A few months in Zagreb

If you talk to most locals, they are not fans of Zagreb. The Croatian coast is typically the preferred spot of many Croats. As a place to spend a few months, we found it pretty ideal.

Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is a very manageable and approachable city. For the most part, it’s a fairly inexpensive city especially with regard to transportation, groceries, and purchasing other basic necessities. Zagreb is also a good home base if you are looking to explore eastern Europe. It was pretty easy and cheap to find flights and trains to nearby countries.

We were in Zagreb during COVID and mostly in warmer months. The city naturally spends a lot of time outdoors — sitting at outdoor tables drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and chatting with friends. It is a city of face to face communication. Not a lot of time or energy is spent on phones or email. It felt safe and like a nice change of pace to be in Zagreb in the summer. As it started to get colder in the fall, a lot of activities still occurred outside but there was less adherence to COVID protocols than I felt comfortable with and began avoiding more indoor activities at that point.

The downtown area is incredibly walkable and not overrun with tourists as are many European big cities. A lot of locals get around on bikes or use public transit options including the tram and bus. I very much enjoy exploring a city on foot and never found the need to use public transit but we were staying in a very central location (a few blocks from the National Theatre). There is also a lot of unique street art around the city.

The city is filled with enchanting architecture. Buildings are painted yellow to denote buildings of importance, like City Hall and the National Theatre. There is quite the mix of contemporary and classical styles throughout the city. There are ancient churches, very new museums, and everything in between. There are also a lot of statues peppered throughout the city.

There is a prevalence of little, independent shops and small local chains in the downtown area. Within a few blocks from us, there were three or four organic grocery stores. At some of these stores, they offer a bundle of veggies that are near their end for a discounted price as a way to reduce food waste. There are a lot of small chain grocery stores as well and a lot of them carry more “alternative” items than we anticipated (tofu, non-dairy milk, etc). We learned quickly to plan ahead as most stores, including many pharmacies and grocery stores, are closed on Sundays.

In many parks, there are farmers markets on the weekends or on select days of the week. The biggest and most well known is the Dolac Market which is open the entire week but has the most vendors on Fridays and Saturdays. It was such a delight buying stellar produce at very reasonable prices here!

If you are looking for tips on what and where to eat, check out my post on Zagreb Cuisine.

As a nature lover, one of my favorite elements of Zagreb was the number of parks scattered about. And, there is a huge forest park (that reminded me of Forest Park in Portland) right next to the city. You basically go from a city street right into the park. There are a ton of trails for hiking and biking. We rented mountain bikes in the city one weekend morning and biked up some trails in the park which was a cool way of exploring the park.

Due to COVID (and the sheer amount of travel I was doing), I didn’t go to as many cultural institutions as I would normally like. Of the ones I did frequent, my favorite was the Museum of Broken Relationships. This museum collects sentimental belongings from individuals who have experienced the end of a relationship along with a note explaining the belonging’s significance. Items are collected from people all around the globe. Some of them were hilarious, others heartbreaking. It’s a pretty small set up and can easily be experienced in 90 minutes or so. But those 90 minutes are well worth the experience.

The people we interacted with were all very friendly and accommodating. We truly enjoyed our few months in Zagreb. We were also looking for a slightly different experience than most — my partner was working fulltime (remotely) and I was busy traveling so we spent a small amount of time each week exploring and the rest was living pretty routine existence. There is also a huge club / bar scene which we did not partake in but many, many do! If you are looking to explore the sights of Zagreb, I think you could do so in about 4-5 days. And, if you are looking for a place to station yourself for a couple of months while working, Zagreb is a great option.

Tips for Zagreb:

• Bolt is a great Uber alternative and much cheaper. The only downside we found was that rides cannot be scheduled in advance. Bolt is active in most of Europe.
• Pretty much everyone speaks English. Learn at least a few words in Croatian as it will be appreciated and will help you with basic interactions but we were able to conduct pretty much all of our business (from vet visits to obtaining a tax ID number) in English.
• The Zagreb airport is small and usually pretty quick to get through when both boarding and departing. It seemed to be busiest first thing in the morning — the lines were quite long to check in then but, even so, moved much quicker than larger airports.
• ATMs are everywhere and some don’t charge any fees while others charge up to $5-8 per transactions so it is worth looking around for ones without fees (which you only know once you are mid-transaction).
• Sundays are good days to explore parks, go to more touristy places (like museums), but are not good days to do errands. Also, in the summer, the city clears out on the weekends as most people go to the coast.