The Advent tour on a mobile application

The Zagreb Tourist Board has added a new tour, Advent in Zagreb, to the five thematic routes around the city already featured on the popular mobile application Zagreb Be There.

With the help of your smart phones you can now embark on a tour of the most interesting Advent events in Zagreb; the Zagreb Tourist Board, in cooperation with the agencies Bruketa&Žinić OM and Brlog, has updated its popular mobile application Zagreb Be There by uploading a new route - Advent in Zagreb.

As you follow this route, you will be able to visit the most interesting locations in the city centre and savour in the yuletide atmosphere in Zagreb. In the central square of Ban Josip Jelačić you will be entertained by a diverse musical programme and you will be able to taste honey and gingerbread cookies. A short walk from there will lead you to the most beautiful park in Zagreb, Zrinjevac, where you will be able to take a spin to the rhythm of waltzes and evergreens. You can warm up in the Flower Square by listening to jazz, and from there you can head towards the new spectacular Ice Park in King Tomislav Square, between the Art Pavilion and the Central Railway Station. Following the Advent route, you will also reach Tomićeva Street, the venue of a particularly attractive cultural and entertainment programme titled Fooling Around by the Funicular, and the Aromat Fair of quirky art in the Meštrović Pavilion. The route also features the attractive event Kapulica and Lampions at the large plateau on the Dolac green market from where thousands of lit lampions will be released into the air carrying thousands of wishes for luck and happiness.

The tourists who check in at various locations in the city using their mobile telephones will be rewarded with a Zagreb Be There coffee and tea mug. To better promote the Advent tour, the organizers will use social networks to announce new events that will be revealed every day in the fashion of an old fashioned Advent calendar. They will also publish yet unpublished photos featuring the holiday atmosphere in Zagreb and original videos which have been created on the popular Vine application, which was designed by one of the founders of Twitter. The application, which allows users to make video clips of up to six seconds long, has gathered one of the most creative online communities in the world. The unknown photos of Zagreb, which have been borrowed from the archives of the Croatian History Museum and the Ethnographic Museum, will show such things as how the citizens of Zagreb use to procure Christmas trees, or a hockey game at Šalata in the 50s of last century. The Advent atmosphere of present-day Zagreb will be presented by the Vine video clips whose authors have played with a simple video animation.

Apart from the Advent Tour, the Zagreb Be There mobile application offers another five possible routes, each presenting Zagreb in a different way. One of the routes, titled “Zagreb in Space”, features all of the locations of the planets of the Solar System - artistic installations by Ivan Kožarić and Davor Preis. The route titled “Hidden Places” reveals the last remaining well at the Upper Town, an abandoned cemetery on Jurjevska Street, and the decorated water pump dedicated to Dino Dvornik as part of the Pimp My Pump project. The “Indie Zagreb” route features the Museum of Broken Relationships, the Museum of Street Art and the “Zagreb, volim te” (“Zagreb, I love you”) memorial plaque for Tomislav Gotovac, located on Ilica Street. Another route worth mentioning is the “Refreshing and Classic Zagreb”.

The application functions on iPhone and Android mobile phone systems, and it is based on the so-called gamification principle, which transfers the rules and ways of interaction from videogames into the real world. Tourists using the Zagreb Be There application must virtually check themselves in at each location they arrive at, and once they have completed the entire route they can collect prizes such as discounts for tickets etc. Partners of the project are the Museum of Broken Relationships, Lauba, the Technical Museum, NextBike and the Zagreb ZOO.