Thursday, September 27
We started the day by going to lunch at a Greek restaurant that we’d walked passed several times. The place was always crowded and the food looked amazing. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving: the food was so bland that we didn’t enjoy it at all. Deborah ordered a chicken salad with yogurt sauce. The sauce had no garlic or spices. I had a pork gyro plate. The tzatziki sauce had no garlic or flavor of any kind and, in spite of the fact that the pork was (too) fatty and grilled, it too was tasteless. We ate very little of what was on our plates.
To make ourselves feel better we walked around a bit and found a cafe where we ordered cake and ice cream. The portions were huge. We split a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of cherry along with a piece of chocolate pavlova cake and a cup of coffee. The dessert was good but not great.
Later that night we looked out our bedroom window to see the moon rise over the cathedral. It was low in the sky and looked very yellow and very large. It was a wonderful sight.
(An Apartment with a View)
Distance walked: 4.4 miles
Friday, September 28
Zagreb can be called the city of a thousand museums. You can find one on just about every subject. There’s the usual art and archeological museums but also some esoteric ones like The Museum of Mushrooms, the Hunting Museum and The Museum of Zagreb in the 80s. Today we planned to visit the Mimara Museum, the art museum of the city of Zagreb. It’s housed in 19th century building that used to serve as a school.
Here’s a fascinating article pertaining to this collection, the collections in Belgrade and the collections in the other former Yugoslavian countries. It states that much of the collections in these countries originated from a man named Ante Topic Mirara who stole and/or forged many of the pieces. We now seem to understand why many of the paintings we saw were said to be “Attributed to the School of” famous painters rather than being authored by them. It’s likely the entire story will never be told in our lifetime because it’s just too convoluted and embarrassing.
The permanent collection of the museum is contained on three floors and temporary exhibitions, which are included in the $6.25 entrance fee, are in the lower level. We had to pay in cash as their credit card machine was down.
The ground floor has collections of far eastern art including oriental carpets, glass and ceramics. The first floor is devoted to archeological collections of ancient civilizations and European sculpture. Considering the size of the space there were few exhibits on display but what we saw was interesting and seemed to be of high quality.
The top floor contained a collection of paintings starting in medieval times through the 20th century. Most of the paintings were unremarkable and we even commented at the time that the ones that were from old masters (or attributed to the studios of old masters) were not the best quality or in urgent need of restoration. We didn’t know at the time that most of these works were probably forgeries. Having seen the collection and having learned of its tainted history its hard to recommend a visit with any purpose other than a nice way to kill a few hours.
(Is This Really a Renoir?)
The temporary exhibit was by a Croatian artist named Izet Duzel entitled Retrospective. His works were painted on large canvases in bold colors with highly abstract subjects. Deborah liked many of them very well.
For lunch we went to a restaurant that specialized in Šis Čevapi, which roughly translates as shish-kebob or as we like to call it, “meat on a stick”. It usually comes as several small, skinless sausages made from beef (sometimes beef and lamb) and is served on a toasted flat bread bun accompanied by raw onion. We also ordered a side of ajvar, a sweet pepper relish that is a traditional Croatian condiment. It was really good.
(Šis Čevapi)
Distance walked: 6.9 miles
Saturday, September 29
Today we planned to seek out one of Zagreb’s most iconic sights: The Lamplighter. In the mid 1850s the upper town in Zagreb had over 350 gas lanterns. Today 241 of them are still in operation and they are lit every evening by a person known as The Lamplighter.
The lanterns are all numbered and The Lamplighter visits each one in turn. He uses a long rod to pull on a handle that increases the gas flow so that the pilot light will ignite the several jets. It’s become an iconic symbol of the city and is one of the most popular things to see.
While it was still light we had time to visit Saint Mark’s Church. Saint Mark’s sits in the main square in the upper town between the house of the parliament and several other important government buildings. It has a beautiful tile roof with representations of the Croatian coat of arms.
Inside the rather small Catholic church, the vaulted ceiling was painted in a very reflective gold. There were several stained glass windows and some large faded frescos on the walls.
By the time we left the church we noticed that some of the lanterns had already been lit. We were very excited. We walked down several adjacent streets hoping to find The Lamplighter at work but could only see where he had been and where he was destined to be. We waited near the square for him to make his appearance. There were several lamps yet to be lit on the street leading to the square and two large lanterns in the square that were still dark.
Sure enough, after a few minutes The Lamplighter appeared. We followed him down one of the streets and took a few snapshots. Some of the websites we read said that The Lamplighters often dressed in jeans and sneakers and sometimes even rode on mopeds while they unceremoniously went about their jobs. This gentleman was dressed in a traditional costume and even posed with his pole so I could take some pictures. We also managed to get some high quality video. There were a lot of other people around hoping to glimpse this iconic event. The mood was festive and everyone was having a good time.
After the excitement died down we headed for another one of Zagreb’s quirky museums. We found it just across the square. It was The Museum of Broken Relationships. We’d read a number of articles about the city and The Museum of Broken Relationships was the number one attraction in town. Even our tour guide had strongly recommended it to us.
The origin of the museum is an interesting story. Once upon a time a long term relationship ended. The two people found themselves with a lot of stuff to divide up. This sparked an idea and they started collecting relics of other broken relationships. Soon people started donating relics from their broken relationships and things progressed from there.
Entry to the museum costs about $6.25 per person. Inside we found a series of stations where people recounted the stories of their heartbreak often accompanied by small mementos. Some stations even had audio/visual versions. We haven’t seen such a collection of immature, winey, self-indulgent wallowing since we left high school. We just wanted to screen, “GET OVER IT” at the top of our lungs. We loved the concept but the implementation left a lot to be desired. Judging by the people who seemed to be enjoying themselves this museum appears to appeal to a younger generation. For us it was a colossal waste of time and money.
Our version of wallowing was to get pizza at one of the places our guide had recommended. We split a Pizza Zagreb which came with salami, bacon and fried egg. It was good but not great but it was comfort food and just what we needed to put the museum behind us.
Today we booked the next leg of our trip. We’ll be in the seaside town of Pula, Croatia for seven days. We can’t wait to see the Adriatic.
Distance walked: 6.7 miles