On refugees and house restoration in Croatia

Refugees are still very much part of the scenery in the former Yugoslavia. As I've mentioned before, many of those with the most energy today are those who have lost everything in the past, and who now want more than anything to live life to the full: Croatian Serbs, Serbian Croats, Bosnian everythings, etc.

Many of my first encounters with refugees were during our searches for a suitable property to buy in Istria or Kvarner (i.e. the North Croatian coastal area). For example, we looked at one run down property in a place called Kunj in Istria, that was in a tiny terrace of four houses. Some friendly people came out and introduced themselves, and it turned out that they were from near Novi Sad. Serbian Croat refugees obviously. They said they missed Vojvodina, but had to flee, as did so many others during the various exoduses of the early 1990s. In the then common house-swap process, they ended up with a tiny ruin of a house in the middle of nowhere in a region that they didn't know at all, having lived for generations in northern Serbia. Anyway, they were very friendly and gave us pointers about how much it cost to put in a bathroom, and how we shouldn't trust Nekretine (Estate Agents - as if we needed to be told - I always thought the kretin part of the word was fitting).

We met several other displaced people during our search for a house, and I suspect that some of the circa 1989 renovated empty properties were probably once vikendici (i.e. little weekend houses) of owners who were no longer nationals of the country in which we were searching. But the parade of refugees didn't stop after our eventual purchase. We are pretty sure that the person who was actually living in the condemnable wreck of a house that we eventually purchased was a refugee. And strangely, or perhaps fittingly, as we started to do things on the house, we encountered ever more of them. For example, one summer Sunday two years ago, Gs father telephoned some guy who called some other guy with a truck to remove the gigantic heap of rubbish we extracted from the property after first aquiring it. The talkative Croatian landlord who was hosting us in an apartman asked quizzically, upon hearing this: Tko rade njedelje?!? (Who works on Sunday?!?) And everybody laughed when they heard: neki Bosanac. Of course it was some Bosnian Croat, keen as ever, so some stereotype apparently dictates, to work any day of the week to make money.







Before









The trio of builders we eventually hired to renovate and build was like some kind of homage to the former Yugoslavia: all originally from Bosnia, but one Croat, one Serb, one Muslim, all living happily in the stable that they lovingly converted into temporary and seemingly comfortable lodgings. Our attempts to rent them more suitable accommodation failed when one of our neighbors in the village who hosts the only rentable apartmani refused to rent to a bunch of dirty builders. And did I mention that the neighbor, herself, is a member of the most perplexing variety of refugees I've ever encountered? She is a Croatian Orthodox. Gs father has no patience for this, insisting that she is a Serb, but somehow she feels ethnically Croat and spiritually closer to Constaninople than Rome.






During










Perhaps the greatest house-building related refugee story comes from the people who are actually the greatest help to us of all: R & S from Slatina, in Eastern Croatia. They are second or third generation Serbian Croats, and great friends of Gs parents. At the moment, for legal reasons, they actually own a small piece of what is technically farming property behind our house as foreigners cannot easily buy agricultural land in Croatia. In other words, we bought a piece of land for them. When I was, at first, anxious about this - "I mean, who the %^&* are these people?" I said in some obnoxious North American tone - G told me the story of how they came to be so utterly enthusiastic about helping us, and why we should utterly trust them.

Up until 1991, this couple lived with their family in Novi Sad, and ran a successful rubber business. I'm not sure how they came to be such good friends with Gs father, but I suspect that business connections kept them close. They are great people: I like them a lot. She is a tough machine who seems capable of organising anything, and he is the strong and silent type, and they are both warm and affectionate people. Anyway, they and Gs parents get along like a house on fire. Perhaps house on fire is the right metaphor here, as around the time of the massacres in Vukovar and elsewhere, ethnic hatred rose to the boiling point even in the normally peaceful city of Novi Sad. Other Croats (in other parts of the country) had had their houses burned to the ground, and they perhaps sensibly decided that they had little choice but to flee to Croatia. In a turn of events that I don't know precisely - but which was repeated thousands of times on both sides of the war - they lost their business and were left with nothing but an apparently unfair house trade with some Croatian Serb refugees in Slatina. Gs father gave them 8000 DM - which was then a considerable sum in Yugoslavia - and told them to go and start a new life. The story ends happily as they now live in Croatia with another successful business and grown up children now successful in their own right, probably profiting from that refugee initiative that I've so often commented on in the past.

Anyway, Gs father, being the last of a breed of Yugoslav gentleman, naturally refused to take the money back when they offered a repayment. R & S decided that instead they could offer their considerable experience - at no cost - to help us build our house; if not to repay a debt of all debts, then to help out some dear friends. This is the kind of friendship loyalty that I've never experienced, and I think it goes without saying that I'll trust them - and for that matter their children and grandchildren - unconditionally.