CC Travel Blog

It took two hours to drive from Plitvice Lake National Park to Zagreb. We first passed a village with waterfalls below it.

Balkans’ history is like a box of bittersweet chocolate. When Napoleon ruled the Balkans, he gave the region a lot of rights such as the right to use its own language and the right to sell properties. When Napoleon was defeated, the Austrians took over and the governing became more harsh.

In Turkish word, bal means honey and kan means blood. In the 16th century, the Ottomen ruled the Balkans. We drove pass a village that still suffered from the war and what was remaining is an old building full of bomb shells.

In Yugoslavia time, Tito is the dictator president of the country but because of his iron fist the people are not slaughtering against each other. He kept Yogolsavia as a socialist country and today some people have the nostalgia of the old country because of the socialism, free education, free health care and cheap housing.

This sets a good stage background for us to understand Croatia’s capital Zagreb. With over 1 million population, Zagreb has 20% of the country’s people in one city.

As we entered the city, I felt that the suburb of it is already quite new.

Public transportation around the country heavily relies upon bus, here is the main bus station in Zagreb.

For museum lovers, they can easily spend a few days in Zagreb.

We started our tour of the city in their cathedral. Although called a cathedral, it is only 190 years old, still a young baby compares to Balkan’s rich history. However, it was built on the same spot where the old cathedral went down. The new structure was built by sandstone which is so soft that it requires constant restoration.

Near the entrance of the cathedral there is a panel of Glagolitic scriptions, the original language in Croatia.

The mosaic next to the glass window is probably the oldest and most precious of the church.

Behind the altar, there is the tomb of Alojzije, who helped with Croatia’s independence but when he had some disagreement with Tito, he was imprisoned till death. After Tito died, he was re-enacted to his original title of the Archbishop of Zagreb. Today, people pray to him for health related problems.

Inside the cathedral there is also a white statue crafted by Ivan Mestrovic to mourn for Alojzije when Ivan learned about his good friend’s sad news. Ivan at the time was in the US, the people in Croatia shipped him the stone and he crafted it and then shipped it back. During the time, Tito was still alive so people had to hide the statue in a closed area until Tito passed away.

The organ pipes in the church has over 6000 pipes, and it was used to ship to Vienna for the Christmas mass until recently that shipping becomes costly and problematic.

The three gold chandelliers were devoted by someone who won the gamble games in Las Vegas. He wanted to donate some money to the church and to prevent misuse of his contribution, he ordered these huge chandelliers. The story caused a debate in the city as whether the church can accept gamble money; at last when the chandelliers prove to be so big that nowhere fits them the cathedral took them in.

Outside of the cathedral, we made a turn and saw the open market at the foot of a church.

Passed the open market, we arrived at the cafe street where it is full of restaurants and cafes. At one end of the street there is a sun clock. Zagreb used to have lots of sun clocks in the city, but now there are only three remaining after the war.

Zagreb’s old town had two parts and was connected by a bridge. Later the bridge was filled to build a road to combine the two districts together. That is the name “Krvavi Most” or “blood bridge” in translation.

As we were walking on the street, a balcony caught our attention. It was built in the 17th century; women at the time wore big dresses and the shape of the balcony allows room for the dress to fit in. It is these little details that tells us how people lived in the city and enjoyed the tour of the place.

We took the road to uphill and it is the only road that keeps the original cobbles.

At the end of the road there is a Saint George statue which is different from all other St. George of Europe. Most of the St. George statues show what he is famous for, fighting against the dragon; while in this one, the dragon is already dead at his feet. Some people joked that the dragon looks like a lizard.

Next to the statue is the Stone Gate. Stone Gate is the only two out of three gates left and it is to the south of the city. The gate was burned down before but miraculously the St. Mary painting inside was not damaged, so people built a shrine to pray.

Passing the Stone Gate, to our left hand side, we saw on of the four oldest pharmacies in Europe. There are sayings that this is the second oldest pharmacy in Europe but there are no actual age order of the four pharmacies; so to be accurate, this is one of the four oldest in the continent.

At the end of the road, we reached St. Mark’s Square. This is an important square as it has government buildings such as the government office (yellow building) and paliament.

In the center of the square is the St. Martin Church. The church is quite remarkable due to the roof which are made of tiles from Hungary. During the Yugoslavia breakup war, the Bosnians bombed Zagreb three times, once at the government building, right next to the church but did not cause any damage to the church, which gives us a great deal of luck to be able to see this beautiful work today.

The graphs have meanings. The red and white checkerboard comes from a legend that Croatia kingdom won the land through a chess game. The three lion heads represent the brave Dalmatians who always fight for their freedom among all the rulers. The animal on the graph is a marten, which represents trade because of its expensive fur. Today the Croatian currency kuna coin still has the animal printed on.

Left out of the Square is the City Hall. A few statues are on the outside of the building, including a great inventor Tesla.

Next to the City Hall is the Naive Art Museum. Naive art is quite popular in Japan as well as in northern Croatia tribal cultures. The main character of the art is the lack of scale and that the paintings are usually found on glass with oil.

Zagreb has 136 street lamps or latterns and they are still gas based. Every night, the lattern staff will walk around to light them up one by one.

Across the street to the left is the St. Catherine Church, a baroque style church. It is the most popular wedding church and it takes 10 months for the reservation. The interior of it is all pink and the local kids call it the “barbie church.”

A block forward we saw the city’s panoramic view of downtown.

The green roof yellow building is the Zagreb Opera House.

Among the buildings is a high glass building. As it turns out it was from teh Yugoslavia period which it was covered with aluminum, which proved to be quite an achievement at the time but looked ugly and unfit to the overall ambience. Then after the war, the rich Austrians bought the building, tore down the aluminums and covered it with glass. Today it becomes the most expensive office building of the city.

Another interesting building is a Jewish building saved by a rich Jew who demanded to put a Jewish symbol on the construction instead of his name, hence the roof design.

And this is the Cathedral building as well as the Catholic church where the open market is under.

As we looked back, there is the only remaining tower of the city with a cannon on the top window. Every twelve o’clock the cannon will fire shots as a 400 year old tradition. The locals will check their watches once they hear the cannon.

On the hill top road, there is also this silver statue of a famous artist who is also a bum and a drunkard.

Although Zagreb is a very safe city, it has a problem with graffiti. Kids after disco hang out like to put grafitti on walls and the city is attempting to resolve the problem by installing cameras on the walls. Thankgoodness if that’s the only problem Zagreb has!

Make a right turn from the graffiti street we ended at the main plaza of downtown, Jelacic Square. In there we saw new and odl trams and two brands that we delt with the most so far, the supermarket “Konzum” and the Croatian chocolate “Kras.”