November the 8th, 2022 - Interliber 2022 is hoping to realise a certain level of profit, putting more emphasis on it than ever before as spiralling inflation continues to force the cost of just about everything up.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, publishers have high expectations from Interliber 2022 in Zagreb, famous for being the largest book fair in the country. They have calculated that they will finally get closer to their pre-pandemic figures and one of the best years of the fair which took place back in 2019, when almost 150,000 people visited Interliber.

Interliber 2022 is the first "normal" year for Interliber, after it failed to be held back in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and last year it was held with the obligation of covid certificates, with only 55 thousand people visiting it. This year is naturally of great importance to publishers as this large book fair brings them from 5 to 25 percent of their annual income.

"Last year, sales were at the level of cost coverage. We expect this year to be at least 50 percent better. On top of that, we expect the results to rise and approach those from back in 2019. This edition should be dynamic, both economically and promotionally,'' pointed out Slavko Kozina, president of the Association of Publishers and Booksellers of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK). The participation announcements this year are also significantly higher than they were last year, with as many as 66 publishers set to participate in the fair, more than last year. More precisely, 296 of them from an impressive 15 countries.

Among them is the Mate publishing house, which specialises in business literature and high school textbooks. They didn't participate last year, because due to epidemiological measures and the limitation of the number of people at the fair, they estimated that it simply wasn't worth it, according to Sanda Tomljenovic Polic, the editor and sales coordinator at Mate. They will be present at Interliber 2022, however, where they achieve a monthly turnover in just six days. However, Interliber 2022 isn't important to them solely because of traffic, but also because it allows them contact with their customers.

"We sell through the web or via distributors, so this is a great opportunity for us to socialise with people and hear their comments for ourselves," stated Tomljenovic Polic, announcing attractive discounts of 15 to 80 percent.

In addition, at Interliber 2022, Bernard Marr's book "Artificial Intelligence in Practice" will be presented, in which the author provides detailed research on 50 companies that have successfully integrated AI into their business practices.

From Fraktura, which annually publishes about a hundred new titles, they have prepared 15 of them for Interliber 2022 alone. "I believe that the fair will be crowded this year," Seid Serdarevic, editor-in-chief of Fraktura, is convinced.

"It's a great source of income for everyone, and this will be especially important this year due to the increase in the prices of raw materials", warned Serdarevic, pointing out that the price of printing is 40 to 60 percent higher this year compared to last year, while the price of paper has also shot up significantly.

"The jump in costs was caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and inflation, and all of this creates pressure on the final price of the product, i.e. the book,'' said Serdarevic, adding that there has been a certain increase in the price of books in general, but that publishers are trying to minimise it so that physical books will continue to be affordable and available to Croatian buyers.

Although researches show that Croats don't read all that much anymore, the fact remains that of all the creative industries, this publishing industry is the toughest. In the last five years, the Croatian publishing scene has gone through three major crises, the failure of Algoritm, then the 2017 Agrokor crisis, and recently the coronavirus crisis, and in the end they successfully overcame it all.

As far as sales are concerned, this year things were solid with a slight increase compared to last year. Slavko Kozina pointed out that the latest figures for the business year of 2021 showed an increase in income of five to seven percent compared to pandemic-dominated 2020. It is the industry that, according to him, employs about 3,200 people and annually generates a massive one billion kuna in revenue.

For more, make sure to keep up with our dedicated news section.

May the 6th, 2022 - The 9th Pink Day Festival has now officially been announced, and it is set to take place on the 21st and the 22nd of May, 2022, at Zagreb's beautiful Lauba.

The 9th Pink Day Festival, dedicated to rosé wines (together with the "festival within a festival" dedicated to extra virgin olive oil) GREEN IN PINK by Romerquelle, the official water of the festival, will be held for the first time this year over two days - Saturday the 21st and and Sunday the 22nd of May, 2022.

The 9th Pink Day Festival will also take place in a brand new location, and we're happy and proud to be able announce that it will be in the beautiful Lauba - a house for people and art. In addition to exhibitors of rosé wine and olive oils, we are announcing something else different - Pink Mixology - where our partners will be able to exhibit and the audience will be able to taste some pink gins, tonic waters and cocktails.

