A question for my two readers; Scrap-booking, yodelling, or semaphore – which is the odd one out?

Semaphore of course. Even in a drunken stupor you would never admit to being proficient in either of the first two skills mentioned. Semaphore, on the other hand is both useful and impressive. In fact I am certain that if Lady Cunnington-Smythe had known that I had earned a Scout’s badge for semaphore skills at age 12 she would have proposed to me earlier in our relationship. We spent today with Ksandro, the owner of our apartment in Zagreb, and he too was a Boy Scout and had learnt semaphore (without vowels of course) in his younger days.

Today Ksandro took us to see his home town of Varazdin, a small city 100km from Zagreb. It was the capital of a kingdom that included most of Croatia for about 70 years in the 1700’s, until a fire destroyed almost everything but the palace. The Queen had a fire sale and shifted house to Zagreb making that city the new capital, as it is to this day. Varazdin however continued to prosper despite the fire and without the queen- today it has a university, a number of good schools and is the tech hub for Croatia. There are stunning Baroque churches, buildings built by Austrians in the neo-classical style, It also holds the grave of Ksandro’s father in what is possibly the most beautiful cemetry I’ve ever seen – a cemetery designed by a Viennese architect aimed at ‘creating a sense of calmness and the notion that all are equal in death.’ He succeeded.

It is a city has cobble stone streets, and Viennese style coffee shops that serve really, really, bad coffee. Even in the middle of a working week the place had a calmness to it that added to a sense of it being somehow special. The middle of the city consists primarily of pedestrian zones – this adds to its sense of calm and it was certainly a great way to finish our fourth visit to Croatia.

As my two followers will know, Lady C-S and I really enjoy Zagreb. In many ways the Croatians remind us of our time spent with with Poles. Poland and the Poles are also proud to be their own country after centuries as a state or kingdom in someone else’s empire. Both countries seem outward and forward looking after having spent centuries trapped between empires. And both countries have a rich history of Boy Scouts. That’s way better than long traditions of scrap booking or yodelling I reckon.

Yours

Even C & MP have to wait for the green light. Fair enough.