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Croatian Chronicle: For those not up to top speed on Balkan history, a brief word must suffice. As communism collapsed throughout Eastern Europe in 1990, Yugoslavia, an unlikely and untenable federation of peoples with thousands of years of antipathy, self destructed as well. The six republics became six new nations–Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia/ Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Homogenous and prosperous Slovenia in the far northwest flourished, but the rest deteriorated into devastating ethnic violence, including at least three definable wars. The bibliography on this subject is burgeoning, and the unhappy saga merits a whole academic course. That is next on my agenda. However, I will focus here on my excursion as one of ten academic participants in the Council on International Educational Exchange Faculty Development Seminar on “The Evolution of South-Eastern Europe: The Croatian Perspective.” The Council annually offers up to twenty summer travel-study opportunities in selected countries around the globe. I had wanted to participate in one of these highly-regarded seminars for years, and this particular topic especially intrigued me. For the last few years, I struggled to unravel the Balkan Wars for my students; but I was quite aware that the task was large, my insight scant, my ignorance vast. The journey consisted of three nights in the beautiful capital city of Zagreb and six nights with our hosts, the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik. The seminar leaders were Dr. Ivo Slaus, deputy director of the Inter-University Centre, chairman of the higher education and science subcommittee of the Croatian Parliament, and an adjunct member of the medical faculty member at UCLA; and Dr. Katarina Ott, lecturer and director of the Institute of Public Financing at the University of Zagreb. The agenda included presentations by some of the leading academics in Croatia on such topics as Croatian and Balkan history, the collapse of Yugoslavia, post-communism and post-war reconstruction, political and economic development, Croatian international relations, and social and cultural issues. Visits, cultural experiences, free time, and fine dining augmented the lectures. In synopsis, Croatia has not fared well in the transition. Development lags behind most of the Eastern European transitional economies (although ahead of most former Yugoslavian comrades and the former Soviet Central Asian republics); the nation suffers grave societal distress; and the political system does not inspire confidence. Warfare bears considerable responsibility for the woes, but the tribulations may be more systemic. Even given normal professorial depreciation of politicians and a penchant for gloom, our Croatian academic hosts may be more correct than the various politicos would have us believe. Croatia sits on the cusp of a future that could go in several directions. My heart wants to proclaim optimism, but the mind cautions greater pessimism. I had traveled in Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia and Vojvodina, in the mid-1970s. Thus the distinctive reddish orange-tile roofed houses of the region evoked pleasant memories as we flew over beautiful Alpine Slovenia and into Zagreb. Much of the city (770,000 population) consists of dreary high-rise apartment buildings, legacy of the old communist regime, but the downtown is elegant with the lovely Old European facade buildings as in Brussels, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. The many parks with statues and colorful flower displays complete the city’s charm. Our well-appointed Hotel Dubrovnik was located at the very heart of the city. Through the large glass panes of the breakfast room and restaurant, we sat immediately on Trg Bana J. Jelacica (Jelacica Square). Each morning we consumed huge breakfasts, as we watched people scurrying to work or shop. The trolley cars, reminiscent of the early twentieth century, stopped just on the other side of the window. Zagreb is an outdoor city with sidewalk cafés everywhere marked by large bright umbrellas. The nation of Croatia may be exceedingly poor, but a tourist would never guess this in downtown Zagreb. Hundreds and hundreds of up-to-the-moment stylishly dressed people, young and old (I didn’t know that it was possible for clothes to fit so tight), stroll the streets and lounge in the outdoor cafés consuming cappuccino, beer, wine, pastries, and some of the best ice cream that I have tasted. Cell phones are ubiquitous. The last night in the city, I sat for a couple of hours in one of the cafés just a block from our hotel, sipped Ozujsko pivo (beer), and enjoyed an outdoor concert of classical, jazz, and contemporary music. When I returned to my room, I continued to listen to the concert from my window. The evening lingers late since it didn’t get dark until after 10:00 p.m. Beyond the lectures, the highlights of Zagreb included the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a symbol of the strong Catholic faith of the country; the neo-baroque Croatian National Theater, and the Parliament (Sabor) building located next to St. Mark’s Church, which displays the Zagreb coat of arms in the roof tile on one side and those of the three distinct parts of the nation--Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia--on the other side. Zagreb abounds with museums. The Strossmayer Gallery and the Museum Mimara are the famous ones, but the single most interesting place that I visited in Zagreb was the City Museum. Croatian, German, and English captions explain the exhibitions which depict the long history of this ancient city founded on the two hills of Gradec and Kaptol. The most fascinating displays for me were from the recent period–the Utashe fascist