Battles and bonding in Zagreb

When children are young, you simply take them on a holiday. When they are teenagers it feels more like you are dragging them.

The problem is, you have entered that transitional stage of parenthood in which you are moving away from dictatorship (strap them in their seats and start the car) towards a fledgling form of democracy.

This means you must at least go through the motions of consultation before choosing the annual summer break.

Unfortunately, though, as any despot can tell you, the people don't always know what is best for them.

Which is why my wife and I had to declare the results of a referendum null and void in which our three teenage children voted an overwhelming “yes'' to an apartment somewhere near lots of beaches and night clubs.

Measured steps

Instead, we handcrafted a holiday that offered all the elements they were after, albeit not in quite the same configuration.

We would be providing them with a foreign location (Croatia), sunshine (temperatures around 30C), an element of the urban (three independently organised days in Zagreb), plus plenty of own-age social opportunities in the form of a week-long families-with-teenagers activity holiday.

The activities were run by the Adventure Company, at a little village in the Plitvice Lakes National Park.

As for us grown-ups, we would be getting some culture along with the canoeing, plus a whole week's worth of other people organising our children for us.

And you can't underestimate the value of that, as we discovered on the first morning of our self-guided stay in the Croatian capital.

There are stacks of interesting things to do and see in Zagreb, a lovely old town with a funicular railway and central market.

The hard part was trying to get the children out of their hotel beds. So instead of extolling the multicoloured mosaic roof tiles on St Mark's Church, we tried to lure them into an upright position by promising plenty of chill-out time in cafés.

Only, of course, when you say “chill-out'', your offspring goes into convulsions of scorn at your attempts to talk young.

Memories

The result was a sort of holiday experience, in which the children enjoyed the spectacular ice cream parlour (Vincek), the café with the cooling steam showers (Potepuh, near the market) and the watering holes of Tkalciceva Street, a 100-yard-long stretch of Lloyd Loom chairs from which one can watch the world walk past. Meanwhile, we adults enjoyed the tree-lined boulevards of the Lower Town (Donji Grad), the sheer manageability of the city centre (everything within a 20-minute walk) and our Number 11 tram ride out to the Maksimirski Stadium, scene of the 1990 football match between Dinamo Zagreb and the Serbian side Red Star Belgrade, which ended in a riot and helped spark the Balkans War.

The only points at which our separate holidays joined were the wonderful little Museum of Naive Art (which we all loved) and the hilltop Pod Grickim Topom restaurant, where we gazed down over the city and ate delicious meat-and-potato stews, cooked by heaping hot coals on top of the pot lid — a method called ispod peke.

By contrast, our adventure holiday in Plitvice Lakes National Park landed us firmly in the same boat.

Literally, too, since three out of the six days were spent in two-man kayaks, paddling up and down and over the bumpy bits of the River Zrmanja.

There's no doubt about it, sharing a canoe does get you pulling together.

Within five minutes, we were all paddling off downstream in pairs, brought together if not by a love of watersports (normally, our children wouldn't contemplate getting in a canoe), at least by the knowledge that the only way we could get out of the canyon was by travelling the 15 miles to where the minibus was waiting.

Once back at base, there were other features designed to bring us together, not least the accommodation.

For instead of being dispersed around the air-conditioned, satellite television-fitted rooms of Zagreb's Hotel Palace, we were billeted on the upper floor of a traditional village home, with windows the only ventilation to hand. Downstairs, the kindly, solicitous family who owned the house; outside, the sound of rushing streams and waterfalls.

Not that we spent many waking hours inside our rooms. Each day brought with it a different outdoor expedition, involving a 9am departure followed by either a five-mile hike, a 15-mile kayak trip or a 20-mile bike ride.

While my wife and I continually struggled to make the children walk 200 yards to breakfast, the tour's two athletic young instructors Marcel and Slaven wielded powers of motivation that got not just our sporty 13-year-old son but our two activity-averse daughters (ages 16 and 17) to paddle off the tops of waterfalls and pedal up the sides of mountains.

As well as having the muscles to drag canoes the wrong way up rocky rapids, Marcel and Slaven also had the gentle touch when it came to bandaging wounds (bike spills, mostly), and picking grit out of cuts.

Teen spirit

By evening, we were too tired to look beyond our meals, which consisted of hearty local dishes (stuffed peppers and beans), served in a large, open-sided hut, at tables occupied both by our group (of 13) and another all-English party of 20.

With children outnumbering adults by two to one, there was no shortage of fellow teens to team up with.

However, it was only after a huge amount of parental prompting and why-don't-you-go-over-and-talk-they-look-nice nudging that the young folk finally got together en masse.

In fact, full inter-teen interaction didn't really get going until the last night, marked by a spectacular thunderstorm and lots of dancing in the rain.

(Somewhat) rewarded effort

So was our meticulously tailored holiday the perfect fit? The answer has to be a resounding “sort of''.

We all did some things we enjoyed, some things we didn't enjoy and some things we never ever dreamt we'd do and probably won't ever do again (we're all pretty kayaked out for the foreseeable future).

There was plenty of grumbling, the occasional teenage and middle-age tantrum, plus everyone at some stage either thought or said: “I'm never going on holiday with you again''.

Which is probably as much as we parents-with-teenagers can expect.

As every government discovers, it's hard keeping the people happy all the time but if you can prevent revolution, you have not done badly: You should give yourself a medal.

Go there ... Zagreb

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— Information courtesy:
The Holiday Lounge by Dnata.
Ph: 04 4380454

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