From September 2021 to October 2022 we lived in Zagreb, Croatia. Why? Because we wanted to and Croatia let us. We left our life in the US, sold the cars, rented the house, and flew into Zagreb sight unseen with 5 bags and a 20 lb. cat. It was as difficult and as rewarding as anything we’d ever done.
As it was an odd thing to do, I figure you might have some questions. So here’s a Q & A about our year in Zagreb.
Q & A About Moving to Zagreb
Why Live Abroad?
There’s a lot of reasons we wanted to live abroad. Both of us had missed out on the college semester abroad, and regretted it. We love travelling, but the two-week stint elsewhere began to feel constraining: right when you begin to feel at-home, it’s time to return. The general tenor of the Trump years heightened our awareness of the shortcomings here in the US, so we wanted to experience the shortcomings of another country — you know, to balance it out. And the COVID lockdown suffocated our wanderlust and we wanted to make up for that lost travel time.
Ultimately the reason we went is the same as the reason we travel to begin with, to make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. And indeed, when we eventually had to leave Zagreb, it was as difficult as getting there.
Why Croatia?
We wanted to live abroad for at least a year. And it turns out you can’t just go hang out in a foreign country for a year. Three months? Sure – most likely not a problem in most countries. A year? That’s a problem. You need to jump through different hoops and have extra paperwork to have permission to stay that long.
I’ll spare you the ins & outs of visas, golden visas, digital nomad visas, temporary residency, et cetera. After considering a number of countries from South Korea to Georgia, we decided on Croatia because it has Temporary Residency for Special Purposes. Despite its cryptic title, it in-fact means that if you pay your year’s rent up front, that qualifies you to stay there for a year. You have to jump through a few more hoops — criminal background check, enough money in the bank — but really that’s it.
Why Zagreb?
Zagreb is the largest, most connected city in Croatia. It has a dense city center and a robust a tram system. As were were without a car, both were important. Direct rail and bus lines made travel into Central Europe relatively fast & easy. And it has a wonderful year-round market, the Dolac.
Other cities in Croatia just didn’t fit the bill for what we wanted. Split is beautiful, the second largest city, and has great proximity to the Dalmatian islands, but it’s too isolated from the other parts of Europe. And any other city — Zadar, Pula, Dubrovnik — didn’t seem to be large enough.
How Did We Afford It?
Between renting our house in Denver and working part-time, we had enough cash-flow to not dip into our savings while abroad.
What Did We Do With Our Stuff?
We own a house and it is filled with crap. Just leaving all of it vacant felt like the wrong thing to do from a security point of view. Plus, if we could rent it we could get money and pay for some of this foolishness.
I looked at renting our house furnished, but I could find no property management company that would do that. The furnished house rentals appear to be managed by the owners themselves who could spot any furniture damage, etc. Short term rental was a possibility, but Denver requires (although maybe not enforces) the owner to live on premise. Our point was to not live in Denver, so no dice.
So we decided to long-term rent our house, which meant that we had to put our belongings somewhere. Even after selling, donating, and throwing away a seemingly large number of items, we found ourselves with still a whole lot of crap. We emptied the house, putting everything in a storage unit. A storage unit which increased in price almost every month. It started at $180 and ended up at $309.
To handle the long-term rental, we hired a property management company (who was not great) who found and managed our tenants (also not great). They had dogs and my one recommendation to anyone else is to not allow any animal larger than a small rabbit. But it worked enough to have the house occupied and for us to have a monthly income.
What About Health Insurance?
We used a combination of Safety Wing travel insurance and a local insurance company, Grawe, to cover emergency health.
After qualifying for a temporary residency permit, we were supposed to get into the Croatian state health insurance, HZZO. But Croatia being Croatia, we never actually got the permit and therefore didn’t join HZZO.
When I went to a doctor for a prescription refill or a dentist for a cleaning, they were both private and I paid out of pocket. So we never had cause to use any travel health insurance.
What Did We Do With Our Mail?
Because we rented, someone else was going to be living at our address. And since they were just rando renters, they were not going to be looking at our mail. We could have forwarded our mail to a family member, but they are all outside Colorado and I didn’t want they to have that responsibility.
There are a few different services that you can forward your mail to. They will then scan it and let you read/download it. We went with Traveling Mailbox — the web interface is a bit dated and there’s no app, but we’ve been happy with their service. They can even forward checks on to your bank.
So You Really Took Your Cat?
Yeah, yeah we did. This could be a whole post by itself. To fly in the cabin, an animal must be able to stand up and turn around in its carrier which fits underneath the seat. Mason is a big guy — he’s 20 pounds and not overweight — so there’s no way he fits under the seat. So he went in cargo in his big crate, which was an additional $400 each way. Then there’s the vet paperwork: a checkup within 10 days of new country arrival, USDA documents that have to be FedEx-ed to arrive in time for the flight, updated rabies vax, and an additional microchip required by the EU.
This was easily the most stressful part of the whole getting there and getting back. There’s just not a lot of good information about and during this process. Is the cat on the plane? Is he in the right part of the plane with heat and the air pressure? Will they allow the cat into the country when we get there?
And for all the stress, the customs guy after we landed in Zagreb didn’t even look at the paperwork. His only question was “Are you going to take him back to the US?” “Yes,” I replied. Not saying what I was thinking which was “If I wanted to ditch a cat, I wouldn’t’ve brought him all the way to Europe to do it.”
But after all the prep work and stress, we found ourselves (and Mason) waking up in our AirBnB in Zagreb. Although getting to Zagreb wasn’t easy, getting settled in and living there also presented challenges. But that’s next.
Good serices