What was on the list after Rijeka? Zagreb! Croatia had yet to show me its capital.  

What kind of city is Zagreb? A very classic mid-Europe city. You can feel the Hapsburgs’ presence everywhere here. This means very elegant buildings, airy squares, trams, and outstanding bakeries which windows look like museums!

However, Zagreb, like the rest of Croatia, seems to have an Italian spine. The entire city center is covered by pizza corners! Pizza slices here, pizza restaurants there, if you are in need of a pizza, you will never run out of resources! And yes, it’s good, especially after a pub crawl…

The Pub Crawl

Yeah, the pub crawl. For Zagreb, I planned something different. I decided to book a party hostel for the first night and then chill in a private Airbnb for the next two days.

If I knew it before, I’d have gone directly for the Airbnb. But apparently, I still don’t want to admit that I don’t like indulging in binge drinking, nor I enjoy engaging with strangers in cheap talk. Hostels can be great, but most of the time, you end up uttering the same canned material. It’s always about the country you’re from, the stereotypes surrounding it, and the questions on why you don’t embed such stereotypes.

What was so bad about that party hostel? The Whole Wide World Hostel didn’t have anything wrong per se. It’s in a great location, few steps from Ban Jelačić Square and its staff is friendly and welcoming.They even have a karaoke, which I enjoyed pretty much.

I must confess I was a bit anxious. This was the first time, since the beginning of my therapy journey, that I was going to challenge my social anxiety at such a level. I just repeated to myself: “This is just one night. If it sucks, tomorrow is another day and you will be safely in another, safe place.”

I entered the hall, where people were already socialising. I bumped into the very owner, a high energetic Scottish dude. He must have been already well in his 50s, but his energy was highly juvenile. The gentleman was engaging in the final stages of a beer pong game and right after I got in, he invited me to be the “pro” of the next game: “Give this man a beer and a ping pong ball!”

And then the game began: me paired with a kiwi girl, vs two young Dutch bros. What an epic setting!

The kiwi and I led since the first 4 shots. I guess most of you know how a beer pong game works, but I’ll still explain briefly for those few who never experienced this fundamental step into adulthood.

You have 10 cups each, placed onto a ping pong table, to form a pyramid in front of you. Each cup is filled roughly for 1/2 with beer. Each time a team manages to throw a ping pong ball into the opponent’s cups, the opponent has to drink that cup.

Simple, right? If you have good sight and good aim, it’s pretty easy to hit the first cups. The challenge is when 1–2 cups are left. Those cups will look like they were cursed. You hit; a mm away. You correct the aim; the ball bounces on the border and then falls below the table.

The game was being a landslide for my team, but after leading by 7 cups, the opponents began to catch up on us. Comebacks are always part of every beer pong game. You miss those last cups while the others hit the target, so you have to drink and your aim gets worse and worse.

Eventually, we won by exhaustion. It was time to start the pub crawl and we were leading 3 cups to 1!

There was just time for a couple of karaoke songs, while the ping pong table was being put aside.I opened the show with American Idiot by Green Day. I think it’s the perfect tune for a place full of young rebel folks who are just discovering freedom.

One thing I love about karaoke sessions is that you can discover songs you would have never heard of otherwise. This is even truer when you are in a crossroad of cultures. Two German guys sang a German song named Atemlos by Helene Fischer. Their singing was the classic karaoke singing; horrible! But the tune sounded so evocative. Despite their performance, I craved to listen to this song and… wow! It tells you how music is a universal language! Yeah, lyrics are important too, but it’s the music that travels across borders!

And then the pub crawl began! What can I say? I didn’t find a particular group or a buddy to bind with. I quickly fell on the side lines, drinking on my own. Already the third stop convinced me to give up. It was the rakia bar and man, rakia can be really persuasive if you are in a bad mood. Two shots and I was already in a dark place, in the Upside-Down from Stranger Things. All the will to socialise vanished in the haze of alcohol.

