Tale of Two Cities
Yesterday I relocated from one capital to another, from Zagreb Croatia to Ljubljana Slovenia. What connects the two cities, apart from a two hour bus ride, is a history of being ruled by the Habsburgs for centuries, right until 1918.
Visually, the difference to the Croatian cities on the Dalmatian coast is instantly apparent. Whereas Dalmatian cities were all medieval (and older) narrow winding roads and sandstone houses with Venetian (or older) carvings, the capitals are clearly in Austro-Hungarian thrall.
The houses in villages around the capitals look like they belong in the Alps (or Asterix’s village),
and the buildings in the capital cities have the ceremonial and slightly pompous look of Vienna. Zagreb being clearly the more ceremonial and pompous of the two.
It’s worth lifting ones gaze in these cities also in the ”newer” parts of town, since there are some rather fantastic and fanciful art deco buildings in both cities.
One clear difference is that there is much more scaffolding in Zagreb. The main reason for this is the earthquake that hit in the middle of the covid epidemic, late March 2020. The epicentre was in Zagreb. Luckily ”only” two people died, but the destruction to buildings was immense and e.g. one tower of the cathederal collapsed. The other tower was structurally so damages that it also had to be dismantled - neither has been rebuilt yet.
But eartquake damage aside, the buildings in the centre Ljubljana do seem to be in better, often quite pristine, condition. In Zagreb there were a lot of buildings with exteriors in need of urgent repair. For example the building I stayed in looked ready to be demolished on the outside. Luckily the inside was much nicer.
There are also differences in transport. Zagreb has a functioning and cheap tram system, but then again, it is a much larger city (some 780000 inhabitants to Ljubljanas 270000). In Ljubljana on the other hand, there are a lot more cyclists and bike paths than in Zagreb.
Nestled a safe diatance from the historical centres of both capitals lie Soviet style suburbs built from the same grandiose plans as in all other ex-Eastern block countries - less pictoresque, more Titoesque.
Both capitals also seem to have an abundance of taggers and graffiti tends to be text-based. Other kinds of graffiti are relatively rare.
Despite the similarities, of the two, Ljubljana gets my vote. It is prettier, the buildings less grandiose
and a river winds its way through the heart of the historical center,
whereas Zagreb was built quite far from its constantly flooding river.
I must admit that the museums in Zagreb have better names.
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