Day 1 | Arriving to Zagreb & first evening

Welcome to my first introduction post to new stories regarding the 10 days of great time with our Japanese guest, Madoka. I am going to describe you places we had visited, cultural experience we had and of course bring you some interesting information of the local Croatian sightseeing from Zagreb and Dalmatia including the islands. I hope you will enjoy the reports and learn something new. If you have already been to the places I am going to mention I would be interested to know your opinion and experience.

Why, when and where?

I spent almost a month in Japan in July thanks to an exchange over Lions Club International (and might consider doing Erasmus in Osaka as well after Master Programme in 2-3 years). Since I had spent some time with my host families there who took care of me my family also accepted one Japanese student, also from Osaka city, to spend more than a week with us and let her have a nice time in Croatia.

I came back from Japan on 29th July and had a few days to relax and meet with all my friends to talk about my adventures in the country of rising sun. And on 3th August Madoka arrived at Zagreb Pleso Airport.

Since my family and I live in Zagreb I wanted to show her a bit of the capital and my hometown but... in August there is something much better and that is the coast and the Adriatic sea. My mom, sister and dog were already on the coast in Dalmatia and my dad returned to pick us up. There were also my grandparents who live in Zagreb. They have met many of our international friends and were also for a very short time hosts to two of our Japanese guests. Anyway, my dad and I arrived at the airport earlier to welcome her. I was waiting at the exit for the International Flights with a paper and her name in Japanese (remember Hiragana! ). I noticed many other Japanese but non of them was her. Then she suddenly popped up behind me! I was instantly switched back to Japan in my head.

Source

Zagreb Airport Pleso

We went straight to my grandparents for some pancakes and dinner. I tried to use Japanese when speaking to refresh the memory (and she was surprised and laughed). And the best part - she started taking photos of everything she saw from the car... and there were already several names of the Japanese companies that had their faculties also in Croatia. So she felt a bit like she had not left Japan.

After arriving at my grandparents' apartment we had been welcomed with tons of food and drink. As usual. It was already night though and she was tired (the flight from Osaka-Frankfurt-Zagreb took more than 14 hours) so we didn't want to bother them much. Also, we planned to go in the morning to the seaside so we tried to go to sleep earlier. She watched a bit TV, tried to converse with my grandparents who know maybe 10 words in English and 2 in Japanese for a few minutes and then we headed back home to another part of Zagreb where my other neighbourhood was.

I will not talk now of impressions and cultural differences because it was the first evening for her and of course with just few persons and two apartments you cannot tell much. But as said, we were going to visit Zagreb on the last day and a half of her stay with my family once we are done with the coast.

So, we went to sleep earlier, she was messaging shortly with her friends and family from Japan (it is 7 hours time difference between us) and prepared stuff for the morning trip and a week on the coast. I didn't take too many things with me now but rather put more of those I brought from Japan to show my mom and sister. I also do not know who was more looking forward to going to the coast; me - because I wanted to relax a bit and swim after Japan (as it was waking up very early almost every day and doing different activities) and earlier chaos with the University... in the end I managed to have one or two days there just to lay, swim and dive without obligations or looking after the others since there was of course the responsibility. And for Madoka it was the first time in Europe I think so I wanted to be a good host and that she had a great time.

Whether she had a good time or not I will not tell you... but rather let you have your own conclusion once you read everything and see the photos of the places we visited, experience we had and enjoy the warm sunny August.

Alright. Enough of talking. Time to go the coast!

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