Croatia - June 2017
Jasenak, Croatia
Once more to beautiful Jasenak where the cow lady brings out her cows every day to munch on various grassy sites and the birds twitter without any screeching seagulls to ruin the peace. Jasenak is a rural village of around 226 people at an elevation of around 624 metres. It is surrounded by heavily forested hills and mountains where bears and wolves roam (although most residents have never seen one). Logging is the main industry up here with managed forestry extending over a huge area. Huge double length trucks move the logs through winding mountain roads to remote saw mills, but you can often see them on the motorway heading towards Zagreb or perhaps Rijeka.
This is snow country although not really high enough to be assured. Houses all have alpine style roofs and one new property has been constructed as a beautiful and luxurious log cabin complete with a rural garden and a stunning summer kitchen. Summer can be hot up here although it’s always cooler than the coast, we had temperatures in the high twenties when it was hitting 33 degrees in Novi Vinodolski by the sea. Storms can be pretty wild up here when the thunder echoes around the nearest mountain tops!
On the road to Jasenak from the nearest town of Ogulin, you pass the mountain of Klek. This is a brutal looking piece of granite (I presume) which is much loved by walkers and climbers. Tradition has it that a coven of witches inhabits Klek, apparently you can sometimes see them flying around the mountain top when the weather is truly stormy. On the other hand, you might find them in Ogulin itself during a fairy tale festival.
Fairy Tales
Ogulin is famous for celebrating fairy tales and now has its own interactive museum of fairy tales located alongside the ruins of Frankopan Castle. Apparently, this was funded by the EU and it opened a couple of years ago. Our friend Miro runs many of the children’s festivals here, he is often to be found prowling the town, sometimes dressed as an elf!
Ogulin is also famous for its cabbages which are fermented to produce a form of sauerkraut. This is something of an acquired taste to those with a more western palate.
Zagreb has a new International terminal at the airport, it opened in March this year. Finally, it has 8 jet bridges, that’s the mobile walkway connecting a terminal gate to the plane. The building has a wavy metallic roof which looks pretty cool, we thought it had been designed by Zaha Hadid but although her company did submit a design the chosen architects were local. So, on arrival we were able to waltz straight off the plane and through immigration in a matter of minutes. Sadly, when it came to departure it was back to the old "sardine can" busses, in fact the plane was parked back up at the old terminal. From a travellers perspective the new terminal does not really offer much and to be honest does not seem to be that well designed in terms of the best use of space.