'President' Blair would:
1. Undermine UK-EU relations for the next 5 years (the Conservatives would have an excuse to sabotage the Lisbon Treaty and all that it entails),
2. Heavily burden relations between EU and the Muslim world (who'd be appalled by the EU choosing one of the initiators of the Iraq war and the 'Envoy to the Middle East' whose appointment there has so far not shown any results (!) as their leader(!),
3. Certainly not energise EU-US relations: Blair belongs to the Bush era (!),
4. Discredit the EU as a whole for not having found a leader with more integrity and better European credentials (as someone coming from a country that is neither in Schengen nor has the euro. Having said that, him coming from the UK would be the least of our problems, and another, pro-European, UK candidate may actually be acceptable).
President Miliband?
President Juncker?
President Robinson?
President Balkenende?
Anyone would be more suited that Blair.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Monday, 7 September 2009
Krajina kalling
From Karlovac to Karlobag
hey, darling friends...
here are a few notes on my recent adventures... the last 6 days... since leaving the official biketour...
and it's been fascinating.
have a happy read!
and hope you're all well!
much, much love to everyone of you!
MISSING YOU!
hugs, isabella
30 AUGUST 2009: meandering about koprivnica, small, a sleepy austro-hungarian style town not far from the hungarian border, mainly searching for an open internet cafe, no luck on a sunday, then for a place to eat, more luck, lignje na zaru for 35 kuna. then off to the train station, direct train to karlovac, south of zagreb.
in karlovac after only a 90 mins train ride, almost missed the station, all so quickly, and there i was, around 5pm, exploring the place. beautiful, afternoon sunshine, a park. but again, no internet anywhere in sight, apart from the vip mobile phone shop, which would however only open the next morning. ended up crashing for the night at the home of a guy from hare krishna, about my age, town centre, lots of hare k. pics allover his flat, a shrine, incense, and a kitchen full of pumpkin soup, satarash, and kurkuma.
31 AUGUST 2009: morning at the internet cafe, vip shop that is, didn't pay a penny, courtesy to stray tourists ('nemamo tu uslugu al ako naidje neko od turista kome bas treba'), served with a smile by helpful shop assistant. spent hours and hours checking by bank balance, nudging payments to come through, reinforcing my recent job application, sorting out by room situation in london, and ploughing through pages and pages of emails. at long last breakfast with warm strukli sa sirom, sitting next to my bike on a bench near a bakery, and after that, a meditation session (nam myoho renge kyo) on a bench in the park, overseeing a range of beautiful austro-hungarian houses lined by a range glorious old chestnut trees reminiscent of another time and age.
departure from karlovac and beginning of biketour number 2 - my own biketour this time, after having said goodbye to ecotopia biketour in koprivnica the day before - at 2pm, on main road towards slunj. lots of traffic, kamioni na sve strane. u kolonama. one after another. trucks, lorries, cars, unpleasant. hours n hours, in the heat, 50km, glad when i finally arrived in slunj, small town in what croats call kordun, part of the 'krajina' region, famous infamous for what happened there in august 1995, towards the end of the war, when 'operation storm', launched by the croatian army, helped by the americans, ethnically cleansed the area of hundreds or thousands of ethnic serbs, who sought refuge in neighbouring bosnia and serbia. 'kordun' - from the french ' cordon', buffer, belt, is the area bordering bihac im bosnia, wrapping around the far western end of bosnia like a glove. no coincidence - it is here that the austro-hungarian emperess maria-theresia settled ethnic serb peasants and soldiers to guard the borders and act as a shield against the threat of the ottoman empire. and those ethnic serb warriors stayed, and multiplied, and many eventually intermarried. by the end of the 20th century, croats and serbs were living together, side by side, house by house, especially in towns like slunj - or village by village, which tended to be either serb or croat.
about an hour's cycling before slunj, i came by an open air 'museum in preparation', not yet finalised, buduci musej, of tanks and anti-aircraft missile-carriers and other rather menacing looking vehicles used in the recent 'homeland' or 'independence war' as they call it here, 'u domovinskom ratu, oslobodilackom ratu'. a group of australian lads were climbing around them and moving the cannons; vehicles were of different makes, some US, some russian, some - it appeared - yugoslav, such as for example the JNA plane shot down by the croats and reconstructed in the middle of the compound.
in slunj, where i arrived around 7pm, crossing the river korana by a large bridge, which i heard had been destroyed during the war, i spent about an hour messing about the town, checking out the selection of little bottles of olive oil in the supermarket, and jars of honey, and comparing the prices of linolada and eurokrem... and settling eventually for a plastic jar of eurokrem (to be recycled) and a glass bottle of delicious bucino ulje, pumpkin seed oil, yum yum,i'm an addict, just as good as olive oil -... and looking for a detailed map, which - again - i didnt find. around 8pm, it started getting dark, and i remembered that i yet needed to find a place to sleep, and i cycled back to the river, checked out the options for wild camping, and decided to try my luck wih one of the locals instead. i entered the first court yard i saw, right by the river, and landmark bridge, and asked a woman on a balcony whether i could put my tent up in her court yard. she called her neighbour, and that neighbour, vesna, without misisng a beat, offered me to stay in her basement flat instead. within 5 minutes, all my stuff was transferred into her basement, the couch was transformed into a bed, and i went to take a shower. what a luxury. of course vesna switched on the tv and went to great lengths to find the remote, and i really ended up doing what i least expected i'd be doing that night: watching about 20 mins of 'carolije', an italian soap starring a bunch handsome doctors and nurses - the head doctor being a gorgeous female (!) relentlessly courted by a very sexy younger guy... the hit of the summer it seems, allover the region (including bosnia).
1 SEPTEMBER 2009: i packed by bags, loaded everything onto my bike, and then took up vesna's invitation to join her in her flat upstairs and take a cup of coffee before leaving. that coffee became a plate full of fried eggs, cheese, mljecni namaz and sunka, accompanied by a steady trickle of stories from slunj and surrounding areas, from both world war II and the recent war, and the time in between. the latter, which - judging from these stories - seemed to have been just a brief interval, meant only to prepare the nation for yet another war. the two big events, figuring large in people's conscience, or memory or collective memory (if they weren't alive in 1942) are really the two wars. ovaj i onaj rat. this war (1991-1995) and that war (1939 - 1945). like vesna said, imali smo vojnu obuku, military training classes, in secondary school, where every child, male and female, learned to take apart guns, rifles and all sorts of other weapons, clean them, load them and put them back together again. 'as if we expected war to break out any moment'. and it did. when they least expected it. or when they had expected it all along. subconsciously. 'focus on something and it will materialise'. the 'law of attraction'? (quoting from 'the secret'.) hm.
other than about vojna obuka, vesna and i talked about pretty much everything we could have possibly talked about, for hours and hours, quite literally, and i was fascinated by her story. in a nutshell, her family had come from austria in the late 19th century, her family name being hazler, possibly derived from hassler (?), and become croat somewhere along the way. her grandfather had lived in a nearby village, and, in 1942, during WW II, witnessed his second son, 14 years of age, being hacked to death, sa motikama, by a group of local partisans. the man commanding the murder ended up in a high position in the slunj town administration after the war, dobio neki cin, zavrsio na nekom polozaju, and vesna's grandfather continued to live in his neighbouring village. his first son, who had been vesna's father, born in 1930, finished schooling after the war and grew up to be a a civil servant himself, ending up working side by side with the man who had savagely killed his younger brother.
and here comes the scary bit: in 50 years, from 1942 to 1991, he never mentioned the murder of his brother to his children. vesna grew up to believe in 'sutjeska', 'neretva', 'neopkoljive' and other jugoslav legends and tv programmes, establishing and reinforcing the myth of the brave partisans fighting an honest war against the fascist terror of the 'ustashe' and 'domobrane', homeland defenders - both ethnic croat organisations, and, especially the ustashe, associated with collaborating with the nazis.
why he never talked about it? 'we would have grown up full of hatred' vesna offered. 'we wouldn't have been able to live together. i was friends with the daughter of that head partisan who had ordered that murder. had i known the story, i wouldn't have been able to hang out with her. my father thought this was the only way of dealing with the past, and embracing the future.' and when i wasn't fully satisfied with that explanation, she went on to say that he was 'afraid to lose his status', explaining that people who talked were stripped of their jobs and positions. her father was a party member, 'he had to'. and: 'even in the 60s, 70s, people didn't dare to speak up. one family of croats who's son had been savagely killed by partisans in 1942, and whose body had beed hurriedly dug into a hole in the woods, resorted to undigging his body a few years later by night, still back in the late 40s, and reburied it in a more accessible place, where however his grave had to be hidden by leaves and bushes and rubbish, for no one to know that it was there. and even in the 60s and 70s, the family wouldn't dare to ever mention it, and visited it only when unseen or by night. it was only in the 80s that they finally dared to put up a plaque indicating its location.'
and like that she went on and on, mixing WW II with this war and the (brief? not that brief...) years in between. and reinforcing my impression that, in this part of the world, people have a peculiar way of dealing with the past. by shoving it under the carpet, letting it rot, and being surprised when it all comes back out a few decades later. rotten but far from forgotten. or, like some famous traveller or writer once said, 'the balkans produce more history that they can digest'. with an emphasis not so much on 'produce', but rather on 'digest', because they don't seem to digest at all. store, stack, and then throw up again 40 years later.
vesna expects the next war to happen in about 20 years from here. 'every generation - two wars', she says, 'that's a rule'. zakon. and she says she's likely to still live through it. somewhat resignedly, and i can't really make out whether she means it or is joking. i think neither can she. it could go either way.
in this war, the recent war, she explains, serb civilians, including some of her neighbours, suddenly left the town, over night, mainly to serbia, leaving behind their menfolk, many of which congregated at the nearby vojni poligon, a large military training ground located at just a few kms northwest of slunj, also sleeping there. from there, in november 1991, those men organised the assault and ethnic cleansing of slunj and neighbouring villages, prompting the local croats to flee. vesna and her ageing mother got a place in someone's car and embarked on a wild and painful 8-day trip through bosnia (passing velika kladusa or bihac?, banja luka, bosanski samac) into north-eastern croatia, slavonia (djakovo, nasice) - and from there back westwards to zagreb, zigzagging their way around the frontlines. 'we couldn't get out the other way; slunj was encircled. the serbs were on all sides, westwards at the poligon, northwards in the serb stronghold village of primislje and surrounding woods. the way through bosnia was our only chance. and a trip that would have normally taken just two hours (slunj - zagreb), took us 8 days, moving slowly, through bosnia and slavonia towards the capital city.' in zagreb, vesna ended up spending three years in the bedroom of her 13-year old niece, not daring to tell her off for listening to serbian folk star ceca and other serb narodnjaci ('pjesme koje su me istjerali iz moje kuce'), sharing a small flat with six other people and trying hard not to be a burden on anyone. when the croats left, the local serbs, including women and children moved back in and stayed there until 1994 or 1995. then, the croats hit back with operations 'lightning' (blijesak) and 'storm' (oluja), prompting hundreds and thousads of serbs to take their turn at hitting the road - moving, into serb-controlled parts of bosnia and mainland serbia. when vesna returned to her house in the autumn of 1995, her house had been destroyed, looted and burned out. with the help of some donations from the croatian state, vesna and her parents managed to rebuild some of it, refurniture it, and move back in - piece by piece.
why that all happened? vesna doesn't know. nije bilo potrebe. niko od ovoga nista nije dobio. sve bezveze. svi su izgubili. her old mother recalls taking a phone call to her home phone in 1991, and getting a little girl on the other side asking her 'znas li da je ovo serbija?' - do you know that this is serbia? - whereupon she replied, 'znam da nije', i know that it isn't, and hung up just to have the phone ring again a few moment later, the same child delivering the same message again. vesna herself remembers a young serb colleague at her work place - radila ko sumarski tehnicar in another town as she couldn't get a job in her own town ('many jobs were given to the serbs')- who spent his office hours bragging in front of another few colleagues and vesna herself that - would he run into vesna on the street, alone - he would 'cut her up, add salt, and indulge'. porezao bih ti kozu i jos bih te posolio. whether he was joking, i ask her. and she says, 'he he simply felt almighty, and he thought the serbs would soon be masters of this strip of land'. provocations like those abunded, she says. a relative of hers ended up emigrating to australia in 1990 after having had to deal with a colleague making constant references to 'serbia stretching all the way to the sea', in songs being sung in the office.
and, again, referring to the time between the wars, she ended by saying that in the former yugoslavia, there had been a policy of making sure that every serb village would have a graveyard, whereas that same policy was not applied to croatian vilages, thereby creating a situation in which future generations would have 'evidence' that 'serbs had always lived here' whereas the same would not be 'true' for croats. graves again. i was getting tired of this.
and glad to finally escape it all on a small road, idyllic and looking like straight from a picture book northwestwards towards the small town of ogulin. there, i thought, i would quickly make by way even further westwards towards the seaside. and i was thinking beaches, sunshine, italy on the horizon, within a day or two. but i had obviously made by calculation without that detailed map that i still hadn't bought. because the road that i picked - and have no regrets picking - led me straight to the formerly serb stronghold village of primislje. more history.
but first the vojni poligon, the largest military training ground of the former yugoslavia and the third largest in europe, right outside slunj - a small road took me straight to it. here, the former yugoslav army had carved out, in 1962, a large piece of land, measuring at least 50 sq kms, for purposes of training (and possibly controling?) in/of the krajina area. entire, mainly serb, villages, were evacuated and resettled in other nearby areas, and a selection of senior yugoslav commanders took hold and moved into the poligon. in 1991/2, the poligon was taken over by ethnic serb forces; in 1994 (bljesak? operation lightning?) or 1995 (oluja? operation storm?), the croatian army took it over, and transformed it into a major stronghold of the croatian army, today being used also as training ground for manouvres involving the US army. i passed a sign saying 'dead end road' and a workman chopping wood on the roadside telling me i couldn't go any further than about a km, but i wanted to see for myself. curves over curves, a beautiful panorama, slightly uphill, leaving slunj about 75m lower - no wonder they could launch grenades from the poligon. i finally arrived at a big sign saying - in 4 languages, english, german, italian and french - 'no access for foreigners. ok. foreigners not allowed beyond that point. and i went on. how would they know that i wasn't one of theirs anyways? with a croatian mother that i could easily make up. and moved slowly towards the ramp until i had a good view of it. and thought i could have even filmed it and no one would have known.
back on the road leading from slunj to primislje, meandering its way through rolling hills, pastures and leafy woods, i was enchanted by the beauty of it all, peace and quiet. (by the way, 'krajina' presumably deriving from the word 'kraj', the end, once designating the end of the austro-hungarian empire, the military frontier - 'kordun' being a part of the 'krajina').
after about 12 kms, i hit primislje. a lose group of little houses, surrounded by little court yards, lurking among scented woods and blackberry bushes, leading to a larger building about 500m up the road, austro-hungarian style again, the former municipality building with a school across from it. here, i parked my bike to study a memorial plaque attached to the municipality building, devastated and empty, marking the death of damir, hrvatski branitelj, junak, poginuo za domovinu u oslobodilackom ratu, 18 augusta 1995. complete with the croatian flag, sahovnica, and recent venac placed on the ground in front of it for its anniversary. i was puzzled. 18. augusta 1995 - oluja had been long over. the whole operation started on 4 august, swept across the country within hours, and was over within a few days, turning 200 000 to 300 000 local serbs into refugees literally over night. also, i wondered - this was a serb village, and here was a plaque commemorating one of the ones who had then expelled the serbs from it in its very heart - a daily reminder to all returnees who was in charge?
and i decided to ask someone. somehow find an angle, tactfully, to hear their take on it. only that there was no one, all houses being abandoned, the whole place put to sleep, or shall i say death, and breathing with a sense of relief and quiet after the storm. and then i spotted a small group of elderly people, 3 men and one woman, standing by the foundations of one nearby house, one of them working to rebuild it.
to make a long story short, i ended up not only chatting with them about this war and that war in this village and that village, covering pretty much all villages in the neighourhood, and all instances of random murders between 1942 and 1995 - directed at ethnic serbs this time; they wouldn't stop talking -, but also accompanied them to their farmhouse, had lunch with them, looked at pictures of their son (in norway) and daughter and grandchilden (in london), played with their baby dog ('tomica', christened po hrvatskome by their oblivious little grandson), and - at the end, slept in one of their two bedrooms. their hospitality was overwhelming. cika branko, my host, showed me his cows (lepa, bela, jagoda and timka), the goat (shonka), the swine (not sure if they had names), and teta jovanka, his wife and i walked 400m down to the well in their garden where we fetched water for the day. the garden and farmyard were breathtakingly picturesque with yellow corn growing to one side, playful kittens, hens and the yellowish puppy running around on the other, the blue sky glistening in the afternoon sun above, red sipak glowing in the bushes underneath. not to mention the old neighbour - 'zora', sunrise - visiting later that day and her bright blue eyes shining out of a rugged face dressed in a colourful headscarf. lunch included domaci dimljeni sir (smoked cheese), domaci kruh (bread), domacu slaninu (lard), domaci prsut (smoked ham), domaci paradaiz (tomatoes) and kafe (coffee) and domace pite od jabuke (apple pie) for desert - 'domaci' meaning as u may have guessed 'homemade' or 'homegrown' - the only ingredients not coming straight from their barn or garden being oil, flour, sugar and coffee. no rubbish at all. no need for recycling either. organic waste going straight to the compost; the odd piece of newspaper, cardboard packaging or cellophane bag into the oven. when i wanted to bin a small paper bag, teta jovanka stuffed it into a place under the oven, waiting to be burned. zero waste. inconceivable.
and this is their story: jovanka and branko are ethnic serbs, both from nearby villages, in primislje since the 1960s. they met in primary school, married in the seventies, he trained and worked as a primary school teacher for years and years when the school in primislje had 483 pupils, before the vojni poligon was constructed in 1962, marking the beginning of the exodus from the area. but even after 1962, cika branko continued to work there, in the mornings, and on his little farm, in the afternoons and evenings.
