What do we need to provide for you to choose Croatia as your destination?

Hi @mirko. I’m building a startup that helps digital nomads find housing solutions, so they can easily & affordably live for a couple months in different places. If you have a good digital-nomad-friendly place in Croatia, I’d love to include it. To start, I’m building it as a house rotation model among remote workers, so it’s an exchange as opposed to a rental. If that could work for you, I’d love to put Croatia on the homebase map. Any place needs to be very conducive to remote workers…“musts” include reliable wi-fi, a desk/office/work space of some sort, and high walkability. I also am personally looking for spots next year…I’ve spent the last year living in a different city every month, and need some new spots! DM me if I can be helpful!

I spent a month in Croatia recently as a digital nomad. To me, it’s have co-working spaces with locals and good internet - across Croatia. I was in Cavtat and although small, it would be nice to have some sort of cool (even if small) co-working space. We had to use the hotel internet which couldn’t handle our usage (we were 70 digital nomads) so we had to bring in our own in addition to the hotels. That being said, for the smaller areas like Cavtat, more cute quiet coffee shops with random seating areas (couches etc), good vibe, plugs everywhere and good internet so digital nomads feel they can prolong their stay a few hours to work. Prague has great coffee shops for digital noamds. Something you could use as reference. La Bohemme was my favourite and something with that energy would probably do well in Croatia.

Hiya Mirko,
We are more midlife digital nomads with a motorhome looking for a place to park for at least a month mid October. Prefer a quieter location with good wifi, place to park the motorhome that has access to power, toilets and showers.

I would say that neighbouring Serbia is a better choice. Croatia is nice in summer, but is very boring the rest of the year. Zagreb is known as probably the most boring capital city in Europe. Serbia is cheaper, and Belgrade and Novi Sad are great cities to live in

One more update, this time about accommodation. I managed to find several small apartments and rooms in the center of Split (old town). All those are very nice because they are rented during summer, 100 - 150€ per night. Off season (and in the old town Split it is from November 1st till April 1st), I will probably manage to arrange price with owners for about 600-900€ per month. Price includes all costs (no extra electricity, etc) and weekly cleaning and new sheets/towels. For a little extra, you could have laundry service and cleaning whenever you want. ALL those will have (or already have) download speed of 42 to 60 Mbit and upload speed of 10,50 to 15 Mbit.

Ther’s a lot of variation in type of places. You have B&B like places with 3 to 10 units in one place so there is a good chance you could meet other nomads but still you don’t share anything, there are places where you share terraces and kitchens, there are places that are regular apartments/flats alone, with no other units nearby.

On top of this, especialy for those that rent rooms because they don’t want to cook themselves. I’m pretty sure I can arrange breakfast + lunch or dinner in nearby restaurants for as low as 10€ daily per person!

Now, price-wise, and considering that this is in the old town of Split… do you think those prices could work for anybody off season?

P.S: I’m also investigating if it is possible to throw in a decent chair to work on, not Aeron but decent, like this: http://www.velinac.hr/ea/wp-content/forum/uploads/2015/03/Sit-Net-1-470x470.jpg I believe it will be possible to have this for free.

I’m spending some time asking around about some services and even looking up for some apartments. it’s taking me some time and is slower than I expected. For now, lowest offer I got for off-season monthly bike rental in Split is 100€. Somehow I guess it should go down to about 65€ but am still waiting for some offer. Also for scooters. Will post it here.

Croatia is on our shortlist for January and February !

croatia is pretty popular with the DN community. judging by the conversation in the #croatia channel on #nomads, there are several people there right now. And I can see why. I was only in Split a few days but I liked it and I could see staying there for a few months.

I loved it there. I want to live there at some point. I made it a point to try cevapi in a different place every time and found some amazing places. i dream about it. lol

Sorry you ended up so far out, @hannahvictorius, but sounds like it’s been working out. I would advise you to ride the wave and not give in to the home sickness, not yet!

We ought to think about creating a couchsurfing-type service just for nomads. I think it would be easier to find and share couches within our community (rather than using Couchsurfing) – that’s exactly what I’ll be doing my first couple of days in Split, which will give me a chance to look at apartments and meet owners in person once I get a sense of the neighborhoods.

Anyway, I’m definitely up for meeting up with folks end of week/ weekend!

I’m very interested in something like this. Croatia has been on our list (myself/wife/son) to visit for a while now. @mirko please feel free to DM me with more information

I agree @suuzin, apartment hunting is pretty rubbish, even if you do your research in Croatian. Online just isn’t easy. As Split is the first time I’ve gone nomad, I wanted to have as much set up as possible, so we’ve ended up in Solin which is a 15 min bus ride away.

