It was Eurotrip bad…

During my last few months in University, I had a hard time transitioning to ‘adult life’. I dreaded the thought of routine life and to delay making life decisions, I resorted to Law and Order marathons. Before I started growing couch potato sprouts, I came to my senses and made a pact with my best friend. We decided that we were going to spend some time abroad before we had to ‘settle’ in Canada, under one condition: we should do at least one trip together Anthony Bourdain style.

"Aye Aye Tony!" My idol celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain travels around the world eating anything and everything and still has not gotten diabetes. 

In 2012, we did a border-run from Hungary to Croatia to avoid overstaying our Schengen visa (a single visa granted to visit most EU countries). This is no longer possible because Croatia had entered the Schengen zone earlier this year. Unfortunately, since this trip was planned very last minute, it was ‘EuroTrip’ bad…

Zagreb was one of those trips that was plagued with moments where we failed to appreciate the city.

We took a four-hour train from Budapest to Zagreb. At the Croatian border, my friend was suspected to be a gypsy stowaway and interrogated profusely by passport control. After she had recited the entire second page of her passport, the officer hesitantly let her through. On the other hand, while I was nervously trying to recall my passport’s date of issue, it was already stamped.

When we finally arrived, neither of us had small Euro bills so we exchanged a total of 5 Euros, praying that it would be enough for a few hours. Walking to the city-centre with less than a handful of Croatian Kuna coins, we made a terrible decision to spend half of it on an extremely garlicky langos. 

Langos - A deep fried bread served with sour cream, garlic and cheese

For the rest of the day, we had to endure each other’s terrible breaths. Nevertheless, there was some attempt on sightseeing.

The beauty about ex-Yugoslavia is that it’s a perfect blend of Central Europe and the Mediterranean - urban blocks filled with Neo-Classical buildings with vibrant colours in the backdrop often not seen on the mainland.  The church of St. Markos was at the top of a hill. Its rooftop was made of colorful tiles, almost reminiscent of a tapestry. 

Llubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is one of the most picturesque capitals of Europe

The Church of St. Markos with its tapestry-like roof

Unfortunately, instead of appreciating the church, both of us were distracted by the scarily long line of people waiting to confess and began to speculate what their sins might be. This conversation got so weird that we felt the need to leave the church.

In the remaining hour, we attempted to tour more of the city, even getting interviewed by a local tourism channel. When asked ‘What are you doing in Zagreb?’ on the big screen, I answered that it was a ‘nice day trip from Budapest’. I can imagine the local residents cursing when they saw this. People like us have given Zagreb the notorious reputation as a ‘border-run destination’. The sad truth is, we could lie about our visit but we were so ignorant that we didn’t know enough about the city to do that.

The main square of Zagreb 

The botanical garden with exotic trees, including beautiful white oaks. 

In the final hour, we went to the local grocery shop, attempting to buy refreshments for the remaining 4-hours back. There were significantly more fresh ingredients in a typical Zagreb supermarket over a Budapest one. While we geeked out over the nice salads at the deli counter, we were also quite touched by how friendly the staff were as well. At the checkout line, we had a loud conversation discussing whether to buy bananas or a plastic bag with our remaining change. After garnering many judgmental stares from other customers in line, we realized that the English fluency in Zagreb is also amazing compared to Budapest. At this point, it was clear we had overstayed our welcome and headed back.

Unfortunately, we found out later through Lonely Planet that, ”Zagreb is an interesting and underrated European capital, with a huge coffee and café scene...If you have that image of Italy or Paris, sitting at a café and watching the world go by, that's preserved in Croatia”. The bottom line is, even if you have terrible experiences on a trip, the importance is to laugh at it and don’t take life so seriously.