in 1991, when the krajina serb leadership took over in the region, and the croats were expelled from neighbouring towns and villages, the serbs of primislje - and almost everyone was serb there - stayed, and continued to live a relatively sheltered life. until 1994/5, when the croats launched 'operations lightning', blijesak, and 'storm', oluja, the serbs of primislje, neighbouring tounj-terzic and kukaca ran for their lives - with most of them having had no time to grab even the most essential items for the trip that lay ahead. 'the villages were already burning all around us', says teta jovanka, 'i could see the smoke', and i still didn't believe it. i couldn't decide to leave, didn't think it would come to us. i kept saying to myself, i did no harm to anyone, i have no enemies, why would they kick me out?' and she stayed until the last moment when her sister-in-law who lived behind her, nopt far from that well where mwe got the water - simply ordered her to get onto the trailer of a tractor, and a neighbour drove them, together with all other villagers out of the village. like jovanka, 200 000 - 300 000 other ethnic serbs fled krajina between 4 and 8 august 1995, many on tractors, some in cars, eastwards to bosnia and mainland serbia. the event continues to be wildly controversial. the serbs claim the croats savagely drove 300 000 innocent people from their rural homes, causing many of them to die on the way and killing those who wouldn't leave. the croats say they had to go in to get their land back - land, which had been occupied by the serbs in 1991, and which harboured the very people who were shelling croat-controlled neighbouring towns and villages, and, last, but not least, pointing out that the masses of civilians had been ordered out not by approaching croatian soldiers, but by their own leadership.
the facts seem to be that a) 200 000 to 300 000 ethnic serbs did leave croatia in those days and only very few ever returned. b) the exodus was ferocious, many elderly people did die of exhaustion on the way, and, c) the operation had been planned and helped by the americans, and directly paved the way for the signing of dayton peace agreement just three months later, which ended the war in bosnia and herzegovina and may well have saved the lives of (hundreds of?) thousands of bosnians. whether general ante gotovina, who had led the operation, oluja, could have done more to guarantee the safety of the serb civilian population in the region and to prevent their expulsion (or exodus), or, at least, to allow them a more dignified departure, remains to be ascertained. gotovina is currently facing trial at the ICTY, and opinions about his involvement remain highly divided.
as for distinguishing the civilian population from the non-civilian one, that may indeed have been difficult. in the case of my hosts in primislje for example, both branko, who would have been in his 50s then and his son and his son-in-law (both in their twenties), were in the krajina serb army - 'they had to' - htjeli nehtjeli. and: two days before operation storm, branko had been called into his unit, to serve on the hills outside slunj, from where - on 4 august - he witnessed the approaching croatian army. when he left primilsje on 2 august, he says he had no idea what was to come. teta jovanka equally claims she didn't have an inkling anything like this was being planned. the ordinary krajina serbs really seem to have been caught by surprise. wouldn't they otherwise have prepared their bags, and left in a more orderly way? my humble reasoning (which may be faulty). the krajina serb leadership however seems to have known (and therefore called in its men to their positions). and may even have, deliberately, (to up international pressure and sympathy), provoked a situation in which as many civilians as possible would fall victim to a chaotic and violent exodus, and as many soldiers would fall in the hills around it. by that time, it appears that the serb leaderhip from serbia, under president milosevic, had already fallen out with the krajina serbs, under martic and babic. 'milosevic sold us out', says teta jovanka, clearly nurturing no more sympathy for the serbs of serbia than for the croats of croatia. of the exodus itself, which lasted for eight days until they reached the town of vukovar, where she had a daughter (a trip that would have normally taken no more than 4 or 5 hours), she speaks of hours and hours of squeezing onto that trailer, looking at the tractor in front of her, rustling along, stopping, waiting, dreading, clutching fellow passengers, without water, without food, with not much sleep, and no knowledge of what was awaiting her and her - by now - scattered - family. in this situation, she tells, one old woman in a nearby trailer died on the way, in the heat during the day; one younger man, again from a nearby trailer, lay himself down on a hand grenade during the night, just a little off the road, deliberately setting it off and ending his life. the whole episode, the exhaustion, the fear, she says, 'was a massacre.'
as for those who stayed behind in the village, there seems to have been just one woman, milica k., zivcani bolesnik, mentally ill, in a house slightly below the others, whom no one had notified of the approaching croats, and who was still in the house when they arrived. according to one croat from a nearby village, milica was killed inside her house and the house then set on fire. 'the croatian authorities' have not acknowledged the case, says branko. 'nisu se zainteresirali', implying that - in other cases - the state may have acknowledged such cases (?), but in milica's case, there had not been anyone to claim justice for her, and she was simply forgotten. 'she just disappeared, with no body ever found, no grave, and no one to hear from her again.'
and as if 'burning houses' was the cue jovanka had only been waiting for, she jumped in with a ready story about a mother and her eight children, who, in 1942, had been barricaded into their own house, with wooden boards being nailed to doors and windows, and then set on fire. in the village of XYZ - she of course knew the name - near her own, now on the ground of the poligon, the village no longer existing, but by no means forgotten.
and here we were again. WW I and the recent war, all mixed in together.
and, in a sudden rush of helplessness, and maybe courage, i told them about breakfast with vesna in slunj, and the story of the 14-year croatian boy being hacked to death by the partisans in the same year - 1942. and, to my great reassurance, cika branko immediately classified the story as 'za vjerovati', credible, very credible - and i felt that maybe, maybe there was a chance for finding some common ground - somewhere - and for all those parallel and different versions of the truth starting to overlap, millimetre by millimetre - and maybe one day, merging into one.
'there can't be two or three different versions of the truth', i volunteer. there can only be one truth, about what happened, then, now, here, there. and that truth needs to be ascertained - utvrdjeno - on all sides - sa svih strana.
and i end by asking them whether - in their opinion - any of this - the recent war - would have happened had the horrors of WW II been dealt with in another way. (for those who don't know, when tito became president of yugoslavia in 1945, the crimes committed during WW II were just shoved under the carpet, mass graves were covered with concrete, and whoever spoke up was arrested. the official state policy was 'bratstvo i jedinstvo', brotherhood and unity, everyone was friends and comrades, regardless of ethnic backgrounds, and the war, partisan crimes in particular, was taboo.)
so, again, in their opinion - had facts and figures and locations been acknowledged, brought to light, in the 40s or 50s - da se to tada sve rasvijetlilo - would any of this - 1991-1995 - have ever happened?
and, after a moment's hesitation, and wavering, and resignation, teta jovanka seems to find an opening, like a new little path in her mind when she says, 'yes, if everything had been brought to light straight away, right after the war, in the 40s and 50s, from the beginning, the full truth, on all sides, that may have made a difference.' and then her interest seems to fade again. and i think she probably isn't aware of the significance of what she just said. a lesson for avoiding future wars? a case for truth commissions and truthtelling exercises instead of relying solely on international justice and tribunals?
just to end this with where i started - the case of damir, branitelj hrvatske domovine, the croatian soldier commemorated on the plaque on the primislje municipalty building - cika branko informs me that damir had been shot by a fellow croat; all serbs had by then been long gone from the area. like many others, he had been very drunk and so was the guy who shot him, and, in the dark, they had mistaken each other for 'chetniks' (enemy serbs), and the whole event had been an accident. and this information, he says, he got from a local croat who had been told by the guy who shot him.
2 SEPTEMBER 2009: i packed my bags and bike, bode my goodbyes, and made my way further down along that road, leading through the rest of primislje, towards the villages of tounj-trzic, kukaca and eventually kamenica. on that road, meandering through abandoned serb villages, and minefields for that matter (where the flora and fauna must have gotten a huge boost since the quasi-disappearance of mankind from their midst), i passed a whole range of landmarks bearing testimony to different aspects of the area's recent past. those included signs marking minefields to my left, a house in tounj-terzic - number 91 - bearing a large graffiti with the name of the (croatian) unit responsible for the looting and burning (so-and-so 'brigada'), a sign and venac marking the grave of a croat soldier (branitelj zdravko something, poginuo 4 august 1995) and another grave marking the site of the grave of a serb victim (something bozovic, poginuo nov 1991e) further down the road. the pattern was clear: serb soldiers had died in 1991 when first occupying or taking control of the territory; croat soldiers had died in 1995 when taking over from the serbs. and in between - the serbs had continued living in the area, and the croats had sought refuge elsewhere, whereas after 1995, the croats had come back, and the serbs were driven into exodus from which only a few would return.
with regard to minority refugee return, i did spot a lot of serb houses having been reconstructed by croatian state money allover the place - and not just in this part of krajina, but also north of the bosnian border, near hrvatska dubica and jasenovac, where i had passed with ecotopia biketour a week earlier. and yet only a few serbs seem to have returned to actually live there. again, the pattern seems to be that they do come, claim their property, get it reconstructed, sell it, and then leave - back to serbia or wherever they my have been living since 1995. generally speaking, the argument goes that even though, on the face of things and under the pressure of EU, the croatian state may have been investing a lot of money in serb refugee return since the early 2000s, and indeed been reconstructing a lot of houses, underneath, there is still a lot of hostility and obstruction and unwillingness on the side of that same state and its civil servants to really realise fully-fledged return, social re-integration and actively create opportunities for job creation and income generation.
being genuine returnees, cika branko and teta jovanka seem to be an exception. this could be due to their problematic choice of exile in august 1995 - the town of vukovar, in eastern slavonia - from which they had to leave again in 1997, when vukovar was reincorporated into croatia, prilikom povratku vukovara pod hrvatsku vlast. then, local croats (who had previously been bombed out of vukovar by the serbs), returned to their homes, and serb refugees started leaving again. at that point, branko and jovanka found (a second) refuge in their son-in-law's home in a small village called dubrave, back in croatia, krajina, not far from primislje. this is where they settled in 1999 and branko got his job as primary school teacher back. just as a supply teacher, and no longer in primislje, but in nearby plasko, but the couple was happy enough. branko did mention the odd provocation from the side of the croatian authorities, but none of that could keep the couple from finally moving back into their old pre-war home in primislje in november 2008, and starting out again as small farmers producing meat and vegetables for their own use, topped up by branko's meagre salary as a supply teacher.
a bit further up the road, where kukaca ends, and the road makes a turn, and suddenly opens up to the village of kamenica, i was surprised by the sudden appearance of two large croatian flags tucked sideways onto a tree, drawing the attention to two pictures of croatian general and ICTY indictee for war crimes ante gotovina attached to it underneath. quite obviously, gotovina is still the hero of the day in this part of the country - as good as and flanked by jesus on a cross in a little chapel to its left. i am puzzled. this is a line of serb majority villages, i thought. and again, my curiousity gets the better of me, and again i play the dumb foreigner - or, more precisely, clueless diaspora yugoslav whose parents emigrated in the 70s - potentially of croatian, meaning friendly, descent. the guy on the other side of the fence seems somewhat distraught by my appearance, but somewhat relaxes when i involve him in a conversation about how far the next village is and whether the road there is uphill or downhill. and then i vaguely indicated the flags behind me, and asked him who put 'em up, and he says, he did, together with his neighbour. and yes, he says, here is the boundary line, right behind this bend on the road. this was the defense line. no, his house never fell into the hands of the serbs, nismo im dali, da, ja sam stalno bio ovdje.
and i am thinking, (good old me, hm, always on the side of the minority, and possibly not quite grasping the situation pre-august 1995 when the serbs were in charge here), right, so this is what the serbs of primislje are getting when they go fetch bread or milk 8 kms down the road to one side, or oil and coffee to the other side. landmarks of the croatian victory left, right and centre, bordering open hostility and provocation. no wonder they produce their bread at home. in tounj-terzic where i stopped to catch my breath, i spotted the above-mentioned house with the graffiti, bearing living testimony of the hordes of croats burning and looting their way through abandoned serb villages post oluja in august 1995 - a view consumed for breakfast, lunch and dinner by the elderly serb returnee couple inhabiting the house just a 100m up the road.
with regards to that couple, i stopped to say hello to the lady who was washing her face when i was passing - and she seemed amused by the smiling girl on the bicycle - and concluded our 2 minute-'conversation' with 'joj, k'o da sam te ja rodila - tolko te volim' (as if i had given birth to you - that's how much i love you!), which made me want to burst into laughter - i had to make sure i wouldn't in front of her. and it also made me wonder whether she would have said that had she been surrounded by a functional group of fellow villagers. she had returnes in 1999, she said and her house seemed to be one of the two, maybe three only houses still inhabited.
in kamenica, about 500m from the above-mentioned bend in the road and the tree with the flags, another plaque commemorated the 'croat victims of WW II and the recent homeland war', clearly linking them to the village of kamenica, and expressing their pride at being 'kamenicans'.
and then, when i came out on the other side, and hit the main road, the fairytale - or shall i say nightmare - scenery apruptly ended - no more virgin and idyllic - or blood-soaked and mine-clad - woods, no more tit for tat, house for house, grave for grave and curve for curve - and i re-entered 'real life', present tense - and embarked on a road first to the village of josipdol, and then on a long uphill to velika kapela hill. through the blazing heat, with little water left, and large billboards warning tourists of forest fires every 300m, i passed another few signs warning of minefields, and eventually hit the top of the hill - and then enjoyed an amazing downhill ride on the other side, to the village of jezerane. there, i stopped for a peppermint tea to catch my breath - and paid for by a local chap who insisted on practising his german on me, and got his friend to practise his french - and then concluded that i must be from holland. i refilled my water bottles, recharged my batteries, popped my newly acquired croatian simcard into my bosnian mobile, sent a few msgs to a few people - just to make myself reachable again, and then embarked on a short evening ride to the village of krizpolje.
in krizpolje, i arrived at 6pm, and decided to call it a day. i liked what i saw when riding past a little farmyard - complete with washing lines and kids running around - and asked the couple in the farmyard whether i could put up my tent on their lawn. that was only the second time i had tried that line - and - miracle over miracle - i must have done something right, or somehow sent out the right vibe, or looked vulnerable and in need for assistance (-;), that, again, the woman running the show in the yard suggested in a loud voice i come and sleep in the house instead. 'sto ne bi kod nas u kuci kad vec ima mjesta.' and i was delighted, and happily obliged. saturated up to my throat with history, i wasn't prepared to take in any more when entering the kitchen - ljetna kuhinja separate from the main house - and spotted two life-size, or larger, portraits hanging side by side on the wall - one of ante gotovina, looking young and handsome and one of franjo tudjman, not as young and not as handsome. both, in my world, personae non gratae. and under them a burning candle. but i was too tired to even ask about them, let alone engage anyone in a conversation. but i put my guard up and resolved that for that night, i would be the daughter of a bosnian-croat mother, marija mrnjavac - name and sirname ready for use in the forefront of my brain, just in case. from kiseljak or kresevo near sarajevo. hence my bosnian accent. croat. yes croat. in case they should ask 'sta je po nacijonalnosti'. married to a german.
at the end, i went to bed well-fed that night, and no one had raised the subject of my 'ethnic belonging'. the whole family ate together around a large table in the garden: viktorija (about my age, 38), marko (about 42), two sons (15 and 11), and marko's father (about 70). 'prava licka vecera' - a real lika-style dinner, all from the farm itself. a huge tray full of delicious crispy baked potatoes, slanine and domace kobasice a voglia (homemade cold cuts), deliciously tasty tomatoes from the garden, and handmade juicy yellowish bread cut into thick slices. nothing more and nothing less. the family obviously surviving on what they produce - again, nothing is being bought - apart from school books and other school supplies - and the zahnspange the younger son was about to get the next week. 'lika' being the name of the region - beyond the velika kapela mountain - and, again, an area where emotions and tensions had run very high both during WW II and again the war of the 1990s.
viktorija outed herself as coming from bosnia herself. born in fojnica, a small spa not far from sarajevo, her (ethnically croat) family outlived the war on its fringes, with both muslim and croat refugees crowding the town's landmark spa hotel 'reumal' (with springs used to cure rheuma), but - as far as i understood - no major acts of war - such as shelling or sniping - going on. before and during the war, viktorija worked in a local textile factory, stitching up suits and other garments for a german client (svabo) - and - to draw up an admittedly morbid 'bilanz' of what the war meant to her family: out of her 7 brothers and sisters, 'only one got killed', said viktorija, - an older sister who, in 1993, disappeared on a trip from fojnica to zagreb and was never heard from again. but viktorija seems well over that episode ('as we haven't heard from her since, she must be dead', she says almost chirpily), and feeling fortunate enough to having been given the chance to resettle far (far?) from the bosnian powderkeg with a worthy husband in the promised land of croatia. as for her husband, i had been very suspicious, and even a bit spooked by those life-size portraits in the kitchen, and paid extra attention to play the innocuous and clueless and yet friendly diaspora croat on a bicycle, enjoying and appreciating the joys of croatian farmlife, organic farming methods and showing interest (and that was quite genuine interest) in how he reckons croatia's accession to the EU is likely to spell the end of small-size family style farming like his own. 'i will be last one in a long line' - my sons will be doing something else. and i was sincerely sorry and distressed to hear that (the EU really doing that?).