Another Day in Zagreb

After one year of therapy, it was easier to accept the situation, put it into context, and walk back to the hostel without drama or regrets. Abort mission. Tomorrow is another day…

And it was! I met my Airbnb host in front of Dubronvik hotel. His name was Marko, an old gentleman from Zagreb, who’s using his pension to invest in real estate. Wise man indeed. Zagreb is growing, like every place in Eastern Europe, the new China. The future is here. Think of China, but with freedom of expression (except for Orban’s Hungary).

The apartment was awesome! A studio in the very center of Zagreb. Clean, spacious, equipped with everything and watched by a giant picture of Erling Harland wearing a Breitling watch. It makes you feel safe. What better guardian than Haaland?

What to do in Zagreb

Nikola Tesla’s Museum

You can’t leave the city without paying a visit to Nikola Tesla’s museum. No, you won’t find a Tesla car, you will find a cool demonstration about the incredible inventions by the man who created “wifi electricity”!

Great, isn’t it? And the museum offers many other technological artefacts from the 19th and 20th century, when mankind was developing real technology. Technology to grant humanity more resources and increase its over-all well-being, not to spy on you and understand what you want to buy, before you even know it.

I don’t want to be a nostalgic grandpa and I admit that today there are still folks developing real technology and even developing tools to put Silicone Valley “technology” in check. There are more Nikola Teslas today than during his time. They are simply not famous, because nowadays you can be famous as a scientist only if you “shock” your audience with definitive “truths” or if you’re an utter asshole that voices against this and that category.

Anyway, in the Tesla’s Museum you have plenty of old fashion cars and I couldn’t help from thinking how classy those cars used to be. They whispered to my ears and told me “why don’t you buy one of us and turn it into an electric car?”. That’s actually my dream. I want to buy an old VW Beetle and turn it into an EV. Then, I’d cover it in graffiti, something very colorful, 1960s reminiscent. Something like this:

I don’t use psychedelics, but those drawings are too beautiful.

In this museum you will find also machinery used for coal mining and an interesting tour about mining in general. Mining is seen as the worst of the evils, the very act of pillaging Mother Earth. And it’s true to some extent. However, without mining we wouldn’t have the world full of comforts we live in. We wouldn’t even have the very internet we use every day to vent about our frustration with this unjust world and the destruction it pivots around.

Damn, I could have never been a miner. Those tunnels were too low for me. Yes, under the museum you can explore a reconstruction of coal mine tunnels. It’s a true work out. The deeper you go, the more you need to crawl. Don’t do it if you’re claustrophobic.

Krivi Put Bar

Zagreb has a vibrant and active CouchSurfing community. Just turn your Hang Out option on and you will be in some nice group ready to hang out in no time. My luck was that the hang out I was in was led by a local. Or at least, she used to be a local. Born and raised in Zagreb, Lea moved to Kenya some years ago to start her brave NGO. Nowadays, she takes care of an entire community in Kenya and she personally hosts like 20 foster children in her home. Lea is a very brave person, with a strong personality and an incredible story.

And Lea is wise too. She proposed to meet all at Krivi Put, an outdoor bar which is literally behind the Tesla Museum.

Krivi Put is a typical student bar, with punk vibes, colourful tables, and laid-back atmosphere. However, it also stores excellent local craft beers, so it’s perfect also for travellers of a certain taste. Don’t be shy, just walk in and sit at table. People are very friendly here and sharing a table with them is not a problem.

The first to arrive were Lea, the hangout leader, and Karo, a girl living in London holding another cool job. Karo creates artificial voices for Spotify! Goddamn it! It’s so thrilling and I believed her when she said how much she loves her job!

The group was soon completed by Yuri, a Ukrainian software engineer, Marko, a Serbian student living in Zagreb (and he’s happy, don’t worry), and Lisa (I hope I remember the right name), a British girl traveling around Europe for a while. Good chemistry with this group. Good moments, good laughs, deep topics, and funny topics alike, passing by with good Croatian beer. Oh, and if you grow hungry, you can catch a nice slice of pizza (again) right in front of Krivi Put, at Fini Priz, the fast food ready to save your stomach at every hour!

