Written by Phil and Caroline, who love to travel Eastern Europe.
From its days as an eastern outpost of Rome to its position at the front line between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires to its initiation as a member of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatia’s culture and history have long been deeply entwined with its neighbors.
Independent since the ’90s, for me, Croatia feels like a nation searching for its own identity – with each region having a different idea of what that identity should look like.
The sun-dappled coastal south and west look very Mediterranean, whereas the northern and eastern interior feels every bit as Mitteleuropean as Prague and Vienna.