Zagreb is the capital and largest city in Croatia and our first stop on our recent trip to Croatia.  After arriving at the airport after our short flight from Paris we picked up our rental car and immediately went to our hotel where we took a much needed nap.  International travel can be tiresome.

We ate dinner and decided we should at least take a short walk around our hotel and while it was absolutely not the most glamorous part of the city it was authentic and maybe that is what appeals to me the most.

The buildings were old, crumbling in places, embellished with graffiti and had character.

Notice the WD40 advertisement on the side of this building.

Zagreb has a long history dating back to Roman times.  The oldest settlement located in the vicinity of the city was the Roman Andautoria.  According to sources in Wikipedia the name “Zagreb” was recorded in 1134 .

It is old.  In so many ways.

It saw limited fighting during the 1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence.

That isn’t that long ago and I remember seeing images but never thinking I would ever visit the country where this event occurred. When we were driving through the country over the next 10 days we saw signs of that war in the way of bombed out buildings that had yet to be torn down or rebuilt.  It made it very real when we saw roadside memorial sites as well.

The buildings and sites that I photographed were not the normal ones that tourists visit and include in their vacation photos.

I suspect that if I knew what some of the graffiti actually said I would be horrified that I had posted a picture on my blog. I am pretty sure there are anti-semitic remarks and other derogatory things in these graffiti marked buildings.

We didn’t encounter too many people when we were walking during this evening but those we did nodded to the obvious tourists and let us go our way.

Street sign pointing to different places.

Of course I found a cat taking a quick bath outside its open apartment window.

Probably my favorite picture from this set is this one. The letter boxes waiting to receive mail all lined up on a gate made me smile.

Definitely not a tourist spot but a place that had texture and life etched on every square inch.  This is the Zagreb I first encountered and loved.

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