Zagreb

A letter home:

It's been raining non-stop (more or less) since we arrived in Zagreb 48 hours ago, so we decided to make today a museum day.

• Zagreb City Museum: This was by far the most traditional museum we visited. It was big and expansive and it contained artifacts going back to Zagreb's very earliest history in 2000 BC and up to the conflicts in the 90s. It was cool, but - to be completely honest - this kind of museum tends to lose my interest after a while. 
• Croatian Museum of Naive Art: This was quite cool - and it was only four rooms, which made it much easier to stay interested. The art was bright and vivid and sometimes quite disturbing. A lot of it was oil on glass, which it turns out is a very distinctive and vivid medium.
  
  Here are two pieces we saw:
  http://www.croatianart.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/hmnu245.jpg
  https://mariannetudor.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/9.jpg
  
  You can see more examples by visiting their website - but beware that some of it is quite, uh... Grotesque. 
• Museum of Broken Relationships: It's a museum about... Broken relationships. Basically people from around the world donate an item that means something to them and they write a paragraph or five about a former relationship. Some of them were funny, a lot of them were depressing, and... Well. it was interesting. It felt kind of voyeuristic at times, but I guess it's all right since these people volunteered to have their stories shared. 

We also visited Lotrscak Tower - a 13th century tower in the upper part of Zagreb. The tower itself isn't particularly distinctive, but the view from the top was nice (and it would have been even nicer on a clear and sunny day.) There aren't really any skyscrapers in Zagreb, so you get a good view of the entire city.

It's still pouring rain - and thundering - and tomorrow we're off to Plitvice Lakes. Here's hoping there's at least a little sunshine over the next few days, otherwise it's going to be kind of sad.

-

Me, again: After I wrote the letter, we also visited the gorgeous Zagreb Cathedral - and spent a lot of time wandering around.

Of the many cities I visited on this trip, Zagreb was one of my very favorites. You're starting to get into western Europe, but retaining the Balkans prices.

It never did stop raining.