Doviđenja Zagreb!

As February neared its end we had to decide on a plan.  Unfortunately, our job search was turning up no results, it turns out the economy is not doing well here in Zagreb (like just about everywhere else) and the unemployment rate is even higher than it is back home.  This means no one is hiring.  So our inquiries were met with either silence or "sorry we're not hiring right now."  A couple people did tell us they might have something come September, but nothing as of right now.
We also found out the fun fact that unlike in Costa Rica where you can have a 90 day visa, leave for three days, then start another 90 day visa, we could only be in the country on a tourist visa for 90 days during a 6 month period.  That means at the end of 90 days of being there we couldn't just leave for 3 days and come back, we'd have to leave for 3 months.  This also meant we wouldn't be able to see Zagreb in the springtime when we heard it was absolutely beautiful!  So we decided to leave Croatia for a while so we could come back later during the time we wanted to be there and explore somewhere else for a while! (But more on that later)

canon blast remnants

Therefore we took our last few days in Zagreb to see something we'd been meaning to see for a while.  The canon!  The Lotrščak Tower has a canon that goes off everyday at noon and we hadn't made it up to see it yet, so we decided we had to before we left.  I don't know what my fascination was with the canon but I really loved it.  Usually when Erin asked me what we should do the next day I would say "Well, we could go see the canon!"  Even after we saw it once I convinced her to go back a couple days later and watch it again before we left.  I don't know why I am just very entertained by it!  Here's a video, maybe you'll love it as much as I do :)

I love how the canon firing man sticks his head out the window and waves at the end:) he was super friendly!

music man

View looking West - Zagreb Cathedral

I think part of my love for the canon is that it's in Gornji Grad, or the Upper Town of Zagreb, right on Strossmayer Promenade.  It's one of my favorite places in the city.  It has fantastic views, great buildings and museums, and sometimes even a guy playing music for some great ambiance!  I love it there!

our statue friend

haha very clever

plaques at Stonegate

icicles!

After we watched the canon we walked down to the Main Square and happened upon some sort of holiday procession.  There was yet another food festival in the temporary building in the square (lots of meats and wines this time) which we wandered through and then we found these fun costumed friends.  They were in the main square, marching around with a catapult device and firing a canon of their own!  It was pretty odd and I couldn't find anything on the internet about a holiday in Croatia on the day we saw it, although it was around the time of Mardi Gras so maybe it was something to do with the start of Lent.  Whatever it was for it was very entertaining to watch!

We also decided it was time we bought some flowers from the flower market by the main square, and picked out som spikey blue beauties.  I'm not quite sure exactly what they are but they were so unique that we had to get them!



Our last stop on our way home was Dolac Market.  It's a huge outdoor market everyday in Zagreb.  It's just north of the main square in a big plaza and has fresh food and fun souvenirs.  We didn't need much as we were leaving in the next couple days but we got some vegetables.  In the picture you can also see the sign on the building at Dolac Market, with the words Zagreb Croatia and the hearts.  The hearts are a symbol for Zagreb and are common on all sorts of things from stickers to glasses and even just on their own as magnets or little ornaments on strings.  If you know me you know I do not love things with hearts (or butterflies really) on them and pretty much refuse to wear them on my clothes or jewelry. So needless to say I was less than thrilled that my new favorite city had a heart as its logo but I have to say they've grown on me now, not that I'm going to buy a bunch of heart covered things but at least now hearts will always remind me of a city I love instead of kid jewelry.

Nocturno is there on the right :)

Among our other things to do again before we left Zagreb was eating at our favorite restaurant, Nocturno.  This place was a recommendation from Tomy and Marina and has such yummy food at awesome prices.  It's on a tiny little street that goes between Tkalciceva street and Kaptol and we went there a lot. I love their pizza (especially since you can get a whole big capricciosa pizza for 25 kuna - about $4.35) and Erin was a big fan of their risotto!  They have tv screens inside which sometimes play tv shows (once the Simpsons was on while we were there) and other times played music videos.  We were so entertained by the music selection one night that I actually made a list of the songs that were played.  I don't think it could have been more random if they tried.  Here goes - Huey Louis - The Power of Love (the Back to the Future Song), Beyonce - Diva (Female Version of a Hustla), Depeche Mode - Reach out and Touch Faith, Elvis - A Little Less Conversation, Eminem - The Real Slim Shady and to top it all off, MC Hammer - Can't Touch This.  We noticed the wide musical range at about Elvis and could hardly contain ourselves when we asked ourselves, "What could possibly come next?" and MC hammer came on.  Touche, Nocturno, good choice.

