The Big Trg - the honey pot

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Medva. She lived in the mountains. One day she wandered down the mountain and met a tired bear. He was sitting on a rock and as she approached he looked up anxiously. “Honey, I am thirsty. Do you have some water?”. She didn’t have any water. But she knew of a secret spring – the Medveščak stream. It came up from the ground not far from where he was sitting. She brought him to the spring and he drank and it saved his life. Forever after that day, this spring was sacred. By sacred, I also mean “fought over”. It divided two parts of the city, ran mills, flooded and drowned people, earning a bridge over it the name “Bloody Bridge”. Then, in 1898, the powers-that-be decided to cover the spring and turn it into part of the sewer system (makes sense, doesn’t it?). By this time the people had built trams around the old spring and a big statue of Ban Jelačić stood in the middle. It was built by Austria in 1866, facing north with his sword raised towards Hungary. A while later, after a great war, a man named Tito came along. He said that the old story was hogwash and bricked over the sacred spring. People were sad but they looked towards the great man and said, “if you say so”. The big Ban statue was removed by the Communists in 1947 since it commemorated collaboration with the Austrians (who collaborated with the Germans who collaborated with the Ustasha who persecuted Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Communists. In a much more impacting and terrible way, it was like highschool). Then one day, Tito died. Tall buildings towered over the bricked-over spring. The summers were hot and the outdoor cafes, filled with people smoking slim cigarettes, yearned for the quenching spring. In 1990, the new leaders were saying “you know what, perhaps that talking bear was OK… because you know, he was a Croatian talking bear. Let’s bring the statue back (but face him south), open up that spring and tell our children the folk story. Then let’s declare our independence and be as we always should have been, an independent Croatia”.

Image below: Ban Jelačić defending Partner Banka, Mikla Chocolates, Vip Cellular and Loreal.

I am sure to have many details of that story wrong. I heard it over beers at a Cinkuši concert – a “modern traditional” Croatian band from the region to the north of the city. The crowd was young and hip, some having dreads, leggy women in slinky dresses, but they were swaying with beer glasses held high, chanting the traditional music as their great-grandparents would have. I remember the woman translating the story into English was stumbling along – her English was rocky – and when she said, in a thick Slavic accent “Honey, I am thirsty”, her colloquialism cracked me up. “But you see, bears like honey”, she said. “Of course!”. The roots of Winnie the Poo may have come all the way from Medvenica, the mountain above Zagreb with the talking, honey-lusting, thirsty bear.
Images above: Giggling Croatian teenagers in the Trg; the staggered clock tower in the distance, the Ban in the center and the fountain in the foregroundpast the flower sellers, up the stairs to the Dolac market.

But the gist of the story stuck in my mind. It put a new spin on the Jelačića Trg (Jelačića Square), the most important public space in Zagreb. It is a clumsily designed square if you ask me. It’s a rectangle at the foot of the old town. Above it, past lovely, wide steps is the Dolac, the main city market that overflows with rural farmers selling produce, home-made cheese, honey, hand-knit caps, traditional cloth, and dried figs. Around the Dolacs are small shops with tables you can stand next to and eat chevapi, little meat sausages in fried bread. A girl runs around bringing cups of coffee to the vendors, many of whom are old, weathered and bundled head to toe in coats and scarves, selling their produce as they have their entire lives. And as you walk down the steps and the vista opens up to Jelačića Trg, flower vendors line the passage. No joke. It’s like you are walking down the isle to the alter every time you enter the square, with the scent of flowers on either side and rose petals scattered on the herring bone stone pavement. Aerial below: Jelačić is in the center red square, the clock on the left/west side and the fountain on the right/east side. The green square is the Dolac market; the fountain on a cold day.
So this fantastic market flanks the square to the north. Ilica Street, the most bustling commercial street in the city runs along the south side of the square, the main artery pumping people in and out. Every tram line passes through Jelačića Trg. Which means huge crowds gather around the tram line. This brings newspaper vendors, the man hawking small bracelets, the Roma women with random articles of clothing, the fancy Italian business woman, the crowds of smooching and giggling Croatian students. It’s jam packed. But just above the tram line is the other clumsy element of the square, a small, out of scale clock that stands on the other side of the big statue of the old Ban. It’s modern in style but awkward, like an Ikea afterthought in a college dorm room. It seems cheap but utilitarian. But it does its job. It was stuck there to, I assume, inform travelers of the time. Just like the blocks of socialist era housing on the south side of town, built to house the workers, pure and simple, this clock tells the time, pure and simple. Even though it has none of the class and sophistication of the old clocks found in train stations and on towers in the centers of other great cities, I’ve met every “coffee date” under the clock in Jelačića. It’s pedestal is constantly surrounded by a group of people waiting for someone else. So regardless of my nose-in-the-air opinions on its awkwardness, it works and people love it.

I’ve been here for three weeks and talked to many Croatian architects and landscape architects. I’ve asked many of them about their opinions on the “Big Trg”. And every single one of them defends it so quickly that you learn shut up and admire its vitality over its design. But this may be the reason why it looks as it does and why people love it so. It is an amalgamation of all the little things, here and there in Croatian history that make the people who they are. It’s a folk story that roots them in the ancient forests, it’s a reminder of the socialist ideological leader who ‘knew best’ and the rebellion when folks decided they wanted their folk story back. It’s the old “Ban” (leader from Austro-Hungarian times) and a placard to modernity with all the big Croatian companies advertising phones, banks, make-up and technology on scaffolding around the buildings lining the square.