Stuck in Zagreb – Part 1

Zagreb.

So many things to say about Zagreb.

Too much for one post.

PART ONE – MEETING THE FAMILY

My time in Zagreb got off to a bit of a slow start. I spent most of my first evening and first full day there working on outlining an idea for a television show that I had been kicking around in my head for the last week. I worked some up in my hostel dorm room, but most of the time I worked in the bar downstairs. I was staying at Chillout Hostel, which was the largest hostel I had stayed in to date by quite a bit, and while not a true party hostel it was the closest I had come to one by far. So, that meant that in the attached bar there were many opportunities for people watching as I drank cider and wrote in my notebook. The best thing I witnessed over this period was an older American woman who was trying to move to Prague talking on her computer to people from different organizations there. The overall impression that I got from hearing both sides of the conversation was that everyone she talked to thought she was crazy. Watching her I very quickly realized that she is the embodiment of everything people think of when they think of the stereotype of the obnoxious American.

It was on my third day in Zagreb when things really started to pick up. After my last couple of hostels having been pretty dead and not having done a whole lot of socializing I was starting to feel the loneliness that can come at times as a solo traveler. As I was preparing to head out that morning and actually start exploring the city I started chatting with a couple of Dutch guys who had checked in to my room the day before. They invited me to join them to go to the Museum of Broken Relationships. The MoBR is a very cool museum, and as a writer an absolute must visit. Started by a couple who had just broken up it marked the end of their romantic relationship and the beginning of their business relationship. The museum consists of items from people’s past relationships and stories to go along with these items. They range from humorous to heartbreaking, from horrifying to beautiful. The museum not only deals with the end of romantic relationships, but also familial relationships, both through death and abandonment. There was also a book in which guests could write their own stories about their broken relationships. I contributed a couple of entries.

After the museum we took the bus out to Mirogoj Cemetery and walked through this massive graveyard, which being owned by the city of Zagreb, houses the graves of people from a wide range of religions. As we strolled through the aisles we speculated on how many people were buried there. After doing some calculations in my head I determined that it had to be more than half a million but my new friends thought I had overshot the mark. One of the guys tried to look it up online but couldn’t find a figure. After we got back to the hostel we asked one of the staff members there and he looked into it for us. A few minutes later he gave us an answer. Over half a million. Winner.

The three of us then went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant/bar that was recommended to us at the hostel. We got a giant plate for the three of us to share of different meats, beans, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, fries and some bread, which I paired with a glass of wine. It was delicious.

After dinner we headed back to the hostel and my new friends rolled a joint. Stereotypical Dutch. We went outside and smoked. It was my first time smoking weed since before I left Washington, and after three months without, it hit me pretty hard. We then went into the bar and did one of my favorite activities when stoned. We played cards. Specifically we played hearts. I shot the moon right out of the gate, but in the long run ended up second in a back and forth battle between me and one of the other guys.

Overall it was a very nice day of getting back into socializing and it left me craving more. Unfortunately, my new Dutch friends were leaving early the next morning, but I was optimistic that I would meet some other cool people before I left Zagreb three days later. The next day my optimism would be very much rewarded.

The next day I went on the free city tour. The tour was great and I got a lot of neat information about the cities past and present and talked with a few other travelers, along with getting advice on what to eat and where to eat it (the most important stuff). One of the highlights of the tour was when we went to the spot where they shoot off a cannon everyday at noon. There is no cannonball unfortunately. It would probably be a bit disruptive if there were, as the cannon faces into the middle of the city, but it would be really cool. Instead it shoots out some confetti, but the “boom” that accompanies the confetti is quite impressive. I had heard this the past couple of days as the cannon is very close to my hostel, but until then I had no idea where the noise was coming from. The guy who fires the cannon has the best job. He gets to fire a cannon everyday and then stand in the window and wave down to us peasants who applaud him. His only other duty is that he has to post on the Facebook page of the cannon. Everyday at noon he posts “boom”. Tough life.

After the tour I got a quick lunch then returned to the hostel where I wrote until I decided it was time for dinner. I decided to stop off for a drink in the bar downstairs and see if I could find anyone else that was looking to get some dinner. It was a little decision that would end up drastically changing not only the rest of my time in Zagreb, but the rest of my trip as a whole. As I sat there drinking a cider I went into people watching mode and observed a young woman enter the bar from the hostel rooms above followed by a woman entering off the street a few moments later. The first woman then approached the second and started talking to her about an apartment that they had apparently both looked at. They hadn’t actually met before but they were in a Facebook group together or something of that nature. Then the second woman came and sat down at the bar with one seat between her and me and we started to chat. She was American and was living in Zagreb as a teacher. The other young woman, who was Dutch with Russian parents, joined us, and the three of us talked for a while.

