Zagreb: Somewhere for the First Time

Travelling is always filled with a mixture of emotions: personal feelings about you, what you are leaving behind and what you are travelling to. For me, there are questions to be asked and answers to be searched out on every trip.

I am sitting on the plane to Zagreb with the entire emergency exit row to myself. My father would be proud of keeping the family tradition of ensuring leg roon! I have now finished the guidebook a friend lent me and the few pages I copied from the Lonely Planet (no point lugging the entire thing). The personal emotions I am travelling with are that I feel a little guilty to be doing this with Mother’s operation on Tuesday (but I am back for that) and not bringing Bro (though I am not sure he would want to come and he’s had days out/Weddings to contend with). It’s been booked a while and I think having a little break will be good for me but it is a little scarey. I have travelled a fair amount with work but this is the first time that I have done it alone. This trip was planned after my realisation of how much of Europe that is left to be seen after watching the Eurovision song contest. I am writing a PhD on the subject s of Europe so I should at least have an idea of its edges!

Reading the history Zagreb, the city is one of those parts of the former Yugoslavia which was not itself damaged by the various wars in the early 90s and instead was simply the national focus for Croatian independence. Unlike the Croatian coast or the capital of Serbia (the former Yugoslav capital of Belgrade), there are fewer hints that this country is a former member of a republic of some six countries. Having spent centuries tied into a variety of empires and still retaining some sense of national identity, it will be interesting to see how this new state combines its independence with its drive to be part of the new coalition of states as a member of the EU. The combination of personal, national and a ‘corporate’, cross-continental identities is an issue facing all members of the EU but it a new state it must be more complicated.

Croatian is often portrayed as the pretty, safe, modern country compared to some rather less safe Western Balkan sister. Indeed, in some ways, it has preferred to look to Europe than to its neighbours. Yet this was the country that in 1996 waged a war against its Serbian neighbours to defend ‘the homeland’ and its conscience is a little less clean than one might expect. Zagreb itself was divided for centuries and indeed one of the streets is called ‘Bloody Bridge’ – the link where so many battles were felt between the two sites. If the pretty sister in the Western Balkan family, I do wonder if it is a little grittier than first appearances would tell.

As whenever I travel, there seems to be album which accompanies me. This time I have Brandon Flowers’ debut solo album on repeat play which is the sort of music I particularly like: angst-filled, indie music combining guitars, piano and good lyrics. Bro would label my angst-ridden, black music but I really do see it as fairly positive; depression is always tinted with a silver lining!! Who could not love the work with lines like “Why did you role the dice? Show your cards? Jilted lovers and broken hearts? You’re out on a whim. Only time will tell.” (Jilted Lovers and Broken Heards) and “We’re caught in the cross fire of heaven and hell and we’re searching for shelter […] Tell the Devil he can go back from where he came […] And our dreams will break the boundaries of our fears”(Crossfire)?

So what will I find in Zagreb? Some kind of personal revelation? Some new insight into European culture? A city where divisions are not explicit but nuanced? A mixed sense of identity: national, European or other? As my album of choice points out, some sort of crossed/torn identity (for me and the city)? Or simply that travel throws up more questions than it answers. And that’s one of the reasons we do it.