At first, the Local Guides program to me meant taking photos of meals and writing cool restaurant reviews. However, after years of stroking my own ego I still haven’t had a Siddharthian epiphany, until the moment when I was trying to explain to my Polish friend where we would meet, I realized the most famous meeting spot in my town is not on Google Maps.
There is a famous inside joke among the locals of Zadar, Croatia and it goes something like this: “A local from Zadar only knows the name of two streets in town: Kalelarga, and its own”, where Kalelarga is the local nickname for the most famous 3000 years old Zadar’s street in the old town. The joke stems from the fact that as Croatia became more touristic, the tourists would often stop locals and ask them for directions, but unbeknownst to the tourists, the locals would only know the name of two streets mentioned above because the locals would use important historical or geographical landmarks to navigate through town and set up meet up spots.
One of those spots is the post office nicknamed Little post office, or Mala pošta in Croatian, as we have the main post office just down the road. However, Mala pošta is one of the most busiest spots in town, as there’s a bus station which a lot of working people and students use to get to work or school and vice versa, but it’s just a perfect spot to meet if you are taking a stroll to the old town with your friends.
So, after the hiccup with my Polish friend, I decided to add Mala pošta to Google Maps, and since that day it’s convincingly one of the most viewed Google Places in Zadar.
