Zagreb, Croatia - Balkan Swan Song

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  Zagreb, Croatia
Friday, June 9, 2006

Phase I - the Balkans mostly - is over. 43 days so far, 11 cities, and 7 countries. The last stop was Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, now independent for 15 years. Although tourism has definitely returned to the coast (but not to pre-war levels by far), I got the feeling that not many people came to Zagreb, except maybe as a stopover, which is too bad because I really enjoyed my time there. The city is inland, kind of in the middle of a country shaped like a boomerang. I asked how that came to be, i.e. was it geographically based on a river or mountain range, and received no decent answer as to why the Croats had primarily ended up settled in such a unwieldy shape.

The city itself had wide Austro-Hungarian streets and squares in the middle, and the de rigeur funky Old Town above, with a standard selection of churches, 19th Century architecture, parks, cafes (where the Croats drank coffee until they leaked) and lazing students

Cats & Mice Living Together

. What made it different was that there were so many, various events and festivals going on all summer. Several were not exactly mike cup of tea, such as a folklore festival, a Baroque festival and a dance festival, but I am sorry I missed the 150th anniversary of Nicola Tesla (Croatian by birth, although ethnically Serbian), quite possibly a smarter dude than Einstein. It's hard to explain exactly what he invented (I will leave that to an electrical engineer), but they were vital to electric power, radio and stereo. Edison ripped him off. In science fiction circles, he is a cult hero. See, for example, all of the "Callahan" books by Spider Robinson, who speculated that he was an alien or time traveler because he was that visionary. Lots more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla .

The festival I did catch, though, was called "Cest is the Best," which means (hold on, it's tricky) "Street is the best," referring to street theatre, puppeteers, buskers, and bands. On my first night (June 5), I stumbled across a band playing an outdoor beer garden. Their repetoire was pop ditties like "Vincent" (recently lisped by Kevin Covias on American Idol 5 - "Tshtarry, tshtarry nights") and "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" to deconstructed to only loosely follow the melody and contain five minute jazz breaks. The drummer and the bassist were really quite good. And I met a couple of the organizers of the event whose responsibilities had completed for the night so they were decompressing with a bottle of wine

Cest is D'Best Organizers

. They told me which acts to catch over the next two days, although it would turn out that I would only actually see one.

The next night, I fully intended to go to their stage and see if I could latch on to post-event activities, but I arrived at 10:00 p.m. (like certain amplifiers, the night before had gone to 11:00) to find it concluded due to rain, and I had to keep dates with a recommended brauerei/beer hall and a Croatian wine bar before that. I then wandered up to the Old Town where, in keeping with the science fiction theme so far, there were two, not one, but two J.R.R. Tolkien themed pubs, complete with fantasy art murals, swords, dragons, and drink names like Golem's Bollocks and Elvish Grog (or some such drivel). They closed relatively early, so I worked my way down to a pedestrian drag I had seen that was lined with cafes.

The cafes were closed, but I followed noise into a random bar that was busy on a Tuesday at midnight, where I ended up getting locked in. I started shooting the shit with the bartender over the music (two old Peter Gabriel songs followed by, you guessed it, Zappa - "I'm the Slime Song" for Kris), and that led to meeting other people in the bar, who all wondered how I had found this particular place, given that it was not in any of the guides (which I can vouch for - the normally trustworthy "In Your Pocket" guide did not have it)

Cool Church

. The bar was meant to close at 1:00 a.m., but we kept going (with all drinks now free!) until 3:00. I walked a girl named Iva to her bus stop, but that was the best I could achieve.

On Wednesday, I did manage to catch the recommended 8:30 concert, a decent rock band fronted by a rather precious Rick Ocasek look like crooning Croatian anthems, at least that's my best guess because it seemed like everyone knew the words except me. I spoke to the organizers a bit afterward, but I had an early flight to Germany and was still kind of hurting from the night before. (As an aside, written before I post this, I am still having some lower GI distress three days later - my best guess is that my decision to order mixed grill rather than doner or pizza at a quicky street shop last Tuesday was ill-advised.)

Sea Change Coming: Erlangen, Germany and the Bergkirchweih

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Cravat Stat	Croat Crooner	I'm Obsessed	Iva and Some Dude
Market Square	Pedestrian Street with Cafes	So Cool	Some Building
The Balkans	Tolkien Pub	Where It's @

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