3 SEPTEMBER 2009: the next morning, i 'sounded him out' a little on what he had done during the war. and well, here's his story:
...
and i have to say, at that point, my curiosity was starting to give in to a sense of tiredness of all these stories, and i resolved to really take a break from it all now. after a cordial goodbye, exchanging numbers and email addresses (that is i gave them mine, suggesting their sons may get one some day), i cycled 200m up the street and stopped for a luscious breakfast at a plumtree to indulge in a handful of succulent, fat, violet plums, before stopping for a second breakfast, around 11am, in the village of brinje, just a few kms down the road, where i sat outside and had a huge portion of fried eggs with mushrooms and yellow cheese, accompanied by a big salad and large quantites of pumpkin seed oil from my supplies. the restaurant ws called 'victoria' - as in 'pobjeda' - or victory, and the receipt for payment adorned with a hand making the V-sign, clad in a chequered sleeve. again, a clear reference to operation storm, which croats have widely regarded as the turning point in the war, marking 'croatia's victory'. 'croatia won the war', bosnian refugees in croatia would say in 1995 - i still remember that.
and eventually i arrived in otocac, a small town with a sunny little park in its centre - and a bar called 'bar central' right across from it. and when i approached the moustached owner - in his 50s - for a little water, he not only invited me into his bar, poured water into all my empty bottles, placed those in the freezer to chill, but also went to the fastfood shop two houses down the road, fetched two portions of succulent chicken wings (there goes my vegetarianism), chopped up a tomato, added a few slices of handmade bread, poured me a glass of rakija, and - miracles over miracles - put down a plate full of homemade dumplings filled with plums, austro-hungarian style (zwetschgenknoedel mit brokruemeln in zerlaufener butter) in front of me and told me to eat. i was of course head over heels - especially regarding the last bit. and wondered for how many days i could keep going like that, cycling from sponsor to sponsor, eating my way through kordun, lika and otocac-style hospitality, and trying to pay my dues with heartfelt gratitude and the odd funny story from bosnia or london - or wherever else people may think i came from. as for cika pajo - pavle gajdek was his name - he really won me over within seconds with his refreshing openness and shrewd to-the-pointness, catching the essence of things without me having to explain, and accepting everything for what it was. entirely without resorting to any bullshit stories about bosnian or croatian mothers named marija mrnjavac or desanka rokvic (depending on the ethnicity of my interlocutor and on how safe i may have felt at a given moment in a given environment where i intended to spend the night), within minutes, he wrapped things up with 'dosla je moja prijateljica isabella iz evrope, dosla u otocac da se malo odmori prije nego sto se vrati u brisel.' where i had mentioned brussels only as my birthplace, adding that i was not really belgian. he just laughed it all away and engaged me in a chat (or shall i say flirt... a classical bon-vivant, 50+, moustache, beer belly, with his wife sleeping upstairs (-;) about his friend mustafa sa bascarsije (using his american girlfriend's credit card to buy pajo a watch for 2000 KM), his wife stojanka from slavonia (who made the dumplings), my chances of finding a used laptop somewhere on my way to the seaside (why slim? he has a friend, in bihac, who has a friend, still in bihac, who could maybe sell me one) and the general population of otocac (gospodja marija iz gospica, his mate zoran celebrating his birthday today), - and i left otocac almost feeling like i had been there not just for an hour, but at least a week.
after that rakija at pavle's, i cycled on with my batteries recharged, but then decided to call it a day already in the next town - licko lesce - where, for the first time, i actually ended up sleeping in my tent. there is not much to add - i arrived at the last house, i delivered my spiel - whether i could put up my tent in their yard - and this time the answer was 'yes', but without any further offers. i was delighted all the same, put it up, for the first time in my life - and it was done within 5 minutes - and then spent the next two hours playing hide and seek inside and outside the tent with gabriella, my host's little 4-year old grandchild. 'snivaca' - and she just loved it. at night, before dropping dead fairly early, and without eating anymore that day, i made sure i got the name of the village right - da, pataran, a part of licko lesce -, and the number of the croatian emergency police - 112 - just in case someone should want to visit me in my tent - which of course didn't happen.
safety-wise, all my 'advisers' from zelena akcija in zagreb, vukomeric and others from the croatian alternative scene, all well-versed in low-budget biketouring around croatia, had told me i needn't fear anything - 'these are backward territories; people are simple farmers, there are no criminals '. this was echoed by katarina, my ageing host who wished me good night and then mumbled in her local dialect 'nemas brige, ovdje nema hajduka'. (-;
4 SEPTEMBER 2009: and day 6 would be the last day spent in the hinterland, where people relied heavily on pig meat and potatoes for a living, before i finally hit the coastline and venetian-style fishing villages on day 7. one more day to go.
i started the day by cycling in a straight line to the town of gospic, where i longed for a clean room, a bath and opportunity to wash my clothes, and therefore asked a few people for a room. with not much luck - in gospic nobody rents rooms. but i got to talk to a 25-year old guy on a bicycle instead, who - after a long cappuccino and delicious sweet in a central cafe - decided to take me home and offer me a shower, followed by a delicious homecooked lunch. that shower was really a blessing (i even got to wash my hair!) and the meal a pure delight (pecene paprike marinated in garlic, satarash, homemade kruh and naresci, cooked by his mum). and the guy himself was not just extremely funny, but - for his age - unusually wise and independent and i indulged in his presence and his stories. not sure what we talked about - DJing and music - 'ja sam metalac, iron maiden, to je moj dzir, svhatam rok ko pokret, kad radim ko DJ, masiram ljudske mozgove, rok znaci sloboda'... seasoned with a constant trickle of 'brijem, brijes, dobra brija, nikavka brija'... which, it turned out is croatian slang (of those born in the 1980s, so i guess i don't need to know that (-;) for 'think', 'reckon' and 'stuff'... 'i think, i reckon, you think, great stuff'... to be thrown in whenever and wherever it seems, for no particular reason or purpose.
at the cafe, i quizzed him on gospic and the war. what actually happened here. i gestured at the shrapnel marks on the houses lining the pedestrian street we were sitting on - and he said, yes, of course, there has been war here, too, itetako, and gospic was on place 2 in terms of shells raining down on it - right after vukovar in eastern slavonia, which was famously reduced to rubble.
according to joco - his nickname -, what happened in gospic is the following: the town had been inhabited by croats and serbs - the serbs accounting for up to 50 or 60% of the population before the war (and this figure may well have been much lower, say closer to 31%, acording to the internet) - almost none of which any longer live here today. those serbs suddenly disappeared in 1991 - again, like in slunj - the women and children moving to serbia - and the menfolk settling in the hills around slunj, mainly to the west, towards karlobag, the coast, and then engaging in three years of constant shelling. from 1991/2 to 1994/5 - until operation blijesak (or oluja?) led to the reconquering of the town of knin, by the croatian army, and hence the end to the shelling. in gospic today, 'there is still a lot of hatred', says joco, serbs aren't happy to walk freely on the streets. croats will immediately recognise them - at least those of a certain age - and serbs won't feel comfortable. why they left in the first place? and here i expected a textbook answer, flavoured with the usual dose of (healthy?) croatian nationalism - taken from his presumably croatian prents and the biased media. instead - surprise - josip said 'they had to leave; whoever wouldn't leave, dobio je metak u glavu, pa nisu imali izbor. - would have been shot in the head, so they had no choice.' and that's when i suspected some peculiarity - and indeed, it turns out he's from a mixed marriage. his mother is a serb. how they survived? his father is a croat and was in the army from the very beginning and both him and his brother carry distinctively croat first and last names, and so they didn't dare to touch them. just good luck? maybe. and maybe the protection of the neighbours who, mainly croats themselves, kept a constant eye on their house and potential approaching problems.
'you won't find anyone saying this like i do in this town', he concludes the subject, without suggesting any particular need for discretion, even indicating that he would say this to anyone, and i sense that he is indeed one of a kind. and that he can somehow get away with it by hanging out with a small minority of other kids who seem to like heavy metal better than folk music and prefer cycling to nearby rivers over bronzing on the seaside. one of that crowd being his buraz, older brother. 'shvatio sam da je ovo raj u paklu', he says with a wink when i say his family home looks like 'raj na zemlji'.
'nebuloza, fantazija, dubioza, ismisljiotina, da nije bilo droge i alkohola, ne bi bilo rata... niko ne bi isao u vojsku... hrvatska do banja luke, hrvatska do srbije, hrvatska do tokya'... he clearly takes the piss. 'a amerikanci ih tjerali natrag u svoje granice, rekli, hajde to je dovoljno nek svak bude na svome. i bilo je dobro. dobro iskustvo. dobra brija. k'o klinci se igrali s metkama, ispred kuce. i tako. adrenalina'. and i offer, 'kazu da su bile najbolje zurke, najbolji derneci, najbolji tulumi u ratu'. and he agrees - 'najbolji tulumi u ratu'. hm.
after joco, i finally cycled on to the foot of mount velebit, the mountain range separating the hinterland from the seaside - and stopped at the village of podostre - where i found another lovely refuge for the night - with another couple around my own age, mile and ivanka, who - after i had half put up my tent - offered me to sleep in the house instead. on the first floor of their newly built house, made of concrete, and used as a storage room, but clean and equipped with doors and windows - and i felt wonderfully safe and sheltered from the first moment on, and so grateful and happy i could hardly describe it. a whole floor for myself, and they even put up an old double bed they had stored up there - it seemed - just for that purpose. (-;. what a wonderful day.
both mile and ivanka had been working in their courtyard sorting out bags frull of old bread in their court yard when i arrived - and i helped them doing that before going tp sleep. the bread was bought for little money from a bakery in nearby zadar, to be recycled as pig- and cow-food by farmers from the region. among those mountains of bread, mile and i spotted the odd chocolate croissant or even krofna, krapfen, fritella with marmelade, and of course kept those for ourselves with ivanka making fun of both of us eating her cowfood. and i mused about cows and pigs eating 'our' chocolate. later that night, i watched ivanka milk her cows, and - delight over delight - two little baby cows sucking their mothers' 'tits', sise, with such ferocious greed and lust and pleasure that it was quite spectacular to watch. dinner - yes, there was dinner (!) consisted of yet more homemade bread, the most delicious prsut (smoked ham), and - the main ingredient being - 'varenke'.... with a long eee... vareeeenke... being - quite simply - hot milk - milked just minutes earlier and boiled on an open fire. i was happy to give it a miss, but mile and ivanka and mile's cheerful old parents (vesela baba) quite clearly loved their varenke - ivanka mixing it with pieces of bread, sugar and coffee, mile drinking it raw and lukewarm out of the bucket - and mile's old mother asking for it again the next morning - again freshly milked - in her coffee.
5 SEPTEMBER 2009: the next morning, mile's mother fried me two eggs, sizzling in pig fat (were i ever a vegetarian?) which i greedily scooped up with another piece of homemade bread, and washed down with a glass of the most delightful elderberry (?) juice - holunderbluetensaft - made from white elderberry blossoms in the month of may. again, warm goodbyes, my offer to pay something vehemently turned down - and my amazement at how little money i had spent in 7 days of touring krajina.
a few more kilometres on a straight road, towards mount velebit, passing a large sign marking the anniversary of the 'velebitski ustanak' - the velebit uprising (that i had never heard of), of 1932, 'protiv vojno-politickog fasizma kraljevine jugoslavije' - against the military-political terror of the kingdom of yugoslavia, the country established in the wake of the breakdown of both the austro-hungarian and ottoman empires between WWs I and II. and i got a sense of how the croats, from different parts of croatia, and for one reason or another, had indeed been dreaming and fighting for an independent state of their own not only long before their recent declaration of independence in the 1990s, but also long before the short-lived and infamous 'independent state of croatia', created under the auspices of nazi germany in the early 1940s.
a long uphill up mount velebit - rewarded with a short ride through a landscape reminisent of the alps, passing a hut run by the croatian mountaineering society - and eventually, when i reached the top - 927m above sea level - a breathtaking view down the other side. a blue coastline dotted with an arrangement of ocre-coloured islands, and schaumkronen on the waves in the sea. and the bura, the wind blowing on the croatian coast in the autumn, almost blew me away. and i quickly moved down on the other side, hoping the strength of the wind would abide with diminishing altitude. in vain. a difficult descent. from 927m to sealevel. the most difficult one ever, where every metre meant battling with the bura, which threatened to blow me straight over the edge of the road, or from the right lane onto the left one, into the way of ascending cars. i took my time, snacked on some peanuts and honey to calm my nerves, and made sure i wouldn't expose myself to any risks. sa burom se ne valja saliti. the bura is no joke. exhausted and sunburnt i eventually arrived in karlobag around mid-day, and was told that both roads, left and right of karlobag had been closed for the day, and access to the ferryboat to pag was therefore blocked. i decided to make the best of it, looked for accomodation and found a lovely two-bed room for only 100 kuna (less than 15 euros) a night (much less than the going rate), a free internet spot at hotel velinac in the centre (where i have been writing this ever since), and, eventually treated myself to a delicious plate full of fresh lignje na zaru and blitve. grilled calamari with croatian spinach in garlic and olive oil. to celebrate my arrival at the seaside. and the end of 6 weeks of (on and off) cycling, wielding and feeling my way through the difficult lands of bosnia and the croatian krajina, and previously, macedonia, albania, montenegro and podravka - and not even catching a glimpse of the sea all that time.
and i felt relieved and as if i had at last arrived. at the healing, soothing, beautiful mediterranean sea. which may have been my destination all along.
and here i will end - for the time being - the next episode of this account possibly covering my adventures on the islands or in dalmatia - to be seen. who knows, i may also decide to return to london or brussels in a few days from here. or never come back at all (and open a restaurant in macedonia or turkey instead (-;). just kidding.
last, but not least, i sincerely hope i haven't caused offence to anyone. all the accounts in this text are accounts i got from people, not reflecting my own personal opinion. this is the stuff i found on the road, and in conversations. and i've very much tried to read between the lines, and really understand and feel and get to the bottom of things. but even so, i am sure, i missed stuff, and maybe misinterpreted stuff. all of this being very delicate stuff. (lots of 'stuff'.) happy to hear about mistakes or inaccuracies.
LOVE (and PEACE!!!) from the coast.
isabella
hey, darling friends...
here are a few notes on my recent adventures... the last 6 days... since leaving the official biketour...
and it's been fascinating.
have a happy read!
and hope you're all well!
much, much love to everyone of you!
MISSING YOU!
hugs, isabella
30 AUGUST 2009: meandering about koprivnica, small, a sleepy austro-hungarian style town not far from the hungarian border, mainly searching for an open internet cafe, no luck on a sunday, then for a place to eat, more luck, lignje na zaru for 35 kuna. then off to the train station, direct train to karlovac, south of zagreb.
in karlovac after only a 90 mins train ride, almost missed the station, all so quickly, and there i was, around 5pm, exploring the place. beautiful, afternoon sunshine, a park. but again, no internet anywhere in sight, apart from the vip mobile phone shop, which would however only open the next morning. ended up crashing for the night at the home of a guy from hare krishna, about my age, town centre, lots of hare k. pics allover his flat, a shrine, incense, and a kitchen full of pumpkin soup, satarash, and kurkuma.
31 AUGUST 2009: morning at the internet cafe, vip shop that is, didn't pay a penny, courtesy to stray tourists ('nemamo tu uslugu al ako naidje neko od turista kome bas treba'), served with a smile by helpful shop assistant. spent hours and hours checking by bank balance, nudging payments to come through, reinforcing my recent job application, sorting out by room situation in london, and ploughing through pages and pages of emails. at long last breakfast with warm strukli sa sirom, sitting next to my bike on a bench near a bakery, and after that, a meditation session (nam myoho renge kyo) on a bench in the park, overseeing a range of beautiful austro-hungarian houses lined by a range glorious old chestnut trees reminiscent of another time and age.
departure from karlovac and beginning of biketour number 2 - my own biketour this time, after having said goodbye to ecotopia biketour in koprivnica the day before - at 2pm, on main road towards slunj. lots of traffic, kamioni na sve strane. u kolonama. one after another. trucks, lorries, cars, unpleasant. hours n hours, in the heat, 50km, glad when i finally arrived in slunj, small town in what croats call kordun, part of the 'krajina' region, famous infamous for what happened there in august 1995, towards the end of the war, when 'operation storm', launched by the croatian army, helped by the americans, ethnically cleansed the area of hundreds or thousands of ethnic serbs, who sought refuge in neighbouring bosnia and serbia. 'kordun' - from the french ' cordon', buffer, belt, is the area bordering bihac im bosnia, wrapping around the far western end of bosnia like a glove. no coincidence - it is here that the austro-hungarian emperess maria-theresia settled ethnic serb peasants and soldiers to guard the borders and act as a shield against the threat of the ottoman empire. and those ethnic serb warriors stayed, and multiplied, and many eventually intermarried. by the end of the 20th century, croats and serbs were living together, side by side, house by house, especially in towns like slunj - or village by village, which tended to be either serb or croat.
about an hour's cycling before slunj, i came by an open air 'museum in preparation', not yet finalised, buduci musej, of tanks and anti-aircraft missile-carriers and other rather menacing looking vehicles used in the recent 'homeland' or 'independence war' as they call it here, 'u domovinskom ratu, oslobodilackom ratu'. a group of australian lads were climbing around them and moving the cannons; vehicles were of different makes, some US, some russian, some - it appeared - yugoslav, such as for example the JNA plane shot down by the croats and reconstructed in the middle of the compound.
in slunj, where i arrived around 7pm, crossing the river korana by a large bridge, which i heard had been destroyed during the war, i spent about an hour messing about the town, checking out the selection of little bottles of olive oil in the supermarket, and jars of honey, and comparing the prices of linolada and eurokrem... and settling eventually for a plastic jar of eurokrem (to be recycled) and a glass bottle of delicious bucino ulje, pumpkin seed oil, yum yum,i'm an addict, just as good as olive oil -... and looking for a detailed map, which - again - i didnt find. around 8pm, it started getting dark, and i remembered that i yet needed to find a place to sleep, and i cycled back to the river, checked out the options for wild camping, and decided to try my luck wih one of the locals instead. i entered the first court yard i saw, right by the river, and landmark bridge, and asked a woman on a balcony whether i could put my tent up in her court yard. she called her neighbour, and that neighbour, vesna, without misisng a beat, offered me to stay in her basement flat instead. within 5 minutes, all my stuff was transferred into her basement, the couch was transformed into a bed, and i went to take a shower. what a luxury. of course vesna switched on the tv and went to great lengths to find the remote, and i really ended up doing what i least expected i'd be doing that night: watching about 20 mins of 'carolije', an italian soap starring a bunch handsome doctors and nurses - the head doctor being a gorgeous female (!) relentlessly courted by a very sexy younger guy... the hit of the summer it seems, allover the region (including bosnia).