rule during World War II, the Tito era, and the Serbian attacks on the capital during the latest war. Several of us sat mesmerized at the last exhibition station by a lengthy video on the fighting in the city. I watched it through twice. But I must confess that high on my memories of Zagreb will be the sumptuous meals. Every restaurant seemed to outpace the one before, and this was preparation for even more salutary fare in Dubrovnik. The ambiance of each establishment was genial, I savored endless varieties of tasty fish during the trip, and the Croatian wines were quite acceptable. On Saturday afternoon we flew Croatian Airlines to Dubrovnik and checked into the Hotel Lero. It was an attractive establishment, although it didn’t appear to have made a full transition to the free market consumer economy. Breakfast was far below the standard in Zagreb, the coffee was awful at best (I was told since it all tastes that way to me), and the dining room was patrolled by surly matrons seemingly left over from the Tito regime. The hotel’s virtue and vice was that it was on top of a steep hill a kilometer from our daily sessions at the Inter-University Center just outside the Old City. The morning stroll down the hill gazing out at the Adriatic was breathtaking, but the haul back up the hill took your breath. It was arduous for some in our group, but I enjoyed the roundtrip two or three times a day. The walled medieval Old City is an impressive sight, one of the best scenes in my travel itineraries. The two kilometer traverse around the top of the city walls built between the 11th and 17th centuries, and among the finest such edifices in the world, is a must for every visitor. The views are outstanding, but the trek is not for the infirm. I made the circuit in the middle of the hottest day that we were in the city, and though I am in excellent physical condition, hiking the many steps left me panting. Wandering the alleyways up and down the long, steep stairways inside the city itself is also a worthwhile challenge. Dubrovnik suffered in the Serb-Croat War. From the mountaintop above the city, the Serbs lobbed over 2000 artillery shells into the Old City during 1991 and 1992. The ten million dollars of damage included striking 68% of the 824 buildings; holes in two thirds of the distinctive red orange-tiled roofs; craters in all the streets and squares; devastation to most of the churches, monasteries, and rectories; nine historic palaces gutted by fire; and 111 direct hits on the great walls. An commission of European countries led the massive reconstruction that has restored the Old City to its grandeur. Two of the major hotels in the larger city still lie in ruins today. One just outside the walls is undergoing renovation; the other on the coastline remains a huge hulking testimony to the senseless havoc of the war. The wonderful funicular cable car which went to the top of the mountain overlooking the city is also totally destroyed. Once again, the culinary constituted a central component of my experience. Inside the Old City, canopied restaurants and pizzerias filled all the alleyways. I enjoyed some delightful repasts in the alleys, but one of the more memorable was clearly plebeian. For about four dollars, on a cool and pleasant evening, I devoured a seafood pizza and a large pivo while watching the World Cup with a couple of enthusiastic local soccer devotees in an out-of-the way quiet alley. The World Cup was in full swing during our trip, and Croatians were beside themselves over their place in the tournament. The country virtually came to a standstill during the team’s heartbreaking loss in the first round. Nevertheless, the games continued to dominate the television screen for the entire time that we were in the country. As in Zagreb, our group shared some pleasant dinners in outdoor restaurants. One evening we traveled by boat to Cavtat, a resort town south of Dubrovnik near the airport. At a rooftop restaurant, my trip roommate and I shared a tray, at least three feet long, filled with various seafood, including fresh sword fish, monk fish, scallops, squid, and shrimp, followed by strawberries and whipped cream for desert. As planes glided over us in the airport flight path, we remembered that Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown died in 1996 when his plane mysteriously crashed into the mountains that surround the airport. We caught the last bus back to the city and thought that we too might be victims of the mountains. The nighttime views looking into Dubrovnik were spectacular, but the driver hurtled along the windy mountain road at breakneck speeds that far exceeded our comfort zone. On our last day we were scheduled for a hydrofoil trip to the Isle of Mljet, purported to be one of the loveliest in the Adriatic. An incoming storm grounded the hydrofoil, so we opted for a conventional boat tour of three closer small inhabited islands–Kolocep, Lopud, and Sipan. Frankly, the islands weren’t that interesting. Two were little more than strings of cafés whose economies were the daily tourist boats. Lopud was an example of many other islands where even today with the relatively recent advent of electricity, life is a tough, isolated existence. We held our farewell meal on the waterfront at the more-developed Sipan. The gusty wind increased as we departed. The captain announced that we would cross directly to the mainland and take buses back to Dubrovnik. During the half hour voyage to the nearest port, the small boat dipped and rose. Water sprayed over everyone. It was fun, but I wasn’t unhappy to reach the port. Once again the speeding mountaintop bus ride home was scenic and exciting. The primary reason that I chose this particular seminar was the day-long excursion to Mostar in Bosnia/Herzegovina. The Balkan Wars were my primary interest. I