Under the shadows of pines and cypresses, between green and blue shades, you can see a massive, white memorial ossuary, dedicated to the fighters in a war for liberation. The park of heroes is dedicated to partisans in WWII.

What Detroit was to the USA and the car industry, Rijeka was to Yugoslavia and the shipbuilding industry. Rijeka has a rougher appearance. Parts of it look like an Austro-Hungarian crack house with palms and sea. It has a certain mess that usually comes with harbor cities. Unlike medieval and ancient streets of southern Adriatic, streets of Rijeka are more urban.

Meet Matija Gubec, Croatian Spartacus who led the Peasant revolution in the 16th century. Partisan army battalions in WW2 fought under his name, kids learn about him early in school, bands sing songs about him and his village still has a very special memory of him that I’ll reveal to you at the end.

What do wolves, Milka chocolate and president Tito have in common? They all found a place for themselves among crystal blue lakes and a hundred waterfalls of Croatian National Park – the Plitvice lakes. Here are 15 facts and guides through the most popular National park of Croatia

Yugoslav monuments, socialist architecture, brutalist buildings, or Spomeniks (Serbo-Croatian word for the monument) have made a comeback. More and more people want to see these out-of-the-world, UFO-like pieces of art created by vanguard artists of their time. Hidden in nature, forgotten by the state and often devastated, these grandiose storytellers still resist the time with a defiant attitude.

If you ever find yourself in Zagreb, you’ll probably get a recommendation to visit the famous Mirogoj cemetery. What you probably won’t get is an offbeat tour through the forgotten asylum graveyard of a psychiatric hospital – although it’s as easy as the walk in the park. Because it literally is.

Don’t worry if you’re having a hard time figuring out Croatian – or even worse: BALKAN – history. This war, that war, one Yugoslavia, two Yugoslavias (What? There was one more?)… Balkans rocky history is so messed up sometimes even we don’t know what hit us, let alone someone coming from outside.