1 SEPTEMBER 2009: i packed by bags, loaded everything onto my bike, and then took up vesna's invitation to join her in her flat upstairs and take a cup of coffee before leaving. that coffee became a plate full of fried eggs, cheese, mljecni namaz and sunka, accompanied by a steady trickle of stories from slunj and surrounding areas, from both world war II and the recent war, and the time in between. the latter, which - judging from these stories - seemed to have been just a brief interval, meant only to prepare the nation for yet another war. the two big events, figuring large in people's conscience, or memory or collective memory (if they weren't alive in 1942) are really the two wars. ovaj i onaj rat. this war (1991-1995) and that war (1939 - 1945). like vesna said, imali smo vojnu obuku, military training classes, in secondary school, where every child, male and female, learned to take apart guns, rifles and all sorts of other weapons, clean them, load them and put them back together again. 'as if we expected war to break out any moment'. and it did. when they least expected it. or when they had expected it all along. subconsciously. 'focus on something and it will materialise'. the 'law of attraction'? (quoting from 'the secret'.) hm.
other than about vojna obuka, vesna and i talked about pretty much everything we could have possibly talked about, for hours and hours, quite literally, and i was fascinated by her story. in a nutshell, her family had come from austria in the late 19th century, her family name being hazler, possibly derived from hassler (?), and become croat somewhere along the way. her grandfather had lived in a nearby village, and, in 1942, during WW II, witnessed his second son, 14 years of age, being hacked to death, sa motikama, by a group of local partisans. the man commanding the murder ended up in a high position in the slunj town administration after the war, dobio neki cin, zavrsio na nekom polozaju, and vesna's grandfather continued to live in his neighbouring village. his first son, who had been vesna's father, born in 1930, finished schooling after the war and grew up to be a a civil servant himself, ending up working side by side with the man who had savagely killed his younger brother.
and here comes the scary bit: in 50 years, from 1942 to 1991, he never mentioned the murder of his brother to his children. vesna grew up to believe in 'sutjeska', 'neretva', 'neopkoljive' and other jugoslav legends and tv programmes, establishing and reinforcing the myth of the brave partisans fighting an honest war against the fascist terror of the 'ustashe' and 'domobrane', homeland defenders - both ethnic croat organisations, and, especially the ustashe, associated with collaborating with the nazis.
why he never talked about it? 'we would have grown up full of hatred' vesna offered. 'we wouldn't have been able to live together. i was friends with the daughter of that head partisan who had ordered that murder. had i known the story, i wouldn't have been able to hang out with her. my father thought this was the only way of dealing with the past, and embracing the future.' and when i wasn't fully satisfied with that explanation, she went on to say that he was 'afraid to lose his status', explaining that people who talked were stripped of their jobs and positions. her father was a party member, 'he had to'. and: 'even in the 60s, 70s, people didn't dare to speak up. one family of croats who's son had been savagely killed by partisans in 1942, and whose body had beed hurriedly dug into a hole in the woods, resorted to undigging his body a few years later by night, still back in the late 40s, and reburied it in a more accessible place, where however his grave had to be hidden by leaves and bushes and rubbish, for no one to know that it was there. and even in the 60s and 70s, the family wouldn't dare to ever mention it, and visited it only when unseen or by night. it was only in the 80s that they finally dared to put up a plaque indicating its location.'
and like that she went on and on, mixing WW II with this war and the (brief? not that brief...) years in between. and reinforcing my impression that, in this part of the world, people have a peculiar way of dealing with the past. by shoving it under the carpet, letting it rot, and being surprised when it all comes back out a few decades later. rotten but far from forgotten. or, like some famous traveller or writer once said, 'the balkans produce more history that they can digest'. with an emphasis not so much on 'produce', but rather on 'digest', because they don't seem to digest at all. store, stack, and then throw up again 40 years later.
vesna expects the next war to happen in about 20 years from here. 'every generation - two wars', she says, 'that's a rule'. zakon. and she says she's likely to still live through it. somewhat resignedly, and i can't really make out whether she means it or is joking. i think neither can she. it could go either way.
in this war, the recent war, she explains, serb civilians, including some of her neighbours, suddenly left the town, over night, mainly to serbia, leaving behind their menfolk, many of which congregated at the nearby vojni poligon, a large military training ground located at just a few kms northwest of slunj, also sleeping there. from there, in november 1991, those men organised the assault and ethnic cleansing of slunj and neighbouring villages, prompting the local croats to flee. vesna and her ageing mother got a place in someone's car and embarked on a wild and painful 8-day trip through bosnia (passing velika kladusa or bihac?, banja luka, bosanski samac) into north-eastern croatia, slavonia (djakovo, nasice) - and from there back westwards to zagreb, zigzagging their way around the frontlines. 'we couldn't get out the other way; slunj was encircled. the serbs were on all sides, westwards at the poligon, northwards in the serb stronghold village of primislje and surrounding woods. the way through bosnia was our only chance. and a trip that would have normally taken just two hours (slunj - zagreb), took us 8 days, moving slowly, through bosnia and slavonia towards the capital city.' in zagreb, vesna ended up spending three years in the bedroom of her 13-year old niece, not daring to tell her off for listening to serbian folk star ceca and other serb narodnjaci ('pjesme koje su me istjerali iz moje kuce'), sharing a small flat with six other people and trying hard not to be a burden on anyone. when the croats left, the local serbs, including women and children moved back in and stayed there until 1994 or 1995. then, the croats hit back with operations 'lightning' (blijesak) and 'storm' (oluja), prompting hundreds and thousads of serbs to take their turn at hitting the road - moving, into serb-controlled parts of bosnia and mainland serbia. when vesna returned to her house in the autumn of 1995, her house had been destroyed, looted and burned out. with the help of some donations from the croatian state, vesna and her parents managed to rebuild some of it, refurniture it, and move back in - piece by piece.
why that all happened? vesna doesn't know. nije bilo potrebe. niko od ovoga nista nije dobio. sve bezveze. svi su izgubili. her old mother recalls taking a phone call to her home phone in 1991, and getting a little girl on the other side asking her 'znas li da je ovo serbija?' - do you know that this is serbia? - whereupon she replied, 'znam da nije', i know that it isn't, and hung up just to have the phone ring again a few moment later, the same child delivering the same message again. vesna herself remembers a young serb colleague at her work place - radila ko sumarski tehnicar in another town as she couldn't get a job in her own town ('many jobs were given to the serbs')- who spent his office hours bragging in front of another few colleagues and vesna herself that - would he run into vesna on the street, alone - he would 'cut her up, add salt, and indulge'. porezao bih ti kozu i jos bih te posolio. whether he was joking, i ask her. and she says, 'he he simply felt almighty, and he thought the serbs would soon be masters of this strip of land'. provocations like those abunded, she says. a relative of hers ended up emigrating to australia in 1990 after having had to deal with a colleague making constant references to 'serbia stretching all the way to the sea', in songs being sung in the office.
and, again, referring to the time between the wars, she ended by saying that in the former yugoslavia, there had been a policy of making sure that every serb village would have a graveyard, whereas that same policy was not applied to croatian vilages, thereby creating a situation in which future generations would have 'evidence' that 'serbs had always lived here' whereas the same would not be 'true' for croats. graves again. i was getting tired of this.
and glad to finally escape it all on a small road, idyllic and looking like straight from a picture book northwestwards towards the small town of ogulin. there, i thought, i would quickly make by way even further westwards towards the seaside. and i was thinking beaches, sunshine, italy on the horizon, within a day or two. but i had obviously made by calculation without that detailed map that i still hadn't bought. because the road that i picked - and have no regrets picking - led me straight to the formerly serb stronghold village of primislje. more history.
but first the vojni poligon, the largest military training ground of the former yugoslavia and the third largest in europe, right outside slunj - a small road took me straight to it. here, the former yugoslav army had carved out, in 1962, a large piece of land, measuring at least 50 sq kms, for purposes of training (and possibly controling?) in/of the krajina area. entire, mainly serb, villages, were evacuated and resettled in other nearby areas, and a selection of senior yugoslav commanders took hold and moved into the poligon. in 1991/2, the poligon was taken over by ethnic serb forces; in 1994 (bljesak? operation lightning?) or 1995 (oluja? operation storm?), the croatian army took it over, and transformed it into a major stronghold of the croatian army, today being used also as training ground for manouvres involving the US army. i passed a sign saying 'dead end road' and a workman chopping wood on the roadside telling me i couldn't go any further than about a km, but i wanted to see for myself. curves over curves, a beautiful panorama, slightly uphill, leaving slunj about 75m lower - no wonder they could launch grenades from the poligon. i finally arrived at a big sign saying - in 4 languages, english, german, italian and french - 'no access for foreigners. ok. foreigners not allowed beyond that point. and i went on. how would they know that i wasn't one of theirs anyways? with a croatian mother that i could easily make up. and moved slowly towards the ramp until i had a good view of it. and thought i could have even filmed it and no one would have known.
back on the road leading from slunj to primislje, meandering its way through rolling hills, pastures and leafy woods, i was enchanted by the beauty of it all, peace and quiet. (by the way, 'krajina' presumably deriving from the word 'kraj', the end, once designating the end of the austro-hungarian empire, the military frontier - 'kordun' being a part of the 'krajina').
after about 12 kms, i hit primislje. a lose group of little houses, surrounded by little court yards, lurking among scented woods and blackberry bushes, leading to a larger building about 500m up the road, austro-hungarian style again, the former municipality building with a school across from it. here, i parked my bike to study a memorial plaque attached to the municipality building, devastated and empty, marking the death of damir, hrvatski branitelj, junak, poginuo za domovinu u oslobodilackom ratu, 18 augusta 1995. complete with the croatian flag, sahovnica, and recent venac placed on the ground in front of it for its anniversary. i was puzzled. 18. augusta 1995 - oluja had been long over. the whole operation started on 4 august, swept across the country within hours, and was over within a few days, turning 200 000 to 300 000 local serbs into refugees literally over night. also, i wondered - this was a serb village, and here was a plaque commemorating one of the ones who had then expelled the serbs from it in its very heart - a daily reminder to all returnees who was in charge?
and i decided to ask someone. somehow find an angle, tactfully, to hear their take on it. only that there was no one, all houses being abandoned, the whole place put to sleep, or shall i say death, and breathing with a sense of relief and quiet after the storm. and then i spotted a small group of elderly people, 3 men and one woman, standing by the foundations of one nearby house, one of them working to rebuild it.
to make a long story short, i ended up not only chatting with them about this war and that war in this village and that village, covering pretty much all villages in the neighourhood, and all instances of random murders between 1942 and 1995 - directed at ethnic serbs this time; they wouldn't stop talking -, but also accompanied them to their farmhouse, had lunch with them, looked at pictures of their son (in norway) and daughter and grandchilden (in london), played with their baby dog ('tomica', christened po hrvatskome by their oblivious little grandson), and - at the end, slept in one of their two bedrooms. their hospitality was overwhelming. cika branko, my host, showed me his cows (lepa, bela, jagoda and timka), the goat (shonka), the swine (not sure if they had names), and teta jovanka, his wife and i walked 400m down to the well in their garden where we fetched water for the day. the garden and farmyard were breathtakingly picturesque with yellow corn growing to one side, playful kittens, hens and the yellowish puppy running around on the other, the blue sky glistening in the afternoon sun above, red sipak glowing in the bushes underneath. not to mention the old neighbour - 'zora', sunrise - visiting later that day and her bright blue eyes shining out of a rugged face dressed in a colourful headscarf. lunch included domaci dimljeni sir (smoked cheese), domaci kruh (bread), domacu slaninu (lard), domaci prsut (smoked ham), domaci paradaiz (tomatoes) and kafe (coffee) and domace pite od jabuke (apple pie) for desert - 'domaci' meaning as u may have guessed 'homemade' or 'homegrown' - the only ingredients not coming straight from their barn or garden being oil, flour, sugar and coffee. no rubbish at all. no need for recycling either. organic waste going straight to the compost; the odd piece of newspaper, cardboard packaging or cellophane bag into the oven. when i wanted to bin a small paper bag, teta jovanka stuffed it into a place under the oven, waiting to be burned. zero waste. inconceivable.
and this is their story: jovanka and branko are ethnic serbs, both from nearby villages, in primislje since the 1960s. they met in primary school, married in the seventies, he trained and worked as a primary school teacher for years and years when the school in primislje had 483 pupils, before the vojni poligon was constructed in 1962, marking the beginning of the exodus from the area. but even after 1962, cika branko continued to work there, in the mornings, and on his little farm, in the afternoons and evenings.
in 1991, when the krajina serb leadership took over in the region, and the croats were expelled from neighbouring towns and villages, the serbs of primislje - and almost everyone was serb there - stayed, and continued to live a relatively sheltered life. until 1994/5, when the croats launched 'operations lightning', blijesak, and 'storm', oluja, the serbs of primislje, neighbouring tounj-terzic and kukaca ran for their lives - with most of them having had no time to grab even the most essential items for the trip that lay ahead. 'the villages were already burning all around us', says teta jovanka, 'i could see the smoke', and i still didn't believe it. i couldn't decide to leave, didn't think it would come to us. i kept saying to myself, i did no harm to anyone, i have no enemies, why would they kick me out?' and she stayed until the last moment when her sister-in-law who lived behind her, nopt far from that well where mwe got the water - simply ordered her to get onto the trailer of a tractor, and a neighbour drove them, together with all other villagers out of the village. like jovanka, 200 000 - 300 000 other ethnic serbs fled krajina between 4 and 8 august 1995, many on tractors, some in cars, eastwards to bosnia and mainland serbia. the event continues to be wildly controversial. the serbs claim the croats savagely drove 300 000 innocent people from their rural homes, causing many of them to die on the way and killing those who wouldn't leave. the croats say they had to go in to get their land back - land, which had been occupied by the serbs in 1991, and which harboured the very people who were shelling croat-controlled neighbouring towns and villages, and, last, but not least, pointing out that the masses of civilians had been ordered out not by approaching croatian soldiers, but by their own leadership.
the facts seem to be that a) 200 000 to 300 000 ethnic serbs did leave croatia in those days and only very few ever returned. b) the exodus was ferocious, many elderly people did die of exhaustion on the way, and, c) the operation had been planned and helped by the americans, and directly paved the way for the signing of dayton peace agreement just three months later, which ended the war in bosnia and herzegovina and may well have saved the lives of (hundreds of?) thousands of bosnians. whether general ante gotovina, who had led the operation, oluja, could have done more to guarantee the safety of the serb civilian population in the region and to prevent their expulsion (or exodus), or, at least, to allow them a more dignified departure, remains to be ascertained. gotovina is currently facing trial at the ICTY, and opinions about his involvement remain highly divided.
as for distinguishing the civilian population from the non-civilian one, that may indeed have been difficult. in the case of my hosts in primislje for example, both branko, who would have been in his 50s then and his son and his son-in-law (both in their twenties), were in the krajina serb army - 'they had to' - htjeli nehtjeli. and: two days before operation storm, branko had been called into his unit, to serve on the hills outside slunj, from where - on 4 august - he witnessed the approaching croatian army. when he left primilsje on 2 august, he says he had no idea what was to come. teta jovanka equally claims she didn't have an inkling anything like this was being planned. the ordinary krajina serbs really seem to have been caught by surprise. wouldn't they otherwise have prepared their bags, and left in a more orderly way? my humble reasoning (which may be faulty). the krajina serb leadership however seems to have known (and therefore called in its men to their positions). and may even have, deliberately, (to up international pressure and sympathy), provoked a situation in which as many civilians as possible would fall victim to a chaotic and violent exodus, and as many soldiers would fall in the hills around it. by that time, it appears that the serb leaderhip from serbia, under president milosevic, had already fallen out with the krajina serbs, under martic and babic. 'milosevic sold us out', says teta jovanka, clearly nurturing no more sympathy for the serbs of serbia than for the croats of croatia. of the exodus itself, which lasted for eight days until they reached the town of vukovar, where she had a daughter (a trip that would have normally taken no more than 4 or 5 hours), she speaks of hours and hours of squeezing onto that trailer, looking at the tractor in front of her, rustling along, stopping, waiting, dreading, clutching fellow passengers, without water, without food, with not much sleep, and no knowledge of what was awaiting her and her - by now - scattered - family. in this situation, she tells, one old woman in a nearby trailer died on the way, in the heat during the day; one younger man, again from a nearby trailer, lay himself down on a hand grenade during the night, just a little off the road, deliberately setting it off and ending his life. the whole episode, the exhaustion, the fear, she says, 'was a massacre.'
as for those who stayed behind in the village, there seems to have been just one woman, milica k., zivcani bolesnik, mentally ill, in a house slightly below the others, whom no one had notified of the approaching croats, and who was still in the house when they arrived. according to one croat from a nearby village, milica was killed inside her house and the house then set on fire. 'the croatian authorities' have not acknowledged the case, says branko. 'nisu se zainteresirali', implying that - in other cases - the state may have acknowledged such cases (?), but in milica's case, there had not been anyone to claim justice for her, and she was simply forgotten. 'she just disappeared, with no body ever found, no grave, and no one to hear from her again.'
and as if 'burning houses' was the cue jovanka had only been waiting for, she jumped in with a ready story about a mother and her eight children, who, in 1942, had been barricaded into their own house, with wooden boards being nailed to doors and windows, and then set on fire. in the village of XYZ - she of course knew the name - near her own, now on the ground of the poligon, the village no longer existing, but by no means forgotten.
and here we were again. WW I and the recent war, all mixed in together.
and, in a sudden rush of helplessness, and maybe courage, i told them about breakfast with vesna in slunj, and the story of the 14-year croatian boy being hacked to death by the partisans in the same year - 1942. and, to my great reassurance, cika branko immediately classified the story as 'za vjerovati', credible, very credible - and i felt that maybe, maybe there was a chance for finding some common ground - somewhere - and for all those parallel and different versions of the truth starting to overlap, millimetre by millimetre - and maybe one day, merging into one.
'there can't be two or three different versions of the truth', i volunteer. there can only be one truth, about what happened, then, now, here, there. and that truth needs to be ascertained - utvrdjeno - on all sides - sa svih strana.
and i end by asking them whether - in their opinion - any of this - the recent war - would have happened had the horrors of WW II been dealt with in another way. (for those who don't know, when tito became president of yugoslavia in 1945, the crimes committed during WW II were just shoved under the carpet, mass graves were covered with concrete, and whoever spoke up was arrested. the official state policy was 'bratstvo i jedinstvo', brotherhood and unity, everyone was friends and comrades, regardless of ethnic backgrounds, and the war, partisan crimes in particular, was taboo.)
so, again, in their opinion - had facts and figures and locations been acknowledged, brought to light, in the 40s or 50s - da se to tada sve rasvijetlilo - would any of this - 1991-1995 - have ever happened?
and, after a moment's hesitation, and wavering, and resignation, teta jovanka seems to find an opening, like a new little path in her mind when she says, 'yes, if everything had been brought to light straight away, right after the war, in the 40s and 50s, from the beginning, the full truth, on all sides, that may have made a difference.' and then her interest seems to fade again. and i think she probably isn't aware of the significance of what she just said. a lesson for avoiding future wars? a case for truth commissions and truthtelling exercises instead of relying solely on international justice and tribunals?
just to end this with where i started - the case of damir, branitelj hrvatske domovine, the croatian soldier commemorated on the plaque on the primislje municipalty building - cika branko informs me that damir had been shot by a fellow croat; all serbs had by then been long gone from the area. like many others, he had been very drunk and so was the guy who shot him, and, in the dark, they had mistaken each other for 'chetniks' (enemy serbs), and the whole event had been an accident. and this information, he says, he got from a local croat who had been told by the guy who shot him.
