After three days of being in Zagreb, I was finally able to get to know the city better!
Today was a normal travel day for me because I saw nice buildings and that's what I've been seeing pretty much every day now but I'm not getting tired of them so here are some of the ones I saw in Zagreb:
Let me tell you something. Of all the Saints in the world, Saint-George is the one I like the least because, according to the legends, he killed a dragon. And I love dragons :) But people in Zagreb obviously don't share my opinion of St-George because there are at least 2 statues of him in the city (maybe there are more that I haven't found, who knows).
Here is a picture of the museum of arts and crafts. The building would look quite nice but the Croatian ruined it by putting up something that covers the entrance. I'm not sure if this is a permanent thing or if it's temporary but I was a bit disappointed to see that!
It wasn't planned like that but I ended up walking in front of the botanical garden and the entrance was free so I thought I'd have a quick look. My "quick look" became a 45 minutes stroll through the garden! And I took a few pictures of nice trees, which is a change from nice buildings!
Something absolutely awesome happened to me today, I was so excited! (You will see in a moment that I really get excited by things that are not that exciting haha). Not all of you know that but between September and April, I was taking classes of Croatian every Tuesday night because I knew I was going to come here. I do have a slight preference for the Serbian language but I didn't find Serbian classes in Ottawa (actually I did but they were for 14 years old and under only). In the Croatian course, we learnt that every day at noon in Zagreb, we can hear a gun shot fired from one of the towers. I was thinking about that today but I wasn't quite sure whether the gun shot was to be heard at 11 or 12, and also I wasn't sure from where it was. I figured I would look it up tonight and try to hear it tomorrow. But today at noon I heard the gun shot!! I was sooo excited, I read about it in my Croatian class and I was now hearing it in real life!! (see I told you it was really not that exciting haha)
Here is a picture of the "only old town gate that has remained intact". This information is coming from my guide of Zagreb, but I'm not sure if they meant the only one in the world or the only one in Zagreb...
Everything under that door is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. We can see a painting of Mary that miraculously survived a fire in 1731 (can you tell that I'm looking up my facts as we speak haha). There are also 100s of plates that I assume were donated by individuals to thank Virgin Mary for something she has done for them.
It's a nice little peaceful location right in the middle of the busy city.
I often see signs such as this one:
It's a description of something and it's in Croatian only... I always tell myself "I'll take a picture of it and translate it later" but I never do so at the end of my trip I'll have many descriptions that I can translate but I won't remember what they were attached to :)
In Zagreb just like in every other cities in the world, street names have changed many times. But in the older part of town, you often get to see things like this:
This is the old name of that street and it was found when restorers were cleaning the surface of the building. The street names are bilingual, written in Croatian and in German (gothic script). I don't know how old these names are but they are not from yesterday :)
The weather was crappy again today so in the afternoon, I went to visit the Museum of Broken Relationships. It was so cute, it was a museum made of objects that people have donated that reminded them of past relationships, and each object had the little story attached to it written down, here is an example below:
It was quite interesting, I did not learn anything new out of it but it was an entertaining use of my time, although it very much reminded me of my own freshly broken relationship and I was a little sad after but it's ok, my happiness came back quickly :)
Today I was meeting someone new! I mentionned to you earlier that my father works with someone originally from Sarajevo. His name is Milija. Milija's daughter now lives in Zagreb and Milija had given me her phone number so I called her and arranged a meeting with her tonight at her place. It was too far to walk there so I had considered taking a taxi, but I didn't want to pay unnecessary money so I decided to try my luck with the trams. So here I was, looking at 3 different maps at the same time (because none of them had all the information I needed in one), trying to figure out how the heck I was going to get there. Believe it or not, I made it to her place all by myself! And the trams are so cool in Zagreb, they look like they're futuristic, I definitely have to take a picture of a tram and show you what they look like before I leave.
I have to apologize to Milija because I am just about to tell the world that his daughter is crazy!! But crazy in a good way :) She trains like nobody else I've seen before haha but from what I understand, she is quite an inspiration for the people around her, and for me as well actually! I think I'm going to start training more in order to be in better shape when I come back to Canada (haha yeah right...)
I had a good time with Tamara, and I also got to see a real Croatian appartment wow! It was quite big and the view was awesome. She very nicely drove me back to my hostel so I didn't have to take another tram on the way back.
That's it for today, I feel like I have 100 more things to tell you but it's already past 1 AM so I will keep them for another day, good night!!
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