Zagreb (and returning to Split)

Darkness is falling on the snow as we move slowly south of Gospic. The train that was nearly empty coming from Split is now close to full, but thankfully I have a forward facing seat.
Zagreb was like visiting the city from the beach. My Californian parallel would be going to San Francisco from Santa Cruz. Zagreb seems to have been built entirely in the 18th and 19th centuries where everything in Split was built before or after that. Split is entirely white limestone and red tiles (or white painted modernist concrete with a sea-wind patina). Zagreb has trams, pastry, and sausage, looks Austrian, and dresses for the snow in the winter, wearing wool, black leather, and fur. Split has promenades and alleys, pizza, and fish, looks Italian, and dresses for an ocean storm in the winter, wearing blue and red gortex and nylon.
(the train stops. Snow on the line. We are waiting for a plow train)
For all its million people, Zagreb’s center was very accessible. The walk from the station along a series of open squares. The trams seemingly free (no one buying, selling, or stamping tickets), though there are rumors of tram inspection police. The pastry and ice creams shops put Split to shame. The old town (yes, there is one) was nice but oddly filled with Croatian government ministries.
I only visited one museum, the Strossmayer, a collection of old masters that was really inspiring. I was the only viewer there other than a couple of art students with their oils and easels. The 15th century Italian and Italian influenced work was great. Little was by top names like Bottecelli or Bellini, though they were there. The collection’s focus was on the best work of the second tier artists. It was intimate, personal and direct in a way that I have never experienced with renaissance art before.
The other cultural outing I made this morning was to Mirogoj, a huge and wonderful cemetery in the north of Zagreb. I have always loved the old London ring cemeteries like Highgate and Abney Park. They were closed around 1900 when their space filled up and their owning companies went bankrupt. But Mirogoj was what would have happened if growth had been slower and more continuous. Every family in Zagreb must have a plot and the variety of funerary architecture is, oddly, a joy to behold. Modern formalist sits side by side with Victorian melodrama. The whole thing was only marred, in an apt metaphor for the country as a whole, by the enormous Albert Speer-like tomb of Franjo Tudjman. However, a freezing wind coming down from Mount Medvedica to the north led me to cut my visit short. We shall have to come back to Zagreb in the spring.
(line cleared. On our way)
Leaving the on the train for Split I realize that it has ugly suburbs with small vegetable plots with plum and olive trees. Zagreb has ugly suburbs with tower blocks, underused factories, and barren ground. Is this why I moved to rural Santa Cruz?