2 SEPTEMBER 2009: i packed my bags and bike, bode my goodbyes, and made my way further down along that road, leading through the rest of primislje, towards the villages of tounj-trzic, kukaca and eventually kamenica. on that road, meandering through abandoned serb villages, and minefields for that matter (where the flora and fauna must have gotten a huge boost since the quasi-disappearance of mankind from their midst), i passed a whole range of landmarks bearing testimony to different aspects of the area's recent past. those included signs marking minefields to my left, a house in tounj-terzic - number 91 - bearing a large graffiti with the name of the (croatian) unit responsible for the looting and burning (so-and-so 'brigada'), a sign and venac marking the grave of a croat soldier (branitelj zdravko something, poginuo 4 august 1995) and another grave marking the site of the grave of a serb victim (something bozovic, poginuo nov 1991e) further down the road. the pattern was clear: serb soldiers had died in 1991 when first occupying or taking control of the territory; croat soldiers had died in 1995 when taking over from the serbs. and in between - the serbs had continued living in the area, and the croats had sought refuge elsewhere, whereas after 1995, the croats had come back, and the serbs were driven into exodus from which only a few would return.
with regard to minority refugee return, i did spot a lot of serb houses having been reconstructed by croatian state money allover the place - and not just in this part of krajina, but also north of the bosnian border, near hrvatska dubica and jasenovac, where i had passed with ecotopia biketour a week earlier. and yet only a few serbs seem to have returned to actually live there. again, the pattern seems to be that they do come, claim their property, get it reconstructed, sell it, and then leave - back to serbia or wherever they my have been living since 1995. generally speaking, the argument goes that even though, on the face of things and under the pressure of EU, the croatian state may have been investing a lot of money in serb refugee return since the early 2000s, and indeed been reconstructing a lot of houses, underneath, there is still a lot of hostility and obstruction and unwillingness on the side of that same state and its civil servants to really realise fully-fledged return, social re-integration and actively create opportunities for job creation and income generation.
being genuine returnees, cika branko and teta jovanka seem to be an exception. this could be due to their problematic choice of exile in august 1995 - the town of vukovar, in eastern slavonia - from which they had to leave again in 1997, when vukovar was reincorporated into croatia, prilikom povratku vukovara pod hrvatsku vlast. then, local croats (who had previously been bombed out of vukovar by the serbs), returned to their homes, and serb refugees started leaving again. at that point, branko and jovanka found (a second) refuge in their son-in-law's home in a small village called dubrave, back in croatia, krajina, not far from primislje. this is where they settled in 1999 and branko got his job as primary school teacher back. just as a supply teacher, and no longer in primislje, but in nearby plasko, but the couple was happy enough. branko did mention the odd provocation from the side of the croatian authorities, but none of that could keep the couple from finally moving back into their old pre-war home in primislje in november 2008, and starting out again as small farmers producing meat and vegetables for their own use, topped up by branko's meagre salary as a supply teacher.
a bit further up the road, where kukaca ends, and the road makes a turn, and suddenly opens up to the village of kamenica, i was surprised by the sudden appearance of two large croatian flags tucked sideways onto a tree, drawing the attention to two pictures of croatian general and ICTY indictee for war crimes ante gotovina attached to it underneath. quite obviously, gotovina is still the hero of the day in this part of the country - as good as and flanked by jesus on a cross in a little chapel to its left. i am puzzled. this is a line of serb majority villages, i thought. and again, my curiousity gets the better of me, and again i play the dumb foreigner - or, more precisely, clueless diaspora yugoslav whose parents emigrated in the 70s - potentially of croatian, meaning friendly, descent. the guy on the other side of the fence seems somewhat distraught by my appearance, but somewhat relaxes when i involve him in a conversation about how far the next village is and whether the road there is uphill or downhill. and then i vaguely indicated the flags behind me, and asked him who put 'em up, and he says, he did, together with his neighbour. and yes, he says, here is the boundary line, right behind this bend on the road. this was the defense line. no, his house never fell into the hands of the serbs, nismo im dali, da, ja sam stalno bio ovdje.
and i am thinking, (good old me, hm, always on the side of the minority, and possibly not quite grasping the situation pre-august 1995 when the serbs were in charge here), right, so this is what the serbs of primislje are getting when they go fetch bread or milk 8 kms down the road to one side, or oil and coffee to the other side. landmarks of the croatian victory left, right and centre, bordering open hostility and provocation. no wonder they produce their bread at home. in tounj-terzic where i stopped to catch my breath, i spotted the above-mentioned house with the graffiti, bearing living testimony of the hordes of croats burning and looting their way through abandoned serb villages post oluja in august 1995 - a view consumed for breakfast, lunch and dinner by the elderly serb returnee couple inhabiting the house just a 100m up the road.
with regards to that couple, i stopped to say hello to the lady who was washing her face when i was passing - and she seemed amused by the smiling girl on the bicycle - and concluded our 2 minute-'conversation' with 'joj, k'o da sam te ja rodila - tolko te volim' (as if i had given birth to you - that's how much i love you!), which made me want to burst into laughter - i had to make sure i wouldn't in front of her. and it also made me wonder whether she would have said that had she been surrounded by a functional group of fellow villagers. she had returnes in 1999, she said and her house seemed to be one of the two, maybe three only houses still inhabited.
in kamenica, about 500m from the above-mentioned bend in the road and the tree with the flags, another plaque commemorated the 'croat victims of WW II and the recent homeland war', clearly linking them to the village of kamenica, and expressing their pride at being 'kamenicans'.
and then, when i came out on the other side, and hit the main road, the fairytale - or shall i say nightmare - scenery apruptly ended - no more virgin and idyllic - or blood-soaked and mine-clad - woods, no more tit for tat, house for house, grave for grave and curve for curve - and i re-entered 'real life', present tense - and embarked on a road first to the village of josipdol, and then on a long uphill to velika kapela hill. through the blazing heat, with little water left, and large billboards warning tourists of forest fires every 300m, i passed another few signs warning of minefields, and eventually hit the top of the hill - and then enjoyed an amazing downhill ride on the other side, to the village of jezerane. there, i stopped for a peppermint tea to catch my breath - and paid for by a local chap who insisted on practising his german on me, and got his friend to practise his french - and then concluded that i must be from holland. i refilled my water bottles, recharged my batteries, popped my newly acquired croatian simcard into my bosnian mobile, sent a few msgs to a few people - just to make myself reachable again, and then embarked on a short evening ride to the village of krizpolje.
in krizpolje, i arrived at 6pm, and decided to call it a day. i liked what i saw when riding past a little farmyard - complete with washing lines and kids running around - and asked the couple in the farmyard whether i could put up my tent on their lawn. that was only the second time i had tried that line - and - miracle over miracle - i must have done something right, or somehow sent out the right vibe, or looked vulnerable and in need for assistance (-;), that, again, the woman running the show in the yard suggested in a loud voice i come and sleep in the house instead. 'sto ne bi kod nas u kuci kad vec ima mjesta.' and i was delighted, and happily obliged. saturated up to my throat with history, i wasn't prepared to take in any more when entering the kitchen - ljetna kuhinja separate from the main house - and spotted two life-size, or larger, portraits hanging side by side on the wall - one of ante gotovina, looking young and handsome and one of franjo tudjman, not as young and not as handsome. both, in my world, personae non gratae. and under them a burning candle. but i was too tired to even ask about them, let alone engage anyone in a conversation. but i put my guard up and resolved that for that night, i would be the daughter of a bosnian-croat mother, marija mrnjavac - name and sirname ready for use in the forefront of my brain, just in case. from kiseljak or kresevo near sarajevo. hence my bosnian accent. croat. yes croat. in case they should ask 'sta je po nacijonalnosti'. married to a german.
at the end, i went to bed well-fed that night, and no one had raised the subject of my 'ethnic belonging'. the whole family ate together around a large table in the garden: viktorija (about my age, 38), marko (about 42), two sons (15 and 11), and marko's father (about 70). 'prava licka vecera' - a real lika-style dinner, all from the farm itself. a huge tray full of delicious crispy baked potatoes, slanine and domace kobasice a voglia (homemade cold cuts), deliciously tasty tomatoes from the garden, and handmade juicy yellowish bread cut into thick slices. nothing more and nothing less. the family obviously surviving on what they produce - again, nothing is being bought - apart from school books and other school supplies - and the zahnspange the younger son was about to get the next week. 'lika' being the name of the region - beyond the velika kapela mountain - and, again, an area where emotions and tensions had run very high both during WW II and again the war of the 1990s.
viktorija outed herself as coming from bosnia herself. born in fojnica, a small spa not far from sarajevo, her (ethnically croat) family outlived the war on its fringes, with both muslim and croat refugees crowding the town's landmark spa hotel 'reumal' (with springs used to cure rheuma), but - as far as i understood - no major acts of war - such as shelling or sniping - going on. before and during the war, viktorija worked in a local textile factory, stitching up suits and other garments for a german client (svabo) - and - to draw up an admittedly morbid 'bilanz' of what the war meant to her family: out of her 7 brothers and sisters, 'only one got killed', said viktorija, - an older sister who, in 1993, disappeared on a trip from fojnica to zagreb and was never heard from again. but viktorija seems well over that episode ('as we haven't heard from her since, she must be dead', she says almost chirpily), and feeling fortunate enough to having been given the chance to resettle far (far?) from the bosnian powderkeg with a worthy husband in the promised land of croatia. as for her husband, i had been very suspicious, and even a bit spooked by those life-size portraits in the kitchen, and paid extra attention to play the innocuous and clueless and yet friendly diaspora croat on a bicycle, enjoying and appreciating the joys of croatian farmlife, organic farming methods and showing interest (and that was quite genuine interest) in how he reckons croatia's accession to the EU is likely to spell the end of small-size family style farming like his own. 'i will be last one in a long line' - my sons will be doing something else. and i was sincerely sorry and distressed to hear that (the EU really doing that?).
3 SEPTEMBER 2009: the next morning, i 'sounded him out' a little on what he had done during the war. and well, here's his story:
...
and i have to say, at that point, my curiosity was starting to give in to a sense of tiredness of all these stories, and i resolved to really take a break from it all now. after a cordial goodbye, exchanging numbers and email addresses (that is i gave them mine, suggesting their sons may get one some day), i cycled 200m up the street and stopped for a luscious breakfast at a plumtree to indulge in a handful of succulent, fat, violet plums, before stopping for a second breakfast, around 11am, in the village of brinje, just a few kms down the road, where i sat outside and had a huge portion of fried eggs with mushrooms and yellow cheese, accompanied by a big salad and large quantites of pumpkin seed oil from my supplies. the restaurant ws called 'victoria' - as in 'pobjeda' - or victory, and the receipt for payment adorned with a hand making the V-sign, clad in a chequered sleeve. again, a clear reference to operation storm, which croats have widely regarded as the turning point in the war, marking 'croatia's victory'. 'croatia won the war', bosnian refugees in croatia would say in 1995 - i still remember that.
and eventually i arrived in otocac, a small town with a sunny little park in its centre - and a bar called 'bar central' right across from it. and when i approached the moustached owner - in his 50s - for a little water, he not only invited me into his bar, poured water into all my empty bottles, placed those in the freezer to chill, but also went to the fastfood shop two houses down the road, fetched two portions of succulent chicken wings (there goes my vegetarianism), chopped up a tomato, added a few slices of handmade bread, poured me a glass of rakija, and - miracles over miracles - put down a plate full of homemade dumplings filled with plums, austro-hungarian style (zwetschgenknoedel mit brokruemeln in zerlaufener butter) in front of me and told me to eat. i was of course head over heels - especially regarding the last bit. and wondered for how many days i could keep going like that, cycling from sponsor to sponsor, eating my way through kordun, lika and otocac-style hospitality, and trying to pay my dues with heartfelt gratitude and the odd funny story from bosnia or london - or wherever else people may think i came from. as for cika pajo - pavle gajdek was his name - he really won me over within seconds with his refreshing openness and shrewd to-the-pointness, catching the essence of things without me having to explain, and accepting everything for what it was. entirely without resorting to any bullshit stories about bosnian or croatian mothers named marija mrnjavac or desanka rokvic (depending on the ethnicity of my interlocutor and on how safe i may have felt at a given moment in a given environment where i intended to spend the night), within minutes, he wrapped things up with 'dosla je moja prijateljica isabella iz evrope, dosla u otocac da se malo odmori prije nego sto se vrati u brisel.' where i had mentioned brussels only as my birthplace, adding that i was not really belgian. he just laughed it all away and engaged me in a chat (or shall i say flirt... a classical bon-vivant, 50+, moustache, beer belly, with his wife sleeping upstairs (-;) about his friend mustafa sa bascarsije (using his american girlfriend's credit card to buy pajo a watch for 2000 KM), his wife stojanka from slavonia (who made the dumplings), my chances of finding a used laptop somewhere on my way to the seaside (why slim? he has a friend, in bihac, who has a friend, still in bihac, who could maybe sell me one) and the general population of otocac (gospodja marija iz gospica, his mate zoran celebrating his birthday today), - and i left otocac almost feeling like i had been there not just for an hour, but at least a week.
after that rakija at pavle's, i cycled on with my batteries recharged, but then decided to call it a day already in the next town - licko lesce - where, for the first time, i actually ended up sleeping in my tent. there is not much to add - i arrived at the last house, i delivered my spiel - whether i could put up my tent in their yard - and this time the answer was 'yes', but without any further offers. i was delighted all the same, put it up, for the first time in my life - and it was done within 5 minutes - and then spent the next two hours playing hide and seek inside and outside the tent with gabriella, my host's little 4-year old grandchild. 'snivaca' - and she just loved it. at night, before dropping dead fairly early, and without eating anymore that day, i made sure i got the name of the village right - da, pataran, a part of licko lesce -, and the number of the croatian emergency police - 112 - just in case someone should want to visit me in my tent - which of course didn't happen.
safety-wise, all my 'advisers' from zelena akcija in zagreb, vukomeric and others from the croatian alternative scene, all well-versed in low-budget biketouring around croatia, had told me i needn't fear anything - 'these are backward territories; people are simple farmers, there are no criminals '. this was echoed by katarina, my ageing host who wished me good night and then mumbled in her local dialect 'nemas brige, ovdje nema hajduka'. (-;
4 SEPTEMBER 2009: and day 6 would be the last day spent in the hinterland, where people relied heavily on pig meat and potatoes for a living, before i finally hit the coastline and venetian-style fishing villages on day 7. one more day to go.
i started the day by cycling in a straight line to the town of gospic, where i longed for a clean room, a bath and opportunity to wash my clothes, and therefore asked a few people for a room. with not much luck - in gospic nobody rents rooms. but i got to talk to a 25-year old guy on a bicycle instead, who - after a long cappuccino and delicious sweet in a central cafe - decided to take me home and offer me a shower, followed by a delicious homecooked lunch. that shower was really a blessing (i even got to wash my hair!) and the meal a pure delight (pecene paprike marinated in garlic, satarash, homemade kruh and naresci, cooked by his mum). and the guy himself was not just extremely funny, but - for his age - unusually wise and independent and i indulged in his presence and his stories. not sure what we talked about - DJing and music - 'ja sam metalac, iron maiden, to je moj dzir, svhatam rok ko pokret, kad radim ko DJ, masiram ljudske mozgove, rok znaci sloboda'... seasoned with a constant trickle of 'brijem, brijes, dobra brija, nikavka brija'... which, it turned out is croatian slang (of those born in the 1980s, so i guess i don't need to know that (-;) for 'think', 'reckon' and 'stuff'... 'i think, i reckon, you think, great stuff'... to be thrown in whenever and wherever it seems, for no particular reason or purpose.
at the cafe, i quizzed him on gospic and the war. what actually happened here. i gestured at the shrapnel marks on the houses lining the pedestrian street we were sitting on - and he said, yes, of course, there has been war here, too, itetako, and gospic was on place 2 in terms of shells raining down on it - right after vukovar in eastern slavonia, which was famously reduced to rubble.
according to joco - his nickname -, what happened in gospic is the following: the town had been inhabited by croats and serbs - the serbs accounting for up to 50 or 60% of the population before the war (and this figure may well have been much lower, say closer to 31%, acording to the internet) - almost none of which any longer live here today. those serbs suddenly disappeared in 1991 - again, like in slunj - the women and children moving to serbia - and the menfolk settling in the hills around slunj, mainly to the west, towards karlobag, the coast, and then engaging in three years of constant shelling. from 1991/2 to 1994/5 - until operation blijesak (or oluja?) led to the reconquering of the town of knin, by the croatian army, and hence the end to the shelling. in gospic today, 'there is still a lot of hatred', says joco, serbs aren't happy to walk freely on the streets. croats will immediately recognise them - at least those of a certain age - and serbs won't feel comfortable. why they left in the first place? and here i expected a textbook answer, flavoured with the usual dose of (healthy?) croatian nationalism - taken from his presumably croatian prents and the biased media. instead - surprise - josip said 'they had to leave; whoever wouldn't leave, dobio je metak u glavu, pa nisu imali izbor. - would have been shot in the head, so they had no choice.' and that's when i suspected some peculiarity - and indeed, it turns out he's from a mixed marriage. his mother is a serb. how they survived? his father is a croat and was in the army from the very beginning and both him and his brother carry distinctively croat first and last names, and so they didn't dare to touch them. just good luck? maybe. and maybe the protection of the neighbours who, mainly croats themselves, kept a constant eye on their house and potential approaching problems.
'you won't find anyone saying this like i do in this town', he concludes the subject, without suggesting any particular need for discretion, even indicating that he would say this to anyone, and i sense that he is indeed one of a kind. and that he can somehow get away with it by hanging out with a small minority of other kids who seem to like heavy metal better than folk music and prefer cycling to nearby rivers over bronzing on the seaside. one of that crowd being his buraz, older brother. 'shvatio sam da je ovo raj u paklu', he says with a wink when i say his family home looks like 'raj na zemlji'.
