Not far from Ljubljana, Slovenia is Zagreb, Hrvatska.
Let me explain. Slovenia is very modern. Great cinema booking systems, good coffee and automatic toilets. But the internet cafes system of time and payment were so bad that after an hour, all the cards that gave time to use the computers were expired, so no more access for anyone. Strange for Slovenia, after its excellent automations.
Hence the reason why we've in Zagrebs only internet cafe so soon after mailing from Ljubljana - I didn't have time to make any replies. This cafe is superb, by the way. Sublink is its name, and its cool in the way that only Eastern Europe can be. We have funky music (including a duran duran track) wafting around, and i'm sitting in near darkness in the corner of a black room full of smoking geeks. The drinks machine is ultra violet light, making your laces glowing, and they have one of those eye of the storm electro globes thingies. This would rate as one of the nicest and most efficient cafes we've been to. Full marks to Sublink of Croatia.
We rode out of Ljubljana and made two hard days ( for we are getting a cumulative weariness) of 100kms to reach Zagreb. The exit of Slovenia saw a beautiful deep river valley planted with vineyards on the south facing slopes, we cycled over a few rolling hills and drank coffee in a restaurant near the border, where a man brought out a pig (dead) and proceeded to spit roast the whole damn thing right next to us.
Over the border and past friendly border guards (the usual wide eyes, disbelief and shaken head at how stupid we are when they learn we've cycled from England) and promply we are lost in the suburbs of Zagreb as we escape from the main single lane highway to the centre. Eventually we find our way to where a campsite should be, but alas, and as we should be used to, the site marked on the map doesn't exist. Null Point to marco polo and their maps. Next we follow the annoying Lonely Planet to a campsite that turns out to be 14kms from Zagreb and only a ten minute walk from the village of Lucko. It took us over 2 hours to find, and 20 minutes to cycle to. It turns out the campsite is actually at a motorway service station, so we had to figure out how to reach it without riding down the hard shoulder. Its a curious site with about 150 places, but we're only seen about six tents maximum there. Maybe this is the effect the war has had on tourism.
Zagreb itself is a little dour. Maybe we're getting tired of European cities ("they all look the same") or maybe the sun wasn't shining, but there doesn't appear to be much in Zagreb, so I'm afraid we succumbed to our need for American culture and took in a pretty shite movie (10 things I hate about you) which was kinda funny. Tonight we will maybe investigate a ROCK BAND at a club here in downtown Zagreb.
Tomorrow we head for five days to Budapest, where we will probably encounter Malboro smoking, coke drinking and mtv watching students for the last time, then we head across the great hungarian plains and into the difficult country of Romanian. Hopefully Turkey may be more accessible by the time we reach it, elsewise of final destination will be closed to us.
regards to all
Tom Moreton (tom@fatbeehive.com)