The Balkan Spectator: West of the War
Malenic, Marina
T H BALKAN SPECTATOR by Marina Malenic West of the War Croatia feels like Europe, but to Europe it's elsewhere. 0 e don't really consider it a Balkan country," insists a German fellow-tourist...
...The yellow and rose-colored theaters and museums constructed by the Hapsburgs, along with the turn-of the-century streetcars, create an impression of civilization and refinement, of a time before world wars or ethnic cleansing...
...After a late night reading of the Tarot, we slip away to Madame Dara's tiny yellow two-room cottage for a cup of Turkish coffee...
...Probably they're scared of the war...
...While Greece and Italy were able to nullify similar decisions, Croatia lacked the diplomatic leverage of the two NATO countries...
...Just outside of it is Trsat, which attracts many more visitors, few of them foreign...
...We just assumed things would change more rapidly after independence was won, that anyone willing and able to work would have the opportunity...
...In a tranquil valley between forested mountains lie the Plitvice Lakes, now a national park, having been entered in the UNESCO Register of World Natural Heritage in 1971...
...Now you have to have connections just to get a job digging ditches in the countryside...
...My dad brings my brother and me here every year now that it's safe," comments one 12-year-old in a red Nike warm-up suit...
...Misfortune such as the imprisonment of Croatian journalist Antun Masle, one of many foreign journalists and aid workers accused of espionage for NATO by Serb forces in Montenegro, is becoming more frequent...
...The geranium-laden balconies overlooking the Adriatic, normally saturated with complacent travelers sipping espresso or the native wine, are now burdened with locals worried about their livelihood...
...Through the sedimentation of calcium and magnesium carbonates and the work of algae and moss, to fa, or travertine, has been deposited to form the natural dams that separate the sixteen crystalline, blue-green lakes connected by waterfalls...
...Dubrovnik, the twelfth-century walled city famed for its Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque churches, synagogues, monasteries, palaces, and fountains (as well as pristine pebble beaches), managed to recover from massive shelling by Serb forces earlier in the decade...
...Prospects for the normally busy summer season are equally dismal...
...out of 30,000 tourists expected in Dubrovnik, 400 arrived...
...Are any decisions left in human hands...
...On an overcast day, the city known for having the best-preserved Roman amphitheater in the world is eerily gray and silent...
...But what of free will...
...A bastion of civilization: 15th-century artillery on Korcula...
...Economic growth isat 6.5 percent a year, behind only Poland and Estonia in Eastern Europe, and inflation remains at a moderate 5.4 percent...
...The Holy House was moved here from Palestine in 1291 and then further west to Loreto in 1294...
...It was part of Austria-Hungary, you know...
...Feared to have been mined by the Yugoslav army in the early 1990's, the park is finally seeing a resurgence in tourism, although mostly domestic at present...
...She shrugs, "Sudbina...
...How is this fair when part of Italy is actually closer to the bombing than Croatia is...
...We're seen as part of the Balkans...
...South of Opatija is Rijeka, an industrial city known mostly for humid, rainy weather and not normally a tourist mecca...
...The Venetians called it Ragusa, you know...
...But this year they're gone...
...60 July 1999 • The American Spectator Medimurje, a northern farming region of Croatia that borders Hungary, is scattered with rolling hills and prairies dotted with bright red poppies and blue cornflowers...
...That fate is now ironically tied to Yugoslavia's current problems...
...Certain moments arise when we are expected to choose one path over another...
...The legend says that Hercules was Pula's first protector, and that his spirit still keeps invaders away," claims the owner of a nearby seaside cafe...
...But both are part of the same tradition," emphasizes the clergyman...
...Croatian authorities are demanding his immediate release...
...A middle-aged man gestures toward the bronze horse and rider...
...Of course we have choices to make...
...Her eyes turn more than once to the crucifix on the wall, with palms from last Easter drying to a pale yellow behind it, as she speaks of sudbina— fate...
...But the rest...
...In a country that earns most of its livelihood through tourism, the summer cancellations have been particularly destructive to the fledgling market economy...
...It's an image problem mostly," insists a tour guide to the nearby island of Korcula, the reputed birthplace of Marco Polo...
...A short train ride from the slumbering plains of the north, Zagreb is a lively middle European capital, reminiscent indeed of Vienna or Budapest...
...I remember the first night the bombing started...
...During the Easter holiday, half of reservations, most by Austrian and German vacationers, were canceled in Croatia...
...Most light yellow or red candles for fulfillment of prayers, and some leave offerings to the Virgin in the devotional room...
...According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the NATO action in Yugoslavia could also MARINA MALENIC is an editorial assistant with The American Spectator...
