Walking past the car in the morning we were quite surprised to find a parking ticket! A friendly local told us to pay for it at a Post Office, which we did on our way down to the river where we took some sweet photos of the castle and citadella by day, with Luiz.
Luiz was a decent guy, but taught us one important lesson: lock your young girls away from Brazillians. He openly quoted to us "How old is old enough? If she can cross the street on her own, she's old enough for sex". No wonder Brazillians girls are known for sexual prowess, they've been practicing for 8yrs longer than anyone else.

With that, we left for Zagreb, and stopped along the way at a town called Nagykanizsa (Hungary: your country for weird language and impossible place names) to watch either Japan and Brazil or Czech and Italy. We found a place that had a nice big flatscreen on the street and plenty of empty seats up front, and both games on the one screen! Wonderfully satisfied, we settled in, and ordered beer and pizza.
20minutes later the power goes out. Unbelievable! We wait around for a bit to see if it'll come back on, but it's no banana, so Mark waits for our pizza and I head off down the road to see if there are other options. Not too far down I find one where the girl says they also have a big screen and yes can turn it on the football. Great, back down to Mark and we swap roles - he takes our stuff up to the new place while I wait around for the pizza and finish my beer. But before the pizza comes out Mark's back. Apparently there's no broadcast!
Shocked and dismayed, we sullenly dispatch of our pizza and get back on the road, to Zagreb.

Entering Croatia, we had an Aussie flag sticking out the top of the car, another large one draped across the front dash, and of course we're wearing our jerseys. The border police found us most amusing, and asked where we were going. When they heard we were hoping to watch the game on a public big screen in the main sqaure of Zagreb they were surprised and warned us to be careful. Hmm....

Our first go at a hostel wound us up on a dirt road, so we scrapped that one and went on to find another one that looked decent, and also had available beds and a fair share of Aussies to boot. Great, a quick settle in and then on the tram to the main square.
We're waiting on the side of the main road for the tram and getting lots of bemused faces, friendly laughs, thumbs up and tooting of horns - our chests swelled up with pride, and we were further heartened by the chat on the tram we had with a bunch of high-school age boys who were quite cool.

We arrived in the main sqaure pretty early and dressed up like this:

Not long later the square was chockas - looking like this:

Mark and I were a bit nervous.
Luckily we found a few other Aussies (who happened to be staying at our same hostel) and about half a dozen poms (that's never good news...) and we all hung together. Before the game, and especially while Croatia were ahead the people round us were quite friendly and shaking hands, telling us how game we were and all the rest. We weren't afraid to let out a cheer and a chant, we sang the Aussie Anthem loud and proud, and the pommies went fairly balmy as they tend to do. Half time was a little hairy, we gave a rousing Aussie chant which ended abruptly when one of us was narrlowly hit with a bottle. That settled us down pretty quick.

Well we all know the final outcome - 2 all, which mean Australia went through. We were simply ecstatic, but let out a half-hearted chant and then went very quiet, quite wary of how the mood of those around us had changed. All good so far. Next thing a TV crew come over and encourage us to make some noise, so we cut loose! Chanting and screaming and whooping, we let them hav it! Then the sky tore apart and it rained bottles. Well, sprinkled maybe, but still bottles. We shut up again and ran across the road/tram lines to where there was a contingent of police standing.

Here we were slightly safer, and really it should be said that the majority of Zagrebians were really nice. One very large Croatian bear (it was more unusual for him to be human than hibernating) came up to us and said "Hey! Australians!" at which point we were poised to soil our durps before he continued with "PHOTO!!!" and we collectively sighed with relief and posed for him.
At the other end of the intimidation spectrum was a quite small fella who came up to me and said "Hey, Australians!" at which point I offered him my hand to shake. This was the most insulting thing I could have done, as he was here to taunt and start a fight, not to be amiable. And the group behind him looked pretty dark about it too. He gave me a mighty shove, which set me back all of 3mm I think, so I turned my back in his face (to hide my strange mix of trembling and sniggering as much as anything). At this time the police came over to us to talk with one of our group who was fluent in Croatian.
Soon later we were all ushered onto a tram - already fairly crowded before our contingent of a dozen Aussies/Poms and 4 or 5 cops. Just before we pulled out the same weedy Croat came up and tried to get on the tram, but he was kept out by the police officer stationed at the door, so as we were leaving I thought it entirely appropriate to blow him a few kisses and watch him explode.
We were instructed to leave the tram at a stop near our hostel where we noticed a police 4WD had been following us also. We all walked together to the hostel, we sang "For they're jolly good fellows" for the cops, and went inside for the merry making.
I offer you this photo as evidence of evening's outcome. Note the only men in colours are Mark and I who are also waving flags, right at the back. Crazy.

Drinking games ensued, which somehow tapered into singing Disney theme songs and being told to shut up and go to bed by a tough looking "woman" with more hair under her arms than on her head. We eventually did.

As a nice postscript, we later found out Mark had his photo published in the paper: