Thursday, June 07, 2007

Food Glorious Food...

Heading out onto the streets of Zagreb, armed with a map from the hotel reception on which the receptionist had kindly highlighted our route towards the Old Town, the first thing that struck me was how quiet it was. This was around 10pm on a Saturday night: I am used to most cities buzzing at that time. I should say that I find most European cities buzzing at that time: our commercial and entertainment districts tend to be all higgledy-piggledy on top of one another, unlike North America where I've noticed it's a bit more segregated. I remember being astounded to discover that Michigan Avenue in Chicago shuts up shop (literally) at close of business hours - I would have expected it to be more like Oxford Street or Charing Cross Road, where, when the shops close, the bars, restaurants, clubs and crackdens open ;)

I was aware again during our spookily quiet walk of the fascinatingly varied architecture. I suppose, geographically, Croatia does rather straddle Western and Eastern Europe (...that would be Central Europe then...), and that is evident in the architecture. We guessed that there has been some sort of clean up campaign going on, as some buildings that were evidently old (going by the intricate carvings and craftsmanship) were quite startlingly clean - and right next to them would be a building that appeared to be of around the same age suffocating under centuries of dirt. Many bore sobering scars of the bombs of the mid 90s. It is hard to describe, exactly, but despite it's somewhat creepy quietness, the city felt very safe. There was lavishings of graffiti and a certain run down air (particularly in the side streets we passed) but yet it felt entirely benign.

After passing some gardens - that's another point, it smelled lovely! Possibly due to the proximity of the botanical gardens, and helped by the fact that with a population of less than a million, there just isn't the pollution to create that heady stink that you come to expect in cities, it was a pleasantly un-whiffy city overall - we came across a large square which the receptionist had circled on the map. When I say large, I really mean huge - it was about the size of a football field, and the couple of small fountains in the middle were dwarfed by the vacuous space around them. Here finally there were some signs of life - groups of kids, a few old people sipping coffee in cafes around the edge, trams trundling by... and no restaurants. Might I remind you that neither of us had eaten since I had a packed of peanuts at Heathrow, so with a touch of panic, we went in to one of the bars and asked if they were serving food. Nope. However, a very kind waitress beckoned for us to follow her. Mournfully gnawing on our hands, we obeyed.

She led us to a large black door next door to her bar - quite ornate, but with absolutely no sign outside to give any hint that it was any kind of commercial entrance. In other circumstances we might have been doubtful, but at this point, we were happy to cling on to the merest hope of food, so we followed her into a dimly lit hallway. The tiles were ceramic and there was a lively pattern in earth tones leading through the hallway to the shadowy stone staircase. We were a bit dubious about the old fashioned lift which creaked a bit ominously when our waitress pressed the call button, but luckily for everyone the door was locked, so our waitress directed us to climb to the third floor, and promised that there we would find sustenance. Well we did... ish. We climbed the two flights of stairs, exchanging looks that might have been of amusement, terror, or just hunger - and there we found to our utter amazement - a bustling restaurant! I don't tend to think that I would be quite so subtle when choosing the location of a restaurant, but it clearly wasn't hurting business at all as it was packed. So packed that they had no room for us. *sigh* No less than three waiters commiserated with us, and discussed excitedly amongst themselves where we might find dinner. Well, we assume that is what they were discussing at least, they said neither "do you speak English" nor "thank you" which is the only Croatian I have a hope of understanding, so they could have been discussing the weather or what sort of hats their mothers like to wear.

When we emerged back out onto the street, already beginning to wonder whether we had imagined that restaurant on the third floor, we found our waitress hovering anxiously by the door, "You don't like?" She enquired, and we assured her we liked very much but they were full. "Okay, please come with me." She took off at a pace back across the square and up a steep hill behind it. We were treated to a sudden close up view of the spectacular cathedral (which looks a little bit like Notre Dame) and then the waitress ushered us (with a helpful note of the name of the restaurant from her order pad) round the corner. We thanked her and entered what looked for all the world like a closed restaurant. By walking through the empty tables in an unlit room (bashing into a couple of the aforementioned empty tables) and into a corridor past the kitchen, we found ourselves on a terrace where there were people! Eating! Well two old men anyway! And a third old man playing eighties easy listening on a keyboard! It was just wonderful.

