Zagreb Local Customs

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Ožujsko is from Zagreb and it is very common beer here, it is lager beer and served from tap or bottle in many places around the city.
Ožujsko also have special strong beer which is excellent, check the other images.

Cest is d' Best is a festival in Zagreb well known for its unusual realizations: the exhibitions, improvisations, concerts, work-shops, theater plays - simply whatever you can imagine - are always situated around the city, on the squares, in the streets & the parks aso. It takes place every year at the beginning of summer & the best part is that you can actually take part in it in a way!

The biggest surprise for me this year was a lawn put right in the middle of the Main square in Zagreb, where people could take a break lying in chairs, resting under umbrellas & chatting, sunbathing... It kind of symbolizes a certain freedom inbetween all those necessities & the busy city life. A really nice thought indeed...

Don't be suprised to see tons of people sitting in caffes drinking coffee in the middle of a working day. Like some other cultures tend to do other things, we drink coffee. A lot of it. When we're bored and when we're not bored, when we have time and when we don't, coffee is a must :) People have been suprised about it plenty of times, so count on it :) And we drink our coffee slowly. Not like South America, no sipping in one sip till it's hot and things like that :) So prepare to sit down, talk, enjoy, take a deep breath and drink coffee!

One more thing I like about Zagreb is that there are always little things that amaze you in a good way... For example, Kvaternikov trg (or Kvatric as we call it) is being rebuilt & reorganized, but (as everything here) it takes time. First they moved the whole market just along the Subiceva street, but now nobody knows what they’re planning to do. In the meantime they put these boards that Zagreb’s b-boys painted with graffiti & I gotta say it looks really cool. It’s a nice way of expressing creativity without destroying private property or anything else. I mean, they could’ve made a temporary parking or something out of the square, so I think this is definitely a smart way of making something out of it. And it’s funny to see old grannies carrying zillions of bags, looking at the graffiti all in wonder. :)

A similar things is the old Branimirova street (going from the Central station to the Central bus station) whose walls are covered in graffiti. That was a nice cooperation between the city & the artists indeed. I remember there were some talks about giving them some more space to paint, but I believe the City denied their wish. That's why you'll still see a lot of graffiti & tags all around the city, on walls, buildings, trains aso.

Anyway, after surfing the Net a bit, I found all the data about it. Davor Preis (born in 1966, graduated from the Design Faculty in Zagreb, a member of the Croatian Association of Artists) had a wish to combine the 'Sun' with the rest of the planets. The interesting part is that he decided to make it as a game called Nine Views, putting the planets in the strangest locations in the city (which a person would usually ignore) & taking 9 people who would take the task of looking for the planets that he put around Zagreb. In the end, they were supposed to discuss the game & talk about what they've discovered.

Luckily, I've been saved the trouble of walking around the city with a map & a globe in my hand. All of the planets have been discovered already! It looks like there really are people who took the city map & took long bus rides to the suburbs to clear this all up... (Thanx to the Zagreb Physics students!) :) Nevertheless, I'm gonna try to locate some of them, since I'm not sure how long they're gonna stay there.

It seems so strange - and it feels that way - that someone just decided to make something like that & even just came up with an idea like that! But it's like someone just put me in a computer game or a fiction book & I'm supposed to go around the place as the main character, detective, scientist or something looking for these clues that are about to reveal something or I-don't-know...

polar* finally has a mission, LOL!

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The exibits of Museum include a collection of Grecian urns, rare flaxen scrolls with the longest known Etruscan text and a numismatic collection which is the largest and best-known in Europe.

This fine neo-classical building is coloquialy called "Sveucilišna knjižnica", although it was trransfered to a new location few years ago. In front of the building stands the massive monument to Marko Marulic, one of the greatest Croatian poet of all times, known as a first one to wrotte poems in Croatian language.
Nowadays the building houses National Archive of Croatia.

Hrvatska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, Croatian Academy of Science and Art is impressive neo-classical building situated in the central position of so-called "Lenuci green horseshoe", which is made of three parks in a row. It houses the most valuable collection of paintings made by Croatian artists.