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| Sveti Georgije |
I've made it through, more or less, Misha Glenny's, The Balkans. Let me explain that qualification. Up to the start of WWI, I dutifully read every page. From that point on my reading began to waver, I started to skip paragraphs and pages. From WWII to the end of the book which deals with the NATO bombing of Serbia and the creation of Kossovo, I've skipped more pages than I've read. Balkan history was grim enough all
the way along but with with the world wars it became even more tragic and gruesome. Atrocity upon atrocity becomes hard to take--hence my failure to read every page. And then with the war's end comes Stalinist Communism. Even Misha's at times amusing turn of phrase can't
distract from the ongoing nightmare.
The horrors of the
90's had roots in the near and not-so-near past. I think that it's true that if
you don't address your history you're liable to repeat it. I wish
that Yugoslavia had had Truth and Reconciliation commissions when
they might have been enough to prevent the catastrophe.
Yesterday we got the CAA Magazine's Fall 2015 issue.
The cover story is that of Croatia's Dalmatian coast centering on
Dubrovnik and Spilt. It was a reasonably interesting article that covered
more than the run-of-the mill historic sites. For example, have you ever heard of the 5 km long
Wall of Ston? Even tiny Vis got a tiny one word mention. This being a travel magazine there was no unpleasantness mentioned, nothing, for example, about the 90's.
In 2011, our Med cruise stopped for a
day in Dubrovnik. The stop was a graphic example of modern mass
tourism. Imagine the distortion of the economy and of the lives of
locals with the descent of 1000s of tourists a couple of times a day
in the summer on a small town.
Walking down a major street in
Dubrovnik we came upon and entered the Orthodox Church of the Holy Annunciation. The church was
pristine if quite spare--in fact, it seemed new. We spoke to the caretaker.
Dubrovnik, he said, used to be 30% Orthodox (synonymous,
really, with Serb). Now the population was 10% Serb with a slow
increase in numbers as former residents returned. The caretaker was
careful in what he said (and didn't say), but the overwhelming feeling was one of
great sadness, and great tribulation. We bought an icon of St George
killing the Dragon: St George being Zak's family's saint.
Further along was a large home being
restored. It was festooned with photographs of the home during the
recent conflict. The photographs showed the building roofless, its walls peppered with shell damage. The suffering was real, but
the triumphalist tone was disturbing.
We tried to get away from our fellow
tourists by walking off the beaten path up and down the narrow twisting
alleyways. We came upon the proverbial little old lady. She was too slim to be a
classic babushka, I don't recall if her head was scarf covered. She stood in
front of a table covered with examples of her needlepoint. We
wondered why she was selling her wares in such an out-of-the way place far
from the hordes. She said to Zak, “buy something beautiful.” Her
sales pitch wasn't really off-putting because the work was very
pretty. To my regret we didn't buy anything: we had spent our cash on
lunch and beer in a little cafe perched between the walls and the sea
on a small rocky outcrop (another attempt by us to escape our fellow travellers). I imagine the the lady was someone who
lived in Dubrovnik during the war. That she was so far from the tourists made me think she was Serb, but really I don't know.
Dubrovink was beautiful, signs of the
war had been erased, the streets were filled with tourists, the sky
and sea blue, and yet I walked away, sort of sad. We're not planning
to visit Dubrovnik in September, instead we're planning two nights
in Split.
