Hrvatska day 2 - Zagreb

Goodbye, Hostel Elena!

I left my four hostel-mates soundly sleeping when I rolled out at 7 am Sunday morning. It turned out that a slightly later bus was a bit cheaper and got me there only ten minutes later, so I bought my ticket and then walked across the street and got some breakfast at the supermarket. On the bus I had a chance to talk with a lady from London who was an expert in applied linguistics. I explained that I had found my lessons and discussions on language and culture more interesting than my civil engineering internships had been and asked what sorts of opportunities there were for linguists. She laughed and said there wasn't much, that most become teachers, the pay wasn't great but at least you got to travel (if you liked that sort of thing), and asked how the outlook was for civil engineers. It was little bit of a wake-up call for me. Yes, I am loving languages and cultures right now and could be perfectly happy living off of oatmeal for the rest of my life, but is that enough compared to the stability of a career position with a city or civil engineering firm? At the same time, I don't know whether having a desk job with my signature on legal design documents scares me more or the idea of being in one place for more than a year or two.

Best guides ever!

Ana was waiting for me at the bus station when we pulled in at 12:30. We drove to her house and she fed me cherries Turkish coffee (unfiltered caffeine) and then turned me loose to explore the city while she finished up a German report. Zagreb was not what I had expected. Sunday afternoon and about half of the shops were closed, but all of the restaurants were open and the streets were full of people and a soap box derby and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. There was music and laughing and the buzzing of mopeds- so much more lively than Sunday in Graz!
Ana met up with me at later in the afternoon and we had dinner at one of the restaurants just up the hill from the main square. A little while later we met her boyfriend and the two of them gave me a walking tour of downtown, complete with a lesson in recent history, from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the acceptance of Croatia into the EU which had been announced two days before. When it started to get dark we walked down to a pub on one of the streets that were filled with them and spent the rest of the evening swapping stories over Croatian beers.
It was the first time that I had talked with people my own age who had experienced their country at war, and one of Ana's boyfriend's stories made me smile. He was staying at the home of a Serbian for a debate tournament in high school and went to brush his teeth. As he pulled out his toothpaste his host came in with a machete and asked "what, is our toothpaste not good enough for you?" - and then they both started laughing. "It is so great to be able to joke like that with a Serbian," he said.
If you get a chance, I definitely recommend a trip to Croatia. You will be stunned by how clear the waters are, warmed by how friendly, welcoming, and quick to laugh the people are, and drowned in the thousands of years of history.