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Croatian at heart

Last Updated 26 July 2014, 20:17 IST

Croatia’s capital city Zagreb entices foodies with traditional noshes and chocolates, enraptures a listener with its dramatic tales of who’s who, and forces a lesson
or two in Crotian grammar  on you, writes Preeti Verma Lal.

Have you ever walked into a city with this near-cannibalistic urge to bite into a heart? A red heart with a swirling outline. Perhaps a small flower on it. A mirror, too. Do not lynch me yet for the sudden heart-eat urge. In Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, hearts are not what you are thinking of — those fist-sized machines that pump blood and keep us alive.

Here, hearts are sweet. Scrumptious. Handcrafted. They are called licitars. Look at the ingredients (honey, flour, eggs, water, natural colours) and gnash that sweet tooth of yours. This heart-making is an arduous process.

Medicaris (licitar makers) hunch over these gingerbreads for almost a month. So traditional and painstaking is Croatian heart-making that it has been listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. It is the nation’s fave gingerbread. And you thought I, the vegetarian, had turned cannibalistic in Zagreb. Tcch!

I sure did not eat a heart. Instead, I had struklji, a traditional Zagreb nosh that is easier to make than pronounce. Don’t believe me? Try saying kuhani strukli and peceni struklji in one long breath. And, Hrvatsko Zagorje. Sounds mumbo-jumbo? I’ll give you clues.

Struklji is pastry filled with cottage cheese, eggs, salt and sour cream, cut into 10-20 cm length and either baked or boiled. Kuhani strukli is boiled while peceni struklji is baked, and both were born in Hrvatsko Zagorje, a region near Zagreb. So, did you get the inflexions right? I bet not. Because the Croatian alphabet does not have w, y and z.

It gets complicated from here on. Look at these: there are three different Cs (the basic Latin C, C with an acute accent, C with a hacek on its head);  Z, too, is burdened with a hacek. Add to it, the simple D, crossed D and D that is almost conjoined with Z (dz).

While you struggled with the Cs, Ds, and Zs, I finished my strukjli in Hotel Esplanade Zagreb, which was originally built in 1925 as a stopover for the monied nobles, royalty and tycoons who packed their bags to snooze on the Orient Express that ran between Paris and Istanbul.

And it was in Zinfandel, often called Croatia’s most famous restaurant, that Elizabeth Taylor, Queen Elizabeth II and Vivien Leigh ordered their strukljis, walked on the staircase adorned with Italian marbles and pirouetted in the ballroom with stained glass dome.

Pink and white oleanders still bloom on Esplanade’s terrace, the sun still peers through the stained glass and the walls still narrate stories of Pierce Brosnan, Woody Allen, Pele, Nixon and that first Croatian striptease party that was a farewell to an Italian count. And if you have watched The Winds of War and The Great Escape II, you’d remember the stunning chandeliers and the room key tassels.

Strukjlis are cheesy, flaky, melt-in-the-mouth, but on the cobbled sidewalk Zagreb, I was staring at a purple cow. I wanted a bite of the cow. No, no, I was not turning carnivore; I was merely yearning for Milka, the chocolate. In Zagreb National Museum, I had met another Milka. A pretty, graceful Milka blessed with the voice of a nightingale. Dressed in finery, Milka Ternina, Croatia’s most famous soprano, stood within a glass box.

That nightingale’s voice has fallen silent, but Croats will tell you that Milka chocolate was named after Milka Ternina. History says that it was a tribute to tycoon Carl Russ Suchard’s admiration of Richard Wagner’s interpretations of Milka, the singer. (Gossip whisperers say that Suchard and Milka had a torrid love story. Shhhh...)

Stuffed with sweet Milka that comes wrapped in purple, I picked up a lantern to know the secrets of Gric. As I walked towards the funicular, the sun edged past the linden trees to dip into the Sava river, and moonlight took over.

“Be careful. You could see ghosts. A witch. A fight. And, remember, if you know of witches, please report to the cops. If not, you will be in trouble,” Jurica Puskar, the guide, was scaring the gods out of me. It was dark and it felt as if the lanterns were swaying on their own. Before I could shrug fear off my soul, a voice boomed. A woman in teal long skirt, waistcoat, white blouse and a bouffant popped out of nowhere.

“I am Marija Juric Zagorka. I am a writer... And I will tell you the secrets of Gric,” her voice thundered like cannon. Zagorka was Croatia’s first female journalist and one of the most-read writers, who died in 1957.

Was the woman in teal Zagorka’s ghost repeating snippets from her most famous novel The Witch of Gric? I stared at the woman, she looked real. An impersonator who, along with other actors, theatrically retold the story of a beautiful princess, a man who loved her, envious women who ratted on her and her trial by fire. All hearts were pounding as the pretty princess was handcuffed and taken to the fire to be burnt. “Move to the side. Move to the side,” the Zagorka-actor hollered. The fumes were billowing as every second ticked eternally.

Suddenly, the silence was drowned by the onomatopoeic sound of horse’s hooves. A man in red cloak galloped on a horse and rescued the princess just as she was about to be thrown into fire. We all let a collective sigh of relief. Claps grew louder for the happily-ever-after story.

I sat under a gas lantern. And chewed on a heart. A sweet scrumptious heart. A red Zagreb licitar heart.

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(Published 26 July 2014, 13:22 IST)

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