2022 World Tour – Zagreb, Smiljan and Plitvice Croatia
Hello from Zagreb, Smiljan and Plitvice, my 25th, 26th and 27th stops on the trip. I’m skipping the summary because we’re still in Croatia. I am so far behind on my posts, I really need to catch you up!
I spent 10 days in Zagreb, to rest up from constant travel plus visit the Rimac sites and do a little exploring in the region. I read a lot about the city and was really looking forward to exploring.
The Flixbus ride from Zadar was great, this is now my preferred bus company. A little more expensive than the others but large, high-quality coaches with great seats, Wifi and a toilet.
My apartment in Zagreb was excellent – a real kitchen, living room, great bathroom and large somewhat firm bed, right in the heart of the downtown area. I did notice that the air flow was weak in the aircon unit so I cleaned the clogged air filters and it worked a little better.
In the evening I walked about 10 minutes to the big town square, and found a street going into the old town lined with bars and cafes. Bought some groceries at Spar and filled up the small fridge for the long stay.
The next day was light rain, a welcome break from the constant heat so far. Dinner in a Greek restaurant, rain was heavier on the way home. I had my umbrella but completely soaked my shoes.
In the following days I went to the Chocolate Museum, booked a walking tour, got a pretty bad haircut at one of the many fancy-men’s-haircut places, did laundry, watched the Formula 1 Austria race and visited the Tesla showroom. The manager there said he’s now getting Model Ys from the Berlin factory, with a delivery every month rather than the every-3-months delivery he was getting from the Shanghai factory, very good news. Build quality looked perfect to me and now includes a rear parcel shelf.
I planned three days of sightseeing outside the city so I rented a car from the airport. There were several small rental companies in the city but they all had terrible reviews so I went with a big chain. I booked a Fiat Panda, the smallest car they had listed but got an upgrade to a Dacia Duster compact SUV, built in Romania, which I quite liked. It got good mileage but still cost â¬373 in diesel, about 3x the price of the rental itself!
The first day was a trip to Smiljan, the birthplace of Nikola Tesla. I’m only 2.5 hours away, I can’t miss a visit to his hometown! The center of the small site is the church that his father was pastor for. There’s a recreation of his childhood home next to it and a couple of small buildings with demonstrations of a Tesla coil and a souvenir shop. I picked up a fridge magnet and keychain – magnets + cars, get it? :^) Came home via the coast, lovely views but heavy downpours that I didn’t enjoy on the big highway back to the city.
The second day was a trip to neighbouring Slovenia, but I’ll make that a separate post.
The third day trip was to Plitvice, recommended by every travel blog and person you bump into on the street. It’s a national park with lakes and waterfalls. But that doesn’t come anywhere near describing the stunning beauty of the area. You just have to see the pictures to get an idea of the deep blue absolutely clear water lakes which spill down small waterfalls to the next lake and then the massive waterfalls at the end. To get through the park you can take an electric ferry or walk along the paths through the forest but at some points there are suspended wooden walkways to get over water or down levels. Every time you round a corner, you think “Holy shit” and take another 10 pictures. I really can’t say enough about this, if you’re within 1000 km you just have to go. Just be prepared with good hiking shoes and a lot of patience for fighting the crowds. I have lost all patience with these Instagrammers that block the path and take 20 poses. I drove back to the airport, dropped off the rental, took the bus home and collapsed. That was a 15,000 step day.
My last day in town was all about Rimac. I mentioned them before, they are a Zagreb-based company that makes both the fastest electric car in the world, but also supplies high-performance battery packs and electric motors to other car companies like Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Koenigsegg, Jaguar, Seat and some other secret projects. They also just took over Bugatti from VW. It all started about 10 years ago when young Mate Rimac converted a BMW 3 series car to electric, and now here they are. After years of development, a couple of days ago they delivered the first production 1914-horsepower Nevera to Nico Rossberg, the former Formula 1 champion. They’ve made a couple of videos that I’ll link below. Besides admiring them for being a powerhouse of ultra-high-performance electric cars, I actually applied for a job there around Christmas 2020. They had a position listed writing software for the displays running inside the car. On a whim I applied and was notified about an interview – wow! They interview went well and I completed the programming assignment in a week despite not knowing anything about the Qt development tool they use. I was later turned down because they said they were looking for someone with more experience in Qt. Well OK but why did we get this far knowing I had never used it? I really had my heart set on the job, the company and living in Zagreb. Sigh.
Here’s the Rimac intro video and the glass tube area that I saw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX060yNCQPg
Here’s the Nico Rossberg handover video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN64wMLyCuY
First thing in the morning I walked out and got a taxi and explained that I want to go to 3 locations and take pictures and video, then come back. The driver was OK with that, so off we went to the original headquarters building in the village of Sveta Nedelja which is about 25km west of the city. Pre-COVID they actually gave tours but sadly that’s still shut down. I had a nice chat with the security man at the gate and he gave me the OK to take pictures from outside.
The next stop was an abandoned Bahaus furniture store in the southwest of the city. Rimac was getting way too big for the original building so they searched the city for some extra space, found this and quickly remodeled it into a hand-built car factory. The site was also barred to visitors but I did manage to get some good pictures, including seeing through the glass tube thing where Mate was showing the prototype cars in the video. I was about 10 feet from those cars, so close yet so far!
The last stop was Rimac’s new sprawling campus, currently under construction and eventually the largest single site in all of Croatia. It will incorporate all aspects of the company including engineering, manufacturing and a test track. The site even includes a historic castle which they’re going to preserve. Best of luck to Rimac!
Thoroughly enjoyed my time in Zagreb and the nearby day trips. I confirmed the feeling that I would have been happy living here. Maybe in a parallel universe I already am!
I’ll be posting a separate video soon on the Rimac day adventure.
Next Stop: Ljubljana, Slovenia
