Exploring the city a little more

Three days in Zagreb have gone fast. On Friday I went to check where I have to be on Monday to start my internship. I found the office building easily and met a couple of my colleagues. On Monday I will see the rest but so far they all seem friendly and very helpful. And I even have my own room at the office! It's the size of the room I used to live in in a student house. And the view is to the mountain just out of the city. Inspiring environment for sure! They said I have to be ready to work hard and there are some tasks thought for me already. I am looking very much forward to really start with this great opportunity I have!

The rest of the day I was walking around Zagreb, this time to a different direction and found a different style of architecture and polished buildings. Later I realized that I had found the parliament buildings of Croatia. There were on each street corner Police men and some weird rather big black boxes. They had dark windows so you could not see inside but I am sure that from the inside they could see you. 

I ended in this part of the city because I was looking for the museum of the city of Zagreb which I finally found. And I've never seen so many screaming kids in one place... The museum was focusing a lot on the cathedral and history before the first World War which I don't find that fascinating. 

When I wrote about the buildings
which were not taken well care of,
I was referring to scenes like this. 

Most of the texts were in Croatian and because of the screaming kids I could not much concentrate on the museum so I just walked through the museum basically. I did learn that the history of the country is complicated because it has been pretty much always occupied by others. Zagreb developed in a lively city with a lot of clubs and associations before the WWI. I also got an answer why German is quite common here. Vienna played a big role in the development of the city. I got the impression that because of everything that happened after the world wars - Yugoslavia and the war at the beginning 1990s - Croatia is in the unlucky situation which it is in now and Zagreb not anymore as lively a city as it used to be.

The parliament and the museum is on a small hill in the city center so from there I could take some nice pictures of the city and try to identify the location of my new home. The first picture shows what I think is the older part of Zagreb, on the second picture you can see buildings which I think are from the 50's and some higher office buildings. My home is in the second picture close towards the direction of the big brownish building - a hotel - in the upper right corner.

 Friday evening I went with a future colleague and her husband to watch synchronized ice skating and to support Finnish girls and one boy  to their best performances in the competition. There were two teams, one of which ended third and the other team won the golden medal with a difference of 30 points to the winners of the silver medal. Successful weekend for Finland I would say!

 My Saturday has been relaxing. In the morning I went grocery shopping and I can tell you that small simple things get challenging when there is no common language. This weekend is the last weekend of the Zagreb Box documentary festival. I went to watch a documentary which was filmed in a taxi in Cairo showing the conversations people have in the taxi driving through the city. They were talking about the disappointment in the revolution, the rights of women and the economic situation. It was serious but the way the dialogue was flowing made the movie funny at times. In the evening I went for a run, prepared a nice dinner and now I am enjoying the luxury of having a TV - watching CNN and the developments in Ukraine.