Zagreb

I imagine Zagreb as a teacup. Fine china, delicately decorated, with a chipped rim and one of those black hairline cracks that make you nervous to pick it up. The inside would have a thick tannin stain on the bottom from innumerable cups shared over the years. It would be someone's prized possession, passed down from the Habsburgs through generations to the present day.

Two things influenced my stay in Zagreb, one which I had foreseen, and one I had no idea about.

I knew I was going to be there on New Year's Eve. This wasn't a deliberate choice or a particular disappointment - NYE hadn't really factored in my plans.

I met an Argentine guy at the hostel (wearing a Leo Messi jersey, obviously) and we got chatting about rugby. Having lived in Canberra, I mentioned Tomás Cubelli, who played at halfback for the Brumbies in Super Rugby, and the Argentina national team, Los Pumas. He was horrified at my pronunciation of his surname and tried to coach me the right way to say it. Sadly this descended into him and I just saying the name back and forwards to each other faster and faster,

"Cubelli."

"No, Cubelli."

"Cubelli?"

"Cubelli."

"Cubelli?"

"Cubelli."

"Cubelli?"

"Cubelli."

I gave up. We both knew who we meant, anyway.

I spent most of the night in the city square, enjoying a concert from what I can only describe as Croatia's answer to Take That. The organisers had made the decision not to have fireworks- which backfired spectacularly when a number of resourceful people brought their own and set them off at midnight in the packed crowd. A few even opted for the football-style red flares which added a nice glow to proceedings the general chaos.

NYE felt like the lid on a pressure cooker popping off. I could tell this year's edition meant something extra to people, given what they'd been through since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

What I had no idea about until I arrived in Zagreb was that Croatia was adopting the Euro at midnight on NYE. As someone who has worked NYE in bars before, I would place this timing in the 'poor/inadvisable' category. Bars and nightclubs turned off their EFTPOS for an hour and a half over midnight to accommodate the change. It was a nightmare.

Effectively, I spent 2 days paying for things in euros and being given Croatian kuna in change, or vice versa, or using my travel debit card, which helpfully decided to forego all that nonsense and charge me in British Pounds instead. I still have no idea how much money I spent, and I'm a little nervous to do the sums to find out.

Zagreb has both a Museum of Hangovers (very apt for January 1st) and a Museum of Broken Relationships but sadly both of them were closed. I did overcome my fear of modern art museums and tackled the National Museum of Modern Art. I was pleasantly surprised, the collection included some beautiful country landscapes alongside the usual dose of straight-black-line-down-the-middle-of-a-blank-canvas pieces.