Zagreb: Kicking Off Croatia Trip in City of Contrasts

Following our hikes in the Austrian Alps, we were ready to set course for a new country – this time Croatia. Croatia was not on our original bucket list of countries to visit, but so many friends recommended this country on the Balkan Peninsula as a wonderful place to visit and so we decided to take a look for ourselves.

Tourism in Croatia has grown dramatically over the last ten years. In 2019, the country with 4 million inhabitants counted a record of almost 20 million visiting tourist – a steep increase from about 8 million visitors a year a decade earlier. While COVID-19 has also hit the Croatian tourism sector, many tourists have returned to Croatia in summer 2021, bringing it close to 2019 numbers. While we were in Austria, locals warned us about traffic jams at the motorways and the borders due to the high number of tourists in Croatia, in particular when travelling on a Saturday as we were planning.

Hence, we got up in the middle of the night in Austria to drive to Croatia. The trip through the dark night was an adventure in itself. Coming from the Alps, there were many mountain passes to cross and in the midst of the night we saw deer on the road and sleeping cows on the side of the road! Not the everyday experience for a big city family😊

Zagreb: City of Contrasts

Our first stop in Croatia was the capital Zagreb. Although it is the country’s biggest city it is often overlooked as a destination as most tourists hit straight for the Adriatic Coast with its beautiful beaches and historic towns.

Our main reason for a detour to Zagreb was to welcome a guest on our trip through Croatia: my mother who was flying in from Copenhagen! The anticipation among the kids was great – they are used to seeing their grandmother almost every day as we live very close to each other in Copenhagen and she often helps take care of them in the afternoon when we are working.

Zagreb came across as a city in the process of finding itself and defining its future. Many historic buildings in the old town have been carefully renovated and you clearly recognize the influence from the Roman, Venetian and Austrian-Hungary empires in the building style. Yet next to the beautifully renovated buildings, you often find worn-down houses and concrete housing blocks from the 1950s and 70s – and again next to these you find very modern buildings with large glass facades, reflecting the latest architectural trends. Similarly, exclusive designer shops and international fashion chains are located next to small, local and sometimes worn-down shops from a different time, again giving one the feeling of walking through different time periods when talking a stroll.

As with other big cities in rapid development, accommodation and restaurants have become quite a jungle, offering everything from very poor to great-value options. For accommodation, we had chosen a centrally-located Airbnb apartment with good reviews but which turned out to be quite a nightmare. The building, backyard and hallway looked like they had long been abandoned. While the apartment had been renovated, it was very small for a party of five and with old furniture and not least old beds which squeaked every time you turned. Luckily, we were only staying two nights (and were so exhausted from the night drive from Austria that we could have slept anywhere!).

Needless to say that we spent as little time and as few meals as possible in the apartment! In terms of restaurants, we found a great Italian-inspired restaurant in the city center, restaurant Basta, which was visited mainly by locals. As with everything else in the city, the restaurant was a mix of old and new. Set in a backyard surrounded by old buildings but with modern decoration and lightning. And great and very plentiful food!

Zagreb seems to be in the midst of a rapid development as seen in other east European cities such as Prague a decade or two ago – and if visiting the city again in five to ten years, we expect it will be a very different Zagreb where the contrasts between old and new, renovated and worn-down will have diminished.

It will be interesting to see what the future heart and soul of the city will be. We got the feeling that it was building up to be a very vibrant and dynamic city with a cultural edge. For example, the city hosts an unbelievable number of museums on traditional topics such as history and art but also on off topics such as the hangover museum, museum of broken relationships and museum of illusions.

We spent two days in Zagreb which gave us time to get a good impression of the city – and added it to our bucket list of places to explore again in the future!