Campbell and I asked the lady behind the counter at the bakery what was the best, and so we ended up copying many of the locals and leaving with cheese Burek, a very filling savory pastry with cottage cheese inside a flaky crust.
One of the places we figured we should go to while in Zagreb was the Museum of Broken Relationships, which features many and varied items donated by many and varied people, telling many and varied stories in line with the theme. It’s something you wouldn’t find anywhere else. I’d didn’t get too much out of the visit, but I did like the following items.
1940s
Cologne, Germany
“My father had his heart set on becoming an opera singer. At the age of 15 he had already begun to train his voice and had singing lessons. In 1942, at the age of 18 he gave a record of himself singing Schubert’s song Adelaide to his first girlfriend and love. Then he had to go to war. He was severely wounded – a shell shrapnel penetrated his throat damaging his vocal chords. Thank God he was healed in British captivity! His voice, however, was irretrievably impaired and his dream of becoming a singer went up in smoke. On top of that, when he returned from the war, he learned that his girlfriend had by that time already started seeing another man.
My father met my mother, fell in love and married her, they had children and lived happily until his death. When my father’s first girlfriend passed away, her sons gave me this record which she had kept all her life.”
Unspecified
Belgrade, Serbia
“I was given this radio at a beach in Rijeka in 1984 by a guy named Darko. It was as a souvenir of the very nice and pleasant time we’d spent together during my vacation. The radio is presently out of function although a very good repairman could have fixed it and given it back its original purpose. It remains quiet because of the broken relationship it has come to represent.
During those 15 days of my vacation as well as after I’d returned to Belgrade, I used it to listen to music from all over the world as well as to songs by the Croatian singer Mišo Kovač: ‘Zemljo moja’ (My Land), ‘Proplakat će zora’ (Dawn Shall Cry), ‘Ostala si uvijek ista’ (You Remain the Same), ‘Ranjeno je moje srce’ (My Heart is Wounded), ‘Zbog jedne crne žene’ (Because of the Raven-Haired Woman) and ‘Dode dan’ (The Day is Here). I listened to many interesting programs on different radio stations and I always remembered that beautiful summer. The radio alarm used to wake me up every morning before work and I would listen to the ‘Radio B’ station and a show called ‘Good morning, Belgrade’ presented by Duško Radović and Zoko Vještica as memories came flooding back. From the moment I got the radio as a present, I took it wherever I went, and it was almost never switched off, regardless of whether it was running on electricity or battery power. I would only ever take a few breaks from it and would only ever take a few breaks from it and would afterwards always think I had missed something important.
From the early 90’s until March 1999 all relationships with the outside world were broken, all of them. Suddenly, there was only silence on the radio. Then, I heard a man’s voice. That man, whom I thought to be Satan himself, told us citizens that we were in a state of war and that the NATO forces would bomb the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia at 8pm. The man, Satan, then disappeared from the radio waves, From that moment the radio was on all the time, and it was my only friend and companion throughout the 78 days of bombing until October 5, 2000. Then, on October 6, 2000 it went almost completely silent. All cables and contacts melted, as did relationships with people and the rest of the world. ‘What now?’ I though with an ambivalent belief in a better future.
At exactly 1pm on March 12, 2003 I was in the Belgrade city centre when I heard the news that our Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić had been shot on the doorstep of the Government headquarters at 11 Nemarija Street. The man who had represented the only link between us and our broken relationships with friends all over the world for more than a decade had been killed. Although I kept telling myself, struggling through the crowd and chaos all around, that it couldn’t be true, I came come and turned my radio on. All the frequencies were clearly reporting that our Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić had died in a local hospital in Belgrade. Between the reports there was only sad music. Both the news and the music carried with them the scent of gunpowder. After several hours the radio went completely silent, leaving behind only pain, sadness and tears.”
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We were not very impressed with Zagreb taken as a whole although it had its good spots, and agreed that in the future we wouldn’t need to visit again: unlike Budapest or Split I didn’t feel a character of the city. The mix of old and new buildings didn’t seem cohesive, and unlike some other European cities the new developments in Zagreb seemed to have lost touch with its heritage. However, I REALLY enjoyed the graffiti, which certainly had the unique flavor of the city that mixed and contrasted with the other beauty and quirks (St. Mark’s Church and the Museum of Broken Relationships). Most graffiti is see is either illegible or profane. In ZAGREB, however, the tables are turned! I couldn’t help but smile when I saw such dark and dingy vandalism as “Haha,” “Mario!” “FLAP”! “Cash,” and “Chez Dogs”! Also, I think McDonalds didn’t realize the irony of “-Joker” being right underneath their quote: I certainly did.
We left at midnight again on a Flixbus headed for Split, and although I think we all managed to sleep some, I for one was happy to have even more time in nice conversation before I got my 40 winks.
Hungary4Harmony 