Before it was unified, Zagreb's upper town (Gornji Grad) consisted of two rival districts which took great pleasure in knocking chunks out of each other at every opportunity - not really surprising, as Kaptol was home to the Bishop and all his riches while Gradec was where you'd find the tradesmen and workers who made the city tick. It was very much a "them and us" deal in medieval Zagreb, until the late 18th century when somebody finally decided that it might be...

Zagreb is a strange place indeed. I've never been a massive fan of cities, preferring to spend my time exploring delightful country lanes and picturesque villages untouched since medieval times - but I think this is perhaps because I live in England and have to contend with the crush of a million tightly packed bodies which is London. Zagreb is different in the same way that Australian cities are different - it somehow manages to contain everything you want from ...

One of the advantages of only having a limited service to and from Plitvice is that everyone has to leave on the same bus, so for the journey to Zagreb I was guaranteed to be accompanied by a lively collection of fellow travellers making their way across the country. We all collected at the makeshift bus stop opposite the entrance with plenty of time to spare - you really don't want to miss the only bus out of town - and had already spent a considerable amount of...

I lay awake for most of the night listening to rain battering the tiles on the roof - something which would've been wonderful had I been sleeping in a cottage in the rain forest somewhere. As it was, I spent at least three hours staring at the raindrops cascading down the window and inventing new curse words, before finally drifting off into a restless sleep which was interrupted quite unexpectedly at 8 o clock this morning by the sound of birds in the trees and ...

I awoke this morning at 6 o clock to the sound of exotic birds in the trees outside going bwark and cheep and nark-nark in that extraordinary way that birds do in national parks when there's nobody around to throw a shoe at them - it was one onomatopoeic forest out there this morning. I found it utterly delightful, in fact, after staying in built up areas for the last few weeks, to finally be able to open a window and look out on something other than a hundred th...