Thanks to Internet I am able to see these wonderful old photos of the places I am very familiar with in present time, but this is a true time machine.
As a kid I grew up right in centre of Zagreb.
Vlaška street was right in front of my house and here is where little me trotted daily, where all the shopkeepers knew me (believe me, it's not a good idea to steal candies where everybody knows you), where I hit my head on some shoe-maker's window display and had to be brought to hospital, where I always had a haircut, where we bought cakes in cake shop by Albanian guy and where I was fortunate to never fall under the streetcar thought the traffic was sometimes quite busy but we all behaved like we own the street. The building that always towered above it all was St.Peter's church - very strange, phallic building if you ask me - that never interested little heathen like me. We lived in a completely hypocritical society where outside people were proper communists with party membership but secretly they celebrated all the religious holidays at home, hidden under the curtains and don't even ask why it was like that - following tradition I guess - so the church was the place on a tram stop. Where that guy had a stand with peanuts and popcorn. Once I did sneaked into a church during some mass I guess, and stood in line with other children who were getting leavened bread, mouth gaping eagerly but the priest just passed me by, knowing I am a little intruder. Funny how we remember these things. This magnificent photo shows the same spot with unrecognisable St.Peter's church the way it looked about hundred years ago - there was no tram of course, buildings were more like a little village than a centre of town and church itself looks very strange because it has a bell tower on a top that I don't know nothing about. Later it was re-shaped with another top and a cross and this is how it looks today.
Not very far from this spot, in fact almost around the corner is a famous birth hospital where countless citizens of Zagreb were brought to life, including, dear reader, the author of these marvellous and deeply wise lines. The street is called Petrova street (again, because of the church I guess) and its still a quiet, nice road that goes parallel with Vlaška street - a step away from hustle and traffic, but lovely oasis with quiet gardens and elegant buildings. I couldn't care less for Zagreb and have not a nostalgic bone in my body - present is present, past is past - but if theoretically I could chose, I would prefer to live in Petrova street because it has a a provincial charm and is short walk away from centre. I could easily imagine myself writing in a garden there and than taking my dog for a stroll afterwards, passing the birth hospital and towards famous Maksimir park. Back to the birth hospital - it appears huge and imposing here but its only because other houses nearby were so tiny back than. Nowadays it is a grey, slightly ruined building that has seen better days and its almost lost between other buildings. I just found it so interesting that all my little life back than was placed in this neighbourhood triangle - here I was born, a street away was my primary school and around the corner of that same school is where I lived. my ground floor windows looking at anonymous parking lot that was a fantastic playground for me and my little friends (and occasional WC for all of us) and where my eyes gazed often up towards the sky from that particularly low perspective, daydreaming above my books about some other place I would one day run away to. I recall sitting there and looking at the map of the world imagining journeys to all these interesting, other countries - by some strange coincidence I did visit them all later in life, even lived in some of them - and in a way I still did not given up my dreams. One is never too old to dream.
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