'nebuloza, fantazija, dubioza, ismisljiotina, da nije bilo droge i alkohola, ne bi bilo rata... niko ne bi isao u vojsku... hrvatska do banja luke, hrvatska do srbije, hrvatska do tokya'... he clearly takes the piss. 'a amerikanci ih tjerali natrag u svoje granice, rekli, hajde to je dovoljno nek svak bude na svome. i bilo je dobro. dobro iskustvo. dobra brija. k'o klinci se igrali s metkama, ispred kuce. i tako. adrenalina'. and i offer, 'kazu da su bile najbolje zurke, najbolji derneci, najbolji tulumi u ratu'. and he agrees - 'najbolji tulumi u ratu'. hm.
after joco, i finally cycled on to the foot of mount velebit, the mountain range separating the hinterland from the seaside - and stopped at the village of podostre - where i found another lovely refuge for the night - with another couple around my own age, mile and ivanka, who - after i had half put up my tent - offered me to sleep in the house instead. on the first floor of their newly built house, made of concrete, and used as a storage room, but clean and equipped with doors and windows - and i felt wonderfully safe and sheltered from the first moment on, and so grateful and happy i could hardly describe it. a whole floor for myself, and they even put up an old double bed they had stored up there - it seemed - just for that purpose. (-;. what a wonderful day.
both mile and ivanka had been working in their courtyard sorting out bags frull of old bread in their court yard when i arrived - and i helped them doing that before going tp sleep. the bread was bought for little money from a bakery in nearby zadar, to be recycled as pig- and cow-food by farmers from the region. among those mountains of bread, mile and i spotted the odd chocolate croissant or even krofna, krapfen, fritella with marmelade, and of course kept those for ourselves with ivanka making fun of both of us eating her cowfood. and i mused about cows and pigs eating 'our' chocolate. later that night, i watched ivanka milk her cows, and - delight over delight - two little baby cows sucking their mothers' 'tits', sise, with such ferocious greed and lust and pleasure that it was quite spectacular to watch. dinner - yes, there was dinner (!) consisted of yet more homemade bread, the most delicious prsut (smoked ham), and - the main ingredient being - 'varenke'.... with a long eee... vareeeenke... being - quite simply - hot milk - milked just minutes earlier and boiled on an open fire. i was happy to give it a miss, but mile and ivanka and mile's cheerful old parents (vesela baba) quite clearly loved their varenke - ivanka mixing it with pieces of bread, sugar and coffee, mile drinking it raw and lukewarm out of the bucket - and mile's old mother asking for it again the next morning - again freshly milked - in her coffee.
5 SEPTEMBER 2009: the next morning, mile's mother fried me two eggs, sizzling in pig fat (were i ever a vegetarian?) which i greedily scooped up with another piece of homemade bread, and washed down with a glass of the most delightful elderberry (?) juice - holunderbluetensaft - made from white elderberry blossoms in the month of may. again, warm goodbyes, my offer to pay something vehemently turned down - and my amazement at how little money i had spent in 7 days of touring krajina.
a few more kilometres on a straight road, towards mount velebit, passing a large sign marking the anniversary of the 'velebitski ustanak' - the velebit uprising (that i had never heard of), of 1932, 'protiv vojno-politickog fasizma kraljevine jugoslavije' - against the military-political terror of the kingdom of yugoslavia, the country established in the wake of the breakdown of both the austro-hungarian and ottoman empires between WWs I and II. and i got a sense of how the croats, from different parts of croatia, and for one reason or another, had indeed been dreaming and fighting for an independent state of their own not only long before their recent declaration of independence in the 1990s, but also long before the short-lived and infamous 'independent state of croatia', created under the auspices of nazi germany in the early 1940s.
a long uphill up mount velebit - rewarded with a short ride through a landscape reminisent of the alps, passing a hut run by the croatian mountaineering society - and eventually, when i reached the top - 927m above sea level - a breathtaking view down the other side. a blue coastline dotted with an arrangement of ocre-coloured islands, and schaumkronen on the waves in the sea. and the bura, the wind blowing on the croatian coast in the autumn, almost blew me away. and i quickly moved down on the other side, hoping the strength of the wind would abide with diminishing altitude. in vain. a difficult descent. from 927m to sealevel. the most difficult one ever, where every metre meant battling with the bura, which threatened to blow me straight over the edge of the road, or from the right lane onto the left one, into the way of ascending cars. i took my time, snacked on some peanuts and honey to calm my nerves, and made sure i wouldn't expose myself to any risks. sa burom se ne valja saliti. the bura is no joke. exhausted and sunburnt i eventually arrived in karlobag around mid-day, and was told that both roads, left and right of karlobag had been closed for the day, and access to the ferryboat to pag was therefore blocked. i decided to make the best of it, looked for accomodation and found a lovely two-bed room for only 100 kuna (less than 15 euros) a night (much less than the going rate), a free internet spot at hotel velinac in the centre (where i have been writing this ever since), and, eventually treated myself to a delicious plate full of fresh lignje na zaru and blitve. grilled calamari with croatian spinach in garlic and olive oil. to celebrate my arrival at the seaside. and the end of 6 weeks of (on and off) cycling, wielding and feeling my way through the difficult lands of bosnia and the croatian krajina, and previously, macedonia, albania, montenegro and podravka - and not even catching a glimpse of the sea all that time.
and i felt relieved and as if i had at last arrived. at the healing, soothing, beautiful mediterranean sea. which may have been my destination all along.
and here i will end - for the time being - the next episode of this account possibly covering my adventures on the islands or in dalmatia - to be seen. who knows, i may also decide to return to london or brussels in a few days from here. or never come back at all (and open a restaurant in macedonia or turkey instead (-;). just kidding.
last, but not least, i sincerely hope i haven't caused offence to anyone. all the accounts in this text are accounts i got from people, not reflecting my own personal opinion. this is the stuff i found on the road, and in conversations. and i've very much tried to read between the lines, and really understand and feel and get to the bottom of things. but even so, i am sure, i missed stuff, and maybe misinterpreted stuff. all of this being very delicate stuff. (lots of 'stuff'.) happy to hear about mistakes or inaccuracies.
LOVE (and PEACE!!!) from the coast.
isabella
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Gaza again
10 February 2009
hi everyone,
before another week goes by, i thought i'd send you a quick feedback from that gaza demo two weeks ago. meant to do that ages ago, but just never got around to it.
first of all, thanks to the ones who came along and the ones who would have come along if they hadn't been out of the country of otherwise occupied.
very briefly:
it was short, sweet and not particularly exciting.
nothing major happened and the numbers of attendants were much lower than those on 10 january.
whereas on 10 jan figures reached about 10 - 20,000 (estimates vary), on 25 jan, there were only about 4 - 5,000 of us (? again, estimates vary).
as for the type of people present this time, i would say that various muslim groups and the more hard-line people around george galloway and the socialist party clearly dominated the picture.
police i spoke to at the end said the relatively low overall turn-out and the predominance of people of arab extraction and, to a lesser extent, members of the socialist party, was clearly in reaction to the starbucks-smashing incident of 10 jan, and that many of the 'mums with prams' and other 'normal people' present on 10 jan had stayed at home on 24 jan.
whether that analysis of his is accurate or whether this is due to a more general trend, i don't know.
even so, on 24 jan, there were still a lot of 'mainstreamers', some dressed very smartly, walking alongside the two other groups outlined above.
as for the arab participants, many of them seemed middle class, and young - there were lots of girls as well - nicely dressed, complete with headscarf and make-up (and probably listening to rihanna and beyonce in their spare time.)
at one point, we were caught between two groups of kids chanting 'free, free palestine' and 'from the river to the sea' - obviously making my hair stand on end.
and then passed an older english guy campaigning for 'a one-state solution: palestine'.
and we quickly escaped to a more balanced part of the demo, and then found ourselves walking in front of a banner by the 'israeli committee against house demolitions', which we felt was a bit more like it.
summing up, the mainstreamers came in smaller numbers this time (again, can't tell whether it was just a reaction to 10 jan or a general trend), and i resolved to definitely bring my own banner next time, with a more balanced message regarding peace in the entire region and on both sides.
(having said that we must not forget that the demos on 10 jan and 24 jan were a reaction to a humanitarian disaster unfolding in gaza, rather than the expression of a balanced political thought process concerning the entire region.)
last, but not least, one of the main themes of the demo on 24 jan was the BBC's refusal to broadcast the DEC appeal for humanitarian aid for gaza's civilians - a theme that was taken up by some of the UK's 'serious' newspapers (eg. the Observer) the next day, which strongly condemned the BBC's decision - and therefore in line with the demands of the demonstrants.
if anyone wants to read a little more - i came across the following two articles on the matter, which i find excellent:
- Time Magazine, by Tim McGirk:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1870314-1,00.html
- statement by the New Israel Fund, a fairly new organisation that I take very seriously
http://www.newisraelfund.org.uk/subPages/05_newsAndMedia/_archivedNews/__old/055.html
and if you still got the stamina for more:
for figures of victims (dead and injured),
take a look at
- the UN News centre's website at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29567&Cr=gaza&Cr1
- the Jerusalem Post at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1232292939271.
for the DEC appeal video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/jan/26/dec-gaza-appeal.
for background stuff on sderot:
- voices from sderot http://www.bicom.org.uk/videos/voices-from-sderot
- 'other voices' from sderot http://pulsemedia.org/2009/01/12/a-sderot-woman-speaks-out-against-israels-brutal-folly/
- BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7830405.stm
and, last but not least, for a recent video by CBS:
- CBS video by Bob Simon, Jewish himself, living in Tel Aviv http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml
- israeli blogger arguing against the CBS video
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/02/harvey-taback-on-cbsbob-simons-60.html
please let me know if you'd like me to take you off this list. just in case there should be any follow-up emails.
all the best and have a good week,
isabella
hi everyone,
before another week goes by, i thought i'd send you a quick feedback from that gaza demo two weeks ago. meant to do that ages ago, but just never got around to it.
first of all, thanks to the ones who came along and the ones who would have come along if they hadn't been out of the country of otherwise occupied.
very briefly:
it was short, sweet and not particularly exciting.
nothing major happened and the numbers of attendants were much lower than those on 10 january.
whereas on 10 jan figures reached about 10 - 20,000 (estimates vary), on 25 jan, there were only about 4 - 5,000 of us (? again, estimates vary).
as for the type of people present this time, i would say that various muslim groups and the more hard-line people around george galloway and the socialist party clearly dominated the picture.
police i spoke to at the end said the relatively low overall turn-out and the predominance of people of arab extraction and, to a lesser extent, members of the socialist party, was clearly in reaction to the starbucks-smashing incident of 10 jan, and that many of the 'mums with prams' and other 'normal people' present on 10 jan had stayed at home on 24 jan.
whether that analysis of his is accurate or whether this is due to a more general trend, i don't know.
even so, on 24 jan, there were still a lot of 'mainstreamers', some dressed very smartly, walking alongside the two other groups outlined above.
as for the arab participants, many of them seemed middle class, and young - there were lots of girls as well - nicely dressed, complete with headscarf and make-up (and probably listening to rihanna and beyonce in their spare time.)
at one point, we were caught between two groups of kids chanting 'free, free palestine' and 'from the river to the sea' - obviously making my hair stand on end.
and then passed an older english guy campaigning for 'a one-state solution: palestine'.
and we quickly escaped to a more balanced part of the demo, and then found ourselves walking in front of a banner by the 'israeli committee against house demolitions', which we felt was a bit more like it.
summing up, the mainstreamers came in smaller numbers this time (again, can't tell whether it was just a reaction to 10 jan or a general trend), and i resolved to definitely bring my own banner next time, with a more balanced message regarding peace in the entire region and on both sides.
(having said that we must not forget that the demos on 10 jan and 24 jan were a reaction to a humanitarian disaster unfolding in gaza, rather than the expression of a balanced political thought process concerning the entire region.)
last, but not least, one of the main themes of the demo on 24 jan was the BBC's refusal to broadcast the DEC appeal for humanitarian aid for gaza's civilians - a theme that was taken up by some of the UK's 'serious' newspapers (eg. the Observer) the next day, which strongly condemned the BBC's decision - and therefore in line with the demands of the demonstrants.
if anyone wants to read a little more - i came across the following two articles on the matter, which i find excellent:
- Time Magazine, by Tim McGirk:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1870314-1,00.html
- statement by the New Israel Fund, a fairly new organisation that I take very seriously
http://www.newisraelfund.org.uk/subPages/05_newsAndMedia/_archivedNews/__old/055.html
and if you still got the stamina for more:
for figures of victims (dead and injured),
take a look at
- the UN News centre's website at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29567&Cr=gaza&Cr1
- the Jerusalem Post at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1232292939271.
for the DEC appeal video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/jan/26/dec-gaza-appeal.
for background stuff on sderot:
- voices from sderot http://www.bicom.org.uk/videos/voices-from-sderot
- 'other voices' from sderot http://pulsemedia.org/2009/01/12/a-sderot-woman-speaks-out-against-israels-brutal-folly/
- BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7830405.stm
and, last but not least, for a recent video by CBS:
- CBS video by Bob Simon, Jewish himself, living in Tel Aviv http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml
- israeli blogger arguing against the CBS video
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/02/harvey-taback-on-cbsbob-simons-60.html
please let me know if you'd like me to take you off this list. just in case there should be any follow-up emails.
all the best and have a good week,
isabella
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Gaza
hi everyone,
gaza is over for now, but people are still dying of the consequences of their injuries, or are still trying to come to terms with have lost a child or a leg or a father or a house.
and so forth.
we can't even imagine it.
so, i appeal to you to attend the demo on saturday 24 at 2pm - details below - and make a statement.
the statement we'd be making is: we're appalled by what has been happening, and what is still happening in many people's dreams and minds (a whole generation of kids has just been traumatised in those 3 weeks between 27 december and 17 january), and won't just go away even when the bombs may have stopped (temporarily?) from falling.
this is bigger than much of what we've seen in a long time.
and i am afraid of serious retaliations on european soil. as in bombings, random shoot-ups in places like starbucks and other desperate ways of desperate people to make themselves heard, noticed. by those coffee-sipping and credit crunch-ridden europeans who haven't been paying much attention to what's been happening in gaza.
a whole province has been shot up and demolished. schools, infrastructure, hospitals.
the UN has been shelled three times. and that was an attack on the whole world order, not just on the terrorists in gaza.
and trust me, repeated shelling of the UN in just three weeks is UNHEARD OF.
and, last, but not least, we've had:
24 israeli dead since 2004
and over 1000 palestinian dead, among which 400 children since 27 dec 2008.
and about 6000 palestinian injured since 27 dec 2008. and im not sure whats worse - losing one's legs, or actually dying.
and just for the record:
1. i am partly of jewish origin myself, have been to israel twice, was about to join the israeli army in 1991 and firmly believe in israel's right to exist and absolutely love the israeli people's lifestyle, mentality and culture.
but human rights are human rights and human lives are human lives and the UN is the UN.
and noone has the right to disregards this, not even my beloved israel.
2. and yes, there have been katyusha and home-made rockets falling on southern israel over the past years. however, again, the death toll has stopped at 24 people since 2004 (not good, as a matter of fact, that needs to stop coz it also means more injured and many more traumatised).
but, there has also been continued harassment at the border crossings and relentless resettlement programmes carried out in the west bank, and the rockets must be seen in that context.
bottom line: the strikes we've seen since 27 december are grossly disproportionate.
and - maybe worst of all - have made this world, and israel itself, an unsafer place.
a real reason for me to consider moving away from london coz london ain't gonna be the safest place on earth in the years coming.
UNLESS we make that STATEMENT.
then we can say to our muslim friends and other friends, and children one day:
we WERE against it.
and we DID something against it.
next stop: the demo.
for the ones who've never been to a demo:
ok, here goes: its simple, safe and even fun.
and it means walking with thousands of other people down london's main roads and squares - and it's quite nice because there wont be any cars and lots of police (spread out on the sides, polite and smiling) all over. so, quite a cool 'hike' through central london.
and yes, there will be crazy anti-american, muesli-eating and birkenstock-sandals wearing hippies with provocative banners, too. but they're not in the majority. so, just ignore them.
also, there will be speakers - usually at the end - probably on trafalgar square. and it'll be quite interesting to listen to them. again, there will be extreme ones like george galloway. but there will be as many moderate ones - like human rights lawyer Bianca Jagger, who explicitely recognises israel's right to exists and always makes a point of that.
so, lets make this more mainstream coz thats what it should be.
if anyone can't make 2pm sharp, no worries, just get off at regents park, great portland street - or if youre a little late - try oxford circus - and then walk towards downing street and trafalgar square.
the demo will end - possibly around 3 or 4pm at trafalgar square and then the speakers will make their speeches.
if anyone wants to meet up with me and go there together, let me know. 0798 1909076.
this matters. this was the grossest war we've seen in ages - worse than lebanon in summer of 2007 and than the ones before that. even if the world's been caught up in post-christmas diets, new year's eve party planning, credit crunch-worries and obamania.
for more info on everything, also the demo, go to http://globaldayofaction.org/stopwar/
feel free to fwd this to your friends!
isabella
Assemble 2pm, BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA
Nearest Tube Regents Park and Great Portland Place)
March to Trafalgar Square via Downing Street
gaza is over for now, but people are still dying of the consequences of their injuries, or are still trying to come to terms with have lost a child or a leg or a father or a house.
and so forth.
we can't even imagine it.
so, i appeal to you to attend the demo on saturday 24 at 2pm - details below - and make a statement.
the statement we'd be making is: we're appalled by what has been happening, and what is still happening in many people's dreams and minds (a whole generation of kids has just been traumatised in those 3 weeks between 27 december and 17 january), and won't just go away even when the bombs may have stopped (temporarily?) from falling.
this is bigger than much of what we've seen in a long time.
and i am afraid of serious retaliations on european soil. as in bombings, random shoot-ups in places like starbucks and other desperate ways of desperate people to make themselves heard, noticed. by those coffee-sipping and credit crunch-ridden europeans who haven't been paying much attention to what's been happening in gaza.
a whole province has been shot up and demolished. schools, infrastructure, hospitals.
the UN has been shelled three times. and that was an attack on the whole world order, not just on the terrorists in gaza.
and trust me, repeated shelling of the UN in just three weeks is UNHEARD OF.
and, last, but not least, we've had:
24 israeli dead since 2004
and over 1000 palestinian dead, among which 400 children since 27 dec 2008.
and about 6000 palestinian injured since 27 dec 2008. and im not sure whats worse - losing one's legs, or actually dying.
and just for the record:
1. i am partly of jewish origin myself, have been to israel twice, was about to join the israeli army in 1991 and firmly believe in israel's right to exist and absolutely love the israeli people's lifestyle, mentality and culture.
but human rights are human rights and human lives are human lives and the UN is the UN.
and noone has the right to disregards this, not even my beloved israel.
