Well, I’m here safe and sound. Now I’m wondering how I’ll ever stand to leave! If first impressions of a city mean anything, I have to think I’ve stumbled onto a hidden treasure.
This is an old European city, centered at the base of a range of hills. The oldest part of the city is up on the hills themselves, with the newer city on the plane extending from the hills to the nearby river. Hopefully I’ll be able to post up some pictures of the cathedral and a few of the old, classical buildings.
Like Kiev, there are little parks and greenspaces everywhere throughout the center of the city. Many of these spaces have statues or fountains. The climate is extremely moderate – these past two days the high has been in the low 80s or high 70 with very little humidity. Great weather for strolling around.
This morning I wandered off to a couple local markets. One turned out to be something of a flea market and the other was a more traditional produce/farmers market. The fleas didn’t look so hot, but the produce looked incredible! There were all the fruites & vegies you could imagine, including these very pale (almost white) peppers that I’d never seen before. No, I didn’t buy anything, but I do know I’ve got to come home with a trinket or two from this place.
Zagreb is host to a rampant cafe culture. Apparently a favorite national passtime is to sit at one of the bazillion sidewalk cafes in the city center and, well, pass the time. As I was strolling around the city this morning, I did my best to hold to the old adage and “do as the Romans do.” A couple times I settled into a seat, ordered a cappuchino and watched the world go by. I’ll probably do the same tonight, although there is an organ concert in one of the nearby churches that I might head to instead.
I recognize the danger in extrapolating the state of a country from its capitol city, but it really appears that Zagreb, if not Croatia in general, has handled its recent transition very well indeed.
The flight over was actually very good. On Friday, Andy, Ann and Jack came over to use the pool in the afternoon and then the lot of us, with my luggage, went out to their place in Herndon. They live only about 10 minutes from Dulles, and after a dinner of pesto pasta salad and various grilled things, Andy dropped me off. The flight left at 9:40 and I quickly dropped off and slept through most of the flight. We arrived in Frankfurt around 11:20am, and I had a little under an hour until my next flight. All told, I was in Zagreb around 2:30pm. My luggaged arrived several hours later.
Tomorrow morning things kick off at about 8:00. One of the folks from the World Learning office is meeting me at the hotel a little before then and we’ll walk over to the office together. Apparently, the air conditioning may be on the fritz, but we’ll deal with that when we need to. Two days of training here, then I’m off to Skopje which, while nice, won’t be able to compete with Zagreb I’m afraid.
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