Buenos dias, Hrvatska

5 a.m. is perhaps not the ideal time to arrive in Zagreb, but let me tell you: some people are still up. Walking from the train station past a lovely park, I passed a group of Croatian teens carrying 32-ounce cups of beer. One of them was carrying on in heavily-accented drunk-speak English.

“Why is he speaking English right now?” I wondered. “Is one of his friends English? Or is he just one of those people who carries on in a foreign language when they’re drunk?”

And I’m not saying anything here about my own proclivities except that on the very rare occasions when I do get drunk, it’s helpful to have a Spanish-to-English translator on hand. ;-)

But that won’t happen here. I don’t think I strung so much as two beers together during the whole trip with the guys, and I’m sure as heck not going to drink when I’m here by myself!

That said, I already love Zagreb and think it is on the whole safer, more charming, and more old-world than Belgrade. I don’t mean to slag Belgrade, but it just wasn’t my scene - although the desk employee at my hostel was the sweetest, friendliest guy I’ve ever met. Besides you, of course, Dad.

Zagreb is a city on a much smaller scale than Belgrade and has a higher concentration of green spaces and beautiful buildings. As I write this - nearly 6 a.m. by now - I am sitting at the edge of a white stone fountain, watching the sun rise. There’s a massive cathedral right in front of me, dwarfing the medieval-looking fortress wall next to it. And they just turned the fountain on, so now I have the sound of bubbling water behind me. I love watching a city wake up. There’s a guy unloading a delivery truck, another guy riding past on a bicycle, and a bunch of old ladies in head scarves setting out vegetables in the central market.

There’s also a young blond girl in a party dress and heels, clearly doing the “walk of shame.” This really is an all-night party town, from the looks of it. Those guys emerging from the bakery, tearing off chunks of bread with their teeth - maybe they are on their way to work, but they could just as easily have been walking home from the pub and decided, "Jeez, I'm STARVING."

And of course they would say it in English, because that's what drunk Croatians speak.

The word for “bakery” here, while I’m thinking of it, is “pekarnica.” So it’s a variant of the word in Serb, and has the same diminutive ending we used in Costa Rica to speak baby-talk to Lady (albeit with a different pronunciation). So every time I see it I think it says, “cute little bakery.”

But it no longer matters what the word for “bakery” is, because if I don’t eat something other than bread soon I am going to get scurvy.