We had also gotten a recommendation to visit a huge Cemetery in the North part of the city that was worth a visit and decided to head up there one day.  We looked it up online to see how to get there and it seemed simple enough.  Just take the tram 2 stops north from our apartment and it's on the right.  The problem was the tram ended up stopping at a place that didn't have an official "stop" and we weren't sure if it counted or not.  We didn't see any signs for the cemetery so we decided to ride one more stop.  Nope. Not there either.  So we went back one stop and started venturing out "to the right."  Zagreb has these handy little brown signs all over the place identifying landmarks and such and we actually found one that said Mirogoj Cemetery but still saw no sign of the actual place.  So we kept walking.  And walking.  And walking.  Up a hill.  We were about to give up and thought we must have taken a wrong turn when we reached a place where we could finally see the walls surrounding the cemetery.  It was a huge place and the paths seemed to go on forever once we got inside.  It was very peaceful and everything looked beautiful dusted with snow. 

The headstone sculptures were cool to see, some were very antique and formal looking, some were sleek polished stone, but I think my favorite one was a big uneven rock one that was covered in moss and looked like it almost grew up out of the ground.  And of course the one with the owl on it.  But that's a given :)

Plaque for the "Grounded Sun" sculpture

Determined to take advantage of every last day we had in Zagreb, and being that I love to look up interesting things to do online, Erin and I had one last "to do" activity before we left.  We had seen the big "Grounded Sun" sculpture many times while walking in the downtown area of Zagreb so I was intrigued when I read an article online about an art installation inspired by it that was relatively unknown in the city. 

I read about how an artist had done a public art installation based on the sculpture of the sun.  He made scale models of the other planets based on the size of the sun in the sculpture and placed them around Zagreb at relative distances equal to their places in the solar system. 

 Basically there is a tiny little Mercury a block down the street from the Sun sculpture, Venus a street over, Earth a few blocks from it, Mars is further and so on (the next planet, Jupiter, and all the others are outside the city center so we couldn't look for them).  

So we went on a hunt.  The addresses of the plaques are available online so we had a basic idea of where they were and managed to find the ones in the downtown area!  Maybe one day we'll make it back and take a bus to reach Jupiter and beyond :)

     - by the way, can you see Erin and I in the "Earth"?

The little plaques are hidden in plain sight.  They're so small that we had walked by them many times before without ever noticing them.  The article I read said that most people who live in Zagreb walk by them everyday and have no idea they're even there.  Finding them was a fun little scavenger hunt and a great way to spend an afternoon.

On our last day in Zagreb we packed and went to The Tolkien House Pub one more time.  I had been wanting the "Legolas" Ameretto Coffee and it was yummy and toasty on that cold day!  Tomy and Marina were so wonderful and picked us up so we didn't have to get a taxi or lug all our stuff onto a tram down to the train station and even took us out for a drink before we left at Bacchus, a little bar down near the station.  It was a great end to our first 6 weeks in Croatia and we'll definitely miss it!

Before we knew it we were on our first train ride and on our way to Italy!  But I'll save that for the next post.  Doviđenja Zagreb!

Maksimir Park

The snow was pretty deep!

 Erin and I decided to pass some more of the time in the snow by going to see the huge park in Zagreb, called Maksimir.  It's like Zagreb's own Central Park and it's got to be over 500 acres, it's huge!  There are paths that go all over it, and several buildings, monuments, a church, lakes, and even a zoo!




We ate at the restaurant at the park too and it was the best chicken and croquettes, so yummy! They also had these awesome paintings on the wall that incorporated little pictures of the park in them but had a main scene painted over the top uniting all the little pictures into one, hard to explain but it was very fabulous art.

The first building we came across was a gazebo like place called the Echo Pavilion.  It is aptly named, and we had fun playing with the echo sounds and busting out some of our old tap moves while hanging out in there :)




The river that runs through the park was frozen over and you could barely tell what it was! Coming from Phoenix this was a sight to be seen!  We were like little kids seeing snow for the first time and were ooohing and awwwing at everything we came across. 




Soon we found an unfrozen part of a pond and lots of birds along with it!  Tons of ducks, a few swans and even some herons were enjoying the water and we had fun watching them, especially when the ducks got into a little brawl at one point. I'll just say there was some hostility and chasing. At one point the swan stepped in and made this big gesture with it's wings and a sound I've never heard before and definitely wouldn't picture coming from a swan, which pretty much got the pond back under control again.

the duck brawl

  

The snow was pretty deep and it was a challenge making our way through it at some points, and when we stopped to hang out on the benches it was pretty much like we were sitting on the ground because the snow came up to the seat of the bench!

