He went to Odessa, and went to Kherson
In fact, of course, neither Odessa nor Kherson. Everything is much tougher. I just decided to visit Northern Cyprus with my family, bought tickets to Larnaca, got a Bulgarian visa and flew to Croatia.
It's all Covid damned, be it wrong.
It was decided to fly to Cyprus last year. Naturally, everything went wrong and Nord Wind Airlines (colloquially “Draft”) gave me some muddy pieces of paper with incomprehensible numbers and letters instead of tickets.
And with a shelf life of a year. At the same time, Skvoznyak stopped flying abroad.
I didn't want to lose money, so I decided that I could spend it flying to Lake Baikal or Kamchatka.
Figu. The longest flight of Skvoznyak was to Kemerovo. And even to Novokuznetsk. It wasn't what I dreamed about.
And I already decided that everything. Khana bablu.
But unexpectedly, a couple of days before the expiration of the certificates, Draft began flying to Zagreb.
And my family and my old buddy and his blonde decided to fly.
This is a shame for me. I am quite an experienced local historian, but Croatia was an absolute terra incognita for me. Come back not so. I imagined Croatia as a sort of post-Soviet hole with dull service and Abkhaz rudeness. What did I know about her? That this is a fragment of the former Yugoslavia, where the dictator Josip Broz Tito, the singer Rodmila Karaklaich and the crappy cars of Crvena Zastava. And that there recently was a terrible war. And Zagreb is a former regional center, which, by the will of fate, became the capital of an independent state.
Damn, how wrong I was. . . How horribly wrong I was.
Now in my ranking, Croatia is in one of the first places, if not the first. And I have something to compare.
Still, 35 visited countries are behind me.
Market Square early in the morning. Coffee. . . Cigarette. . .
But I needed a visa. Firstly, they were immediately taken aback by the consular requirements for the applicant. Too many questions, up to providing a history of the movement of funds on accounts for the last three months.
And the date of the meeting with the consul was set a week later than the expected departure.
Ambush. . . But I went to the website of the consulate and found there an order of the Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs, where the wise minister explained that yes, it is difficult and long to get a Croatian visa, but the country does not want to lose tourists and in this regard, you can go to Croatia with a Schengen visa, with a Cyprus visa, with a Romanian visa and with a Bulgarian visa.
Bingo! My friend and I went to the Bulgarian consulate, where kind Bulgarians asked what our names were, who was traveling with us, and they issued us a national annual multiple visa.
And we flew.
I liked Croatia right away. I liked her in the airport toilet.
If people have a sense of humor, then everything will be fine.
I also ordered a transfer from Moscow to the hotel. 49 E for a ten-seater Mercedes minibus with an elegant driver who was waiting for us with a sign.
Amazing accommodation for 129 E for 4 people for 2 nights .
And the city. Zagreb turned out to be a worthy European city. This is Europe even more than Europe. A mixture of Austrian solidity and Venetian taste, and all this on a Slavic basis. An interesting result.
At first glance, the architecture of Zagreb is dominated by absolute eclecticism. Ancient Gothic is adjacent to the now dull constructivism,
but heavy art nouveau with exalted baroque pathos, and classicism with Stalin's Empire style.
But it's all harmonious. All this is admirable.
It's a pity that we stayed in Zagreb for only a day and a half. Not enough.
The city is very positive. There, for example, an annual competition for the most comfortable courtyard is held. And a competition for the most beautiful mongrel.
Zagreb is absolutely not a European province. Designer shoes for 500 E look quite natural in the window. . .
. . . and underwear for 300 E.
And it's all locally made.
I will not describe the sights that I managed to visit. This has been written about a million times already.
But here's my list - Funicular. . .
. . . St. Mark's Church,
catacombs. . .
The entrance to the catacombs is not immediately found.
. . . Tkalchichev street…
In short, you just need to walk around the center and you will find everything by itself. And you can see a lot of interesting and unusual things that are not in the guidebooks.
Graffiti. . .
. . . old-fashioned scrapers for manure-stained boots at the entrances of houses. . .
Scraper in the left corner
. . . cool ads at bus stops, in which you become a member by being caught on camera. . .
Almost all of our company
. . . the sad consequences of the recent earthquake. . .
patios, funny beggars. . .
Very honest uncle. He rides a makeshift bicycle truck, collects cans and bottles and begs a little at the same time. And he's honest. And they give him a lot
. . . unexpected trading, etc.
The photo does not contain propaganda of prohibited substances and is published purely for educational, local history purposes
We also tried to follow in the footsteps of "Eagle and Tails" to find a man who lights lanterns, as in the old days. They did not find him, but they found a man who milks a snake.
Well, that's Aesop's language. Milk the snake, strangle the bishop, punish the Cyclops. . .
And they also found a man who kills a crocodile. He, a crocodile, has very touching paws.
It's a pity for the little animal. For us, since a crocodile, it means Gena. It's a pity Cheburashka wasn't around.
He would punch this guy in the face. Ears.
And a lot of different Teslas.
But the most important thing is people.
Zagreb is full of booze establishments. A few pieces are not even on the most central streets. But there are no drunks. We were lucky to be in the city center during the Croatia-Scotland football match. The main square, where a huge screen hung, was full of people.
There were police, there were water cannons.
But none of that was required. Even the drunken Scottish fans in skirts and bagpipes didn't feel uncomfortable among the drunken Croatian fans.
The people were just fine. And the people are calm and friendly.
In short, I am very sorry that I did not visit this city and this country earlier. Liked. And not only to me. Friend,
for example, he appreciated the absence of migrants, and the Evon blonde was delighted with a completely unexpected fact, having learned that the local currency is called the kuna, and in the plural kuni, she said that it was worth going to Croatia just for that.
But Zagreb was only the beginning. In the morning we boarded a transfer bus (twelve-seater Mercedes, 190 E) and drove to the unknown city of Senj.
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