ZAGREB GETS READY FOR CHRISTMAS

the Cathedral from the upper town's Christmas market

Coming to Zagreb felt like coming back into familiar territory, after the six weeks spent walking along the Croatian Adriatic coast.
It is a city of contrast. A ring of concrete block housing surrounds the city center like a fat garland spiced-up with shopping malls lit-up with colourful sign-boards. The old town, perched on the hill of Gradec, seems immune to the gloom of concrete, rather it looks freshly pimped-up as a trendy destination for museum visitors. Churches are visible on every streets, especially the Sveti Marka church whose red-tiled roof is embossed with the coat of arms of the city. Next to it is the City Hall and the Parliament.
The Austrian-Hungarian area including the Cathedral, located between the two historical hills of Gradec and Kaptol, and the whole area South of the hills are giving Zagreb the allure of a city of distinction. This is where equestrian statues of national heroes are to be found.
The Cathedral currently undergoes a face-lift on one of its tower which looks like it is wearing a sticking plaster.
But first things first, we reached our apartment in the evening and found our hosts waiting for us on the street in fur clothes to prevent the wind from freezing them altogether. He was retired and, he said, an avid collector of music. He certainly could have entertained a statue for an evening before getting bored of talking. She was lively too but also down-to-earth and aware that her husband could talk for hours. They gave us a perfect beginners' briefing about Zagreb.
The next morning was sunny in our apartment which made getting up and having breakfast an easy thing. We dressed up warmly and went out in the direction of the train station, looking at the elegant stuccoed facades from the buildings along the successive garden squares of Donji Grad where a Christmas market was being set up in white chalets. An ice-skating ground was also being prepared in the garden leading to the train station.
Fortunately, the snow had not come despite the weather forecast. There had been only a few snow flakes the night before. Nonetheless the cold was real, but it didn't seem to have caught anyone unaware. Long coats, hoodies padded with fur, boots, hats, scarves, the winter panoply was out and about on the street or in the tramway.
Pigeons braved the cold en-masse in front of the train station to get some bread crumbs brought by some bird lovers. A cold wind traversed the train station opened on all sides and challenged homeless people to find a spot to hide away from the cold. We wanted to buy some train tickets to Ljubljana. After that we walked back towards the old town, passing by the Jelačića square. The Dolac market was all abuzz despite the freezing temperatures, it wasn't cold enough for fruits and vegetables sellers to forfeit their bread-earning attendance.
The colour of the upper town's Christmas market was red with red chalets courtesy of Coca Cola that had discreetly branded the red ribbons used as decorations. When it is cold outside, museums have a particular appeal and so have cafes. We entered the museum of Broken Relationships, which displays objects that are at the center of crowd-sourced stories of relationships that have come to an end and for which the protagonist tells the story of the break-up in his own words and contributes a related object. It was the same concept as the War Childhood Museum of Sarajevo.
Matko Mijić, based in Trogir had a retrospective at the modern gallery next to the Strossmayer park. The pieces presented were very diverse. A table with surreal plates, cutlery and food representation; a series of photography prints of material on canvas over which he glued a few real pieces of material in a seamless manner (like gluing a piece of stone on the picture of a stone facade). He did another series of suspended boats, probably related to the migrants.
Zagreb has many secret corners, particularly cafes hidden in courtyards where one can disappear from the street for a chat with friends in a cosy environment. An acquaintance brought us to such a lounge which had a true-looking fireplace that even faked the smoke of fire. It was a nice way to warm up from our nightly visit at the Christmas market were we had tried struckli, a sweet served in vanilla cream, local sausages and mulled wine.
The next day, we walked to the contemporary art museum down in Novi Zagreb on the other side of the Sava river. It opened at 11am. We arrived there a little before that but the lobby was opened so we didn't have to wait outside. A lady, a student, I suspect, was already positioned at the cashier point. She told me however that we would have to wait for seven minutes to be able to buy our tickets because it was only 10.53 AM. We sat down on sofas in the lobby looking at some black-clad staff, who were smoking outside in front of the glass facade of the building. It felt like we were the only visitors in the museum that day. There were probably ten guards to look after the whole collection. A retrospective of Jadranke Fatur's work on hyper-realism was going on. She paints daily life scenes inspired by pictures and makes a point of making the painting look like the picture, playing with reflections. I found that the painting was always overpowering the original photograph because of the size and abstraction introduced by the blurring of the brush.
A young man was seating in the dark next to the paintings, looking after them. I pitied him for what would surely be a dull and solitary day. But he wasn't the only one in that case. In the permanent collection, which included a variety of topics, the guards weren't busy either.
One of them sat right opposite a series on testimonials of domestic violence respectively attached to the plaster moulding of the witness's face. I was wondering if anyone had ever assessed the psychological impact of exposing people to repeated lengthy episodes of contemporary art pieces associated with trauma.
Upstairs was a room with drawings, newspapers cuts and the presentation of a typical room of Gastarbeitern ( migrant workers) in Germany done by an artist who himself went to work as a migrant in Germany. He spelt out the way immigrants of various communities were handled in Germany and the various prejudices people had against them. I thought the strongest work of the museum, was a giant print of "Bosnian Girl", the black and white photograph of a girl with the hand written legend, allegedly by an EU soldier during the 1990s war. It read "no teeth...? a mustache...? smel like shit...? Bosnian Girl!"
On the morning of our departure we went for a quick walk in the upper town to the top of the Lotrščak tower from which one has a 360 degree view over the city. The Christmas market stalls where now about to be fully functional. It all looked nice and pretty. We stopped at Dolac market to buy some dry figs with laurel as souvenir from Croatia before heading to the train station where we spent our last kunas drinking coffee under a blanket at an outdoor terrace in front of the station.

images:

1/ the Cathedral from the upper town's Christmas market
2/ Jelačića trg
3/ fancy columns in Donji Grad
4/ the Sava River
5/ festive urban advertising, warm inside

Jelačića trg

fancy columns in Donji Grad

the Sava River

festive urban advertising, warm inside