May 16, 2012

Visiting Zagreb and the Museum of Broken Relationships




Like so many of the Central and Eastern European cities, Zagreb is part hip, sophisticated city, part small-town village. Perhaps it's a throw-back from the Communist years, but Zagreb feels like one vast outdoor living room.

This is a city make for walking. With the exception of a few main thoroughfares reserved for electric trams, the streets and squares belong to pedestrians. Dozens of cafes- the majority selling only coffee and drinks rather than food - draw crowds from early morning to late night.


We arrived by train from Split via the new fast "tilt'' train that curves around the tracks, cutting what used to be an eight-hour trip through the mountains to about 5.5 hours. Unfortunately our train developed a problem and we had to take part of the trip by bus, then get back on an older, slower train for the final leg of the trip to Zagreb.

We walked out of the railway station and hopped on one of the free trams going to Jelacic Square. A group of teenage boys were putting on an awesome break-dancing performance. All around were young people, dressed in the latest fashions. What a surprise. No signs of leftover Communist-era dreariness here. Zagreb looks and feels like a young Vienna or Budapest.


Our home for two nights was an $80 apartment on Radiceva Street, a pedestrian street halfway between the Medieval upper old town and the modern lower town.


The owner, Jasminka, met up with us only briefly to give us the keys, but from the way she furnished the apartment, she seems like someone who would have been nice to get to know. Persian rugs decorated the floors and a travel poster from Iran hung on a wall between two windows facing the street. In a typical Croatian sleeping arrangement, twin beds covered with orange spreads were on opposite ends of the room.


One street over was Tkalciceva Street, a long pedestrian promenade lined with cafes and restaurants where we ate a tasty risotto with asparagus and fennel at Ivica Marica, one of the few places along Tkalciceva selling serving anything more than popcorn or chips to go along with a long list of drinks.


The people-watching was especially good at the Dolac farmers market, three-floors of stalls selling produce, cheese, meats and flowers. We went there for a breakfast of coffee and cherry strudel our first morning, then shopped for some yogurt, pastries, fruit and milk to bring back to the apartment. Vendors were generous in handing out samples. When I asked about the differences among three types of dried figs, one offered me a slice of each. Of course, we bought a few of each. We especially liked a variety dusted with a light coat of flour to keep the moisture inside.

Our apartment was halfway between the lower town and the upper town of Gornji Grad, reachable by walking up several short flights of stairs or taking a one-minute ride on a little funicular that was out of service.

The upper old town is the prettiest part of Zagreb, yet it seemed eerily quiet, more showpiece than living city, filled mainly with churches and baroque-style mansions housing museums and government buildings.

Guidebooks fail to mention which may be the most interesting museum in Zagreb, one we'd been curious about even since seeing it among the listings of sites on a sign near the train station.

Prague has its Museum of Communism. Berlin has its DDR Museum. Zagreb has its Museum of Broken Relationships. This is neither a joke or as sad as it might sound.


The museum is the work of designer and artist Drazen Grubisic and film producer Olinka Vistica, business partners whose four-year romantic relationship ended about six years ago.


"We asked ourselves, 'What are we going to do with all the stuff,' '' says Drazen. They came up with the idea of starting a traveling art exhibit made up possessions donated by people who would accompany the donations with personal notes about what led up to their break-ups and what the items symbolized.


"We observe just about every important occasion with some sort of a ritual," says Drazen, pictured above.  "But when you break-up, that's it."

Now with a permanent home and cafe inside an 18th century baroque palace in Zagreb's upper town, the museum continues do traveling exhibitions (this year in New York and Boulder, Colorado) and acquire more items and more stories. The collection includes around 1,000 items, 104 of which are on display in Zagreb.

One of the first items visitors see is a furry white wind-up rabbit – a relic of Grubisic and Vistica's own relationship, which ended six years ago.

"We traveled a lot and one of us would take it wherever we went," Drazen says. It was meant to travel the world, but made it only as far as Iran where Drazen photographed it in the desert.

In one room labeled "Rage and Fury'' hangs an ax donated by a woman in Berlin who used it to chop one piece of her girlfriend's furniture everyday for 14 days after the woman left, then went on a two-week holiday.


About 70 percent of the items have been donated by women, 30 percent by men. The exception is items coming from Turkey. Most are donated by men, something Drazen credits to changing cultural attitudes.