had gained some flavor of the fighting in Zagreb, and I had viewed the aftermath of the destruction and the restoration efforts at Dubrovnik. I was eager to see Bosnia, where the war had been more intense and severe. Our guide on the bus trip to Mostar was a Bosnian Croat who had worked for the United Nations in Sarejevo during the war. Katarina Ott was displeased by her politicized commentary and cynical assessment of the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords settlement. Our Croatian academic hosts were unfailingly judicious on the war. Their critiques focused on the errors of Croatian political leadership, especially the regime of the ultra-nationalist Franjo Tudjman, who died in December 1999. From the academic presentations, it was hard to grasp the passions that triggered genocidal massacres. I welcomed a polemic, even if only a whiff. Along the journey we encountered the devastation in Herzegovina, an historically distinct geographical region which is predominantly Croat and Muslim. The highway served as somewhat of a dividing line between the Croat and Serbian areas–Croat villages to the west and Serb villages to the east. The fighting left both heavily damaged and unrepaired. Just after we crossed the border into Herzegovina, the road was closed for about thirty minutes while land mine demolition was taking place in the area. People in the countryside continue to suffer casualties from the hundreds of thousands of land mines left behind. Detonation and deactivation will take years if not decades. Before the war Mostar, a city of 270,000 inhabitants, was one of the purported models of Croats and Muslims living together peacefully–Croats primarily on one side of the sleepy, green Neretva River and Muslims on the other side. The famous Mostar Bridge (the town name comes from Stari Most meaning “old bridge”), completed in 1566 by Suleyman the Magnificent at the height of the Ottoman Empire, was a symbol of co-existence. After surviving 400 years of earthquakes, civil wars, and heavy fighting during World War II, the bridge was felled in November 1993 during the Bosnian War. A temporary suspension footbridge serves until an international community effort restores the old bridge, which will take two more years. Large parts of Mostar still lay in ruin from the shelling. In brief footnote, Bosnian is a geographical rather than ethnic identity, although there is a small Bosniak identity, from which the name of the area derives. Bosnia and the region of Herzegovina, which has made its way into the name of the new country, is comprised of Serbs, Croats, and the Muslim community which is treated as if it were an ethnic identity. Some of the Muslims are descendants of Turkish invaders in the 16th Century, but most are later converts, predominantly Croats. The Croats stake their claim to the area on the proposition that the Muslims are Croats who succumbed to the alien faith. The relationship between the Catholic Croats and the Muslims historically has been tenuous. During the war, at times the Croats and Muslims together fought the Serbs and for a period the Croats and Muslims fought each other. Today, on the surface the two communities coexist again, but it remains a marriage of convenience. Our tour of Mostar was far too brief and touristy. Our guide in the city described herself as Muslim, but if her understanding of the faith was as superficial as her presentation at the obligatory mosque and traditional Turkish house where each tour group stopped, then Bosnian Muslim is indeed an ethnic identity rather than a religious community. Since I teach Islamic politics, I found the tourist cliche spiel pathetic and disgusting. On a note of greater verisimilitude, we were informed that everything was much cheaper in Bosnia, and the etched brass and copper trays and other items that I remember from my years in Turkey were exceedingly inexpensive. After a huge lunch, including dolmas for a Turkish touch, at the grand Hotel Ero, where the UN and European Community personnel reside, we had the privilege of a briefing from the UN Office of the High Representative, which monitors the peace agreement and assists nation building in the fractured country. The task is daunting to structure a viable political and civil society under the rule of law out of the corruption, warlordism, hatred, mistrust, and general chaos in the postwar environment. I am not optimistic about any short term success. We left Mostar far too soon. This is what I had come for, and I was frustrated by the limited amount of time on the ground. Back in Croatia, we stopped briefly at Ston and Mali Ston, where remains of a 5.5 kilometer wall built in 1333 is the longest fortification in Europe. Returning to Dubrovnik, we crossed the brand new Franjo Tudjman Bridge at Lapad, a magnificent high cable structure which dominates the landscape and eliminates a thirty minute foray around the inlet. I went to Croatia to learn more about the transition of the political economy since the end of communism and to better understand ethnic conflict and war in the region. In conjunction with Laura Silber and Allan Little’s Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, which filled much of the time during two twelve-hour flights, I gained some perspective for my classroom. I am more than aware that my insight is limited, my perception narrow, and my sources one-sided. I saw only a tiny and unrepresentative slice of Croatia, and a few hours in Bosnia/Herzegovina does not constitute profundity. But my interest level is peaked and my commitment honed for greater comprehension. Travel does that. The Croatian opportunity was extremely valuable for me, and the Croatian Nationalist Tourist Office would find me an enthusiastic advocate. I look forward to return.
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