2. and yes, there have been katyusha and home-made rockets falling on southern israel over the past years. however, again, the death toll has stopped at 24 people since 2004 (not good, as a matter of fact, that needs to stop coz it also means more injured and many more traumatised).
but, there has also been continued harassment at the border crossings and relentless resettlement programmes carried out in the west bank, and the rockets must be seen in that context.
bottom line: the strikes we've seen since 27 december are grossly disproportionate.
and - maybe worst of all - have made this world, and israel itself, an unsafer place.
a real reason for me to consider moving away from london coz london ain't gonna be the safest place on earth in the years coming.
UNLESS we make that STATEMENT.
then we can say to our muslim friends and other friends, and children one day:
we WERE against it.
and we DID something against it.
next stop: the demo.
for the ones who've never been to a demo:
ok, here goes: its simple, safe and even fun.
and it means walking with thousands of other people down london's main roads and squares - and it's quite nice because there wont be any cars and lots of police (spread out on the sides, polite and smiling) all over. so, quite a cool 'hike' through central london.
and yes, there will be crazy anti-american, muesli-eating and birkenstock-sandals wearing hippies with provocative banners, too. but they're not in the majority. so, just ignore them.
also, there will be speakers - usually at the end - probably on trafalgar square. and it'll be quite interesting to listen to them. again, there will be extreme ones like george galloway. but there will be as many moderate ones - like human rights lawyer Bianca Jagger, who explicitely recognises israel's right to exists and always makes a point of that.
so, lets make this more mainstream coz thats what it should be.
if anyone can't make 2pm sharp, no worries, just get off at regents park, great portland street - or if youre a little late - try oxford circus - and then walk towards downing street and trafalgar square.
the demo will end - possibly around 3 or 4pm at trafalgar square and then the speakers will make their speeches.
if anyone wants to meet up with me and go there together, let me know. 0798 1909076.
this matters. this was the grossest war we've seen in ages - worse than lebanon in summer of 2007 and than the ones before that. even if the world's been caught up in post-christmas diets, new year's eve party planning, credit crunch-worries and obamania.
for more info on everything, also the demo, go to http://globaldayofaction.org/stopwar/
feel free to fwd this to your friends!
isabella
Assemble 2pm, BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA
Nearest Tube Regents Park and Great Portland Place)
March to Trafalgar Square via Downing Street
Thursday, 2 October 2008
More Greece
PART II
couch-surfing
google it if you dont know it. 'the latest trend in making connections - forget facebook'. or: 'a worldwide network for making connections between travellers and the local communities they visit'. and it's good. highly recommended. even though i had been sceptical as i'm generally tired of meeting new people all the time.
on 6 september, sabrina (on her last night), arvin and i joined the athens couch-surfers on a night out in the cute little neighbourhood of plaka followed by hours and hours of squatting on the rocks below the acropolis, playing the guitar, gazing at the illuminated city and - in my case - trying to secure myself a few couches for the coming nights. with amazing results - i secured 3 potential couches and another few phone numbers of people available for showing me around and having coffee.
for the record, all athenians, and not just couch-surfers, were incredibly generous with letting me use their mobiles to make quick phonecalls to make arrangements. this applied to random people on the street, on the tram, in cafes sipping their frappes - i always found someone, usually the first or second person i asked (!) who would, without missing a beat, hand me his/her phone to make a quick call. and no one ever accepted any money. unthinkable in london, where people would suspect i'm trying to steal their identity, make a call to tokyo, or run off with their phone to buy myself a shot of heroine.
but back to our romantic night by the acropolis. around 3 in the morning, that night eventually ended with me bidding my goodbyes, and - right before leaving - making the acquaintance of a guy who introduced himself as nektarius. and off i went and no longer thought of him.
getting lucky
and now - and here comes the story to tell my grandchildren: two days later - arvin had just left for london -, i was standing with my backpack at a metro station called megaros moussikis, fairly central, but not one of the obvious meetings points like syntagma or monastiraki. at that station, i was supposed to meet with a guy named theoharis, a big blondish teddybear type of a couch-surfer and major foreign language talent who had kindly agreed to host me for that night. and with my gaze fixed on the escalators, i waited. and after about 5 mins, my eyes met somebody else's and i recognised nektarius, the chap i had met below the acropolis. i was very surprised to have 'run into an acquaintance' in a city where i didn't know anyone. and he seemed very amused as well and half jokingly suggested i stay with him instead of with theorharis.
and well, it turned out that 1. theoharis had been waiting on the other side of the street, 2. nektarius had come to that place by pure coincidence to meet with another guy to go to a concert with, and that 3. theoharis, nektarius and the third guy all knew each other, but had no idea of each other's respective agreements.
now, for the londoners among you: athens is not exactly a village. we're talking 5 million inhabitants. now imagine not knowing anyone in london, but really no one, then meeting 10 people at an event on, say, leicester square, and then - two days later, running into one of them at the entrance of, say, edgware road tube station, and learning that another two people were on the other street-side.
so. at the end, we decided i'd first drop my stuff off at nektarius' place, half way between megaros moussikis and the concert, and then we'd all go to the concert.
and that arrangement seemed to suit everyone, and the night eventually unfolded with the four of us, soon joined by another few friends of theirs, sitting in an open air amphitheatre, listening to music by nikos ksadakis, rebetika and langourous sounds from magna grecia and relishing the velvety air of a warm summer's night.
and even luckier
and now - to make a long story short and as you may have guessed: i ended up staying at nektarius' place for more than just one night. and spent the next three days walking about athens in the mornings and sitting in his car, listening to more nikos ksadakis and going on road-trips to nearby beaches (luccia) and sightseeing spots in the afternoons and evenings.
and after three more days in and around athens, i decided that what i really needed was an island. reif fuer die insel. and suggested we go to an island together. and, without missing a beat, he said 'sure, let's go to paros for the weekend. that's where my mother and brother live. there we can stay for free and my mother will cook for us.' too good to be true.
and that's exactly what happened. i left even the next day, a week day. i literally escaped athens, which had started to stress me out bigtime with its hugeness and loudness and horrid buses. i took the ferry from piraeus, spent 3 hours relaxing on deck, and then arrived at paros, in paricchia, where nektarius' brother anthonis picked me up at the harbour and drove me to their family home. there, i was assigned a large space of my own, complete with ensuite bathroom, unlimited supply of steaming hot water, a spacious fridge and kitchenette, fresh crisp sheets on a double bed, balcony and washing line. all at 5 minutes walk from the beach, and 10 mins from the stupendous old town. and i could hardly believe my luck.
paros
but it was even to get better. two days later, nektarius joined me and we spent 2 amazing days between the old town of paricchia, where he showed me the beautiful ancient church and site of pilgrimage in the centre, and inside that church the seats with the names of two of his relatives engraved on the backs of them. also, we visited the fishermen's village of aliki where we had dinner, and, the next day, the village of naussa - a jewel of a jolly little place - with colourful houses and fishnets and little churches with lots of burning candles, glittering icons and sleeping kittens. from naussa, we took a little boat to lageri beach, a far-away and pristine spot on a peninsula, where we spent a day swimming, soaking up sunshine and wading in water as clean and low as in a bathtub and feeling like robinson crusoe.
late on sunday night, nektarius had to leave, and i stayed. well integrated into the family by now (well.. (-;) i spent the next few days discussing important issues with nektarius' mother maria, like where to buy the best kadajfi... or karpusi... or stafilji... (turkish pastries, watermelon, grapes), how to eat the kounoupidhi, whether krio or zesti or with ladhi or limuni (cauliflower, hot or cold, with oil or lemon)... how to prepare the psari (fish)... and whether, at a particular time of the day, to call nektarius sto spiti or at his dhulia (at home or at work).
other than that, she told me that until 2004, foreigners from england, germany, france and italy had come to paros in clusters - but that ever since, tourism has severely declined, which she attributed to the introduction of the euro - and, since, tourists going to turkey or egypt instead. she'd write down '1985 - 2004' on a piece of paper and under that '2005 - 2008' and then gesticulate and explain - and i'd have no trouble understand. as a matter of fact, i didn't see that many foreign tourists - at least not to the point of feeling overwhelmed by them. but then again, i was there at the end of the season. apparently, the western tourists have been replaced by rich and often rude athenians who all buy or build property and hence do not need accomodation. the result is that several times every day, when the ferries from athens arrive, clusters of 'kamaki', blokes 'pulling' tourists to their rooms, are basically falling over each other at the harbour to get their meagre share of what is left of tourists needing accomodation. and the prices are by no means particularly low. a spacious double bed room with ensuite bathroom and kitchenette like the one i was given, would have cost 70 euros a night in july and august and 45 euros in june and september.
olla dzaba
and i got all that for free. and that pretty much saved my holiday. on my fifth day, i tried to give kyria maria a 50 euro note just to cover the odd expenses, which she vehemently declined. then, when she wasn't looking, i placed it next to her telephone - just to have her knock on my door about 10 mins later, with a disgusted expression on her face, holding the 'dirty' bill wrapped in a napkin, and throwing it onto my kitchen floor. and she said 'byebye' and hurried back upstairs. after a split-second of shock, i quickly closed the door behind her and almost laughed my head off.
my next attempt at giving them something back consisted in buying the family some baklava. not just any baklava, but first rate baklava (and i like to think i'm a specialist (-;). and kyria maria, her friend angela and myself sitting upstairs on the terrace and discussing at what bakery i had bought it. megalo, magazin, fornaris, platia, kentro, banka (big, shop, bakery, square, centre, bank) - and a lot of gesticulating did the trick. and they congratulated me on my choice. and later that night, when that baklava had been washed down with copious amounts of wine and water and digested with the help of silly jokes told by ladi, anthonis' albanian mate and neighbour, maria had the grace to once again thank me for the pastries.
i was sincerely amazed by the family's kindness and the way in which they shared their kounoupidhi and psari and krasi with me - even though they were very clearly struggling. for illustration, when kyria maria once boiled a couple of eggs for me, she first placed the eggs in a small pot with water into the warm oven where the water could warm up a little, and only after about 5 minutes, she took out the pot, sized it up, decided against the stove, and instead put it onto a tiny gas cooker - all to save the odd penny of electricity.
on my last day, i finally resolved to do business with anthonis instead, and attempted handing him the 50 euro note. at first, he wouldn't accept it either, but when i - inspired by his mother - dropped it into his pocket and acted annoyed, he no longer resisted. and everyone seemed happy. and with hindsight, i am still amazed at the family's generosity - those 35 pounds really being just symbolic - for a 9-day stay.
terrace bliss
what else can i add? that kyria maria was really a primary school teacher when she was younger. and that anthonis was glued to the TV all day, half-worrying about the global stockmarket meltdown and the collapse of a major insurance company. and that i loved sitting on their terrace in the evenings when it was still warm, joining anthonis and his mates ladi and yiannis, and maria and angela, in their gossip and trying to get the gist of what they were saying - such as when angela, who cleans dhomatije (rooms) for a living, had been accused of having stolen somebody's suitcase, and ladi, laughing his head off, suggested she gets someone to 'look into the coffee' to tell her who really stole it as to exonerate herself.
at times anthonis tested his broken english on me, at times ladi showed off his bad italian, at again other times i simply understood what they were saying, and at again other times, maria or angela used her hands and feet to explain. what helped was the occasional italian word being used by the family - such as valitsia (suitcase) or coverta (blanket) - remnants of the venetian rule of the cyclades islands. and of course the odd turkish words like dzaba - for free - being the same in bosnian. later i was told that angela was really from georgia, the former soviet union - and had come to greece only about 15 years ago - which, judging from her rapid banter in impeccable greek as far as i could tell (and i did hear ladi's accent) and balkanic temperament, i would never have guessed.
beach bliss
in daytime, i rent a mountain bike for 5 euros a day (!) and explored nearby beaches like the one at agia irini, about 10 km south-west of paricchia. there i made the acquaintance of a happy threesome of greeks, consisting of a guy named thomas, born and bred on the island, and his two mates penelope and alexandra, originally from athens. it turns out many athenians have come to live on paros - buying property and moving there - just because they're tired of athens. i met thomas and co. on three consecutive days. on the third day, he dived into the water equipped with a big butcher's knife, and came out with a bag full of ahinos (urchins), a delicacy tasting of mussles and crammed with zinc and other minerals - sold for lots of money in the restaurants on the island - and we ate them on the beach.
at agia irini beach, i tried to cure my chronic sunshine deficit - catching up on three lousy london summers and probably a vitamine D insufficiency (-; - and thoroughly soaked up as much sun as i could. on my last day, i even tried to get myself a sunburn on my whitest and waxiest bits - hoping it would turn into a bit of a tan later on. and i spent as much time as i could swimming and floating in the soft and velvety, clear blue water, trying to imprint its silkyness and smoothness on my skin's 'sensory memory'...
back to athina
after 9 days altogether, i took another ferry and left the island. and made my way back to the capital.
and there i had another 4 days to go before catching my flight back to london. and - hey, i really need to wrap this up now - those last days nektarius and i spent having dinners at a place called barbayan (?) at exarhia..., driving to a most amazing couch-surfing party with overnight stay at the house of a couch-surfing member on the peninsular of evia... and, on my last night, going to a yummy and yet improvised dinner party at the home of an absolutely crazy and funny and very talented chef and couch-surfing member named stefanos.
and talking about delicious food, i can't possibly not mention that at 'barbayan' at exarhia we ate the most luscious fried aubergines with friend aubergines topped with fried aubergines... and other tantalising and orgasmic (ok, now i'm exaggerating...) 'lathera'... - my new favourite word in greek - ... veggies and other bits cooked in oil... papucaki, fasolakia, filled aubergines, green beans, stuffed wineleaves, tomatoes and so on...
- and i knew what i had come to greece for.
but hey, let that be the end of this - hopefully not too boring - tale.
my little greek odysee. which ended up lasting 30 days. and instead of eating up my money, allowed me to save some.
and let's hope i will have the opportunity to come back - which i'm sure will be the case.
and last, but by no means least - i almost forgot to mention that on the morning of the day i met the couch-surfers and nektarius below the acropolis, i had finally gotten my act together and looked up the athenian branch of the SGI - the buddhist organisation i belong to - and joined them for their saturday morning 'service' or meditation. maybe not a coincidence. certainly not in buddhist terms.
hugs from islington!
isabella
couch-surfing
google it if you dont know it. 'the latest trend in making connections - forget facebook'. or: 'a worldwide network for making connections between travellers and the local communities they visit'. and it's good. highly recommended. even though i had been sceptical as i'm generally tired of meeting new people all the time.
on 6 september, sabrina (on her last night), arvin and i joined the athens couch-surfers on a night out in the cute little neighbourhood of plaka followed by hours and hours of squatting on the rocks below the acropolis, playing the guitar, gazing at the illuminated city and - in my case - trying to secure myself a few couches for the coming nights. with amazing results - i secured 3 potential couches and another few phone numbers of people available for showing me around and having coffee.
for the record, all athenians, and not just couch-surfers, were incredibly generous with letting me use their mobiles to make quick phonecalls to make arrangements. this applied to random people on the street, on the tram, in cafes sipping their frappes - i always found someone, usually the first or second person i asked (!) who would, without missing a beat, hand me his/her phone to make a quick call. and no one ever accepted any money. unthinkable in london, where people would suspect i'm trying to steal their identity, make a call to tokyo, or run off with their phone to buy myself a shot of heroine.
but back to our romantic night by the acropolis. around 3 in the morning, that night eventually ended with me bidding my goodbyes, and - right before leaving - making the acquaintance of a guy who introduced himself as nektarius. and off i went and no longer thought of him.
getting lucky
and now - and here comes the story to tell my grandchildren: two days later - arvin had just left for london -, i was standing with my backpack at a metro station called megaros moussikis, fairly central, but not one of the obvious meetings points like syntagma or monastiraki. at that station, i was supposed to meet with a guy named theoharis, a big blondish teddybear type of a couch-surfer and major foreign language talent who had kindly agreed to host me for that night. and with my gaze fixed on the escalators, i waited. and after about 5 mins, my eyes met somebody else's and i recognised nektarius, the chap i had met below the acropolis. i was very surprised to have 'run into an acquaintance' in a city where i didn't know anyone. and he seemed very amused as well and half jokingly suggested i stay with him instead of with theorharis.
and well, it turned out that 1. theoharis had been waiting on the other side of the street, 2. nektarius had come to that place by pure coincidence to meet with another guy to go to a concert with, and that 3. theoharis, nektarius and the third guy all knew each other, but had no idea of each other's respective agreements.
now, for the londoners among you: athens is not exactly a village. we're talking 5 million inhabitants. now imagine not knowing anyone in london, but really no one, then meeting 10 people at an event on, say, leicester square, and then - two days later, running into one of them at the entrance of, say, edgware road tube station, and learning that another two people were on the other street-side.
so. at the end, we decided i'd first drop my stuff off at nektarius' place, half way between megaros moussikis and the concert, and then we'd all go to the concert.
and that arrangement seemed to suit everyone, and the night eventually unfolded with the four of us, soon joined by another few friends of theirs, sitting in an open air amphitheatre, listening to music by nikos ksadakis, rebetika and langourous sounds from magna grecia and relishing the velvety air of a warm summer's night.
and even luckier
and now - to make a long story short and as you may have guessed: i ended up staying at nektarius' place for more than just one night. and spent the next three days walking about athens in the mornings and sitting in his car, listening to more nikos ksadakis and going on road-trips to nearby beaches (luccia) and sightseeing spots in the afternoons and evenings.
and after three more days in and around athens, i decided that what i really needed was an island. reif fuer die insel. and suggested we go to an island together. and, without missing a beat, he said 'sure, let's go to paros for the weekend. that's where my mother and brother live. there we can stay for free and my mother will cook for us.' too good to be true.