Thanks, guys for a lovely evening!

Walking Tours: A Simple Way to Get Around

Karo proposed a walking tour for the next day and I decided to follow her. And Spotify’s voices were right. Sometimes, walking tours are the easiest, most pleasant way to explore a city. I wish I took this tour in my very first morning in Zagreb. But wait… How could I have done it, after that reckless pub crawl? Never mind. The tour was hosted by a very talkative and enthusiastic man, named Robert. Born and raised in Zagreb, Robert is very proud of Croatia, beside being very knowledgeable.

The meeting point was at the weather station, an elegant device dating back to Austria-Hungary. The Hapsburgs donated the device to Zagreb, so the citizens could be informed about the current temperature and other parameters, in an era when smartphones were not option.

I wish I took more photos during the tour. You can tell I’m not the classic tourist. I was too focused in listening to the curiosities Robert was sharing with us. Among many:

I wish I took more photos during the tour. You can tell I’m not the classic tourist. I was too focused in listening to the curiosities Robert was sharing with us. Among many:

- The attempt of Nikola Tesla of electrifying the lighting in Zagreb, a mission sabotaged by the local oil lobby, which feared the electric revolution. Same old story of lobbies vs innovation. - Nikola Tesla is subject of eternal dispute between Croats and Serbs over his nationality. Everyone wants to claim the genius scientist (and his own accomplishments) for their own prestige. The dispute grew stronger these months over the intention of Zagreb’s government to put Tesla’s face on the new Croatian Euro coins! - During March 2020, Zagreb was not only affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by a magnitude 5 earthquake, which damaged its historical center, including the iconic cathedral. Some speculated that the earthquake was a punishment for locking down pubs and bars. When these were closed again during the second coronavirus wave, a second quake hit, making the claim more credible. Since then, Zagreb didn’t close its pubs anymore and no more quakes happened… - Ulica Tkalčića used to be the red light district and a very dirty one. Now an avenue full of top rated restaurants and clubs, Tkalčića was once an open air sewer, where a stream of the Sava river passed by, collecting the waste of the ill-famed neighbourhood. - Croatia is the country responsible for strangling men all around the world for two centuries. How? Because it was in Croatia that the neck-tie became the distinctive men’s clothing accessory. The tie originated precisely in the 17th century, from Croatian mercenaries’ fighting in the Thirty Years’ War. These soldiers wore cloth bands around their necks, a detail that caught their contractors’ eyes, the French. It didn’t take long for the necktie to become the new sensation in Paris, and when a fashion item becomes cool in Paris, it becomes cool everywhere else. Gradually, this self-hanging device became the standard of elegance for every respectable man in the West and beyond.

And after this series of oddities, I found the time to have an engaging conversation with Ruđer Bošković, a prominent scientist from the 18th century. He’s well regarded in the astronomy and physics fields, as the man who calculated orbits and planet sizes thanks to triangulation, aka using a maximum of three observations, a great feat of deduction.

Parks & Tunnels

What else can I say? Zagreb is a fun, vibrant city, even beautiful, thanks to its several parks beaming green from every corner. I can’t say I’d live there, but I’ll definitely visit more in the future.

Just to add a cherry on top of the cake, I decided to prolong the walking tour on my own with the Gric tunnels. These were built during the early days the tragic Yugoslavian Wars that devastated the Balkan region during the 1990s.

The tunnels are open to the public and they are accessible for free. Today, they constitute an handy shortcut in the heart of the city center, as well as an acoustic curiosity for loud kids… During the 1990s, these tunnels meant shelter from the bombings, a spectre that is coming back in the flesh these days…

After the walking tour, it was already time to head to the bus station. I was heading to the final stage of my first trip across former Austria-Hungary: Budapest!