What's It Like to Live in Zagreb?
Living in Zagreb can by no means be described as ordinary or boring. Your ordinary Zagreb weekend begins in the morning hours with a trip to the crowded city centre and a cup of coffee that sometimes lasts for several hours, a habit which often surprises many tourists. After coffee, it’s time for getting the groceries and preparing the lunch. If you are not very skilled at cooking, there’s not much left to do but to walk to a nearby restaurant and choose one of the traditional Zagreb dishes. After finishing the meal, it is a perfect time for a walk through the old town and climbing to Tuškanac and Gornji grad (“Upper town”). A time when you can enjoy the view or drink another cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette, a prop without which many locals can’t imagine their leisure time.
Image Credit: Zagreb Tourist Board, J.Kopac
Perhaps the best time to enjoy and relax in Zagreb is autumn and winter. The fall is drenched in the magic of colours of fallen leaves, delicious fruit, and the smell of chestnuts which mark the beginning of the real Zagreb season. This might be true if we take into consideration that during summer days most of the Zagreb residents escape to the southern parts of Croatia in search of refreshment of the nearby sea while the city becomes a ghost town, a very unusual temporary state for a metropolis of one million people.
Life in Zagreb is interesting in so many ways as well as the fact that some neighbourhoods have a greater number of dogs than children, so you can sometimes witness a true festival of these furry animals that happen to be men’s most loyal friends. If you do not have a dog, then it would be a good idea to consider having a bike, which could certainly make your life in the city easier because it will help you avoid the tremendous traffic jam that takes place between 6h and 8h in the morning when most of the citizens of Zagreb head to work, or between 15h and 17h when the same crowd returns home.
Image Credit: Zagreb Tourist Board, P. Macek
Apart from all the beauty that Zagreb has to offer, there are also these periods when we are covered in rain of sadness, literally and figuratively, when the days are short and the heaviness and inevitability of our responsibilities come tumbling down upon our heads. If we add the delay of a tram on a day when you’ve already gotten up on the wrong side of the bed and your coffee from the thermos has spilt all over your bag, you start to curse the everyday life in Zagreb. But even those days can change by going for a drink or two with a friend or choosing among numerous nightclubs, pubs, theatres or museums that Zagreb has to offer. It is certainly important to have a circle of good friends around you but in certain cases solitude in Zagreb comes in handy, especially while walking along the banks of the river Sava, which reflects your every thought, and breathing the fresh air mixed with particles of inevitable smog, a long-time resident of this city.
Zagreb can be considered a city where every person can find himself, where you can find your own group of people, a favourite place to have a coffee, favourite bench to sit on and read a book, a favourite club, a favourite spot to spend every little part of your day. Whatever your needs are, Zagreb will fulfil them. At the same time, there are days when even going to a nearby shop can represent a sizable challenge. They are those cold, rainy days that we want to get over with as soon as possible and leave them far behind us. On the other hand, we want to remember the happy days when Zagreb is full of life, the beautiful events and warm-hearted meetings with friends and loved ones. Each person writes his story and lives his life in its own way, but somehow the charm of Zagreb is something that its inhabitants share among themselves, just like they share the soil they walk on and the nature that surrounds them. It is something that they all have in common and that brings them together and makes them all a part of this city. In the end, life in Zagreb doesn’t have to and probably won’t be easy but it can and certainly should be a lot of fun.
Header Image Credit: Zagreb Tourist Board, T. Šklopan
Author: Bruno Roncevic