Train to Zagreb

An early rise after a rainy night had me at the train station by 7:15. A short modern two car diesel passenger train had me comfortably seated in nonsmoking, but facing backwards. Alas! The train was only partially full so I could have tried rearranging but the conductor had little English and was concerned that I remained in my assigned seat, number 46.

The outskirts of Split were of partially derelict industry surrounded by a random assortment of mostly built but already lived in houses. Reminiscent of Turkey, Syria, or Jordan. Construction was an on-going activity but spread over decades and without plans, architects, or permits. The effect on northern Split was less than charming. The train proved to run on new, heavily banked, single track through the limestone hills. As windy as a minibus on a mountain round, quite surprising for a train. As we gained altitude and swerved around corners, I felt, for the first time in my life, mildly trainsick. I’m not even sure that I’ve heard the word before, but that was my state.

The limestone left little topsoil and only small fields in the dips between hills, which had thick stone walls evidencing generations of work separating rock from soil. Plums and possibly a few cherries were in bloom, but everything else looked dry and sapped of life. After an hour or so of weaving and rising, we reached Knin a small depopulated looking town that had once been the capital of Krajina, the Serbian separatist state taken over by the Croatian army in 1995. Previously the majority, the serbs left/were expelled. Most went to Repulika Srbska in Bosnia or to Serbia proper. It didn’t look like many people moved into the houses. For the next couple of hours, roofless or boarded up houses became common, maybe a fifth to a third of all the buildings.

Next we hit snow. Just a light dusting here and there to start. In some way it made it all the sadder. Gracac was also grim, but in a less abandoned, more communist way. It started snowing properly and the cover grew to an inch and slowly to about two. The limestone started giving way to other stones, never going away but losing its dominance. Trees moved from the stunted oak and tiny pines of the coast to larger birches and others all bare of leaf but holding some damp snow, then as we got the mountains proper, different taller pines and some yew or cedar, droopy and working to shed the snow, now closer to four inches thick.

Then, four and a half hours into the trip, we started to decend. The snow returned to a light dust and then we were surrounded by open fields, but now green with clay and substance to the soil. Suburbs marked our approach to the capital and finally Zagreb station. Small by some European standards, but huge for Croatia. This city has more than a fifth of the country's population. But more n Zagreb tomorrow