Day 8: Onward to Zagreb

We packed up our tent for the first time on this trip, happy with our first European camping experience. We may have had our best nights of sleep here and the setting had been perfect.

We bought train tickets to Zagreb and rushed to the platform only to discover that the 11:19 Zagreb train we saw on the board was an arrival and not a departure. Oh well. We sat in a cafe and spent a couple of hours drinking wine and a strange brew of beer with grapefruit juice which is very popular here. It is surprisingly good. If you are reading this go and mix some up yourself and let us know what you think.

Arriving in Zagreb's main train station, we stepped out to a vista of open paved square, public gardens and trams trundling by. This was definitely a better first impression than Ljubljana made. The city was bustling with people, tourists of course but also plenty of locals going about their daily business. This was a different sense to what we got in Ljubljana and Vienna where it seemed that the city almost existed purely for the escapist tourism fantasy.

We hopped on the tram and followed our hostel's detailed directions. It was centrally located but we almost walked by it due to its practically non-existent signage and though the street number was correct, at first we couldn't believe that this was the place. We spied bunk beds through an open window on the ground floor and only a single sticker stuck on the door jam above the door bell confirmed its existence. The hostel looked dilapidated from the outside with graffitti (becoming a common sight in these parts) and an old facade that was probably best before 1850. We were paying 50 euro for the privilege of staying here so it was with trepidation that we ventured through the doorway. We were pleasantly surprised then, to find that our room was the height of modernity and utilitarian design and we settled in for an evening cooking at a kitchen we would happily live in.

We passed up the opportunity to explore Zagreb that night and opted instead to cook our own long-missed home-style cooking. We listened to some music on our ipod speakers and chilled out. Zagreb could wait til morning.