Renovations and Broken Relationships

We wander around Zagreb under the direction of Robert, our sardonic guide to the city. We stop in front of museums, cathedrals, monuments and churches. He tells us the history and stories about how the cathedral received chandeliers from a Las Vegas casino thanks to an enterprising Croatian (obviously cleansed and blessed by a bishop first 😉), how Croatia came to be, and the country’s relationship with Europe. Almost every stop ends with ‘it’s beautiful inside buuuut… it’s closed for renovation’.

In 2020 whilst battling covid like the rest of us, Croatia was also facing an incredible amount of earthquakes with our guide putting the number around 2000. ‘Eventually we gave up on Covid because we were constantly battling earthquakes’. Because of this, much of the city is in need of repair and so many of the usual tourist sights are closed for vital renovations.

One thing that Croatia does have open in abundance is a range of very niche museums. There are museums dedicated to mushrooms, to hangovers, to chocolate and as we head into, even one dedicated to breakups.

The Museum of Broken Relationships was created as an art project by two Croatian artists going through a break up. Today the museum has become somewhere that people can send their tokens from failed relationships to, I suppose as a way to let go and move on. There’s everything from sentimental post it notes and jewellery, to Godzilla toys and coldsore cream. It showcases the breakdown in relationships of all kinds; romantic, platonic, familial, even someone’s failed relationship with pizza after they were diagnosed as coeliac. Stories range from angry breakups, to food intolerances, to the slow fade out of friendships and long distance relationships. There are stories of miscarriages and absent parents, of love long lost and long found, of people whose impact had never truly faded although their presence had. In many ways it’s a bizarre display and yet it’s also sad, and funny, and sweet. At it’s core it’s heartfelt and deeply human, and in many ways cathartic. It serves as a slightly mad but earnest love letter to the human experience and it’s strangely enchanting in its own weird way.

The day ends with thunder and lightning and some good conversations with the other two girls in my hostel room about life, travel, the world and of course, the ‘Toaster of Vindication’ (see photo).Read more