It’s a good location and the apartment is excellent (although the 10mb internet gets slow with two of us - one coding php and the other editing photos and writing).

Yet I’ve only found myself venturing into Split once so far and the last bus back home is 23:30. Otherwise it’s a 90min walk, which is possible, but not great. I might go into the city tomorrow and see if I can negotiate a cheap monthly bicycle rent. If you know of anywhere @mirko, I’d be happy for you to share.

Also, this is a test run for me. I have enough money but not a lot and I’m definitely feeling a little home sick. Have thought about abandoning ship earlier than planned, but going to try and ride the wave. So if anyone wants to meet up while they’re here, it would be great to chat to some friendly people

For comparisons sake, we found our apartment through Airbnb for $800 for the whole month, so between two it isn’t bad and is cheaper than my rent in the UK. It’s got a double and single room, sofa bed and air con. Kitchen is good and washer/shower also great. Only downside is a lack of balcony, but that’s minimal.

I’ve found most people happy to provide details of internet speeds, but I’m going to get the 5GB data sim top up today that @levelsio mentioned, and use that as back up.

Airbnb link for further info

Really good thread though, and I’m keen for Croatia to mean more to tourism than just beaches and festivals. The ruins in Solin and the fortress at Klis are so beautiful.

Hiked 4.5 miles to the top of one of the surrounding mountains yesterday and the view of the peninsular and mountains was amazing. Croatia is stunning!

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Thx all for such a great comments and tips. We’re already working on some. A few comments about mentioned topics:

Weather: (@Ani and @skat)
It all depends where you’re coming from. Croatian coast (Dalmatia) is a sunny place. It almost never snows and hardly ever reaches 0, even in the middle of the winter. Average high in winter is 12-15 Celsius (day/night average is 7). But almost every week, even in the middle of the winter, there are sunny days when everybody goes out. in general Dalmatia likes to live “out”. As soon as you see the sun, everybody is out in cafes, etc. So, for a Scandinavian, our winter is like a summer but yes, for a guy working in Thailand it is not. Take a look here for Split which is an average for Dalmatia: http://www.holiday-weather.com/split/averages/
Of course, Dalmatia in the summer is a fantastic place, temperatures up to 38 C, swimming, diving, sailing, full of tourists, but I’m worried about pricing then. We rent our rooms or apartments for 100-150€ per night then! And we sell 95-100% capacity easily then. In that period, your only option is short-period rent of apartments outside of the city center and that means you’ll be alone in a flat without much services available or company of other nomads (other than in co-working places).
Off season, price can drop dramatically and you can find peace on some places or a lively larger cities like Split is.

Community, meeting locals, networking (most of you mentioned this) - we will look into this and have a few meetings on our locat IT events. I don’t think this would be a problem at all.

landing package and other services (@hannahvictorius, @wanderingdev ) - this is easy SIM cards, bus tickets, etc. Bikes and scooters are also easy. Remember we’re full during summer with all those services in our cities to serve much more tourists. When off season comes, with us locals working on it, we can get great deals on those because they sit in garages waiting for the summer anyway.

Coworking (@levelsio ) - the only one I know is Am!osfera. There are iniciatives in several cities on the coast to work with our local governments to improve this. @marko_zd is doing it in Zadar and several IT companies in Split already had few meetings with the city government but administration is slow here and I believe at the end it’s going to be a private initiative. But in the meantime, we know several IT companies on the coast and are very sure you could find a working spot in one of those too, for free and together with some networking and meeting people. If anyone is interested, I can help there too, until we make it more organized.

Hi @mirko - I work as a UX Designer and will arrive in Split in a few days. So I’ll happily take any recommendations for apts! I think the other suggestions here sound great – meetups for nomads always appreciated.

I went through a rather confusing housing “pre-search” recently, I guess you could call it, because the basics of fast internet and some other things weren’t provided in the off-season rentals I was offered – I felt like I had to dig for details like is there an oven and washer provided, etc. And I didn’t (and still don’t) have a clear idea of what different neighborhoods are like.

A friend also was very surprised at the quality of place she rented on AirBnB when she showed up, and had to switch. (I’m sorry to report I also have a Croatian-American friend who nearly got scammed on a rental in Croatia!) So I’ve decided to not rent until I show up in person to see places and meet the owners… and I know I’ll have to play the whole negotiating game, which is time-consuming. Still, I’m looking forward to it… but I think a list of nomad-approved apartments with reviews of not just the apts but the neighborhoods would be a great help! Thanks for asking.

