Week 37: Zagreb, Plitvice and Belgrade

This week took us through the rainy, but still charming, Zagreb, the wonderful waterworld of the Plitvice Lakes, and down south to my fave Belgrade.

Welcome to our weekly recap! This one's for September 12th - 18th, which is week 37, 2014


Memorable moment:
We had seen so many unbelievably beautiful pictures of the Plitvice Lakes National Park, that there was no other options than to visit. The recent weeks (actually the whole summer) has been very rainy in this part of the world, and we had a very special experience at the lakes. There was water everywhere, small (and bigger) streams running down, covering the tracks and forcing us to wade our way through. Forget the turquoise pictures of the lakes on sunny days, we had an adventure in a water wonderland and it was definitely at least as enchanting experience.

Plitvice


Tip of the week:
 If you visit the Plitvice lakes at a rainy time, do check with the information booth which paths are open. We ended up doing plenty of back-tracking when some of the tracks were closed (not just under water but actually roped off) midway through. And without warning signs at the beginning of the path.

Path under water

What I've learned: Humans are humans anywhere you go in this world. Well, this is something I did know already, but got reminded once again when visiting the excellent Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb. The museum hosts a collection of items related to broken relationships, and they each have the story attached to it. The items and the stories have been donated by real people around the world, and the collection is evergrowing (you can leave your own item when visiting). The museum made me laugh out loud, to sob quietly, to shake my head in wonder and to nod it with "I so now what you mean". 

Museum of Broken Relationships


Food love: 
On Knez Mihailova, the long walking street in the center of Belgrade, there seems to be ice-cream vendors every 10 meters. All the ice-cream looks delicious, often made from fresh berries or fruits, and there are so many flavours. With a price of about 60 (euro)cents for a scoop, it looks I'm going to have to try all of them. - There are also popcorn stands everywhere, another detail that makes me love Belgrade.

Knez Mihailova


Random thought:
 You can usually divide places into those where pedestrians wait at traffic lights (even if there are no cars insight) and to those where people just cross streets wherever and whenever. Belgrade is different, sometimes people wait, sometimes not. Often half the people wait and half don't care. Confusing. Not fitting the neat little boxes I have in my mind.

People


Surprise of the week: 
Not so nice surprise this week: Antti's tooth suddenly got infected and he was in so much pain that he had to visit a dentist. He was going through all the worst case scenarios in his head, of not being able to communicate, and ending up with a wrong tooth drilled or something. It all turned out really well. We asked for directions to a dentist from our lovely Airbnb host and she ended up taking Antti there and staying the whole time as a translator.

Belgrade rooftops


Workwise:
I started a Tumblr about workshop tips and Antti started building a blog about web and data for himself (in Finnish). Both still very much works in progress, but do check them out and give us some feedback!

Zagreb people


And that's it for our week. How was yours?

This week's photos can also be found in our photo albums in Flickr.

Antti and Mirje

We are Mirje and Antti, a 30+ digital nomad couple, entrepreneurs with restless feet and passion for experiencing the world. more »