By Charlie McCabe
(A note about the recent lack of new posts: Sadly, this has taken a back seat to paying work of late, so I apologize, but I have actually have four separate articles in various stages of assembly, so stay tuned!)
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, an inland city of over 750,000 in a country known more for its seemingly endless coastline, islands, and beautiful historic cities and towns. We arrived on a thundry, rainy night in early fall of 2019 via a one-hour bumpy flight from Sarajevo, but the weather proved to be good during the rest of our stay. Zagreb is a very walkable town with a tram system that can whisk you on to further destinations. While on one of the days we took a long day trip via bus to a very cool national park (complete with hikes through canyons and waterfalls), we mostly just wandered around the city, checking out museums, parks and pedestrian friendly streets.
There was art everywhere, not only in the form of the usual graffiti, but also in a wide variety of murals. The above mural was in a small park, which had seen better days, but was an exception to the rule, I do love the old wooden and steel merry-go-round below.
Here's a better example of the playgrounds in parks; this was close to museums and the botanical garden.
I loved the incredible variety of the murals, often decorating adjoining walls in parks. The attention to detail was pretty amazing.
And, of course, any city that has a monument to Nikola Telsa is great. Actually, both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina claim Telsa as their own.
And who wouldn't love this botanical building with its victorian details and brick orange paint? Stunning.
In multiple cities during our trip to Central Europe, there was street lighting that had been turned into chandeliers. This was along a pedestrianized street in the upper portions of the city.
This was one of the bigger parks and they were setting up for a weekend Octoberfest (sadly, after we left for our next destination). There were groupings of bars and seating sprinkled throughout the park, surrounded by tall trees and green grass.
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