The starter that our lovely waiter (and fluent English speaker) Emil swiftly brought was possibly one of the most exquisite things I have ever tasted in my life (although let's face it, I was hardly fussy at that point.) It was a sort of savoury croissant, with a dip which seems to be traditional Croatian as we were then served it everywhere we ate - a sort of creamy ricotta with chives and garlic - oh I must stop describing the meal because I will start to eat the keyboard! Suffice to say it was wonderful - Emil chose for us and I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised at how yummy everything was. You don't usually think of Croatia as a gastronomic capital of Europe, but take it from me it should be. We were even more pleasantly surprised to discover that three courses, a couple of glasses of wine each and tea came to £36 between us. Clearly, we were going to eat like Kings in Croatia!

Monday, June 04, 2007

Welcome to Zagreb...

Country number 24 (on the 30 Countries Before 30 challenge with Toby) came in at just under 36 hours in Croatia - unquestionably one of the most fascinating and unusual places I have ever visited.

It all started with some fun and games on Saturday morning: forgetting to pack, losing my passport (and finding it), discovering that the Piccadilly Line wasn't in the mood to take anyone to Heathrow last weekend, finally getting to Heathrow to discover that my mobile phone was happily snuggled under my pillow where it had been shoved after having the audacity to go off at the time I'd set it, having to page Jemma so we could check in together (oddly enough, she'd already guessed that I would forget my phone and was waiting for the page). Once on the plane we pogo-ed across Europe in an alarmingly lively pin-ball-ricocheting-off-clouds manner which meant I had to spend the entire flight with my head between my knees (when faced with any adverse flying conditions, my body usually elects to pretty much check out, in a charmingly Jane Austen heroine kind of way - I really should start carrying smelling salts) prompting the Aussie sitting next to us to enquire whether Jemma was okay because she didn't look great either, and Jemma to indignantly reply that she was perfectly alright thank you, that's just her natural complexion - we finally bounced out of the clouds and onto the tarmac in Zagreb.

I absolutely love exiting planes via a stairway onto the tarmac - it just feels like a proper arrival - and the misty evening and deep pink, hazy sunset lent the visible Croatian countryside a pleasingly other worldly air. Shortly afterwards, thrilled to have received another stamp on my still depressingly new passport, Jemma and I were confronted with the realisation that we had absolutely no idea what the currency was, nor its exchange rate to pounds. Or any idea how to get to our hotel. Or anything of the language (with the exception of the helpful phrases that lovely Mel of the Melbourne girls had emailed me, but I did worry that "eight beers please" and "do you have a girlfriend?" wouldn't do much to covey to a taxi driver our desire to go to our hotel). After a bit of lively wild-guessing at the ATM and vaguely wondering whether or not we'd just cleaned out our bank accounts, we discovered that Croatian taxi drivers speak the universal language of "Sheraton" and we were off.

At speed. Over the course of the stay, we learnt that Zagreb(ian?) taxi drivers are lively to say the least (perhaps that's what the pilot had originally trained as): we came within inches of rear-ending seemingly innocent drivers, had a couple of hair-raising diversions onto the pavement and more than once flew round corners at such startling speed that we were flung across the backseat into positions that platonic friends rarely find themselves in.

The scenery and outskirts that zipped past looked… foreign. Extremely foreign. I think that these days we are so saturated with images of Western Europe, the US, Canada and Australia in various media, that even when we arrive in such places for the first time, everything looks somewhat familiar. At the very least, I tend to have a mental image that may or may not be quite right, but is at least a starting point. Croatia, on the other hand - with the exception of war torn images from the mid nineties, I am ashamed to say that I really didn't have a clue what to expect. The first few buildings that heralded our arrival into the city looked appropriately Eastern European - dark grey concrete blocks of flats, the kind with deeply black windows that look like dead eyes, broken occasionally by a depressing line of washing or faded duvet cover thrown over a balcony. But then there would suddenly be a terracotta structure that conjured images of the Mediterranean, and the text on street signs or advertisements was written in non-European characters, text that to my ignorant eye looked Russian. The other thing I noted was the lack of globalisation - not one MacDonalds, Starbucks, Co-op, Spar. I couldn't guarantee that they don't yet exist in Croatia, but I certainly laid eyes on not one familiar brand name this weekend.

By the time we had chucked our things in our hotel room and freshened up from the flight, it was 10pm and having not been able to catch much in the way of dinner as it gaily flew around the plane, we were both quietly thinking that the other looked surprisingly tasty. So it was off out to hit Zagreb on a Saturday night…