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Zagreb, Croatia–Aug. 27, 2025

Some pictures on the way to the first museum I visited today:

Souvenir socks with text: I CHILL HARDER THEN YOU PARTY

It’s either missing a comma or it has misspelled THAN.

Reliefwork portraying greek or Egyptian workers
Multi-coloured birds
Utility building painted in purple with Mexican-style symbology

Croatian Museum of Naïve Art (Hrvatski muzej naivne umjetnosti)

According to one of the signs in the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art:

Croatian Naïve art is a unique artistic phenomenon of the 20th century. It emerged in the 1930s in the Podravina village of Hlebine, where talented, self-taught peasants, under the guidance of academic painter Krsto Hegedušić, used humble materials to create works on paper, canvas, and later glass. Inspired by Hegedušić’s advice to paint “what they see and feel”, they depicted rural life, portraying the hardships of labour and social injustice, free from pathos or idealisation.

The artists really are talented!

Small wooden and stone sculptures of people, people’s heads, and animals.
Painting of winter scene; snow on houses and on ground. Center of picture features a tree with bare branches.
white goat in forest
Two women collecting wood from trees being chopped by three men in the trees with axes. At left, a ow At right, a peacock.
Painting of sun over rolling hills
A group of workers standing in front of a wall. The man at the left has a bicycle.
Sculpture of dog with brown head and long floppy ears; body of dog is white with brown spots.
Wall with seven paintings in an asbtract style. The one in the middle has a recognizable figure of a human.
Street scene of Zagreb, showing a funicular with two cars.

The Zagreb funicular

Painting of a church in multiple colors
Painting of Stefansdom in Vienna

This is the Stefansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral) in Vienna.

St. Mark’s Square (Trg Sv. Marka)

Church at St. Mark’s Square (Trg Sv. Marka). The roof has colored tiles that form the coat of arms of Zagreb and the coat of arms of Croatia

The coat of arms of Zagreb and Croatia.

Closeup of tiles on church roof

A close-up view of the roof tiles.

Short traffic pylon with coat of arms of Zagreb embossed on top.
Niches with religious statuary in them

Pictures on the way to the next museum:

Window of a photography store featuring transfer-to-disk services, varying sizes of photos (with a picture of a cute cat), and rolls of film.
Statue of man in monk’s robes

Museum of Illusions

Frankly, just average. Totally inaccessible to wheelchair users. The front door opens inwards (totally illegal in the US, and one of my pet peeves about living in the EU).

This corridor is stationary, but the outer cylinder rotates, giving you vertigo. The flashing lights don’t help either :)

Corridor where outer cylinder rotates

This mirrored polyhedron is pretty cool.

mirrored polyhedron with pentagonal faces; appears to recede to infinity

They have lots of classic illusions such as the Kanizsa Triangle...

An illusory triangle; three circles at the vertices of a “triangle“ have triangular segments cut out of them, creating the illusion of a solid white triangle.

...the Jastrow Illusion.

The exhibit includes a magnet that lets you show that the arcs are really the same size.

Two arcs , one above the other, which appear to be different lengths, but are actually the same length.

The Shepard Tables. The tops of the boxes are the same size.

Two cardboard boxes shown at different perspective angles. The tops appear to be different sizes, but are actually the same size.

And, of course, the classic Müller-Lyer illusion (both lines are the same length).

Two lines, one with arrowheads facing inwards and one with arrowheads facing outwards. They appear to be different lengths, but they are the same length.

The Ebbinghaus illusion (light blue circles are the same size).

Two blue circles. One is enclosed in a circle of large black circles and appears smaller than the one that is enclosed in small black circles. The blue circles are actually the same size.

The Penrose Y, where the shadows flip between concave and convex.

Y-shaped blocks. Your brain perceives the shadows as either concave or convex, and switches btween them.

The gears appear to rotate.

Picture of four sets of six gears which appear to rotate.

The arrows seem to move.

Two arrows, one pointing left and one pointed right. They are both filled with wavy lines and appear to move.

My description of the last two are sparse, because I was unable to see the motion. Apparently, not everyone can be fooled with this illusion.

Miscellaneous Pictures

Abstract black and white patterns centered in canvases the size of a bedsheet.
Wall painted with various sizes of rectangles in varying shades of gray.
Statue of Nikola Tesla. He is sitting on the ground, one hand on his chin and the other on his knee.
Potted cactus in front of a store. It has three yellow flowers blooming on it.
Black and white grafitti of a tiger lying down, head facing viewer. Artist’s name SANTEX is on one leg of the tiger.
Poster for Buč Kesidi (two singers)

The name is pronounced as “Butch Cassidy“.

Ulica Kneza Branimira (Prince Branimir Street)

Lots of grafitti and wall art here...

Abstract that looks a bit like a circuit board.
Vidiš li razliku? Showing a pickle at left costing 2,15€ and an identical pickle on the right costing 2,99€.

“Do you see the difference?“ (this is some sort of advertisement, but I do not for what company)

At left, a person in priest’s cassock. At right, a science-fiction scene with a tauntaun and some people.
Abstract design in dark purple, turquoise, and red.
At left, a cartoonish cityscape where buildings have teeth. At right, a blobby looking character somewhat resembling a whale.
At left, a concrete ear protruding from the wall. In middle, people’s faces in various colors. At right, a somewhat abstract design in black and white with a banner “here just to regulate funkyness”
Building with windows that have yellow, blue, and white shades.
Letters PK (for Park Kneževa) in a fluid metal design.

I really liked the fluid metal design of the letters.

Interlaced fingers
Two metal ghost-like figures, one with vampire fangs and one with a wide-open mouth, and two hands, seated atop a wall.
Cartoonish aliens in yellow, red, blue, and green
At left, man playing a french horn. At right, a soldier on a pennyfarthing bicycle pointing a sword to the right.
At left, outlines of people with square faces; at right, a person holding a basket on one shoulder
Man with red jacket, goatee, sunglasses, and a cap; looks like a rapper.
Person with long hair and yellow baseball cap, making a V (peace sign)
At left, person in racing helmet. Grafitti in middle. At right, woman with flower in her hair
At left, pixellated face; at right, drawing of a car with front facing the viewer
Painting of a fish. Holes in the wall align with the fish’s scales.
Painting of octopus. Holes in wall align approximatelywith the suckers on its tentacles.
Silhouettes of people dancing in the air, and one person falling head first toward the ground.
At left, a woman singing, mouth open. At right, a green gecko-like creature. Below the gecko, a person in a space suit.
Four white birds sitting on a pole. Above them, the word “Yeshua” in Hebrew print

The Hebrew letters spell out “Yeshua” (Jesus).

Above: Man crouched down; below: whimsical abstract people in various colors
Multicolored grafitti tag