In a room labeled  "Rites of Passage'' is a blue chiffon blouse worn by a woman from Ireland on the day her husband took her out to lunch to tell her he was leaving.  In the same room is long, silky dress purchased by a Croatian woman to celebrate her 8th anniversary.


She never wore it because her husband broke up with her two weeks before.

"May it dance with teddy bears, wedding rings, love letters and other people's boxer shorts, but without me," she wrote. "I have to dance my dance somewhere else, away from it."

I'm sure I'm not the only person to have wandered through here thinking about what I might have to offer if I were ever in a position to do so. My choice would be easy. It would be a leather key ring I've been carrying around for the 35-plus years since my husband gave it to me for Christmas one year. A friend criticized it as a "cheap'' gift, insinuating that I could do better than marry Tom.  He was wrong, of course. Our marriage has lasted, and so has the key ring.


Here's a link to our photo gallery

May 10, 2012

Hello from Split, Croatia's second-largest city


Hello from Split where we arrived after a short and scenic bus ride along the coast from Sibinek. Split is Croatia's 2nd - largest city and a major transportation hub, so we expected it to be busy, but we weren't prepared to see thousands of people on the streets, singing, marching in a parade and floating baloons. As it turned out, we arrived on the feast day of St. Dominus, Split's patron saint, a holiday equal to 4th of July or New Year's back home, fireworks included.


Besides a beautiful coastline and seafront prominade, Split is known for Diocletian's Palace, the 1700-year-old, still-inhabited retirement home of the Roman emperor Diocletian, a Croatian, who built his retreat inside what is now the bustling Old Town center filled with hotels, cafes, museums and shops.


Much has changed, of course, but people still make their homes in the former residences of nobles and wealthy merchants. Streets and walls are made of thick slabs of stone, and the whole area is off limits to cars. Shops selling everything from stylish shoes to handmade chocolates line a network of narrow, pedestrian-only alleyways.

Sleeping inside the palace walls has its pros and cons. We rented a fourth-floor room from Tina and Ivo Saric, a father-daughter team who own Base Rooms above their little souvenir shop in a refurbished building next door to what was Diocletian's Temple of Jupiter.

The narrow alley leading to their shop is sometimes so crowded with tour groups we have to stand in line to get to get home. Around the corner is the Peristyle, the "palace square'' in Diocletian's time, used today for everything from the Croatian equivalent to the Occupy Movement to tango dancing.


The advantage of being right here is that we're able to walk out our door and find a seat on the steps for nightly guitar concerts at the Luxor cafe decorated with columns made of the same color rose stone Diocletian imported from Egypt.

Across the square is Diocletian's former mausoleum, converted to a cathedral in the 7th century, and topped with a 200-foot bell tower that took 300 years to build (and still wakes everyone in the neighborhood up at 6 a.m.!)


All of Split became a street carnival on the feast day, with vendors setting up stalls along the waterfront, and people relaxing on sofas and chairs at the outdoor bars and restaurants.Tina told us this is the one day of the year when everyone stocks up on cooking utensils, mainly wooden spoons and spatulas, and parents buy wooden toys for their children.

The action at the "Jupiter'' bar, just behind the temple, kept us awake until around 1 a.m. No complaints, though. This is a great time of the year to be in Croatia. The weather is warn and sunny, and after the feast day celebration ended, there were few people around. It was if we almost had the town to ourselves, with the exception of a few tour groups, mainly German and Japanese. There was no wait to climb 180 steps inside the bell tower. When we reached the top, we heard music. It was the sound of an a cappella male choir performing below in an area of the palace Diocletian used as the entry to his living quarters.


Tina and Ivo have been interesting to talk with. Tina is an artist, and her father at first bought the building to use as an art gallery. Later, he added three rooms, all nicely equipped with new bathrooms, TVs, Wi-Fi and computers, for about $80 per night. Both Tina and Ivo grew up in Split and seem to know the answers to just about every question. Split takes its name, Ivo explained, from the latin word for a yellow flower that once carpeted the hillsides.

