Zagreb: Epiphanies In Eastern Europe

Despite the region's chequered political history, Croatia's capital holds on tenaciously to its good humour, finds

- Soity Banerjee

Sometimes it takes little to make a good day better: 8ml of free shampoo, three not two pints of beer, Sundays or (almost tumbling into) an open grave— its heavy marble top propped on two of the scrawniest pieces of wood east of the Adriatic. For it’s one thing to remember Zagreb’s Mirogoj Cemetery by its gorgeous ivy-draped arcades, conveniently backlit by an Insta-friendly, no-filter, late afternoon sun, and quite another to think of it as the place you nearly pushed up daisies in a borrowed box. Things could only get better.

Not to suggest that tourism in Croatia is in grave need of help, certainly not for its casually charming capital city Zagreb or the striking seaside spectacle that is Dubrovnik. Zagreb, in particular, is like a Balkan mistletoe under which East Europe kisses the West in slow, unhurried ways. Oblivious to its own beauty, the city lets its blue skies and good humour spill over like Istrian wine on its cobbled streets and stately statues, funicular trams and modern trams, marching bands and music bands, often strumming their guitars under a gorgeous pergola from 1891 at Zrinjevac, a public garden square.

Yet my encounter with the freshly dead at Mirogoj, on my very first afternoon in the country, gives me just enough pause. Back from the marbled maws of death as it were, epiphany arrives instantly under the heartbreakingly beautiful, blue-green cupolas at the cemetery. I know then without a doubt, that an intrepid traveller, no matter how intrepid, must always keep her feet firmly on the ground.