A Love Letter to the Museum of Broken Relationships: Hurts So Good

Zagreb in December is like a postcard that got drunk on mulled wine. The advent lights twinkle with a kind of winking optimism, as if they know something you don’t. Maybe it’s that the whole city has cornered the market on festive cheer. Or maybe it’s just that Zagreb knows how to do heartbreak, and the evidence is tucked up in the Upper Town, in a museum that feels less like a tourist trap and more like a collective exhale of humanity.

The Museum of Broken Relationships. Even the name makes your chest tighten a bit, doesn’t it? It’s not just a museum. It’s a quirky little time machine, a hall of fame for emotional debris, and a clusterfuck of feelings that might leave you gasping in laughter one minute and wiping away a sneaky tear the next.

Here’s the premise: people from around the world donate objects that represent the ghosts of their past relationships. Each item comes with a story—sometimes a single sentence, sometimes an emotional essay. A toaster that saw too many breakfasts for two. A wedding dress that never made it to the altar. A little stuffed bunny that once carried the weight of every hope and promise you could pile onto it. It’s the stuff of ordinary lives, yet it lands like a gut punch.

Walking through this space, you get to bear witness to the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t just break—it shapes. And somewhere between the shelf of tokens and the walls of stories, you realize that this museum is as much about healing as it is about hurt.

It’s not curated for closure in the tidy, Instagram-quote kind of way. No one’s trying to stitch up the wounds here. Instead, it’s an invitation to sit with them for a while, to feel the sting, and let it echo. Because the hurt and the healing aren’t linear or disparate. They’re more like dance partners—awkward and clumsy, but somehow perfectly in sync.

I stood in front of an axe once, donated by someone who used it to chop up their cheating ex’s furniture. “After every strike,” the donor wrote, “I felt better.” 

And I thought, isn’t that just heartbreak in a nutshell? 

A little destruction, a little catharsis. 

The axe wasn’t just a symbol of loss; it was a monument to the kind of messy, imperfect humanity that feels oddly like home.

I’ve been in that room before, metaphorically speaking—the one where love implodes and leaves you staring at the wreckage. The museum’s genius is how it pulls you into that shared space, that collective hum of, “Oh, you too?” It’s oddly comforting, in the way a song can wreck you—and save you—all at once.

This museum is for the romantics and the cynics alike. It’s for anyone who’s ever loved and lost—and if you haven’t, are you even alive? 

You walk out of there feeling gutted and full at the same time, like you just finished the last page of a book that knew you better than you knew yourself.

So, if you make it to Zagreb ever in this lifetime (and I highly recommend that you do), soak in the city lights and cobbled alleyways of Upper Town. But save a moment for this little corner of heartbreak. Let yourself hurt. Let yourself heal.

Welcome the clusterfuck.

Nostalgia Nudges Strong in a Sleepy Airport Lounge...

 

The suffocating heat slaps me in the face as I step from the frigid autumn cold into yet another airport, my hair a mess and my sunglasses held together by a band of duct tape across the bridge. Ever the fashionista.

I’ve been at this for five years now, with everything I own crammed into one backpack. To be fair, the backpack probably weighs as much as I do, but that’s beside the point. After half a decade, I’ve gotten used to living like a human turtle, my entire life strapped to my back as I wander from one place to the next, still stubbornly taking the long way home.

The Blue Mountains in Australia were one of the first places that made me question my sanity. I hiked alone for hours, the cliffs and eucalyptus trees stretching out endlessly before me. There’s something about those mountains that made me feel gloriously insignificant, like the universe was giving me a gentle reminder that I´m really just a speck of dust on this planet. I did some intense self-soothing and had long conversations with "God" out there in that remote Aussie terrain. There may or may not be a wedding ring at the bottom of one of those canyons. The irony of it being swallowed up in the vast wildness of that unruly landscape wasn’t lost on me.

Sicily was another highlight. I spent days wandering the narrow streets of a village where the Wi-Fi was more myth than reality and the seafood came straight from the boat to patrons´ plates. I sat at a tiny café, watching locals debate what I assume was the most important news of the day, and pretended I wasn’t the most obvious tourist there. My lack of Italian didn’t stop me from nodding along like I knew what was going on when they brought me into the rousing back-and-forth, signature Sicilian spice talk. Honestly, I think I convinced myself I’d learned more Italian than I had after the second limoncello.