We are also looking forward to the After Party in collaboration with Lauba, which will take place outdoors - in front of Lauba, after the end of the exhibition on the first day of the festival, more precisely on Saturday at 19:00.

Pink Day's partners will also decorate their exhibition tables at this edition of the festival, because that is how they'll be able to enter the competition for the most beautiful table of all. Traditionally, Pink Day rewards the most creatively decorated tables with prizes - this time from Foreo, SMEG and Nikel.

Just like before, Pink Day will celebrate rosé wines and sparkling wines; extra virgin olive oils and pink cocktails; spring, hope for better days, a world without war and COVID-19; flowers, femininity, and beauty. It’s actually a two-day attempt to look at theworld through pink glasses! In a word: a celebration of optimism!

Of course, in addition to tasting the products, there are also educational activities and entertainment to be enjoyed. The programme of rosé wine workshops is interesting, as is the one for olive oils and Pink Mixology.

In one of the VIP corners, Pink Day will be joined by Kraš, who, as part of their recently launched #IJaSamDomaćica campaign, is trying to raise public awareness of how women, including those from the world of winemaking and viticulture, oenology or olive growing, are still the main people responsible for taking care of the household. The aim of the campaign is to remind us all that the job of a housewife is demanding and complex, and that in our society there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to a fairer distribution of household chores among all family members.

Pink Day is happy to include Visa Premium Card, DS Automobiles and Romerquelle among its partners. We're sure we'll be able to reunite a large number of visitors dressed in pink or decorated in pink, all of whom will be eager to socialise - especially after everything that has happened to us lately. The friend of the Festival this time is VAPT, and Pink Day is being held under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Croatia.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:

SATURDAY 21.05.2022.
13.00 - 14.00
Masterclass "VAPT rosé wines" powered by Premium Visa
Leaders: Dino Kušen and Juraj Dusper
15.00 - 16.00
Olive oil: "Indigenous varieties of Croatia"
Mentor: Edi Družetić
17.00 - 18.00
Mixology: Pink Mixology powered by Double Dutch
Mentor: Natali Borić

SUNDAY 22.05.2022.
11.00 - 12.00
"Rosé of the autochthonous variety" powered by the Ministry of Agriculture
Leader: Nikolina Paleka mag. ing. agr.

You can follow PINK DAY on the Internet: https://pinkdayzagreb.com/
And on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PINK-DAY-166888780125529/, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinkdayzg

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

April the 16th, 2022 - The City of Zagreb is set to become the centre of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) this May, with six keynote speakers and many lectures on offer.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, from the 10th to the 12th of May at the Plaza Event Centre (formerly the Hypo Centre), participants in the Data Science Croatia (DSC) 22 event will have the opportunity to listen to six keynote speakers, be present for as many as sixty high-quality lectures and ten technical tutorials by international experts from companies such as The Financial Times (FT), Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Rimac Technologies, Science Park Gratz, SQream, and more.

Data Science in Production, Big Data & Data Engineering, Data Analytics, Decision Intelligence, Data4Good, Ethical AI, Open AI, Data Governance, Data Migration to the Cloud, Building Data & AI Teams are just some of the topics which will be discussed in the heart of Zagreb next month.

Speakers include Leanne Fitzpatrick, Data Science Director at The Financial Times, Martin Mössler, Director at Science Park Graz, Sacha Vrazic, Autonomous Vehicle Development Director at Rimac Technologies, David Akka, SVP EMEA at SQream, Vuk Vukovic, CEO at Oraclum Intelligence Systems, Emmanuel R. Goffi, co-director & co-founder at the Global AI Ethics Institute, Josip Saban, solution manager at Erste Digital, Ana Mestrovic, a Professor from the University of Rijeka, Enes Deumic, lead data scientist at Noom Inc. and others.

The regional franchise Data Science Conference and the Croatian Data Science 22 Economy are merging together to create a completely new event, with the goal of creating the most important annual data science regional event for data lovers and professionals in this region. During the three days of this upcoming Zagreb conference, 500 people will be in attendance.

For more information on upcoming events in Zagreb and across the rest of Croatia, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

March the 11th, 2022 - The Zagreb lower town (donji grad) is set to be lit up by the Festival of Lights for the first time, joining upper town (gornji grad) in the return of this festival following a coronavirus-induced two year break.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, following a two-year break, the Festival of Lights is returning to the City of Zagreb, and it will be held in its fourth edition from March the 16th to the 20th, when visitors will be able to enjoy 32 artistic light attractions at 31 locations from 18:00 to 23:00.

