apartments hadn’t really answered my emails so I did go along wondering if a room would be there for me but I put it down to language difficulties. How true: when I met the owner, we quickly realised that we shared no common language but in the end I felt happier when, after booking for two days, he said “zwei Tagen” – I hope my readership needs no translation – and I offered him 400 kuna for my stay. A couple of thumbs up, the description of the room fitted what I expected and we went our separate ways happy. Later, his daughter spoke perfect English, mother speaks a bit of German so all was not lost...

My first impressions in the cold and wet of Zagreb were not favourable but, the next day, in the cold, I did see the very impressive historical and more modern areas by and fairly close to the main Railway Station so did go away with a better impression. The newer part is vibrant and fun, the older had impressive archite-

cture but other areas were like many Eastern block cities and were characterless. The area of the Servus Apartments was both quiet and pleasant.
The main reason for going to Zagreb, however, was to visit the birthplace of the late President, Josip Broz Tito. I had long been interested in his rise to power since my first few visits to Yugoslavia with my grandparents and, for part of my History O Level, had taken Tito as my subject. Let me tell you, though, that reaching the small village of Kumrovec is no easy thing and it took all my powers of reading and finding timetables to try and sort out a short visit there. The main problem was that, at weekends, public transport is even more

limited than weekdays and the best I could do was to go and pretty much turn back a few minutes later which wasn’t ideal. It meant a train to Zapresic and a bus onwards but let’s just say that my morning attempt to reach Kumrovec turned out to be a recce... The bus station was about half an hour’s walk from the train station and I

missed the only morning bus. I returned by direct bus from Zagreb in the afternoon and had twenty five minutes in Kumrovec because the bus arrived twenty minutes early and it was a treat to go there.