“We took the night train to Zagreb, arriving in the capital just after dawn.” I think that would be a wonderful opening sentence for a short story by E. M. Forrester or perhaps even Virginia Woolf. It was less enchanting as a description of our travels last night. Most Americans assume that train travel in Europe is clean, affordable, efficient, and comfortable, and I think that those thing are generally true. But John and I learned that none of those adjectives apply to Hrvatske Željeznice, the Croatian National Railways.
We arrive in the dark at the railroad station in Split. As transportation centers go, this place makes the average American bus station look like the Tuileries Palace. We stumbled in the dark over a couple tracks to the train. There was a large group of young tourists, mostly German, also looking around for the sleeping car. I tried to ask the one older man who appeared to be the conductor, and I showed him my ticket. We had purchased these tickets in the United States, and the conductor seemed completely perplexed by these apparently unfamiliar forms. Our tickets gave use a compartment on carriage 20, and this was nowhere to be found on the train. He almost pushed us onto carriage 40. The car was stiflingly hot, at least 90 degrees. I few windows were open, but that did nothing to relieve the heat. There was already a crew of young Germans in the compartment indicated on our ticket. John went out to find the conductor. When he arrived, he looked at our tickets again, brow furrowed, and finally pointed to another compartment. We put our luggage through the narrow opening.
There were six berths, though two of them had been pulled up to allow for a seating area. Only about half of the lights worked, and what passed for a temperature control did absolutely nothing when we attempted to use it. We did manage to open the window and that allowed a bit of air in, though the smell of burning diesel fuel was almost enough to make us close it. A few minutes after the train pulled out, the conductor appeared again and handed us some pillows that must have been at least twenty years old. He also handed us a package containing some disposable pillow covers. Considering the dirt we could see and the bacteria we could not see on those pillows, we quickly put them on. John settled on one of the lower bunks, and I took one of the upper ones. We turn off the lights and tried to get to sleep as the train started through a series of switchbacks through the mountains.
We somehow managed to get some sleep. When I woke up and looked outside the window, I was stunned by how much the landscape had changed. The brown, dry, rocky hills of Dalmatia had been replaced with flat farmland and small groves of trees. It was as if I had somehow gone from Baja California to central Ohio. We had about a half hour before the train pulled into Zagreb at about six in the morning. The station in Zagreb was obviously once quite grand, but a few decades of deferred maintenance had yet to be remedied. I took this picture of the station a few hours later.
Right when we came, we only wanted to find our hotel and we hoped that the just might already have a room for us. I had picked a hotel I knew was both one of the best in the city and quite close to the station, the Esplanade. Here is a photograph of the hotel, again one I took later in the day.
I am sure we did not quite look like the most elegant of guests when we entered. The doorman muttered something about “check out time, not check in time” as I pushed past him loaded with way too much luggage. The woman at the reception desk was more polite, but she looked dumbfounded when we said we had come on the train from Split. I could also see her thinking, “What kind of a fool does that?” She was kind enough not to say it. She said instead that she regretted that our room would not be ready until about one o’clock, but that they would be happy to hold our luggage for us. That was an offer I could hardly refuse. John and I had Sunday brunch at the hotel — we figured few if any other restaurants would be open yet. I was actually pretty decent, and after drinking a couple cups of coffee were ready to check out Croatia’s capital.
The area around the hotel and the train station looks like it was once one of the most elegant in central Europe. The buildings all date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Most are in the Beaux Arts style with elaborate window and door decoration.
The nicest buildings all face onto a narrow park several blocks long. I could tell that this part of the city had been carefully planned by people who deeply admired Georges-Eugène Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris.
We came to the central square of the city dominated by an enormous equestrian statue.
The figure is Ban Jelačić, and the square is named for him. I learned from my guidebook that he was a 19th-century governor who led Croatian troops into an unsuccessful battle with Hungary. That statue stood in square with his sword facing toward Hungary until 1947 when Tito ordered it removed. Croatian nationalism did not fit into his vision for a socialist Yugoslavia. When Tito’s worker’s paradise disintegrated in 1991, the statue was quickly placed back in a place of honor. One small change — this time the sword was pointed towards Serbia!
There are a number of nice buildings on Jelačić Square, mostly in the Beaux Arts and Secession styles. I did find this more Moderne building with some interesting terra cotta work.
We walked to the upper town in where the market is normally held looking for some fresh produce. Alas, Sunday is not a market day in Zagreb. Of the former Soviet Block countries, only Poland and Croatia are still resolutely Catholic, and no doubt that is the reason that the market was empty. Still, the lack of people buying and selling did allow me to get a good shot of a mural on one end of the market square.
We decided to do the route that Rick Steves suggested in his book. We went through Zagreb’s nineteenth century shopping arcade. It was never as grand as the one in Milan, but it covered in scaffolding it was even less impressive. We heard some church bells ringing at what looked to me like an Anglican or Presbyterian church. When I came closer I saw the bits of mosaic on the outside and realized that it must be a Serbian Orthodox parish.
We stood respectfully in the back.
Even though John has been in many Orthodox churches, he had never been present for Divine Liturgy and found the service rather moving. “Much less boring than the Catholics,” was, I think, the review, and from John that is a liturgical five stars.
We continued on and went toward the Upper Town. This is the most medieval part of Zagreb, but it is not primarily a tourist area. It still functions as the center of national government. We took a small funicular instead of a couple flights of stairs.
The entrance to the Upper Town is dominated by a large tower.
You can climb to the top of the tower for a better look, but I passed on that. We passed by the Parliament building.
This was bombed by the Serbians during the war in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Croatian president. Across from the National Assembly is Saint Mark’s church with it distinctive tile roof.
We went inside. It was close to full, and I was fairly impressed with the choir. Of course, Croatians are famous for their love of singing. We stayed only through the Gloria and then pushed on.
There are a number of state museums including the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art, a highly-regarded collection of Balkan folk art. Unfortunately, although museums are open on Sundays, they are closed on national holidays and it turned out that today is Statehood Day, a national holiday. Private museums are open, and we chose to check out Zagreb’s most unique collection at The Museum of Broken Relationships.
The museum does not quite live up to its intriguing premise. Inside there are a variety of donated objects. Each object is connected to a narrative describing a the end of a troubled relationship. The objects are sometimes odd
and sometimes predictable.
We went down the hill. Along the way, we looked at the former red-light district.
We stopped at a small cafe on an incredibly cute street nearby. As we were drinking some coffee, an odd little parade came by. We never could figure out what it was about.
After this we returned to the hotel. Our room was ready, and we were ready to nap for a bit. Not longer after we checked in, it began to pour torrentially for a couple hours. After it cleared up, in the early evening, we went to the park area where there was supposed to be an opera performance.
However, even though the rain had stopped, it was wet enough for the performance to have been canceled. We walked around a bit looking for something to eat before returning to the hotel.
Tomorrow, we head back to Ljubljana, Slovenia.
