ZAGREB-The First Stop

The first stop of my Croatia trip is Zagreb. The capital city of Croatia is the biggest and actually only metropolitan city of the country. I have to admit that before coming I was not expecting such developed, planned and modern city.
I flied to Zagreb with Turkish Airlines with a very good price about 200 €. There are other airlines flying from Istanbul to Zagreb but surprisingly Turkish Airlines rate was the best of all.
Zagreb International airport is 16 km far from the centre of Zagreb. There is a bus service of Croatian Airlines that takes you the city bus terminal. It takes 20 minutes at most and costs 5 €.
Zagreb is the largest and strongest industrial and economic centre in Croatia with 126000 hectar surface area, 1 million inhabitants population.
Average annual temperature is 12 C. In summer it is around 28 C. It is warm enough to feel the summer.
Zagreb can be defined as the city of trams actually. In the city center it is very much easy to get somewhere with trams. I am so lucky that the day I arrived to the city was a national day and all the trams were free.
After a long communist regime, the country was introduced to Capitalism. As far as I understand people are very much pleased with that new lifestyle but it seems that they are still living without capitalist passion and eager about earning lots of money and having a brilliant career. It seems like they are just having very fun of living at a very peaceful country and all they want is to keep this as it is.

There is no rush in the traffic. Obeying the traffic rules may not be something surprising but even if there is no car on the road, pedestrians keep waiting for the lights to turn to green for them. I need to say that It is really much for me and I jaywalked:) with a great pleasure ignoring the residents routines.

Guys you have got to know that Zagreb nightlife really sucks! Maybe its being summer time there is no club open

Actually there are some so-called clubs but they seems like cafes serving alcohols. You just sit on the seats outside of the clubs (cafes) and staring at the people passing by or sitting on another clubs seats

Konzum is the very common supermarket of the city spread all around the city. If you are staying at a hostel with a kitchen and you want to cook your dishes, I recommend you to go to Konzum for shopping.

I have stayed in Funk Hostel. It was really nice place to stay. Despite of being a little bit far from the city center It offers more than enough comfort and luxury. The only thing I do not like about Funk Hostel is the shower tab and the water pressure.

The SPOTS of the CITY

Ban Jelacic Square and The Mandusevac Fountain

Ban Jelacic Square is the central focus of modern Zagreb. The square name is coming from a general in the Austrian army Ban Jelacic. He had also governed the country between 1848 and 1859. The statue of Ban Jelacic is placed on the square in 1866, it was removed by the comunist regime in 1947 and it was placed again in 1990.
It is easy to take a tram from this square to go to the other city attractions. Lots of people waits for the tram at this square so it will be a very important spot for you when exploring the city.
The Cathedral and Virgin Mary with Angels
In front of the Cathedral there is a fountain with gold-plated statues of the Virgin Mary and four angels, the latter symbolizing the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, Innocence and Humility.
The Mirogoj Cemetery
The Zrinski Square
The Saint Mark’s Square

CROATIA TRIP BLOGS TO BE PUBLISHED VERY SOON

I saw I noted and I blogged. Croatia blogs will be published very soon in here.

Thanks for your patience.

HEADING TO CROATIA

In 2006 I had attended to a workshop about knowledge assessment methodologies and met a lot of people from different professions and different countries. I was the reporter of my group and actually I took that post over without knowing what exactly I had to do since I had recognized that I need to present all the work done by the group to all attendants and to be in contact with the other reporters of the groups. So I had the chance of knowing most of the people just because of my task.

One of those people was a pretty Croatian girl. I remember her so clearly that on the last day of the workshop we were on a boat trip on Bosporus and she was very much surprised by the views she saw and she said that she never thought that Turkey is that kind of a beautiful and “modern” country. She was always thinking about Turkey being kind of an Arabic country which camels are around, all the landscape is kind of desert and the woman with black scarf.

Now it is my turn. I am heading to Croatia without any information besides its being a part of Yugoslavia once upon a time. I have to admit that I have some stereotypes about the country and its people actually that being relatively rude and not so much welcoming for the foreigners. As I said these are just the prejudgments that need to be repaired so soon and I want to be very suprised as my croatian friend did.

We are flying to Zagreb with Turkish airlines in this saturday afternoon and going to stay at Funk Hostel for two nights. I picked this hostel and totally persuaded by the photos I saw on the hostel website. I hope it would be clean and comfortable otherwise my friend would kill me.

Out itinerary is changed several times but eventually we ended up with a route that we are pledged to follow :)

We will stay in Zagreb for two night and then go to Split and the islands around the Split and then we go to the famous Dubrovnik. So below there is the map of Croatia and the cities we are planning to visit.

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