We all have a "list of things" to do in our journey. The most common one in all of our lists is to travel, tracing a wish route to make our holiday magical.
When you pick a map of Europe and hover your iris around the most famous places, its likely that Croatia would get its undeserved ignorance. well, Time has been talking to me whispering into my ears to not to keep Croatia waiting. Croatia is a piece of land paninted by God when he was apprently in good mood.
Me and my friend zeroed in on Zagreb and Plitvice lakes for this time.
As we catapulted ourselves from Brussels, Zagreb invited us solemnly with its vivid panache. First observaton is that the city is prim proper and clean dapper.
We booked hostel Subspace near the old town and occupied what they called capsules. The concept was totally cool.
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| Inside my Capsule |
Had a delightful lunch and headed back to freshen up. We had no fixed list of places to see but to stroll every possible street in the city. Thick beautiful sunlight with colorful outpour of attitude gave a thump to our excitment.
Zagreb is more real in the sense, it is not prepackaged with attractive tour packages or unnecessary hypes that pollutes the very fabric of the place. I had very little expectations from Zagreb but I was bewildered with its artistic grace. It took us by surprise.
A patch of desire catalysing our blend with the atmosphere, to become part of breeze that keeps blowing to all the streets, we roamed loosing track of time. In the streets, follow your curiosity and you will be rewarded. We got pulled into unknown unruffled lanes, Its just the way how Zagreb unfolds to visitors. Small unexpected delights is the teasing generosity of this city.
Lower town has meuseums and newer stuff while the upper town has the old quaint chruches and buildings. We moved around Gornji Grad covering Zagreb Cathedral, St. Marks Cathedral and Lotrscak tower.
It was wonderful to simply chat and walk clicking pictures, taking a break sitting in street corners. Not to forget ice cream break, delicious.
I never felt so comfortable with a city that I travelled to.
Tkalciceva!! good luck wih the pronounciation. It's a paradise. There are endless number of restaurants in this street and we had nice little time in one of them. As sun gets thin, lot of musicians, of different Genres perform at different parts of the street.
The fun filled holiday attitude and style being so conspicuous all around the street leaves everyone floating in delightful ambience.
Be it the Spanish tempo that made people dance on streets, or the old man's swag with cigar and guitar, smoking it out or bands with bass, saxophone and violin or the band with loads of beautiful songs, the street is an unforgettable experience.
We just sat there people watching and listening to music in inevitable deep reverie.
Back to the capsule. The only excuse that this day can give for ending so quickly is that, time has Plitvice in store for us tomorrow.
Alarms, Quick showers, Taxis and into the bus at 6:30AM.
This was the USP for our trip and we were curious to explore the largest national park in Croatia.There are 6 trails if my memory serves me right, a 8km hike is what we picked from entrance 1. With a bit of fresh forest air, place starts to bombard you with its distinctness.Paths are laid out throughout giving you clear views of lakes. Perfect sunny weather, Azure sky, turquoise waters is as pretty as it can get.
You feel as though land is scooped out and waters keep filling the cup making it look dramatic. Unable to escape from the rage of beauty and equally hungry we sat in the middle of trees in plain old benches and had a relaxed brunch.
A short ferry ride took us to explore much more better parts of the place.
Whenever we see lot of people recommending a place to visit, somewhere deep down we begin to suspect- is it really so good. The next few kms that we walked rewrote the thought of smug facade that I had in mind about Plitvice lakes.
Crystal clear waters letting us see the flora that it beholds, truly imaginary paths cutting through endless lakes on either sides, swept my feet to fall for it.
Some where, some time when I was half asleep, when I was half awake and I don't even know whether it is my imagination or a dream, you get flashes of pictures, which may probably never exist....nature had its own strange way of acknowledging it by making me come here.
Inch by inch we came to the end of the hike closing it with a short bus ride to the entrance 2.
Having gone through a splendid day, we reached Zagreb and this is where the sting in the tail starts. We went for a exchange of currency and reached tram station. Tram arrived and as we were getting into it, my friend for some reason looked into her bag. She uttered "wallet is missing, someone stole my wallet", a pause and then comes the bomb, "Our passports are in the wallet". No no i dint hear what i just heard.I came out of the tram and we looked around, She totally lost her cool and who wouldn't. Too many things coming to my mind and i simply told myself and to her to keep calm and focus on what needs to be done. Its lost and now we need to see how we can get back to Belgium. It was an ambush on the mood that we had so far in Croatia.
The very first step is to give a police complaint, we went to hostel and explained them what had happened and asked for help. We are so grateful to the staff that they called couple of stations to find out what can be done. They called a taxi and gave us details on where to go. we got the FIR copy after spending few hours in the station. The worrying part was that it was a saturday, sunday is a holiday for Indian Embassy in Zagreb which means we cannot take the flight that we had booked on Sunday. We got back to hostel With minds getting heavier unable to bear the change in the script. Well, the notorious us with the shittiest smirk that you can imagine told us that we have one more day in Zagreb to roam :P really!! But yeah....
Half past 12, we were sitting in the benches near the old town and having a pizza.
After a very emotionally draining day, oscilating between poles of excitment and worry, we went back to our capsules.
Woke up next day wishing the entire scene to be a dream. After a nice brunch, we covered Medvedgrad castle. We could get good 360 degree view of Zagreb and surrounding mountains. Spent good amount of time walking in the forest bushes and small streams.
Got a chance to lazy walk zagreb again and we wouldn't miss such an opportunity. Its not only about the check boxes that you tick against the places you visit but the strange guilt that you feel when you dont have enough time to spend in worthy places that makes you mad. We got time here. Day ended with a fine dine meal in food street.
Monday. We thanked hostel folks for their timely help and left for Indian Embassy. We thought the process would be easy. Offcials told that the document they give can be used only to go to India. This was a blow, a big blow.In our case we need to go to Belgium since we were working there. Tensions, calls, photographs, proofs, taxis, mindset to go to India, thought of going with the documents we have to Belgium....we were all over the place. After a lot of struggle, we got our temperory passport using which we can go to Belgium. We rocketed to the airport with just one hour left for the flight. As a tourist i hate to leave this country so soon, but given our situation, we rather get some how smuggled out of this place for now. Just before our minds slipping towards numbness, we were inside the fight laughing the situation out.
We reached Belgium and purchased on arrival visa to enter.
The entire Croatian footage would not get the liberty to fade in my memory and in time, when I recall, it would weigh rich than it is today.
Croatia has retained its pureness and resisted the onslaught of wild attitude that can be seen in other cities rather developing its artistic own cool.
It is like a song that grows on you as you listen to it.
-UR
uday.s7@gmail.com
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