There is an old church in the park and it was so tiny you could walk around the outside of the whole thing in a minute flat.  In fact it was apparently a popular exercise spot for doing just that because as we were looking at it a whole herd of what I can only assume to have been a high school track team came running by us, around the church and down the hill, and then passed us again twice as we were walking away from it.  It was very odd.  A whole huge park at their disposal and they run around and around one little area over and over again. 


By the time we got back down to the main path of the park it was starting to get dark so we decided to head home but we stopped and enjoyed the sunset for a while.  The snow covered trees were so gorgeous and made beautiful silhouettes against the sky as the sun was going down, it was really wonderful.


On our way out we caught a glimpse of the zoo and saw an emu!  He was just visible though the fence and we decided the zoo is definitely worth a visit sometime when the weather is a little warmer.

Zagreb in February: A Very Snowy Birthday

When we got back to Zagreb from our trip to the coast we were greeted with lots of snow!  It ended up being pretty much the worst blizzard Europe has had for about 20 years, which makes sense since it was Erin and my first time dealing with snow, so of course it would be an epic storm.  

The funny thing is earlier in the month Tomy and Marina (the couple that owns the apartment we were staying in) were telling us about how it had been an unusually warm winter, and that they were surprised because it hadn't snowed at all this year.  Apparently nature was saving up all the snow for this week.  

We were lucky that we planned our trip to the coast when we did because just about right after we got back to Zagreb they closed many of the roads to the coastal cities.  Basically we would have been stranded if we had been one day later. 

We made the most of the situation though and had a great time playing in the snow at the park by our house and trying to keep warm amidst the blizzardy weather. 

Ribjnak Park in the snow.

We did like taking walks in the snow, the city looked really beautiful all covered in white and the snow gives everything a quiet peaceful quality that's easy to appreciate having lived in the AZ heat my whole life :)

Snowball Fight!

  

It says "Zagreb 2012" with a heart if you can't tell ;)

As many of you know, my birthday is in February and I was lucky to be able to celebrate the big 25 in Zagreb this year.  Apparently Zagreb knew it was my birthday as well and was nice enough to throw me a Chocolate Festival!  It was very nice of them :)  

There is a big temporary building/tentlike structure on the Main square in Zagreb during the holiday season, and when we arrived in Zagreb it had mulled wine and food stands in it, but in early February it changed over to a Chocolate Festival full of beautiful and yummy treats.  We decided to go on my birthday and had a great time.

Chocolate  Tools

Chocolate record

There were booths with some pretty cool things, from fancy little cakes to realistic chocolate tools.  The place was packed and we walked around the tent a couple times before deciding on what we wanted to try.

Pretty little Chocolate cakes and desserts

they had these cute chandeliers all along the ceiling

So once we made the rounds and saw what each booth had to offer we decided on one we wanted to stop at. It ended up being the wine booth.

Now I know that it was a chocolate festival and all but the wine was very enticing and in our defense, each glass came with a chocolate as well so we were partaking in the chocolate festival, just with wine!  Erin was also kind enough to venture off and get me some birthday yummies while I held down the fort at our little table at the wine booth.

Chocolate Festival Wine

Birthday Treats

Now if you know me you know that I'm not exactly a cake fan.  I don't exactly "hate" it as many of my friends have claimed but it is definitely not my dessert of choice.  I do however like cheesecake!  So Erin found the closest thing to it (it was sort of like a cheesecake mousse ball) as well as some macaroons (which we had never had before and I've decided that I like the vanilla, not the mystery cough syrup one that I'm assuming is supposed to be berry).  Through some linguistic difficulties Erin managed to get the desserts in a box to go (so she could bring them back over to the wine booth where I refused to leave) but was without a utensil to eat them with.  As the place was very crowded and she didn't want to wait in the line again just to ask for forks she got a little coffee stirrer thing and we (very clumsily) ate the cheesecake with that.  It was quite entertaining. 

There is also this little bakery/coffee shop down the street from our apartment called Amelie.  We were very excited when we first saw it because Amelie is the name of one of Erin's favorite movies (it's a pretty good one if you haven't seen it although it's in French) and we decided to save going there for my birthday.  It was the cutest place inside, with adorable little tables and fun dainty art on the walls, and we picked the little table by the window to sit and drink some bijela kava (white coffee) before taking home some delightful desserts for later.

Our walk home from Amelie took us through Ribnjak park again and we enjoyed some more beautiful snowyness.  One of my favorite things are the streetlamps with snow on the top because the heat of the lamp melts the snow and it freezes again as it drips off the bottom to make these awesome icicles all around the base of the light.  Pretty fancy.

My boots in the snow


I must say it was a very good birthday and I am enjoying 25 so far!