Last night I informed the owner of my hostel that I wasn't going to have breakfast in the morning because I wanted to leave very early. She is so nice, she said "No problem, I will prepare you a sandwich for the road, just tell me what time you plan on getting up". So at 6 AM she got up with me to give me my sandwich and a big hug for the road :) I'm going to miss her!
I left around 6:30 and that was a smart decision because there was not too many cars in my way while I was trying to understand where to go. I don't know about Serbia because I didn't drive there but Croatia is really good with indications (most of the time). For example, on my way to Zagreb, there was a sign pretty much every 5 km saying "Zagreb, keep going straight". Very convenient, however I've also seen places where it said "Osijek keep going straight" and "Osijek turn left" on the same sign... oh well, Osijek was not my destination so it worked out well ;)
I wanted to see Đakovo because in one of the guides I read, it said that the small town had one of the most imposing cathedral of Eastern Europe. It is truly quite imposing because I haven't been able to fit the whole cathedral properly in one picture for you
But I think the Cathedral in Osijek looked nicer. I'm glad I went to see it though, otherwise I think I would have regretted it.
Once in Đakovo, I had a cultural shock! The bureks are different here! I don't know if the Croatian bureks are always different from the Serbian ones or whether there is many ways to make bureks and I had only tried one so far but anyways, I was quite shocked haha.
It tasted just the same though :)
I pretty much took only pictures of the Cathedral in Đakovo and I left for the next town on my list of things to see today which was "Slavonski Brod". I did not prepare for Slavonski Brod at all, all I knew was that I was going there. When I got there, I had a choice between going to East Slavonski Brod or West Slavonski Brod and I had no clue whatsoever what exactly there was to see and where to go, so I picked one I can't even remember which one now. I stopped in a gas station hoping to buy a map but they didn't have any, however the guy there very nicely explained to me how to get to the tourist information downtown. Usually I never understand people's directions (my father can relate haha) but his explanations were super clear, well maybe it helped that he repeated them 2 times, anyways I was able to get to the tourist information where they gave me a city map and off I went to discover Slavonski Brod.
It's a cute town and I saw lots of nice buildings again. Slavonski Brod has a nice walk by the Sava river. The Sava was also flowing in Belgrade I don't remember if I told you that. So I walked around for maybe 3-4 hours and took pictures:
I saw something interesting in Slavonski Brod, the street name was announced differently. I don't know if you can see it clearly from the picture but it looks like both streets that are crossing each other have the exact same name, but actually the one that's sticking out is kind of pointing in the opposite direction as what we are used to.
I'm not sure I'm making sense but I get lost when street names are marked properly, imagine when they are marked differentlz! It was ok though, it's not that big a town so I didn't get lost for too long :)
The nice thing about getting lost all the time is that you cross nice buildings that were not even announced anywhere, such as this fire station:
Our fire stations are not anywhere as nice in Canada!
There is what we could call a main area in Slavonski Brod, it's a place for pedestrian only and it's kind of in the middle of downtown. When I first got in town, there was a placeholder for a fountain that was empty. A few hours later, I passed by it again and people were making a construction in the middle
And then a few more hours later, when I was about to leave, the fountain was completed and functioning!
Pretty cool that they decided to make it work the day I drop by :)
In that same area, they seemed to have a special diabetes event where you can be tested to see if you have diabetes, and I think there were a few information booths as well, I didn't look that closely. But the important part of the story is that some TV channel was there and I saw an announcer being filmed:
Needless to say, I had to try to get on Croatian television so I ensured that I walked behind the lady to be filmed while she was talking. Well, I will never know if I made it on TV but at least I tried!
Because Slavonski Brod is located by a river, they have to have their Tvrđa! Remember what that word means? Yes! Fortress! Good job!
After 3-4 hours, I'm pretty sure I saw what there was to see there, so I decided to head to my final destination of the day: Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
Getting to Zagreb was not a problem at all, as I said, there are signs every 2 seconds... But the problems started once I got there. My instructions taken from Google Map were telling me to turn on streets that I couldn't see in real life and couldn't find on my map of Zagreb either, so I was completely stuck. There's even a nice Zagreb guy who stopped by and tried to help me but he had no clue either where I was supposed to go.
I was quite desperate, tired and annoyed at that point so I decided to call the hostel and simply ask. Only to find out I don't have the hostel phone number with me. Grrrr. On my map, there is a number to call tourist information. I took my Croatian cell phone (yeah I have one, I didn't tell you) only to find out I have no more money on it. Grrrr. So I ended up parking my car somewhere close enough to downtown, walking to the tourist information, ask them where my hostel is (fortunately they were able to show me on the map), walk back to my car and drive to the hostel. That sounds simple but I honestly wasted one hour of my time on this and I feel really stupid that I didn't learn from my previous mistakes and organize myself better. Oh well, that makes an interesting story to tell I suppose.
By the time I was ready to discover Zagreb it was already 5 PM. I was able to get a few pamphlets from the tourist information, one of them had a very nice walk to take around Zagreb so I decided to follow that. Obviously I got lost, but that's ok I took nice pictures again of other things that were not on the map. Then my phone ran out of battery and I couldn't take anymore pictures, so I decided that was a sign that I had done enough today! But what I've seen of Zagreb so far is very very nice, I'm enjoying this city a lot and considering staying a few extra days here!
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