Croatia with the Serbs

I first visited Croatia in the summer of 2004. Not such an odd thing for a Canadian living the Europe: like most people, I had heard about it as a place to visit, and it was supposed to be great, relatively cheap, sunny with nice food and people, so why not? What was a little odd was who I was traveling with: three mostly Serbian people from Novi Sad, my girlfriend and her parents. Now, there is quite a lot of traffic in to and out of Croatia, so I can't really be 100% sure, but I was pretty damn sure that we were the only people who were in that part of Croatia in a car from Novi Sad, complete with Serbian passports, the little Serbian flag on the license plate and everything. Indeed, I saw only one other car from Serbia the whole month that we were there, a Belgrade license plate on a car tucked away in a parking lot in Pula.

My other half had been back to Croatia a couple of times. Like many of the former Yugoslavian diaspora, she had a lot of friends from different former provinces, and had been the past two summers on sailing trips with various Croatian friends, but she hadn't dared to be as conspicuous as all of this - flying in with just one passport check, but no other obvious symbols to give her away. Coming from Novi Sad, and being something of a true polyglot herself (six languages and one of them is Hungarian) she blends very quickly. Add the odd "j" to your words, and remember to say Kruh instead of Hleb nothing can really go too wrong.

Anyway, back to our 2004 trip. I must admit I was a bit nervous, given that I had also heard all kinds of opinions, mostly from people in Serbia, which I had visited several times already, about why it wasn't a good idea to drive to Croatia: they would vandalize your car, beat you up, etc. Actually, nothing of the sort happened and indeed, it was rather the opposite.

Virtually everybody we met in hotels and restaurants was very glad to see us, or rather them, as normal tourists like myself were obviously part of the summer furniture. People of her parents generation generally moaned (as +50-somethings often do) that things weren't as good as they used to be, and that the new customers (Germans, Italians) weren't of the same ilk as the old Yugoslavs. At one point over ribice in a restaurant in Punat, on the Island of Krk, her father explained to me, in his charming, if a little broken English, that "We are having a very nice time". I think the pleasant surprise, combined with nostalgia must have been almost overwhelming.

A little later, we went to Brijuni, which was Tito's summer residence - an Island off the Istrian peninsula. There, we saw a play about the former Yugoslavia, set inside the prison island of Goli Otok. The play seemed good: we moved around from scene to scene inside the ruin of a fortress that served as the prison, and apparently all the actors were dead famous, but, of course, I had never heard of any of them, and understood almost nothing. Blah blah blah mi blah blah blah mislim blah blah blah dobar blah blah jeste blah blah nije. But quite an experience. After the performance there was a little party, I was asked to escort G.'s mother (who was feeling a bit timid) over to a group of people singing old songs, and eventually the singers worked out that she wasn't precisely one of them, and once again there was the usual charm and exchange of jokes about the mad old Communist days.

Other odd things happened on that trip. For instance, one day we were driving along a narrow road on Krk, and, as is very normal, a big German registered Mercedes was coming towards us, not giving way. I began my usual curses about the discourteous German drivers, when the window of the Mercedes rolled down, and a head popped out that was decidedly not German. A dark-complexioned man in sunglasses, with a rough beard looked out and said "Eh, Novi Sad" and then did something with his hand. Three fingers - thumb, index, and middle finger - points towards us. G.'s mother did the sign of the cross, her father laughed heartily, and when I asked what it was, G. said "he was just doing something stupid". Obviously, he was giving us the three fingered Serbian salute. I realised that we weren't, in fact, the only Serbs there, but that plenty of Gastarbeiters from Germany had probably been sneaking into the country for years. It reminded me of what an American once joked to me about Canadians in the US: "they can walk among us, almost undetected".

I've been back to Croatia now about a dozen times, and we've bought a house there that we are slowly beginning to renovate. I love the place, and love the people. It isn't all good, of course. In certain parts of the country one encounters people who really really don't want to hear that one is from Serbia, such as the Taxi driver who had "Croatia forever" tattooed on his neck. And in a later trip, another person from Novi Sad had his car vandalised - if it could be called that: somebody stole his license plate, probably wanting a souvenir. But such things could easily have happened in London, and indeed a lot more besides.

But on the whole, things have been event free as far as Serb/Croat relations are concerned. Indeed, I think I overheard some of the first ice-breaking conversations between Serbs & Croats regarding the wars. Last time we were there (September) we were sitting on the terrace at night sharing a glass of wine with our hosts. G's father was telling the story about the bomb-shelters in Novi Sad. The synopsis was the the mechanism for opening/closing the blast doors on the shelters had stopped working, and they thus needed to use a Tractor to close them. They had to draw straws for the hero who would have to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others, and he bravely agreed he would go outside, close the door, and then die (a hero) in the bombing. It was only then that the others wondered how they would ever get out of the shelter. The Croats related the story about how the New Croatian Army toured the island to familiarize the people with the implements of war. They threw a single grenade into a field, and when they turned around, the entire village had disappeared, having fled in terror. Neither of these stories was uproariously funny (though perhaps in another blog I should try to explain my understanding of Balkan humor), but I could see how both people were carefully observing the other to see whether the subject matter was acceptable, and it was clear that the slightly over-enthusiastic guffaws were as much about relief as humor.