Zagreb’s 1980s Yugoslav Time Capsule

A slight hangover after one beer last night — soft, I know — I grabbed a burger for lunch, watching some Croatian singers across the street perform the longest mic check in history. Feeling less seedy with the greasy burger on board, I went off museum hunting in Zagreb for my first full day in Croatia. There are a few museums and galleries I’m interested in here, and while on the way to one, I came across another goodie — *The Museum of the 80s*. It felt worth a post in itself today, so let’s go back to the 80s.

A little hidden up a winding staircase, a couple — probably just a tad younger than me — were looking after the museum today. I paid my €5 entry fee and got a rundown on what the museum is about and what I can do. “Everything is interactive — you can touch, put on music, play games, try the clothes,” the lady explained to me. “We want you to get a feel for what life was like in a typical Yugoslav household in the 80s. We call it the good decade — no war, normal times.” She left me in the living room of the first-floor apartment — a time capsule of the 80s in Yugoslavia.

Or was it just in Yugoslavia? As a child of the 80s myself, I couldn’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia coming over me. The velvet sofas, the dark wood furniture, the lack of minimalism everywhere, the ashtrays! This could have been a house in Australia in the 80s or early 90s too. I felt somewhat at home here. *Terminator* on a VHS tape sat with a stack of other tapes — some in cases, some loose, not yet rewound or put away — a hallmark of the 80s and my 90s. A cassette player with tapes scattered beside it — no mixtapes here, just original releases before CDs and streaming were invented. And of course, an obligatory piano in the corner. So many houses had a piano, organ, or keyboard back then. And that’s just the living room.

Into the kitchen, a sewing machine is set up, beside which is a book of dress patterns ready to be made at home. While my mum was definitely no dressmaker, a few of my aunts were. I remember visiting Canberra as a kid and being taken to Spotlight on shopping missions to get fabric that Moya would then turn into clothing from a book not so dissimilar to the one I saw today. The brown kitchen crockery — quite the rage back then — reminded me of visits to family. At home we had those blue and white print plates I thought were hideous at the time, but they were all the rage too.

I spent most of my time, just like I did in the 80s and 90s, with the games. They had a Commodore 64 and an arcade version of *Space Invaders*, which I played for a while. The shoot button was sticky and didn’t always fire, meaning I lost lives way too fast — but playing this game was worth the entry fee alone. Even the books on the table brought back memories — *The Muppets*, posters of *Pac-Man* on the wall, and movie and band posters too. Every kid back then had posters on their walls!

In the entryway, they had a cute little yellow car with luggage strapped to the roof — presumably ready for a summer getaway to the beach. The guy tells me, “Get in, I take a photo of you driving.” I hop in and am taken straight back to the road trips of my youth. While I was always the passenger back then, the feel of the car seats, the roll-down windows for air conditioning, and that stiff, hard steering wheel all brought back memories of drives with Mum in our own little Mazda.

And with that, my trip back into the 80s was complete. Such a great museum — and while it aimed to depict a typical 80s home in Yugoslavia, was it really that geographically specific? Getting access to information back then was harder — partly because I wasn’t even ten yet, but also because of the slower pace of the news cycle. But if this is what Yugoslavia looked like in the 80s, triggering so many memories of my own Aussie childhood — were we really that different after all? I knew nothing of Yugoslavia in the 80s, and only saw the terrible glimpses of war in the 90s, but it seems the Yugoslav 80s looked a lot like mine. What a great little museum find.Read more