freising and Munich, I was sooo happy to be back in Croatia. The Croatian people are some of the friendliest, most helpful people on the planet. As a perfect example, just as we were standing in front of the lockers, with it plainly obvious that all of our junk would not fit into one, not one but two people came up and pointed out to us that just a little ways down the room were bigger lockers for the same price. They wanted nothing in return. They were just being their friendly, helpful Croatian selves. I really do love this country.
 
So for our 6 hours in Zagreb, we basically just walked from one place to sit and drink coffee or soda to another. But along the way, we passed a farmer's market with flowers (I took pictures of them this time), ended up in the middle of a protest and craft fair, all in the same place, and saw an innovative way of dealing with the fact that the cars have outgrown the wideness of the streets. Pictures will easily tell these stories...
   


























 






 

 


One last thing. I did not get pictures of any of this man's work, but if you are ever in Zagreb, look this artist up - Hrvoje Marusic. He makes incredible die cast jewelry. We saw him in the street craft show. And if you cannot get to Zagreb to find him, his website is www.toka-hr.com.
The only thing is that it's in Croatian. So figuring it out might be an adventure. PS. A friend tells me that if you use Google Chrome, it will translate the page for you. 


Next stop: Milna.

Comments

liz
2012-04-18

Helpful hint: if your readers use Google Chrome, they can choose to automatically translate the artist's page. Once the choice to translate has been made, it will automagically render the remaining pages on the site in English :)

jsarracino
2012-04-18

Thanks, that's good to know. I use Safari, and it didn't give me that option, so I didn't know that. I'll add that info. to the entry.

2025-02-09

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