August 16
Today we traveled from Lake Balaton in Hungary across the Border into Croatia. As Croatia is not a part of the Schengen zone (which allows free movement across borders), all non-EU member countries had to line up to get our passports checked. Wow- What a long line up – it took almost an hour. We were a little worried as a lot of the cars in our line were getting pulled over and they had to wait to be searched, but when our time came and we handed over our Canadian passports it was really fast, we were stamped out of Hungary and into Croatia.
Croatia is actually known as Hrvatska. After a bit of research it seems like Croatia is “kind of” a translation of “Horvat” or Hrvat which is a Slavic name for the country into a Latin version which became Croat… I’m sure that is not a perfect explanation but, at this point it will have to do.
We made our way toward Zagreb and stopped in a beautiful little town just outside called Simuncevec. A small little farming community where a local family had decided to turn part of their farm into a camping place to make some extra money. The family was so lovely, we were treated to a cheese and ham plate when we arrived. They went out of their way to make sure we had everything we needed.
August 17
The next morning we got up early and headed into Zagreb. What a cool city. We decided to park in the downtown and walk to a museum that we had heard about. It was the Zagreb Museum of Natural History. It was a crazy cool museum. It was like a museum from 1900.
It was all original taxidermy, thousands and thousands of specimens in glass cabinets. It was also home to some of Croatia’s famous neanderthal bones, the most famous one, the skull, however was on loan and we only got to see a plastic cast of it.
We had the place to ourselves. I don’t think anyone visits it anymore. But we loved it.
We then walked all over the old town see the beautiful sites. We saw the famous Church of St. Mark’s which has the roof tiles formed into the coat of arms for Croatia and Zagreb city.
We saw the beautiful Zagreb Cathedral which is undergoing major renovations from a huge earthquake that struck in 1880, and from the lack of work that happened through the wars and through Communist rule.
The original clock from the earth quake is mounted on the city wall near by. The earthquake hit at 7:03 pm on Nov. 9th 1880 and the hands stopped at that point, never to move again.
We also walked through the Stone Gate (Kamentia Vrata). It is the last of the 5 original city gates and it was built in 1360. There is a chapel inside the gate that is built to commemorate a famous painting of Mary that survived a huge fire.
It was an incredibly neat city – we did see some evidence of the fighting from the was for Croatian Independence in the 90’s, a few bullet holes in a few walls, but most of the city has been cleaned up and fixed.
We stopped for lunch and were treated to a changing of the guard as they marched through the streets.
After lunch we headed back to our campsite and had a relaxing afternoon!
Thank you Zagreb, We really enjoyed it here!
Tia and Mari
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