reality check
Hi there. Day three in my visit to the former Yugoslavia. I probably won't be posting too much after this, as I'm leaving on Sunday or Monday for a weeklong roadtrip to the coast and through to Budapest. The city has been pretty much how you'd imagine it to be. Every building you pass has a sense of permanence and history to it, everything is beautiful and old.
I'll show you one picture of the city and then leave you alone. Here is the statue that resides in the center of Zagreb. This guy was one of Croatia's early war heros, and his statue resided in this place, with the sword facing towards their enemy, the Austro-Hungarian empire. The statue was then hidden away for years, passed around in basements all over the countryside until the fall of communist Yugoslavia late last century. It now stands again, this time facing East towards this century's enemy: Serbia. A quick refresher in case you're not familiar with that conflict- you've got the Bloods and the Crips, the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and then, way over to the right of the scale, are the Croats and the Serbs. These two teams simply do not like each other. I knew about it, but I didn't know about it until this week. There's formalized segregation and everything: black roofs for Serb houses, red roofs for Croat houses. Separate restaurants and grocery stores. You could probably murder a Serb in the street here and not really face a penalty. Not that there are much of any laws to begin with. Most of the city's statutes- everything from speed limits to real estate license qualifications- serve as mere guidelines rather than enforced laws. Gangs of gypsy children roam the streets agressively pan-handling and pick-pocketing anyone and everyone. I asked if there are laws or if the city does anything. "Well" Nancy said, "Usually if a shopowner catches one of those kids in their store they'll just grab them by the hair toss them out on the street." Ok then. I'm off on a tangent now but what I meant to say is that it's much more nationalistic than I'd anticipated. Let's end with this: when Croats greet each other on the phone, on the street, in email, whatever, they say "Bok". This is a condensed version of how they used to say hello and goodbye: "Bog i Hrvati", literally: "God and Croatians".
