Croatia - Zagreb - 7th-8th March

Funnily, for somewhere relatively close to the border, trains out of Pecs in the direction of Croatia are few and far between, and this resulted in me having to check out of my hotel at 6:30 AM for a 7 o clock train. I wasn't too happy about this, and became even less so when i discovered that my connection point, Gyékényes, is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Literally, the station is all there is. This didn't bode well for my 3 hour wait for my connection to Zagreb, but I dealt with it. I was, however, rather amazed at the amount of times that morning I had to produce my passport - border guards at the station,on the platform, on the train (twice), ticket people, customs officers and police all wanted me to prove I was a person. I know Croatia's not in the EU, but that was a bit over the top!

Anyway, I made it to Zagreb by about 130, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised - it's a really nice little city, very modern and cosmopolitan, and not at all "edgy", as some people had suggested it might be. My hostel, Fulir Hostel, was also very small and cool :) All good so far...until the weather came in. But bad weather simply means an inside tourist mode, and luckily Zagreb is well-equipped for such things. After a small lunch wander, I spent most of the afternoon in the Zagreb City History Museum, a fascinating place covering the history of Yagreb and Croatia from it's very beginnings up to the present day. It's actually based on the site of a series of small walls (a golden archaelogical find!) from the Roman times, which you can walk through on the ground floor.

The next day was unfortunately also grim, but I stubbornly refused to let this get me down, and managed to get through 2 walking tours of the city in just one morning. Zagreb really is a nice little place, and I think at some point in the future I'd like to go back again and do more of Croatia. Later on I found my way to the Naive Art Museum, something apparently unique to Zagreb. I'm not a big fan of art things, but this one was different - naive art is essentially made by artists with little or no actual training, which doesn't make it bad, but means it's quite different to conventional stuff, and thus really quite interesting! Certainly made for a different kind of day, and a nice change.