The old town of Zagreb was small. The cathedral was very tall and from the hill, there was a very beautiful view of the city. However, there were not many tourists compared to Italy, which was great for me. As it was Christmas I went to the mass in the cathedral. Although I did not understand the language, I really enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. I noticed the top part of the cathedral was under maintenance but probably because no one could figure out how to fix it, they used a painting to cover the tower and it looks like it’s been there for a while.

As a vegetarian, I found it hard to live in this part of the world. There was a kebab restaurant next to the hostel but there was no vegetarian option. Interestingly, there is a veggie option for kebab shops in Australia, but they never refer to the final product as a veggie kebab. Instead, they call it a veggie wrap so that the name of kebab cannot be messed up with non meat stuff. As no supermarkets were open on Christmas Day, I had to buy a beef burger and got rid of the beef by myself to change it to a veggie burger. I remember the situation was the same in Poland or Czech when I was there a few years ago. I don’t complain about it. As it was so cold here in winter, people need the energy from the meat.

One thing I do want to complain is that people have to pay a luggage fee for buses in Croatia. I was surprised when the bus driver asked for cash for my bag. Later I googled and found an article on the website explaining the reason for the fee – they argue this is similar to the extra luggage charged by budget airlines so that people only pay what they need – this is just bullshit as there are a lot places in a bus. Basically, I had to get some Euro coins just for the luggage and most of my other expenses could be paid through credit card. The exception of the luggage fee is the the company called Flex which is associated with MegaBus. Flex had wifi on the bus and the check in was via my mobile phone. I guess Flex was considered as non-budget bus company and much better than the others.

My Yugoslavian trip started from Slovenia. This country was known as the first one to be independent. I was a little surprised as Slovenia was part of European Union and Euro was also used.

I took the bus to Ljubljana but did not know how to pronounce its name. In Milan, the bus driver asked me “where do you want to go”? I said “Slovenia”, he asked “Ljubljana”? I said yes. Then I knew how to pronounce it – sounds awful.

I stayed in the “new” part of the town. My check-in was pretty late and when I woke up in the morning, I found the city was not that pretty. I managed to talk to a Slovenian local. He was not against Yugoslavia but he also emphasised that this country was much better than the other countries. Maybe that was true but I just couldn’t tell.

I went to the old town in the afternoon. The town was small but quite beautiful. I particularly like the dragon bridge which had four dragon statue in each corner of it. There was also a nice fortress according to the map but unfortunately, I did not find the entrance to it, so most of the time I just walked around under the fortress.

I quite liked this Ljubljana as it is nice and small. I bought four persimmons from an “Aldi-like” shop called “Hofer” for lunch and they were delicious. I thought this city set a high standard of the trip, so I hope the following would not disappoint me much.