Zagreb

Last weekend Kinga joined our family for a one-night trip to Zagreb. I'd been bugging Stephanie about places to go for the weekend. I finally got traction when, on Friday night, out with Kinga for some hot chocolate with the kids, I said, What are you doing tomorrow? Want to go to Zagreb? If Kinga's in, everyone's in. And as far as I can tell, if Kinga is available, she is ready to travel anywhere.

She made some phone calls, including a call to her cousin, who for years had lived with Kinga's family here in Barcs while Yugoslav wars raged between the Serbs and Croats in the nineties. You see Diana in flannel in the third picture. She met us at the train and oriented us to her city, leading us to the front steps of a youth hostel where we'd later spend the night. Diana and I also ducked into a bar, where she introduced me to a new liquor, a warm welcome to the city.

On our way to Zagreb, we changed trains in a Hungarian village and ate chocolate in a smoky bar and saw men at work with an enormous dead pig hanging by its hind feet in their back yard. Second picture.

Zagreb is a beautiful city, with medieval walls and towers surrounding its imposing cathedral and whimsical bronze statues everywhere and cars hidden in hundreds year courtyards throughout the old town. The youth hostel was in a prime location (though the hostelier couldn't find a key to our room into which a neighbor stumbled two separate times before backing up and lurching into the bathroom and heaving heaving at three o'clock, two o'clock in the morning).

It's hard to believe this vibrant place was home to brutal war only a few years ago. Or that steps from where we slept would be a 15,000-man, rock-throwing protest only one week later, reported in today's news. This is a good reminder that our brief and happy forays catch only the barest glimpse of a place. That it wakes up our empathy and desire to know more, as well as that it lays down a lasting fondness makes every visit a gift nevertheless. Plus the kids got to sit in Nikola Tesla's lap.