On my first trip through the former Yugoslavian countries I spent a weekend in Zagreb which I really enjoyed. I thought Zagreb was a nice city and there was a lot more going on there than in Ljubljana. It didn’t have a castle, however it did have a disproportionate number of museums for a city of that size. I managed three of them including what is possibly the saddest museum in the world, the Museum of Broken Relationships.
I got the bus from Ljubljana to Zagreb, I’d booked online and taken note of the reviews and I made a good choice, it was a nice comfortable double decker with tables in it. I didn’t bother trying to go upstairs, there were spare seats downstairs with a table and a man already in the bus (it had come from Munich) helpfully pointed out that the two forward facing seats at the first table were unoccupied. It wasn’t far to Zagreb so I wasn’t sure why it was going to take so long to get there, but Croatia aren’t in the Schengen Agreement so we had to stop at the border and all get off the bus for a passport check leaving Slovenia and entering Croatia. It seemed a bit mad to me that I’d been crossing all these borders in Europe without any passport checks and yet when I transferred from one former Yugoslavian country to another I had to have a passport check.
I stayed at the Palace Hotel in Zagreb, once the hotel of choice in Zagreb for the Hollywood stars, it’s got a lovely old fashioned lobby and very modern lifts that I couldn’t work very well. Instead of buttons the lift had one of these touch panels, like on a mobile phone or iPad, except I kept pressing and nothing was happening! Sometimes it worked first time, other times I was pressing and it just wasn’t lighting up. No one else seemed to have a problem, I must have had too delicate a touch!
I wasn’t bothered about doing too much for the rest of the day, it was almost 4pm by now. I knew several museums were open late, but I had a bit of a wander round and found a place called “The Cheese Bar” off the main square. It only served Croatian cheeses and wines (and some Croatian meats which, as a lifelong vegetarian, I don’t touch). So I ordered the cheese plate and looked for the grape varieties I hadn’t tried before. I thought I’d have a go at the whites that night. There were 4 grape varieties I hadn’t tried before, so I tried them all. They were reasonably priced and all but one were pretty good. I wouldn’t bother with Skrlet again. There were 3 young lasses sitting at the table next to me. This older bloke came in on his own, sat at another table next to them and then imposed himself on them. I could hear him attempting to chat them up. At least he didn’t ask to sit with me!
By the time I’d finished my cheese and wine I just wandered up to the corner of the square where they’d set up a stage for Vintage Zagreb. I’d been able to hear some of the music while I’d been in the cheese and wine place, I was sitting in a kind of outdoor conservatory. But I could hear much better from outside and I wouldn’t have expected to hear a singer and a jazz band playing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” in Croatia’s capital. It was a bit of a strange mix though because all the old cars they had in the square were American ones from the 1950s.
Next day it was pouring with rain all day, so a good day for museums. I started out with the Technical Museum, not normally the type of museum I’d go to and the reason I went was entirely the fault of a Sacramento heavy metal band, Tesla. They named themselves after the inventor Nikola Tesla who was born in Croatia and on all of their albums they gave information about Tesla. So I was playing Tesla music and went to the Technical Museum. It’s the most visited museum in Zagreb because of all the school groups that go there. It also had a large number of parents taking their children there this Sunday morning. I can’t say it really grabbed me. The most interesting part for me was the bit about the environment, sustainable energy and old household appliances. They seemed to have a lot of sewing machines for some reason. There were some cars and planes and the original snowmobile.
There was also a tour down a mine that they’d built in the museum. The only problem was, the tour was only in Croatian. In fact, a lot of the information was only in Croatian. If they’d done the tour in German or French I could have followed it reasonably well, I could have got the general idea in Italian or Spanish, but Croatian, no chance. The only word I could make out was “bauxite”! But walking through the mine was okay.
It was the same story with the Tesla experiments, the man doing the experiments only explained what he was doing in Croatian. So when something happened I could see it, but I can’t say I fully understood what was going on which was a shame.
Much easier to understand was the tragic Museum of Broken Relationships. Everything was in English, a lot of people from Sleaford had contributed, as for some reason, when the museum toured in 2012, it went to London and Sleaford in England. Is Sleaford a particularly bad place to live if you want a lasting relationship?
There were some tragic stories in there, but some amusing ones too, the woman from Colorado who took the toaster when she moved out “that’ll show you, how are you going to toast anything now?” and the lad from London trying to persuade an Australian girl to stay in England by writing a list and first thing on his list was “Alton Towers is quite good”. How could anyone possibly consider going back to Australia after that? And then there was the ex axe where a man from Berlin went away on business for 3 weeks to the States and his girlfriend was heartbroken. When he got back to Berlin she told him she’d fallen in love with someone else and was moving out and would come back for her furniture in a fortnight. He bought an axe and by the time she came to pick up her furniture it was firewood! But there were the tragic stories too. Very good museum. There are a few more of these elsewhere in the world now, but Zagreb had the original concept, this was the first of these museums.
Finally I went to the Museum of Illusions, expensive for what it is, a few holograms and trick rooms with sloping floors or lots of mirrors. I did get a photo of infinite Hayleys which is much scarier than the ghost walk I went on that evening. The ghost walk was a bit lame, the stories weren’t very scary. I’ve been on ghost walks in England, mainly in York and ghost walks are something that we English do very well. So this didn’t really compare. But I got a 2 hour walk around parts of the city I hadn’t seen in the dark, so it wasn’t all bad.
I went back to The Cheese Bar and had my 3 favourite cheeses and tried 3 red Croatian wines, again grape varieties I hadn’t come across before. There were several brands of the most expensive red grape variety I hadn’t tried before and I asked the waitress if there was one she particularly recommended. She told me which one she thought was the best and it wasn’t the most expensive one. I was really impressed, it proved to me that the staff really were committed to giving the customer the best experience and not purely motivated by profit. They brought me a piece of chocolate tart when I’d finished my cheese, said it was on the house, they must have appreciated my interest in Croatian wine and my patronage two evenings in a row.
So all in all, I really enjoyed Zagreb and I would go back there, although I don’t know if I’ll be passing that way again. I will return to Croatia, but as Zagreb is inland and most people head to the coast, the capital isn’t a convenient stopping off point if you’re touring the Dalmatian coast. But if I do manage to get back to Zagreb, there are plenty more museums to go at. And plenty more wines!
I travelled to Zagreb on the first weekend in October 2016.
I stayed at the Palace Hotel in Zagreb, one of the original grand hotels in the city and former favourite of Hollywood stars. It is located in the city centre close to the railway station.
I visited the original Museum of Broken Relationships – the best museum in Zagreb and possibly the saddest museum in the world. Entrance costs 40kn.
I visited the Technical Museum which is the most visited museum in Zagreb. Entrance costs 20kn. There is limited information in English. The museum is located slightly out of the main centre of Zagreb, an approximate 15 minute walk.
I visited the Museum of Illusions in Zagreb. Entrance costs 40kn.
I enjoyed Croatian cheese and wine at The Cheese Bar located just off the main square on Ulica Cesariceva Slapa. All produce is Croatian.
I travelled to Zagreb by bus from Ljubljana with Arriva who are part of the Panturist company. They offer cross border bus transport on comfortable, clean coaches from Munich to Zagreb via Ljubljana. Journey time from Ljubljana is 2 hours 15 minutes which includes the cross border passport check.
For more on my travels in the former Yugoslavia, read about my visit to Ljubljana.
Ljubljana – My First Taste of the Former Yugoslavia