For dinner, Tina recommended a local restaurant called Fife, in a neighborhood called Varos, near the harbor. We sat at outdoor picnic tables. Tom ordered pasticada, the local specialty, made with potato dumplings and slabs of pot roast. I had stuffed sweet peppers and we shared a half-liter of the local white wine. The whole bill was less than $30, and we ended up going back twice. We liked the food, the prices and the mix of locals and tourists. It's interesting how some restaurants treat travelers in a way that says "We're never going to see you again," and others treat you like loyal customers. Fife treated us like regulars the first time around, so that's what we became.


Getting weighed in public was not one of my goals for this trip, but Tom did his part to support the local economy by stepping on this woman's scale. She charged two kuna, about 20 cents, and seemed to have a steady stream of customers. I thought it was interesting that she parked her scale each day across from a bakery selling pizza and pastries.


Walking off all of this food and wine has been easy. Beyond the town center are parks, waterfront paths, beaches and hilltop pine forests. From Varos one morning, we hiked to Marjan Hill, a lookout reached either by climbing a long series of steep steps or walking on a path that follows the coastline. This was the view from one of the cafes along the way.


While walking, we heard a man yell out "Welcome to Croatia,'' and looked up to see him and his wife standing on a ledge next to an iron fence. They invited us to climb up and join them for a look at the home of a wealthy soccer player. We did, although we had no idea who the player was or why we were looking at his house. They seemed impressed, and that was good enough for us.


Beautiful sculptures by Croatian artist Ivan Mestrovic decorate many parks and gardens. We spent a pleasant hour or so visiting a museum in a house he built for himself in the Marjan neighborhood. Above is his huge statue of Bishop Gregory of Nin that sits outside one of the palace gates. His big toe is worn shiny from people rubbing it for good luck.

Here's a link to our photo gallery

Next: Onto Zagreb on the "tilt'' train.



May 5, 2012

Sibenik and Krka National Park

Every once and a while a traveler gets lucky and finds a little gem of a town that the guidebooks manage to skim over or leave out all together. Sibenik is one of those towns. Of course, it pays if you know someone whose name is Lucky.

We were looking for a small-town coastal stop between Zagreb and Split, and discovered Sibenik, a mostly pedestrian waterfront town with a Medieval town center developed by the Venetians in the 15th century. It's been easy to meet people here, thanks, as usual, to where we're staying - an apartment managed by owners of the local a hostel, Hostel Indigo - rather than a hotel.

Maybe the reason Sibenik doesn't make it into the guidebooks is that there are no big resorts - fine with us - and few places to stay within the oldest part of the city. I found Hostel Indigo on the Web and wrote to ask about the possibility of a private room. The owner, Lucky Ujevic (His Croatian name translates into Lucky in English, so this is what he uses) wrote back and offered a newly-renovated apartment next door to the hostel in an old stone building on a street too narrow for cars.


Lucky is a former journalism teacher, and he and his wife, Nina, and their son, Lorenzo, are great examples of Croatian entrepreneurship. The Indigo, with four rooms (four bunkbeds in each), has been around for about a year. Business must be good because Lucky, above on the left, recently opened another hostel, The Globe, next to the bus station. Lorenzo, above on the right, along with helpers Ivan and Maja, runs the Nostalgia Cafe, a cozy place with an outdoor courtyard where we had our best meal yet - fried sardines, grilled mussels, grilled meats, vegetables and the local white wine - all for about $30.



The town is beautiful, with its little waterfront cafes, preserved churches, a Venetian town hall, monasteries and a web of stone alleyways leading to the ruins of a castle overlooking the sea. The old streets and alleys are paved mainly of stone worn smooth over the years. As always, however, it's the people that make Sibenik special. Most everyone speaks English, so it's easy to communicate, and since tourist season hasn't yet kicked in, the locals seem relaxed and have time to talk.

This is Martina Goreta who makes and sells fritule, little donuts flavored with chocolate, cinnamon or marmalade. She starts around 9 a.m. and finishes around 9 p.m., a pretty typical workday, especially in-season when the whole coast will be much busier than it is now. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon when most of the businesses were closing for the weekend, but there are some interesting shops here including one selling religious icons and another some very creative wearable art clothing handmade by the owner.



Sibenik is a convenient base for exploring Krka National Park, twenty minutes away by bus. We left early and spent a day walking and hiking along the Krka River. The waterfalls here are amazing, and unlike Plitvice, it's possible to get very close to cascading water almost eveywhere you walk.