Along with the city's upper town location, locations in Zagreb lower town, as touched on above, will be illuminated as part of this much loved festival for the first time following the break.

”This year's edition of the Zagreb Festival of Lights, along with the creative and inspiring art of light, is set to send out messages of unity, tolerance and, above all, peace. We included sixteen locations in upper town and, for the first time, fifteen locations in the lower town, as well as two international collaborations with artists from Berlin (Germany) and Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), both of which are new,'' said Martina Bienenfeld, President of the Zagreb Tourist Board (TGZG), when speaking of the upcoming event.

The Zagreb Festival of Lights event is being organised by TGZG and its partners along with the support of the City of Zagreb. Admission to the programmes set to kick off on the 16th of this month is totally free.

For all you need to know about the bustling and increasingly popular Croatian capital city, why not check out Zagreb in a Page.

ZAGREB, 27 Feb 2022 - This year's international documentary film festival ZagrebDox will take place from 3 to 10 April and will feature about 80 titles, the organisers announced earlier this week.

The programme includes several films with a focus on children and challenges they face. Among them are Ohad Milstein's "Summer Nights", Zahavi Sanjavi's "Imad's Childhood" and Simon Lereng Wilmont's "A House Made of Splinters".

"Inspired by children’s curiosity and an honest, piercing view of the world in and around them, these creations portray children’s microcosm in a gentle and empathetic way, without shying away from painful and still often taboo topics such as death and grief or burning issues such as growing up in constant uncertainty and restricted freedoms," the organisers said in the announcement of the festival's 18th edition.

The films will be screened at Kaptol Boutique Cinema.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 9 Feb 2022 - Organisers of the Terry Fox Run in Croatia have donated HRK 50,000 raised in this year's anti-cancer week to Dr. Mladen Ćepulić, Department of Oncology and Haematology at the Children's Hospital Zagreb.

The Terry Fox Run has been organised in Croatia since 2000 and has raised almost HRK 7 million in that time for cancer research. Due to the pandemic, this year's event was organised online.

The director of the Children's Hospital, Goran Roić, said on Wednesday that the recovery rate in children is more than 80%, however treatment is often complicated. This year's donation will be used to improve rehabilitation and early intervention in children who experience complications after oncology therapy.

Canadian Ambassador to Croatia Alan Bowman expressed his satisfaction that so many people in Croatia participated in the Terry Fox Runt this year as well and raised money for cancer research.

Terry Fox is a Canadian national hero who started a marathon that today takes place in over 60 countries, with millions of people running in honour of his passion for running and his desire to beat cancer. Fox lost a leg to cancer and in 1980, in order to raise money for treatment, he embarked on a run across Canada which he called the Marathon of Hope. He ran 143 days, covering 42 km a day, but failed to finish the run because his cancer returned, claiming his life at age 22.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 4 Sept, 2021 - The Zagreb Burger Festival will be held in Trg Franje Tuđmana Square in Zagreb from 10 to 19 September.

The sixth edition of this event features burger makers from Zagreb, Šibenik, Dubrovnik and Varaždinske Toplice.

As many as 10 participants will take pat in the contest as part of the festival which will be organised in compliance with the COVID epidemiological rules.

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ZAGREB, 16 May 2021 - The Zagreb Book Festival (ZBF) will be held from 24 to 28 May at the Urania venue in Zagreb, and the seventh edition of the ZBF will be held under the slogan "I want your story!".

This year's festival features Jul Maroh, Nebojša Lujanović, Vedrana Rudan, Korana Serdarević, Monika Herceg, Boris Jokić, Dino Pešut, Ece Temelkuran, Robert Torre, Zoran Ferić, Sena Puhovski, Barbara Matejčić, Rujana Jeger  and some other writers.

Since its founding in 2014, the Zagreb Book Festival has been designed as an annual literary event with the clear goal of encouraging reading and critical thinking.

"After six successful editions, it has become an unavoidable point on the cultural and literary map of Zagreb and beyond," the festival says on its web site.