Now, before I continue I just want to make a note here. It has been pointed out to me that sometimes it is confusing and or awkward when I am talking about several different people repeatedly since I don’t use names in my blog. It is awkward to write as well, but I am not going to start using the real names of people for a couple of reasons.  One: I don’t want to mention anyone who might not want to be associated with this blog.  Two:  Sometimes I don’t know how people spell the names of the people I am talking about. So, since I have some recurring characters coming up I decided that from here on out in my blog, in some situations people will be given fun nicknames or pseudonyms. Some of these might be nicknames that the people already have in real life and some will be ones that I make up specifically for the blog because I find something funny about the name in connection with the person that I’m writing about. I mean no offense to anyone by any of these names.

Back to the story: The first woman who shall henceforth be known as Florence invited the Dutch girl who will now be Hermione and me out to karaoke with her and her friend who was a volunteer at the hostel. A couple of drinks later and after talking to a couple Australian guys for a while, Florence’s friend Holly (a fellow Washingtonian from up the road in Seattle) joined us and the three ladies and I headed out to the karaoke bar, stopping at a bakery along the way so I could grab some pizza and finally eat that dinner that I had come down for about two hours prior.

On several occasions in the past I have almost done karaoke, but for some reason or other it just never ended up actually happening. Since I am so keen on trying new things on this journey though, I was determined that it would finally happen this night and so shortly after we got to the karaoke bar and after a shot of vodka I went over and signed up to sing “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. As I waited for my turn I listened as one after another people got up and just killed it. So many amazing voices and no bad ones. I had really been hoping for a few terrible performances or at least one absolutely awful one right before I got up so that I wouldn’t sound quite so terrible. No such luck. Finally it was time for me to get up there and perform. While my singing was terrible I made up for it somewhat with my incredible dance moves. I may have been the worst singer on the night, but I was the best dancer.

Karaoke was a lot of fun, there was just one thing that I didn’t like about it. I definitely didn’t mind getting up in front of everyone and making a fool of myself. I do that kind of thing all the time. Almost everyday I am walking down the street listening to my iPod and singing along and dancing and getting the strangest looks from the people that I pass on the road. What bothered me was that by singing into the microphone I could hear my real voice, and I hate my real voice. I don’t mind subjecting others to it but I hate having to listen to it myself. Still, the enjoyment far outweighed the annoyance and it was a really good evening. Another guy from the hostel whom Hermione had invited along joined us after a while. I hadn’t actually met him before, but I had certainly observed him while people watching at the hostel. He was a large Panamanian guy who was at the beginning of three months in Croatia as he waited out his time to return to the Schengen Zone. We’ll call him Mic. We spent a few hours at the bar before finally calling it a night.

The next day Mic and I went out for lunch to a Korean BBQ place that he had found. It was a lovely first date in what would develop into one of the great bromances. That evening Mic, Hermione, Holly, and I were planning on going out. We didn’t have any firm idea of what we were going to do, other than go somewhere with alcohol. I was told we would go out around six, so after spending most of the day writing I put my computer away at six and ordered a cider from the bar. After three ciders (one on the house) everyone was finally ready to head out at around nine. The four of us, along with Mic’s roommate (a young Canadian woman living in France), all headed out to a bar where we met with Phil (one of the hostel workers) and his buddy. We spent the night drinking on the top floor of the bar and then went down to the basement level where we danced for a while before returning to the hostel to wind the evening down with a final drink.

The next morning I was supposed to check out of the hostel, but instead I went down and extended my stay for three more nights. It was very nice to have a group of good people to hang out with after having so little socialization in my last few hostels that I didn’t want to head off into the possibility of another extended period of limited social interaction without at least taking advantage of the great company that I had in Zagreb for a little while longer. I am very glad with my decision, as not only did I have a great time in Zagreb, but it led to a wonderful chain reaction of events that have worked out very well for me over the last couple weeks. It also led to me getting to meet some other great people in Zagreb, including the final member of what became my Zagreb family, a young 19-year-old man whose fingers I would end up licking before dubbing him Cookie Fingers.

But that’s a story for another post.