I’m in Croatia now (in Split). I really like it. It’s very mellow, relaxed, people are exceptionally friendly, I had some old Yugoslavic/Soviet prejudice that people would be cold and angry, but it’s completely the opposite. Also the food is fresh everywhere, even in the touristic fast food places, really surprised (in a good way)!

It’s also very cheap (especially housing).

I think room for improvement would be getting more coffee shops with nice desks (just like most of Southern Europe, there’s only Italian-style coffee shops with round desks, and relaxing chairs, which suck for working and it’s frowned upon to sit with a laptop).

I visited Am!osfera (the coworking space in Split), and it’s a great start, and I hope it can modernize more soon. See https://hubbathailand.com or http://hubud.org as an example. There’s only 1 coworking space in Split, probably a few more in the rest of the country, but there needs to be a lot more. Maybe you can ask the government to subsidize the building of more modern spaces to work.

I wish there was more taxis here, seems like only a few. Public transport is okay, but taxis would definitely help to get around more.

Internet has been pretty great and fast. The mobile 4G is great too (I use BonBon, with 5GB for I think 6 euros, pretty amazing).

So yeah, most importantly, more spaces to work!

I don’t know how bad it gets in Croatia during winters. But only thing that could motivate me to go to cold is snowboarding.

The issue is i’m not even prepared for cold weather.

scooter rental is a great idea!

I’m here right now with my brother in Solin.

I’ve been visiting Croatia since 2010, so I’m familiar with what it has to offer. For us, the shoulder season is good because it is still warm but prices are a little cheaper and we can still get cheap flights from the UK and other parts of Europe. It gets much harder over the winter months.

As @wanderingdev said, a landing package would be very useful. I know how to get a sim, but it can be quite confusing for travellers. Also, a multi trip bus ticket would be a great part of that too. Or even better, access to affordable monthly bicycle and scooter hire, because that seems non-existent.

I think organising some sort of community meet up would be very important, and getting to know some locals too. I know there is couchsurfing etc. but these things get a lot quieter from September onwards. Same with nightlife. It isn’t a high priority for me, but a lot of organised events only run until early September.

I’d love to go for a beer and maybe catch a Hajduk Split game with some other nomads and tech/non tech locals. I’ve just realised I should probably check the fb meet up to see if anything is planned…

I follow the weather, so I’m not too sure about Croatia during the winter, at least for myself. But I would want a reliable WiFi connection (which as you say is a given here), a good desk, independent accommodation (i.e. no sharing of facilities), washer (I want to do my own laundry). Those are the top items on my list. If I find that I have to share, a peaceful (read: non-party), non-smoking environment is essential.

Hi, everyone. Thank you, @wanderingdev & @gdpelican , for constructive feedback & ideas. It will help us a lot recognizing your needs and expectations regarding Croatia.
I am one of those IT professionals @mirko mentioned in the first post, located in Zadar, willing to host & meet DMs from around the world. Please, spread a word about this thread so we can get as much feedback as possible. Thanks once again!

I’d be happy to get looped in on this as well; I’ll be looking for a place around late-October / early November.

As far as attracting DNs to Croatia, I think @wanderingdev’s right on the money that it’s a marketing effort… Game of Thrones has put Croatia on the map for a lot of people, and so it’s decently well known at this point, and so offering affordable short-ish term housing with good internet and pretty pictures of the Mediterranean is a great start.

My other big draws as a DN are a) finding a community and b) being able to interact with locals (being a tourist / walking piece of money meat gets a little old and sad after a while), so those are good things to push into the marketing as well; (come join us, we’ll show you around; Croatia rocks!)

Reaching out to some of the travelling communities (RemoteYear, Hacker Paradise, SunnyOffice… I’m sure there are others too) and enticing them to bring a bunch of people your way might be a good way to go as well to get the word of mouth going.

happy to help. yes, send me a DM and we can chat.

I would totally be up for that! I’m looking for somewhere to be from late November-late December if you want to make me a deal.

The big thing is just getting the word out. Perhaps build digitalnomadcroatia.com with the info? The DN community is small and Croatia is popular so you just need to get the word out. Offering coworking space, etc. is great for people who want that. Perhaps setting up meetings with the local tech/startup community for networking, etc.? Having a “landing package” so when they arrive they have a SIM card, a list of local places of interest, etc.? Host hackathons?