This year's program includes an international project called "Every Story Matters" which "raises awareness of the role of literature, especially for children and youth, in building an open democratic society. Although European society implies diversity, it is not in fact reflected in all its segments: literature and the book world are still quite homogeneous in many respects."

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This year is another one in a series of years when the summer in the City of Zagreb will be filled with art and culture. To announce that, a press conference was held in the centre of the city last week, where the program for the Zagrebačko kulturno ljeto (ZgKUL, Zagreb Summer of Culture) was presented, zagreb.info writes.

Events that are part of ZgKUL will be held all over the city: on Kralj Tomislav Square, in Upper Town, as well as in Novi Zagreb, and the most beautiful open-air and standard stages of the city will offer the best and the most attractive pieces of culture in Zagreb. More than two thousand artists from Zagreb, the rest of Croatia and abroad will be participating in those events, which will include music, movies, theatre, exhibitions, traditional arts and many other events. 

Milana Vuković Runjić, head of the Zagreb department of culture said at the press conference that Zagreb has done its best trying to keep everyone from going to the seaside. She said that not many cities in the world offer that much culture during the summer. She highlighted the fact that this year, Zagreb is ''going back'' to the Sava river, where, back in 1926, Miss Sava was selected.

One of the first programs was the Zagreb Classic Festival, held on Kralj Tomislav Square this weekend. The musicians were on the stage, and the people attending were sitting on the grass on one of the nicest squares in Zagreb, listening to the Fiesta Latina program performed by Croatian Radiotelevison orchestras with guests such as Los Caballeros and the band Cubismo. The program on Kralj Tomislav Square will continue with performances by Tonči Huljić, the Moscow Cadet Choir, the Croatian Army's Brass Band, the Croatian National Theatre's Opera and Ballet, LADO, and many others.

Marina Bienenfeld, the director of the Zagreb Tourist Board said that the total number of cultural events during Zagreb summer will be over 300! Some programs that are already well-known and popular, like Dvorišta, Crossover Festival on Ribnjak, and Summers by Matoš in Upper town will continue, and new, similar programs will be started this year. We've already written about the Tuškanac summer stage, and Summer on the Museum of Contemporary Arts' Roof will see the unique combination of music, film and literature, and the Atrium of the Klovićevi Dvori will host a rich classical musical experience.

And of course, it's already become a tradition for Zagreb summers to start with the InMusic festival, which starts today. One of the staples of the festival, which is always held in late June in Zagreb, is that it almost always rains, so seeing the weather forecast which says that this year the festival might, in fact, be dry (but only as far as the weather is concerned!) might come as a shock to regular visitors, who say that they enjoy the mud on Jarun as a part of the experience.

A sigh of relief as the long-awaited and much anticipated Zagreb on the Sava project finally gets underway, and there's even been talk of an opening date.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 21st of June, 2019, the "Zagreb on Sava" (Zagreb na Savi) manifestation will take place at three locations on the south and north river coasts of two popular Zagreb bridges, Most Slobode (Freedom bridge) and at the so-called Hendrix's bridge.

Rather unsurprisingly, this Zagreb project failed to begin on June the 19th, as was recently announced by the City of Zagreb, and there's now a brand new date for the opening of the long-awaited "Zagreb on Sava", Vecernji list writes, with accompanying photos.

The planned summer program set to be held on the banks of the Sava river which runs through Zagreb should, at least according to Sanje Cvjetko Jerković, head of the capital city's strategic planning office, begin on July the 5th this year.

The installation of the assembly pavilions has already been completed, and part of the planned activities, she said, will also be organised earlier. - The holiday program, called Odmorko, which is for children who intend to spend their school holidays in Zagreb, is set to begin in the next few days, claims Sanja Cvjetko Jerković.

The schedule for this year's summer has been published on the website of the Zagreb School Sports Association, which is organising the "Odmorko" program on the south side of the Sava river, next to Freedom bridge. According to them, from the 26th of June to the 12th of July, volleyball on the sand can be played. In addition, the Croatian flying disk alliance will organise the playing of various sports with discs on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Various other events have been organised and arranged within the scope of this much anticipated Zagreb summer manifestation, and as previously mentioned, when finally complete, "Zagreb on Sava" will take place in three locations.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. If it's just Zagreb you're interested in, give Total Zagreb a follow or check out Zagreb in a Page for all you need to know about the increasingly popular Croatian capital.