6/7 Friday
We are determined to get into some
museums today. We have a nice walk into the city once again, it’s a beautiful
day. Zagreb spends time and money on its parks, and there are yard workers
tending the flowerbeds all over the city. Our first stop is the Museum of
Contemporary Croatian Art, in a beautifully baroque building right in town. The
collection is very interesting: a small room with 19th century
works, then a bigger collection from 1940’s to current, with a brief history of
expressionism contained therein. These are works that would be hard to find
anywhere else, and it’s quite enjoyable to see them.
We
stop for a visit to the Dolac market, where the fish building is open. Want
fish? They’ve got fish! Beautiful piles of sardines, snapper, mullet, octopus,
shrimps, monkfish, anchovies, squid, and everything else.
We take a break for lunch at the
market, a popular grill where everyone is having huge pitas filled with meat.
We’re sharing a simple hamburger when the skies open up once again for a
dramatic thunderstorm. Again, it last for about a half an hour, then it’s
lovely weather once more.
We climb steep stairs to the Old Old
town for a visit to the Museum of Naïve Art. I wouldn’t call most of it truly
naïve. It’s representing a certain mystical or lyrical style, some of it evokes
Breughel or even Grant Wood. It’s not unschooled or without artistic
references. It is a very nice collection of Croatian art, nonetheless.
The upper town is filled with
tourists, tour groups, school groups and wedding photographers today, making
for an interesting mix in the streets. We find the chains from Admiral Nelson’s
warship, a disappointing little corner that’s not even marked, and the oldest
pharmacy in Zagreb, still functioning but just closing as we find it.
Back in the main plaza, the Cest
Fest is going on, while dozens of kilted soccer fans are grouping around the
beer tents. Scottish soccer chants are wafting through the air, answered by
Croatian soccer chants, but it’s all more congenial than competitive, and many
of the Scots are wearing Croatian red and white checked t-shirts with their
tartan kilts.
The performers for the street fest
are pretty lame. It’s an ‘international” festival, and for some reason
they’ve dredged up some characters all the way from England and New
Zealand to be awful in Croatia. One “Felicity Fantastic” has a talent of
juggling “swords” while hanging upside down on a scaffold, a stunt that takes
thirty minutes to “get started” and round up “helpers” from the audience, and about
five seconds to execute. A second performer spends quite a long time getting a
drunken Scotsman, who is actually very amusing, to use a bicycle pump to
inflate a rubber glove that he, the performer, has duct-taped to his head,
before juggling the same “swords” while riding a unicycle, which requires about
four “helpers” from the audience to hold so he can get onto it, which takes so
long we just have to leave before we actually see the five seconds of juggling.
But we do have some fun chatting
with the soccer fans, Scots and Croats, all swilling beers and shots under the
umbrellas together before taking off for the game. All the cafes in the city
have tv screens out to show the game. It turns out to be quite an upset, with
Scotland winning 1-0!
At Tesla Square, we stop for dinner
at a charming little fish restaurant on the second floor, where we can look out
to see the Fest musicians playing on the corner while we enjoy our cuttlefish
stew.
2 Videos Included
Zagreb Museums Part 1
Zagreb Museums Part 2
Zagreb Museums Part 1
Zagreb Museums Part 2
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