Zagreb: Surfin' Croatia (Nov. 19-20, 1996)

[Essentially as originally written for Letters from Ljubljana #2]

The halls of Zagreb's central train station look like a way station of the damned. Limbo's anteroom is filled with a collection of infinitely sad- looking folk with hard lives worn into their faces and the air of stateless refugees hanging about their shoulders. In the station's dining hall, an Edward Hopper dream of smoke-darkened wood and chocolate-brown paint, a large black-and-white bird, resembling a distressed pigeon, perches atop one of the window sills above patrons' heads. No one pays it the slightest notice. The bird makes small, shivery movements.

Outside, the rain pours down on the antique, monumental Croatian buildings. November: the perfect month to visit this gloomy, melancholy place. My first view of the cityscape stunned me: it seemed like the dream Eastern European/Balkan landscape Id been searching for, something Ljubljana provides only in odd corners (LJ is romantic on the surface, hardheaded just beneath). What is it about Zagreb? There is some definite sinister, dark, mysterious vibe about it, suggesting secret meetings and brown envelopes passed from hand to hand.

For all that, Zagreb is very Westernized, nowhere more so than in the Importanne Centar, a labyrinthine underground mall near the train station. Croatians come here to get their fill of Mad Max, Nike, Swatch, Ray-Bans, and of course leather jackets; Zagreb must be the leather jacket capital of ex-Yugoslavia. One big store, WGW (Wonderful Gando World), specializes in American-style T-shirts, as inevitable in a European shopping mall as an Irish pub or two in the old town.

Hotels, and most other things, are expensive in Zagreb; the Croatian government has raised taxes through the roof to pay for the debilitating costs of the late war. On the plus side, Croatia has a terrific rock scene (especially on the Istrian coast, based in Rijeka and a couple of other places, but all bands play the capital), specializing in loud, fast headbanging stuff inspired by the Velvet Underground, Stooges, Ramones and Clash. Other good points include a hundred thousand little cafés, and stunningly stylish women, most of whom wear high-heeled clunky black platform shoes (called Lugs), the higher the better.

On Wednesday, the 20th, my second and final day in Zagreb, I sip Ozujsko beer and munch a poppyseed pastry at the Buffet Blato (or "Mud Bar"), on the corner of Ivana Gundulica and Masarykova, gazing out the rain- streaked window at the midday confusion. Cars and trucks jam the inadequately wide downtown streets. The Ozujsko, a local brew, is somewhat bitter, but not bad. The local version of the Good Humor ice- cream truck chugs by, a polka-dotted mock choo-choo with the dairy's name, Dukat, painted on the caboose. A guy in a very dark brown, nearly black, oilcloth-type raincoat and hat passes by outside. National flags hang out of a couple of windows (Croatia's flag has a checkerboard pattern; it seems like one of the uglier banners in the world). On the bar's stereo: Madonna's "Like A Prayer." The Blato is a longtime Zagreb landmark with atmosphere two inches thick adhering to the walls. Everybody is smoking but me and the lady behind the bar. Near one window is a verse by a deceased poet named Tin (August Tin Ujevic, 1891-1955), who, I learn later, was sort of a Croatian Dylan Thomas who drank himself into history in several bars in town, including the Blato.

Now: I'm not an alcoholic, don't aspire to be one, and nothing bores me quicker than people's stories about bars they have known or their struggles with the bottle. Although I'm a writer and I have nothing against a good mug of beer or glass of wine, I've never been a great drinker or a connoisseur of taverns. And in photos I develop later in Ljubljana, the Blato looks like any unremarkable old bar on a traffic-choked street on a rainy day. But I will say this: when I was there, I felt the magnetic pull of Zagreb focused to a laser point on that particular piece of the old city.

NO COMMENT:

For three long months did the Serbian barbarians from the East unremittingly vent their rabid fury on this once beautiful town. They murdered its people, destroyed its rivers, its avenues of trees, all its historic monuments, symbols of Croatian perpetuity. And then, they destroyed even the shards of the pulverized town in order to build a new Byzantine Vukovar upon our crushed memories and newly-dug graves. And yet, despite everything, this ancient town of ours is slowly but surely sailing into its safe Croatian harbour.

-- from a set of 10 souvenir postcards of old Vukovar, sold at the Zagreb post office, November 1996

On November 20 I actually took the Orient Express back from Zagreb to Ljubljana (the full route: Zagreb-LJ-Trieste-Venice (Mestre)-Milano- Lausanne-Geneva.) The train was, however, nothing to write home about. So I won't.