...S outh of Zagreb and seemingly out of reach of political concerns, travelers encounter Croatia's alpine central region...
...A reporter for Croatia's Globus weekly newspaper for 15 years, Masle was the last foreign correspondent to leave Chechnya in 1994 and reported on the Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian wars for independence...
...But the current neighboring conflict may be driving just as many visitors from the summer resort...
...Indeed the implications of the most recent Balkan crisis have dimmed the initially exuberant mood of Ban Jelacic Square, which witnessed cafes and restaurants filled to overflowing with revelers on the first night of NATO bombing...
...Beautiful...
...The north, more Alpine...
...0 e don't really consider it a Balkan country," insists a German fellow-tourist and professor of Slavic languages...
...Finally he has his rightful place again, connecting us to the West," he declares...
...Ban Jelacic Square, named for the nineteenth-century Croatian Viceroy (Ban) Josip Jelacic who fought the Hungarians and continued Croatia's alliance with Vienna, saw the return of the nobleman's statue in 1991 when the country declared independence from Yugoslavia...
...Lloyds later reconsidered and decided that only Dubrovnik, 3o miles from the Montenegrin port city of Bar, would be considered part of the Balkan war zone...
...His equestrian statue was banished by the Yugoslav communists for fear that it would become a rallying point for Croatian independence...
...Although over 1,70o km from the nearest NATO military activity, the 2,000year-old arena where gladiators once did battle is experiencing its first tourist drought since Croatia's war for independence...
...diminish investors' confidence, further slowing economic reforms...
...A Franciscan priest explains the legend this way: Along with the sanctuary in Loreto, Italy, Trsat marks symbolically the diffusion of the spiritual legacy of "Mary of Nazareth...
...The lakes once attracted a million annual visitors from across Europe and the world, but this year's are mostly Croatian children on a final field trip before the end of school...
...A sanctuary of the Virgin Mary, Trsat receives pilgrims daily...
...It doesn't help when cruise ships now instead go to the Italian side [of the Adriatic]," protests a Dubrovnik hotel receptionist...
...ofol The American Spectator • July 1999 61...
...She sees in the drippings everything from the number of future progeny one may expect, to the return of former lovers, and travel to distant lands...
...The professor smiles mischievously, unwilling to abandon his theme...
...Did you manage to see the old city this morning...
...Zagreb certainly attempts to emulate Vienna—with some success...
...That word secures our fate more than a thousand years of history and culture ever can...
...At the outset of the NATO action against Yugoslavia, Lloyds of London, the British insurer, declared Croatia part of a war zone, a pronouncement which increased insurance costs for companies and individuals doing business in the country...
...Last year there were lots of British people," she adds...
...Having no desire to join in the inevitable debate about Central versus Eastern Europe (a debate I would necessarily lose, if not lose track of entirely, if forced to continue in the Hamburger's native tongue), I quickly change the subject from culture and politics to scenery...
...We thought we would finally have peace from the Serbs, but again more problems," a teenager sighs wearily...
...Celebration fatigue and economic concerns have combined to bring about a more subdued atmosphere in the city center...
...Of course Dubrovnik and the whole of the Dalmatian coast remain somewhat Italian in character...
...Slightly further down the coast, Opatija, made up almost entirely of Hapsburg villas, is equally deserted, as if the spirit of another ancient hero holds visitors at bay...
...The Kosovo war is making the transition to post-Communism even more difficult than it would have been...
...Our generation remembers how it was before Tito finally died," declares a physician in her late twenties...
...After drinking the bitter liquid until only the thick sediment of the grounds remain, visitors invert their cups onto saucers to allow shapes from the future to drip into the present...
...The black-haired widow, renowned in the village for inspecting the dregs of each visitor's cup of the pungent brew, has shared her knowledge of the future with avid listeners for decades...
...You have to be ready for misfortune to happen when you have such neighbors...
...But it is the West rather than the Serbs that now keeps us from making progress...
...Croatia is a stable democracy, maintains a free press, and has little international debt...
...Pula, in Istria at the northern end of the Adriatic coastline, lacks even the children in brightly-colored sportswear...
...We learn English in school, so I can tell...
...I was scared that NATO would make some mistake and bomb us instead...
...This military hero of the 1848 revolutions also abolished tenant farming seventeen years before slavery was outlawed in the United States...
...But despite difficulties, Croatia continues to persevere in democratic and market reforms...
...S uch heavy-handedness toward Croatia on the part of Western countries, compounded with an official unemployment rate of 17.6 percent, adds to the pessimism experienced here by a generation of people who thought the end of Communism would initiate a natural transition to prosperity...
...Croatia may be more "European" than the rest of the Balkans, but it cannot escape the effects of regional conflict, even when the country itself is at peace...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
