BUCHAREST TO LJUBLJANA: Hostel drama in beautiful Zagreb

Zagreb was a shock (and a very pleasant one). After the age and pollution blackened buildings of Bucharest, Sofia and Belgrade, the street we emerged onto from the station was chocolate box pretty.

Ahead of us was a wide street with a strip of park along the middle, the grass and footpaths shaded by tall trees. A huge statue of King Tomislav was directly in front of the wide front of the station, busy with early morning tram traffic. Behind it stood the Art Pavilion of Zagreb with its honey coloured walls topped with a grey glass dome; it’s more than 100 years old and was one of the first prefabricated buildings in Europe.

A sleepless night

We’d had out most sleepless night of the holiday so far. The train arrived nearly two hours late, during which time we ordered beers and drank them among a party-like atmosphere in Belgrade station. The journey was a shorter one than those connecting Bucharest and Sofia or Sofia and Belgrade and was interrupted partway through the night by armed border guards shining torches into our compartment when we arrived at the Croatian border.

An hour or so later the train stopped unexpectedly, waking my friend, who called out: “We’re here! We need to get out!” Half asleep and disoriented I started groping around in the dark for my things before the train jolted and began to move again. It was light when we woke up again and admired the green hills dotted with neat, prosperous looking houses, and cars zooming along smooth, wide roads.

Our first task was to take our bags to the hostel, a tram ride out to the suburbs. The proprietor, Marko, was a giant, loud man with big belly not only partly covered by his t-shirt. When we arrived he was extorting departing backpackers: “Don’t forget to write to Bostel Bookers and Lonely Planet!”

“You have to go clubbing tonight!” he yelled at us when it was our turn to check in.

We stared blearily at him through sleep deprived eyes, before walking back to the tram stop to return to the centre in search of strong coffee.

Exploring Zagreb

The next two days we spent exploring Zagreb, as well as taking a side trip to Kumanovo.

We started by exploring the small pedestrianised streets around Trg Ban Josip Jelačić, a 19th-century Croatian war hero whose statue stands in the square.

A trip up in the Zagreb Funicular — the shortest funicular in the world — took us to the Upper Town, where we stared out at the view over the city, before meandering around St Mark’s square, where the church with its distinctive roof tiled in the red, white and blue of the Croatian flag stands surrounded by the government buildings flanking the cobbled square.

We learned more about the history of the city back to the middle ages at the Croatian History Museum.

We also visited the Zagreb Ethnographic Museum, which had a collection of artefacts from Africa as well as the Balkan items we’d already become familiar with at the ethnographic museums in Bucharest, Sofia and Belgrade.

Hostel drama

But it was the hostel that provided the drama for our stay in Zagreb — and not in a good way.

After an excellent Italian dinner, we took the tram to the nearest stop, then walked with delivery motorbikes shining headlamps in our eyes to the hostel.

Ready to fall into bed, we got trapped in a conversation with the bitter Tomas, who quizzed us about our life plans before talking over us with his own sad stories.

In the background we heard yelling, then a young American man burst into the room to tell us one girl has left without her luggage. “Is it yours?” he asked me urgently, then swung around to my friend. “It’s yours, isn’t it!”

Bed was in a mixed dorm full to capacity with sagging metal bunk beds that creaked whenever any of the 20 or so occupants moved.

I’d just drifted off to sleep when the light was suddenly switched on — revealing a young couple across the room in a bottom bunk together — and Marko burst in after a sheepish looking young guest.

“IF YOU KEEP COMING IN AND OUT DISTURBING YOUR ROOMMATES YOU WILL HAVE TO PACK YOUR BAGS AND LEAVE!” he bellowed, waking everyone who might not have been woken up by the light coming on.

The next morning we were glad to pack our bags and leave for the journey to our last city of the trip, Ljubljana.