Fur coats are all over Zagreb this time of year. They are worn mostly by women in their seventies and eighties. Many of the coats look as though they have been inherited, too. Long and baggy, generations of women must have worn them. Some of them could go back a century or so. On top of looking incongruous at this day and age, when fur coats are among the symbols of animal abuse and environmental oblivion, they look tattered and entirely out of synch with contemporary fashion. Which is why I relish them in my own way. They are ugly as hell. And they get uglier as time goes by. In a few short years I will start missing them, I am almost sure. Fur coats will be history. Another reminder of the Austro-Hungarian roots of the Croatian capital will have perished never to return. And this brief note will become utterly incomprehensible. Worse, unfashionable.