Croatian Blues ..

I was 12 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic disintegrated and as far as I can remember back then on the limited news channels in India there was not much about it.  Three years later cable television came in India in a big way and suddenly the world and the events happening in it were louder.  In 1993 the loudest were the explosions heard in then, Yugoslavia. Words like Bosnia, Kosovo; Siberia, Croatia etc were spoken a lot on the news.

Some 10 years later ‘Lagaan’ an Indian film was nominated for the Oscar’s. Back home in India we all were vouching for it to win. But ‘No mans land’ a film made by a Bosnian director won the coveted best foreign language film award in 2002. 

Eight years later in 2010, I first came to Slovenia, and realized it had a past and was first to branch out of Ex Yugoslavia in a 10 day war with not much casualties.. The other country to do so was Croatia but for them however it was not that easy. It took 5 years and the lives of some twenty five thousand Croats before the war ended, and the borders of Croatia were recognized by the world.  My interest in this region I realized had grown enough to explore it.

The war is over and the tourism is booming. Places like Dubrovnik in Croatia attract close to 2 million visitors every year. But in my search of the real Croatia and the way it was before the war, I decided to move around this little Peninsula of Istria. The clear blue waters, lazy little towns with cafes on the sea front and a typical old town feel is what I had imagined every town of this Peninsula to be more or less. But, tourism, which supports the economy, also destroys the peace of a place. On my first evening I was very disappointed with Rabac which claimed to be smaller of the lot, but it left me wondering ‘if this is small, then !!’ It took me the next morning and a visit to a tiny family estate, which specializes in making a typical ham from this area to feel close to the real Croatia.

Fazana from the sea !

It was in these villages, where the impact of the war was only economic in nature. So the charm continues to live. The people smile but not like the front office manager in a 5 star hotel who when she smiles and says ‘its so nice to see you, have a nice day’ actually means ‘hey listen, fuck off I hate this job’. When I enter a restaurant and the menu doesn’t come to the table, not because the place is busy, but is at its own pace I know the food has more chances of being good. Just like the town itself, which lives at a similar pace.

This is where you should eat !

That’s what is going wrong in tourism. Places like Dubrovnik or any tourist town in Europe, which receives crazy amounts of tourists per day, have café’s, souvenir shops etc where the pace is like Mumbai, while the town has a pace 10 times slower. The result if you think deep and u should be lucky for it to occur to you, that you are only physically present in the place. Mentally it feels like the fast moving Tokyo.

I went today to a bookshop in Zagreb and asked for some movies by Croatian and Serbian directors. All of them had war scenes on their cover. I asked the salesman ‘all war movies?’. He said ‘offcourse’ .. it was more a statement about the war than the movies.  1995 is seventeen years old but no 17-year-old works in a book store. When you live through a war you don’t forget it.

Somehow it makes me think the war did change the people here for the good. I don’t know how and I can’t explain it. Maybe they were this friendly from the beginning.. Who knows!!

All I know is right now Croatia has just opened its window to me. The door I will knock in the time to come