Christmas in Europe has a different vibe compared with the US where the advent of Xmas season takes on an overwhelmingly commercial look and feel. People get overwhelmed with bargain hunting, putting check marks next to their long shopping lists, huge sales signs popping up everywhere, stores stocking up on season?s inventory and financial analysts start predicting the sales reports and how it will affect retail sector going into Q1 of next year blah blah.
In contrast to all this, in Europe, Christmas is steeped into rich, colorful history and traditions many of which originated centuries ago and still revered among the locals. Life slows down with people giving priority to "us" time, catching up with friends and family and enjoying quality time together. One of the timeless traditions is Christmas markets which start popping up in city centers and squares all around Europe by late November. These markets mainly comprise of small wooden huts where people sell charming little Christmas crafts, souvenirs, hot mulled wine, coffee, freshly made waffles and crepes. You layer up with bundles of warm clothes, grab a freshly made crisp waffle topped with whip cream & syrup, wash it down with a hot cup of coffee and then take a stroll on the cobbled stone street giving a curious look to those cute little Xmas crafts and enjoying the serene beauty of the moment as the freezing chill of December, long dark evenings and the dimly lit Christmas decor come together to create this unforgettable magic.
This year for Xmas holidays, we went to Croatia, a hidden little gem off the beaten paths where occasionally it would feel like time has stood still for the past many centuries. This is what I really like about Europe, there is so much history, culture and beautiful landscape to discover, learn about and enjoy. Zagreb, the capital city is a curious mix of new vs old, modern vs traditional, trapped in time vs moving along with new trends. The countryside is still visibly trapped in Soviet era past. People are amazingly friendly, specially the younger generation would go out of their way to help you out. English is widely spoken, cost of living is cheap and with dollars/Euros in your wallet, you can treat yourself like king .... or queen for that matter. Croatia though poor compared with most western European countries, still has well maintained public infrastructure and transport system with open WiFi access. Their banking system is linked with the European central bank system so if you have Euro bank account, you can use your debit card to carry out transactions in local currency Kuna although for smaller merchants you would still need the local cash.
This is Plitvice Lakes National Park, about 2 hours drive from Zagreb. This is an absolute beauty during summer when lush green vegetation surrounds the hill tops everywhere and draws lot more tourists during summer season. But since our main attraction was to spend Xmas in Zagreb, we had to make do with a barren landscape which still packed a tons of natural beauty owing to clear water lakes and waterfalls.
Sid, surprisingly there weren’t any typical touristy challenges, hick ups coming our way - country is quite English friendly despite being a homogenized society of non-English speaking natives. In fact you’d have more language barriers in ethnically diverse places like Germany, France which ironically are more touristy mainstream attractions. We arranged all our lodging through Airbnb in advance as well as rental car which BTW felt dirt cheap compared with rates in the US.
Now the food! This is where you can say a bit of disappointment, but not Croatia 's fault.
Most of traditional Croat dishes comprise of veal/chicken so I had to bow out there as halal restaurants or fast food joints are non-existent unlike many western European countries where you are almost guaranteed to run into halal joints at every nook and corner of the city. Wife is non-Muslim so she totally enjoyed the savory traditional Croat fancy dishes and as the country sits along the Adriatic sea coastline, top quality seafood also features prominently in the local cuisine and that saved the day for me, along with some authentic Italian cuisine.
But as tourists visiting a place for short duration, you don do not wanna be sitting down 2, 3 hours for every meal at a full service restaurant, so my on-the-go options were fairly limited and was always having a bit of munchos/snacks to kill the craving. My first full hearty meal was back in Rotterdam after 10 days, that’s when I came back alive and regain enough strength for a 14 hours long haul down to MEL
