On renovations and drawing comparisons…

At the moment, we are in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, which is also its largest city and home to an impressive array of cafes and museums. Whenever I am in a large(ish) city such as this one, I naturally draw comparisons to my own home city. There are obvious differences that cannot compare, of course—such as those that are historical, cultural, and architectural. However, what’s really struck me about Zagreb are two things that stand in stark contrast to my own city. Before I explain what those two things are, allow me to set the stage for my comparison: from a population perspective, Zagreb and Portland, OR (my home city) are not so dissimilar. The city of Zagreb is approximately 684,000 and the city of Portland is approximately 635,000. The entire country of Croatia’s population is approximately 3.9 million, while the population of Portland’s entire metropolitan area is approximately 3.2 million. So, as you can see, we’re not so different from the perspective of size. 

Now for the things that have really stood out to me about Zagreb: first, Zagreb is remarkably clean. In an entire day of roaming around a busy, crowded city center, I noted one piece of litter. (Incidentally, this isn’t just true of Zagreb, but something I noticed in Trogir and Sibenik, as well.) The second thing that really stood out to me is the conspicuous lack of homeless people on the streets. I suppose this is especially noticeable to me right now because the US (and particularly the west coast) is in the midst of a homelessness crisis that is hard to ignore; regardless, the lack of seeing people living on the street made me curious enough to look up the numbers.  

In the entire country of Croatia, there are approximately 2000 homeless people, half of which live in Zagreb. By contrast, the population of homeless people in the Portland metropolitan area is approximately 7480, more than three times the number in all of Croatia. Obviously, this is a really simple comparison and the homeless situation is a very complicated (and contentious) issue back home, so I don’t want to stir the hornet’s nest here—I am simply pointing it out because as someone who cannot walk through my own city without encountering massive amounts of trash and people living on the streets, the conspicuous lack of these things in a city of similar size is notable.  

Having said that, for those of you who know me, you know that I try my best to be balanced. So, I will also offer up a few cons that I’ve noticed so far. The first one is something that annoys me daily: smoking. The percentage of smokers in the U.S. is 11%. Much to the chagrin of my asthmatic lungs, the percentage of smokers here in Croatia is 31.1%…and it shows. One cannot sit in a restaurant or cafe without encountering cigarette smoke. We quickly discovered that when we’re at a caffe bar or restaurant, we cannot move every time someone starts smoking near us because we’d never stop moving. The other negative thus far (and this is really just a minor annoyance): many of the major architectural sites here are under renovation. I suppose with buildings this old, major renovations need to happen at some point (and what better time than the off season?), but it’s been so common in Zagreb that what started as an annoyance became pretty comical. Allow me to share with you a collection of some of my finest photos of Zagreb’s most photographed architecture:

Pros and cons and comparisons aside, I’m having a wonderful time so far and am truly enjoying Zagreb. More on that later…