I’ve had a lot of “new favorites” on this trip, especially during the European portion of it. In part, that’s just because it’s easy for me to like everything I see when I don’t have to work, I sleep as late as I want every single day, and it’s the sunny springtime with foxy females strutting their stuff outside. I’m in the right frame of mind to be appreciative of everything pleasant that crosses my path.
Zagreb is not my new favorite. Its historic center oozes ambience, it’s got a big-city feel that I’ve missed since I left Portugal, and the European café culture that I love so much is very much in evidence here. I enjoyed my stay here. Still, Zagreb can’t top València’s grandeur, Porto’s character, or the the charm of my current overall favorite, Ljubljana. Here’s how my ratings tell it:
- Rent: 5.9. As of today’s exchange rate, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Zagreb’s city center is $477.48.
- Walkability: 7. Zagreb has a few pedestrian-only streets (it could use a few more), and even on the outskirts it features wide sidewalks. It is a large, sprawling city, but its major sights are clustered in a fairly compact area, much like another capital I know well, Washington, D.C. And therefore Zagreb earns the same walkability rating I gave D.C.
Wide streets, wide sidewalks, long blocks, lots of green space… this looks familiar (9 June 2018).
- Dating: 9. Ah. Another city where I’m constantly surrounded by boobtacular, buttalicious Slavic women. And most younger people here speak excellent English (in Europe, generally, the smaller the country, the better English you’ll hear), so I wouldn’t have to learn too much Croatian to hit on them.
- Food: 7. After gorging myself for much of my stay in Ljubljana, I noticed my pants getting tighter, so I made a point of eating lightly in Zagreb. I pat myself on the back: I did not eat a single ice cream cone here! Still, I ate enough to know that supermarkets here are very cheap, restaurants are fairly reasonable, and there’s generally good variety and quality of food. The cheap beer here is uniformly forgettable, but Zagreb has plenty of relatively affordable craft beer.
- Ambience: 6. This rating would be higher if I confined myself to the city center. I saw a larger swath of the city during my last few days when I got in some long runs, bike rides, and bus and tram trips. Zagreb’s boring outskirts drive its overall ambience rating down, as in Málaga.
- Transit: 7. I got in a few rides on Zagreb’s cheery blue trams and buses and was impressed. They’re cheap, even when buying single-ride tickets — 4 kuna ($0.64) for a 30-minute ride on buses or trams including transfers and 10 kuna ($1.60) for 90 minutes. While Zagreb lacks an underground system, and the trams have to stop for traffic lights, they zip along fairly quickly nonetheless.
This bus left right on time and got me to the airport 15 minutes sooner than Google Maps directions predicted (13 June 2018).
- Health care: 5.0.
- Nature: 5. Zagreb’s city center is a long way from hiking areas or even large urban parks. There are forested hills looming north of the city where I hear there’s some good hiking, but I didn’t make it out that far.
- Internet: 7.
- Crime: 8.0. Zagreb’s crime rate is freakishly low, almost as low as Ljubljana’s, which is surprising given how large and sprawling the city is.
- Language: 4.
- Bikeability: 7. In theory, this rating should be even higher, given that Zagreb is laced with bike lanes. However, in practice, zipping around the city on 11 June on a bike-share bike (more expensive than Ljubljana, but at least I got a three-speed this time), I found that while the lines may be laid down for them, Zagreb’s transit planners didn’t bother to follow up by eliminating curbs or adding ramps at all of the intersections, so I either had to dismount and hoist the bike over the curb or I just had to endure some jolting. In places the pavement was in rough shape, too. Also, cars here tend to take the right-of-way for themselves unless cyclists are fairly aggressive.
- Friendliness: 5.
- Pollution: 7.2.