At this year’s event, Amsterdam Street Art sent 5 artists to Croatia for the Kronland festival 2022.
ASA was invited to be part of the 2nd time at the Lronland festival. A festival that has the intent to build a more positive relationship between The Netherlands and Croatia, with Creative projects such as workshops, art, and dance. The goal is to build a sustainable and strong relationship between the two countries.
It all started on Monday when the artists arrived at Zagreb airport. We found out that the car we rented, was too small for 5 big guys plus luggage, so this ended up in a painful ride of 1.5 hours to our destination. With 5 pitstops to stretch our legs and smoke some cigarettes. We ended up in our guesthouse. after a quick look at our rooms we, were invited to come for a dinner that the chef of the guesthouse had cooked for us. This was a hilarious moment as 3 of the 5 artists were not so happy to see what the special of the day was. a local dish with rolls of cole with sauerkraut and minced meat. We had a big laugh and only our photographer as like it was his last supper
The next day we were ready and happy to go and see the school where we were supposed to paint our murals, this was another 1 hour and 20-minute ride, over let’s say pretty curvy and small roads. When we arrived at the school we were warmly welcomed by the director of the school and the vice mayor of the town Hrvatska Krostanjinca. After we inspected our murals, we decided to ask if we could not sleep at the school. So we did not have to drive 3 hours every day, to paint our murals. The director had absolutely no problem with this idea, she even brought us all the sleeping gear and towels we needed. We really felt welcome.
As we were pretty hungry, they told us where we could have a nice dinner, we drove 5 minutes into the mountains and ended up at a great restaurant. We got some good steaks and a local dish called cevapcici. It’s like a kebab variant of Croatia. After a very nice dinner, we decided to drive back to our guesthouse, where we had some beers and went to sleep. The next day we packed our stuff and drove back to the school to start our walls. Kasher and Heez painted a wall on the side where the kids always played during their school breaks. Ottograph and Ives.One painted on the other side where the teachers arrived and parked their cars.
The town we stayed in, has a big history and was a part of the war in the 90’s it was only 5 minute’s drive from Bosnia, So we decided we wanted to cross the border, to take a look in Bosnia as well. In the end, we went a few times to eat and to do some shopping over there. Cause we found out it was even cheaper over there.
After 2 days of good weather during our work on the murals, on the 3rd day, it started to rain. We decided not to let us stop by the rain. With here and there some breaks, when the rain was too much to handle. In the evenings we enjoyed ourselves with some local Bosnian beer and homemade Rakia.
After we finished the murals, We received a lot of compliments. The kids were very excited about the new paintings at their school. The mayor and director gave us some great gifts. We are looking forward to coming back and bringing more color to the town and working with the locals next year again.
We like to thank the Kronland organization, for everything they have done for us.