And then, of course, there was that summer in Southern Turkey, where I spent at least a good week wondering if goats had it all figured out. They just roam the streets without a care, the locals watching them like it’s peak entertainment. I stayed in a town so small that I’m pretty sure I became the main event by day three. I’d go for long runs, no real destination in mind, just trying to take in the quiet, which eventually gave way to conversations with myself. Don’t judge—goats aren’t exactly great conversationalists.

And the tiny island where cows outnumbered people? That was one for the books. It was like I’d wandered into some kind of whimsical painting where everything was serene and somehow made sense. The hills were so green they almost looked fake, and I found myself waking up each morning to the soft clang of cowbells outside my window. This place had magic, and I spent most of my time marveling at the sheer absurdity of it all. How did I get here?

And then there’s Slovenia’s Triglav. The hike that nearly broke me. It was cold, it was steep, and I may or may not have questioned all of my life choices en route. But once I stood there, alongside my beast of a Slovenian guide, overlooking that lofty scene, even with my teeth chattering and my legs aching, there was something surreal about it. The view stretched for miles, and for a split second, I thought, “Okay, maybe this is why people do this.” Then I remembered the climb down -- far more terrifying than the ascent. Life has been this way, too, funnily. 

But for all the beauty and wonder, solo travel isn’t all mountaintop moments. There are days where I want to throw my backpack off a cliff and days where I wonder why I ever thought setting out all on my own was a good idea. But then there are also days where I’m standing on a beach at sunrise -- or watching the sunset while sipping wine at a sidewalk cafe on a cobblestone square in a country that is nothing short of chef´s kiss -- that make it all make sense, or make me not care that it doesn´t (to anyone but me maybe)?

Five years now on the road, and I’m still going. There have been more places than I can count, more moments that I couldn’t capture even if I tried. My journey has been as winding as the trails I’ve traveled, and I’m still taking the long way home, wherever that may be.

So here I am, sitting in yet another airport, waiting for yet another flight. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, and carried way too much on my back—both literally and figuratively. And on this story goes...

Lost in Translation: It´s Funny, How.....

 

Ah, the joys of traveling—new sights, new experiences, and… new ways to completely bomb a joke. As a traveler, I have quickly learned that humor, like currency, doesn’t exchange at the same rate everywhere you go. What’s worth a belly laugh in one country might barely buy you a smirk in another. And no matter how funny you think you are, a joke that kills at home could leave you stranded in a sea of polite, uncomfortable smiles abroad. Welcome to the comedy no-man’s-land, where humor goes to die—or at least to awkwardly shuffle off-stage...

As a traveler, humor becomes a test of adaptability, kind of like trying to eat foreign street food without getting food poisoning. You think you know what’s funny? Guess again. Each culture has its own comedic currency, and if you’re not careful, you’re that tourist trying to pay in Monopoly money.

The Art of the Blank Stare

Here’s the thing: when you’re in a foreign country, humor is like a delicate soufflé—one wrong move, and it collapses. You’re out there, bravely trying to connect with people, and then you hit them with what you think is a killer joke. The room goes quiet. Someone coughs. A tumbleweed rolls by...

The Cultural Time Lag

One of the most mystifying things about traveling is the time lag of humor. Not jet lag—I´m talking about that delay between telling a joke and the (hopeful) response. In some places, like the UK, where irony is a national sport, a joke will hit instantly. In Russia, however, a joke might be received with stone-faced silence—only to be appreciated later, when you’ve long left the room. Humor is marinated there, like vodka-soaked fish. You’ve already moved on to your next punchline, but that dry, wry quip about existential dread is just now working its magic.

As you travel, you start to understand that humor can be about the long game. Will they get it tomorrow? Next week? After another vodka shot? 

So, what’s the takeaway for the globetrotting comedian? Sometimes the funniest moments often happen organically, through shared experiences and, yes, even the awkward silences.

Because if there’s one thing that truly transcends culture, it’s the universal appeal of laughing at how badly a joke can fail.

Funny how that works... or, didn´t---