Friday, July 1: Castles, castles everywhere!
[Yes, I know. Quite a delay since my last posting. These recent post from July 1 through July 5 will be shorter than usual, as I'm trying to make sure I get down our experiences however truncated they may be.]
Damn, it's hot here! We're enormously grateful for the air conditioning in the Zagreb apartment, but once outside you really have to take stock of where you're going and for how long and stay ever hydrated.
We are continuing our forays into the Zagorje countryside. Yesterday was our first experiment with day trips. Today we're headed for the northwest: a castle in Trakošćan and another in Varaždin.
Our Seat Leon SUV (Seat is the make; Leon is the model) proves to be a truly eccentric vehicle. The infotainment center which is supposed to control everything from the air conditioning to music to navigation has not worked from day one. It is a touch screen completely unresponsive to touch. Fortunately, the air conditioning is set permanently to 65 degrees so that hasn't been an issue especially in this weather. But the weirdest thing is that it is constantly listening to our conversations and spontaneously pipes up from time to time. "Sorry?" "How can I help you?" or most strangely "Setting the air flow to high in the upper right vent." We constantly have to tell it to "cancel" though half the time it selectively understands us. Then it gets all pissy: "Voice control has been suspended for lack of input." FINE!
So up Croatia's roads we drove to our first destination, the castle Trakošćan, a thirteenth-century fortress castle whose original owners are unknown to us, but last possessed by nobility in the nineteenth century, by the family Drašković. These Croat noble families were Hungarian-Croat hybrids that were largely tasked with fending off Turkish attacks through the 17th century, after which very few threats occurred. They were true to the Habsburgs, but even more loyal to their familial feudal rights and privileges.
Sadly, the museum forbids any photographs inside (a very stupid rule as it's not as if flash photography is going to ruin it for the handful of visitors we encountered throughout the space). I've included a lot of terrific panoramic views from the heights of the fortress. Trust me, though, this museum has awesome portraiture of the families who lived here, a great military armaments collection, well-restored and decorated living spaces, and incredible exhibits. I especially love the photography collection of one of the last inhabitants in the late nineteenth-century who took awesome photographs from the 1850s through the 1880s. Steven and I were marveling how this space could be supported by a staff for the family. It must have cost a fortune to keep it up. Post-World War I it had passed on to the state, and much later as a museum. I'm thinking this place needs a Croato-Hungarian Downton Abbey series.
The website I referenced above is in Croatian, but you can probably have "the Google" translate it for you. A couple more views from various vantage points:
After a quick lunch at a restaurant at the base of the castle, we jumped in the car and headed for Varaždin, about 23 miles northwest on the border with Hungary. I'd been there briefly some 39 years earlier with my friend Darko, who grew up there, but I didn't see much of the town.
In the sweltering heat we made our way to yet another castle which as of 1923 (I think) became a museum, passing from the estate of a local noble to the city. The collection was eclectic drawing from a number of sources (according to the museum employee...manager...director...ticket person?) but really well curated.
Several rooms were laid out according to time periods: Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, Biedermaier, all the way to the fin-de-siècle Art Nouveau/Jugendstil to the First World War. Steven was into the exhibition of clothing. You really got a sense about what nobility war through the centuries. There were some stunning Habsburg/Croat-Hungarian military outfits here. Besides the "period rooms" there were rooms dedicated to armaments as well as to guilds. The pictures below show signs and coats of arms for several of them:
This below was a second-floor toilette (a hole with a seat that passed down to an outside pit):
Here's some noble's family portrait, not sure whose, but you get the idea they were insistent upon establishing legitimate lineage:
Here, too, hot as hell so we made our way to a cafe through an old gate to the inner part of the city.
Back to Zagreb. Luckily, no issues with parking this time! We crashed soon after we got back.
Next post: Saturday, July 2: Off to Slavonija!
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