Memory lane

Zagreb was a mistake. I mean, who would choose to spend time there? But what followed was unforgettable.

It happened that last summer we had a day to kill in Zagreb. Originally, the plan was that we would have flown back a day earlier, wherein Zagreb's only function was as our airport. As ever, I'd got the details wrong - on the morning of our flight, we checked the details, only to discover that our plane left the next day. Hardly the end of the world, you might say. Zagreb is a capital city. All capitals breed culture and politics.

You'd be wrong. Zagreb is the European Sahara, a cultural desert, void of anything remotely worthwhile. But we had to do something with ourselves. So we slouched into town, hoping that something might turn up. After a few hours in which we drifted into a state of perpetual under-whelmedness, we decided to visit the main museum. After all, museums are the cathedrals of modernity, apparently.

We arrived, only to be swamped by clusters of canapé. The temptation was too much. So we gorged, notwithstanding the men in dark suits trawling the perimeter, watchfully gazing upon the guests. At some point, someone grew wise to our free-riding, and we were booted out. As it later turned out, we had attended the presidential function, for which the elaborate canapé (by this point, firmly embedded in my stomach) were the first course.

Bizarrely, we found ourselves jettisoned into another clump of people, hovering outside, and staring intently at someone. There were also cameras. And more suited men. Trying to find out more, we jumped up, looked around, pulled some faces and left.

Later that day and back at the hostel, we were watching the news. And there we were, guffawing on live TV, shocked that we had appeared on camera. Turned out that the press release was a fairly important one, too, jointly given by the prime minister and president of Croatia on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

From this I have learnt that if you are going to gate-crash presidential banquets and butt into live broadcasts featuring the two most important people in a country, it is worth looking dignified rather than bewildered and bedraggled. But you've got to start somewhere, I suppose.

The enclosed link is the video footage of what I have just described (http://dnevnik.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/ako-je-bilo-onih-koji-su-uzimali-novac-za-to-moraju-odgovarati.html)