Krka was the site of a hydroelectric dam that began production in 1895, and up until the 1980s, some locals still used the falls as natural washing machines. People argue about which is best, Plitvice or Krka, but they're very different, and both are worth visiting for anyone who has the time.

We bought a cup of cherries from this man who had a stand set up on one of the trail. If we didn't have to worry about the liquids ban in our carry-ons, we would have bought some of his homeade fig and almond schnapps.

Needless to say, we're working up an appetite doing all of this hiking. Dinner was sea bass, local lamb and grilled vegetables on the terrace of Gradska Straza, another one of those Sibenik finds the guidebooks seem to have missed.


Here's a link to our photo gallery

Next: Off to Split






May 4, 2012

Dobar Dan from Croatia

Dobar don (Hello!) from Croatia. This greeting works all over the former Yugoslavia, which for those of you who have asked, is where we are - across the Adriatic from Italy and right below Austria and Slovenia.

Croatia gained its independence in 1991 and is about to become part of the European Union, although it still uses its local currency, the kuna, rather than the euro. The war with the Serbs over who should occupy certain towns and cities ended 17 years ago. Memories still linger, of course. Take a ride through the countryside and see abandoned villages once occupied by Serbs and abandoned homes pock marked with bullet holes. But 21st-century is Croatia not only safe and peaceful, it's a bargain for travelers compared to Western Europe.

Tom and I last visited Croatia about nine years ago, and at that time, visited Dubrovnik as well as spending time in Bosnia. This is a short 10-day trip for us, so we had to make some hard choices: A short visit to Plitvice Lakes National Park, then onto Sibenik, a small town on the Dalmatian coast; the Roman city of Split; and finally Zagreb.

We usually like to start out in a major city, but we decided to save Zagreb until the end this time, and instead head directly from the airport to the bus station and onto a bus for a two-hour ride to Plitvice Lakes National Park. Maybe it was the special Hindu meal we ordered on Delta Airlines, but we arrived surprisingly un-jet-lagged, given the 13 hours of flying time from Seattle via Paris and the nine-hour time difference.

For some reason, the AC wasn't working on the bus, and Croatians consider breathing outside air while in a car or bus unhealthy, so everyone toughed it out with the windows closed. We spotted some nice little guesthouses along the way, but since we don't have a car, we reserved a room at one of the two hotels inside the park. The Hotel Bellevue is a big Communist-era place that looks as if it's set up mostly for tour groups, but it's quiet this time of year and a good value. So quiet, in fact, we could hear birds and frogs from our porch. After a walk and a dinner of fresh lake trout, veggies, salad, strudel and red wine, we were ready to explore.

Plitvice is a natural marvel with 16 terraced lakes, separated by natural limestone rock dams and connected by dozens of waterfalls, all accessible by a network of boardwalks and forested walking paths, electric lake boats and shuttle buses. Plitvice became Croatia's first national park in 1949 and it's the country's pride and joy for good reason. The guidebooks recommend spending a few hours here, but we spent most of a day walking about 6 miles, enjoying the sunny, mild weather and making lots of stops for pictures and taking in the views. Shuttle buses connect two major areas - the Upper Lakes and the Lower Lakes - so almost anyone in any kind of shape can get around and enjoy the hikes.

We met lots of Japanese, Koreans and Germans, but this was the end of a holiday week in Croatia, and from the looks of all the young people on the trails, Plitvice is popular with locals too. One group organized a sing-along on one of the lake boats- likely the Croatian equivalent of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Everyone enjoys the park's picnic areas where vendors roast chicken and sausages on wood fires and the local Ozujsko beer.

Getting to our next stop - Sibinek, a medieval town on the Dalmatian coast - sounded like it might be be a challenge. Buses pass by Plitvice about a half-dozen times a day, but you can't buy a ticket or make a reservation, and word was if they're full, they pass right on by. We got to the bus stop about 45 minutes early along with a group of six Japanese. Lucky for us, the bus wasn't full and we all got on for a four-hour ride through the mountains and along the coast to Sibinek. There we checked into a beautiful $53 per night apartment in the Venetian old town rented out to us by Nina and Lucky, owners of the new Indigo Hostel next door. They named their hostel for the blue jeans that decorate the walls. Leave a pair, take a pair.

Next: Exploring Sibinek and Krka National Park