and that's exactly what happened. i left even the next day, a week day. i literally escaped athens, which had started to stress me out bigtime with its hugeness and loudness and horrid buses. i took the ferry from piraeus, spent 3 hours relaxing on deck, and then arrived at paros, in paricchia, where nektarius' brother anthonis picked me up at the harbour and drove me to their family home. there, i was assigned a large space of my own, complete with ensuite bathroom, unlimited supply of steaming hot water, a spacious fridge and kitchenette, fresh crisp sheets on a double bed, balcony and washing line. all at 5 minutes walk from the beach, and 10 mins from the stupendous old town. and i could hardly believe my luck.
paros
but it was even to get better. two days later, nektarius joined me and we spent 2 amazing days between the old town of paricchia, where he showed me the beautiful ancient church and site of pilgrimage in the centre, and inside that church the seats with the names of two of his relatives engraved on the backs of them. also, we visited the fishermen's village of aliki where we had dinner, and, the next day, the village of naussa - a jewel of a jolly little place - with colourful houses and fishnets and little churches with lots of burning candles, glittering icons and sleeping kittens. from naussa, we took a little boat to lageri beach, a far-away and pristine spot on a peninsula, where we spent a day swimming, soaking up sunshine and wading in water as clean and low as in a bathtub and feeling like robinson crusoe.
late on sunday night, nektarius had to leave, and i stayed. well integrated into the family by now (well.. (-;) i spent the next few days discussing important issues with nektarius' mother maria, like where to buy the best kadajfi... or karpusi... or stafilji... (turkish pastries, watermelon, grapes), how to eat the kounoupidhi, whether krio or zesti or with ladhi or limuni (cauliflower, hot or cold, with oil or lemon)... how to prepare the psari (fish)... and whether, at a particular time of the day, to call nektarius sto spiti or at his dhulia (at home or at work).
other than that, she told me that until 2004, foreigners from england, germany, france and italy had come to paros in clusters - but that ever since, tourism has severely declined, which she attributed to the introduction of the euro - and, since, tourists going to turkey or egypt instead. she'd write down '1985 - 2004' on a piece of paper and under that '2005 - 2008' and then gesticulate and explain - and i'd have no trouble understand. as a matter of fact, i didn't see that many foreign tourists - at least not to the point of feeling overwhelmed by them. but then again, i was there at the end of the season. apparently, the western tourists have been replaced by rich and often rude athenians who all buy or build property and hence do not need accomodation. the result is that several times every day, when the ferries from athens arrive, clusters of 'kamaki', blokes 'pulling' tourists to their rooms, are basically falling over each other at the harbour to get their meagre share of what is left of tourists needing accomodation. and the prices are by no means particularly low. a spacious double bed room with ensuite bathroom and kitchenette like the one i was given, would have cost 70 euros a night in july and august and 45 euros in june and september.
olla dzaba
and i got all that for free. and that pretty much saved my holiday. on my fifth day, i tried to give kyria maria a 50 euro note just to cover the odd expenses, which she vehemently declined. then, when she wasn't looking, i placed it next to her telephone - just to have her knock on my door about 10 mins later, with a disgusted expression on her face, holding the 'dirty' bill wrapped in a napkin, and throwing it onto my kitchen floor. and she said 'byebye' and hurried back upstairs. after a split-second of shock, i quickly closed the door behind her and almost laughed my head off.
my next attempt at giving them something back consisted in buying the family some baklava. not just any baklava, but first rate baklava (and i like to think i'm a specialist (-;). and kyria maria, her friend angela and myself sitting upstairs on the terrace and discussing at what bakery i had bought it. megalo, magazin, fornaris, platia, kentro, banka (big, shop, bakery, square, centre, bank) - and a lot of gesticulating did the trick. and they congratulated me on my choice. and later that night, when that baklava had been washed down with copious amounts of wine and water and digested with the help of silly jokes told by ladi, anthonis' albanian mate and neighbour, maria had the grace to once again thank me for the pastries.
i was sincerely amazed by the family's kindness and the way in which they shared their kounoupidhi and psari and krasi with me - even though they were very clearly struggling. for illustration, when kyria maria once boiled a couple of eggs for me, she first placed the eggs in a small pot with water into the warm oven where the water could warm up a little, and only after about 5 minutes, she took out the pot, sized it up, decided against the stove, and instead put it onto a tiny gas cooker - all to save the odd penny of electricity.
on my last day, i finally resolved to do business with anthonis instead, and attempted handing him the 50 euro note. at first, he wouldn't accept it either, but when i - inspired by his mother - dropped it into his pocket and acted annoyed, he no longer resisted. and everyone seemed happy. and with hindsight, i am still amazed at the family's generosity - those 35 pounds really being just symbolic - for a 9-day stay.
terrace bliss
what else can i add? that kyria maria was really a primary school teacher when she was younger. and that anthonis was glued to the TV all day, half-worrying about the global stockmarket meltdown and the collapse of a major insurance company. and that i loved sitting on their terrace in the evenings when it was still warm, joining anthonis and his mates ladi and yiannis, and maria and angela, in their gossip and trying to get the gist of what they were saying - such as when angela, who cleans dhomatije (rooms) for a living, had been accused of having stolen somebody's suitcase, and ladi, laughing his head off, suggested she gets someone to 'look into the coffee' to tell her who really stole it as to exonerate herself.
at times anthonis tested his broken english on me, at times ladi showed off his bad italian, at again other times i simply understood what they were saying, and at again other times, maria or angela used her hands and feet to explain. what helped was the occasional italian word being used by the family - such as valitsia (suitcase) or coverta (blanket) - remnants of the venetian rule of the cyclades islands. and of course the odd turkish words like dzaba - for free - being the same in bosnian. later i was told that angela was really from georgia, the former soviet union - and had come to greece only about 15 years ago - which, judging from her rapid banter in impeccable greek as far as i could tell (and i did hear ladi's accent) and balkanic temperament, i would never have guessed.
beach bliss
in daytime, i rent a mountain bike for 5 euros a day (!) and explored nearby beaches like the one at agia irini, about 10 km south-west of paricchia. there i made the acquaintance of a happy threesome of greeks, consisting of a guy named thomas, born and bred on the island, and his two mates penelope and alexandra, originally from athens. it turns out many athenians have come to live on paros - buying property and moving there - just because they're tired of athens. i met thomas and co. on three consecutive days. on the third day, he dived into the water equipped with a big butcher's knife, and came out with a bag full of ahinos (urchins), a delicacy tasting of mussles and crammed with zinc and other minerals - sold for lots of money in the restaurants on the island - and we ate them on the beach.
at agia irini beach, i tried to cure my chronic sunshine deficit - catching up on three lousy london summers and probably a vitamine D insufficiency (-; - and thoroughly soaked up as much sun as i could. on my last day, i even tried to get myself a sunburn on my whitest and waxiest bits - hoping it would turn into a bit of a tan later on. and i spent as much time as i could swimming and floating in the soft and velvety, clear blue water, trying to imprint its silkyness and smoothness on my skin's 'sensory memory'...
back to athina
after 9 days altogether, i took another ferry and left the island. and made my way back to the capital.
and there i had another 4 days to go before catching my flight back to london. and - hey, i really need to wrap this up now - those last days nektarius and i spent having dinners at a place called barbayan (?) at exarhia..., driving to a most amazing couch-surfing party with overnight stay at the house of a couch-surfing member on the peninsular of evia... and, on my last night, going to a yummy and yet improvised dinner party at the home of an absolutely crazy and funny and very talented chef and couch-surfing member named stefanos.
and talking about delicious food, i can't possibly not mention that at 'barbayan' at exarhia we ate the most luscious fried aubergines with friend aubergines topped with fried aubergines... and other tantalising and orgasmic (ok, now i'm exaggerating...) 'lathera'... - my new favourite word in greek - ... veggies and other bits cooked in oil... papucaki, fasolakia, filled aubergines, green beans, stuffed wineleaves, tomatoes and so on...
- and i knew what i had come to greece for.
but hey, let that be the end of this - hopefully not too boring - tale.
my little greek odysee. which ended up lasting 30 days. and instead of eating up my money, allowed me to save some.
and let's hope i will have the opportunity to come back - which i'm sure will be the case.
and last, but by no means least - i almost forgot to mention that on the morning of the day i met the couch-surfers and nektarius below the acropolis, i had finally gotten my act together and looked up the athenian branch of the SGI - the buddhist organisation i belong to - and joined them for their saturday morning 'service' or meditation. maybe not a coincidence. certainly not in buddhist terms.
hugs from islington!
isabella
Greece
PART I
escape from london
tired from my job-hunt in london and with very little money, i finally boarded my flight to athens, athina, on 26 august, which i had booked several months earlier, to make my way to nafplio, a small town on the peloponnese, where, on 30 august, two greek friends from london were to get married. i was very excited, and hoping to finally get my share of something resembling a bit of a summer. august 2008 in london had been worse than august 2007 and august 2007 had been about as bad as a summer could possibly get. with lumpy grey skies hanging low over an edgy city and depressed people walking about, putting on fake smiles, and going to the gym everyday to beat their chronic winter-blues.
so, the prospect of getting away from it all, to athina, to greece, to a mediterranean country, to another life on another planet - held a promise nothing short of salvation and deliverance. deliverance from all the shabbiness and constant frustrations of my life in london, perpetually closing doors and antagonisingly polite voices carrying messages of rejection on topics as varied as bank accounts, overdrafts, appointments at the eastman dental hospital, a deal with virgin mobile and jobs applied for through recruitment agencies. hick-ups and negativity all over the place - high time for a serious shift.
so, when on a cold and ugly 25 august i locked the door behind my tiny ground floor flat and walked out of the council estate, i felt that my 'real life' was finally dawning, and a snappy little voice inside me told me that i wouldn't be back any time soon.
petros
at gatwick airport, i was surrounded by an army of overweight red-faced and white-bossomed english people, off to their late summer holiday. and the only greek person i spotted was a handsome young fellow, standing out somehow, in his mid-or late twenties, and i decided i'd sit next to him. and that's what happended, and i spent the next 4 and a half hours (the flight was delayed) learning my first greek phrases. starting with 'then eho pai pote stin ellada' or 'i have never been to greece before' and ending with 'to megalo tondro elleniko gamo' or 'my big fat greek wedding'. and obviously - as i always do - i played my little game freaking people out with my good pronunciation and speed at which i'd pick up even lenghty phrases (which doesn't mean i'll still remember it 10 minutes later). and it worked this time like it always does.
and the guy, petros was his name, loosened up and we dived straight into a fun conversation about everything and anything and the greeks and the english and whether he preferred london over athina or the other way around. and he shared his thoughts about greek doctors taking money from greek patients even if it should be the greek NHS paying for it. and about greeks in greece being generally lazy and lacking in ambition and work ethics. and about greeks in greece being worlds apart from the greeks in london. and, about the fact that 'europe is feeding greece' and has been for a while. and, last, but not least, about greeks having huge inferiority complexes when going abroad and behaving accordingly. and i was amused. and beginning to ask myself whether petros was greek at all. needless to say that he didn't smoke or drink black coffee. and that his only distinctively greek vice was to eat souvlaki at thanassis, famous-infamous for its juicy and soft meat chops ('no one knows what they put in it')...
and i held that against something i had read on a Greek website, written by another Greek traveller, a certain Costas, who sustained that 'in greece, everything is better than in holland' - yes, he was comparing it to holland -' except for gouda and salaries'. and i felt tempted to substitute gouda with cheddar, fish 'n chips or guiness. and trade that in for better weather, food, friendships, music, sex, prices, beaches and parties. or whatever the guy had been thinking of.
no plan's land
i finally landed in athina, and to cut a long story short - because otherwise i'll still be sitting here tomorrow, telling, re-telling the ins and outs of every encounter with every greek person i met there - i will skip a few episodes, and get straight to the gist of what i'm here to tell.
when i first got to greece on 26 august, i didn't have much of an idea of what i'd be doing there. i just knew that upon my arrival i'd be staying with my old friend/acquaintance katerina for two nights. and that on thursday 28, i would move on to nafplio, where another wedding guest, renia, whom i had met at the groom's name-day party in london half a year earlier, had reserved a two-bed room for three nights for us. on saturday 30 at 6pm 'when the heat from the day is waning' - yes, greek people marry in the evenings - i knew there would be the wedding itself. and on sunday 31, i suspected we'd sleep all day.
and after that, i had no plans. and still another 7 days to go. my return flight was on 6 september. and i was worried about not getting what i wanted. that is, the real thing - the real greek experience - the real mediterranean experience, eastern mediterranean that is - with all its madness, exhilaration and crudeness. and sanity-restoring sincerity and straightforwardness. and kindness and generosity. and that different rythm to life, that rythm i knew from bosnia and serbia and italy. that heart-warming and energising way of interacting, cracking jokes and having a good time - and not just over a bucketful of pints after a certain hour, but throughout the day, as a way of life.
now, of course i had an inkling that the 'deliverance' from my woes in london and a real sense of recreation and recharging my batteries wouldn't have kicked in after only 12 days, arrival and return days included. and yet, i had no one to stay with or travel with for longer, and hence, when booking my flight, pressed '6 september', with a tear in one eye, and hoped for, against all odds, to somehow get what i wanted anyway.
and then, the day of my departure, i decided i'd have a great holiday no matter what.
and this is how things unfolded:
athina and nafplio
when i first got to athens, i was sick. temperature and a throat infection. and so i spent two days and two nights tucked up in katerina's guest bed in her flat in kifissia, a posh neighbourhood in the north of Athens, trying to get better and telling myself not to fret too much about losing 2 of my precious 12 days. the latter not being that easy.
on day 3 i eventually took the tube to piraeus where i boarded a train to korinthos, and from there a bus to nafplio, where i arrived after a 3,4 hour trip altogether. in nafplio, i found the room renia had booked at hotel athina and spent the rest of the day in bed - sweating, coughing, sneezing - not a lot of fun - and renia, who arrived shortly after me - putting up with it heroically.
the next two days were spent sleeping, visiting mykene, sleeping again, skipping epidavros, sleeping some more and, on friday 29 august, eventually joining the rest of the wedding guests from out of town on a pre-wedding night get-together on the beach... and, later that night, an attempt at checking out the local clubbing scene consisting of two or three bars altogether, one next to another, outdoors, on an elevated sidewalk leading to yet another beach - with a splendid view of a most beautiful skyline over a night-black sea and glittering lights on the horizon. no wonder they say that nafplio is one of the most beautiful towns in greece.
and i'd have plenty of occasion to convince myself of that again over the coming week. nafplio is made up of narrow streets laced with pretty little houses converted into small museums, squares made out of polished marble, shining in the morning sun and in the evening lights, with couples, parents and small children playing on them until late at night, and countless little boutiques selling crafts and jewelry at every corner, very much like in sarajevo. no wonder nafplio had been greece's first capital, and some leaflet referred to it as greece's 'most elegant city'.
my favourite spots in nafplio were the beautiful little church of agia paneia (?)where i lit many a candle, the icecream place selling home-made icecream tasting of kadajfi, and, next door, the guy making beautiful bright blue kombolois out of miniature dice, spelling out people's names.
D&G's big fat greek wedding
and then the wedding itself. well, if i was to recount it all, i'd still be here tomorrow morning. here, just a few highlights.
the 'stag' and 'hen' dos: dimitris in his underwear getting dressed by his pontiac-samothracean cousins. georgia-cinderella, surrounded by her numerous arcadian-aeginean family, trying on her satin shoes and writing her single girl-friends' names on their soles. dimitris being fed big bites of sweet round pies and having to pay money to get his second shoe. georgia riding off in a horse-drawn carriage.
the service: at the church of ai-yiannis. really beautiful. byzantine, ancient. priests in heavily adorned, embroidered robes walking around in circles, chanting, swaying incense, placing wraths on the bride and grooms' necks and shoulders, candles flickering, more chanting, more incense, the lithurgy, the rings, the vows - i felt elated. and yet almost fainted as i was shaken by another bout of temperature and other flu-like symptoms.
the feast: great location by the seaside and the sunset and the breaking waves, great food with luscious bits of baked aubergine and all sorts of other delicacies, great and crazy guests from both north-western and south-eastern europe, great dancing and live music from thrace and the peloponnese - and everyone who was there, will have taken home their own unforgettable memories.
more nafplio
and then, at some point, the beautiful big fat greek wedding was behind us and we all said goodbye. and the next day, my cold was waning (the day after the wedding - what outrageous timing) - and my friend sabrina from london had finally, very last-minute, booked her flight to athens and joined me in nafplio on sunday 31st august. and... i was delighted.
to make a long story short - sabrina and i basically spent the next 5 days lazing around nafplio, with no desire to do much else than sleep in the morning, sleep again in the afternoon, and drag ourselves to arvanitsia beach at some point in between. there we tried chatting up the occasional, unresponsive italian - one of them, a lonesome ranger archeologist whom we crossed at least twice a day -, and kept running into georgia's mother sitting at the same cafe at the same time every afternoon - once with her son, once with her husband and twice with her friend - just when we made our way back from the beach to the hotel. eventually, we were withdrawing to our daily evening meal trying out another restaurant every night - where we spent our money on wine and fish and - of course - baked aubergines and papucaki (i'm a junkie)... and discussed the 'events' of the day.
our favourite topics: 1. why the lonesome ranger italian was resisting our charm. 2. what life must be like being georgia's mother who, every day of her life, has the luxury of sitting herself down after a certain hour at a cafe facing the seafront, breathing the salt, letting her mind wander, and watching her friends and family walk by and sit down next to her. 3. what exactly the albanian waiter lendi meant when he invited us to 'join him in his house' later that first evening. 4. whether to finally take a bus to mistra or olympia the next morning or just keep lazing around in nafplio. we never made much progress on any of those subjects, which got drowned in buckets full of wine and the odd ouzo on the house, and we took them up again the next evening.
and eventually time was up and sabrina and i returned to athens, allowing her to catch her flight home and me, to change mine from the 6th to the 17th. what exactly i had in mind and how i intended to spend those remaining 10 days, i still didn't know. i just knew that my holiday had just about started now and that this was not the time to go back.
persian connection
and here begins the persian chapter of my little greek saga. on 5 september, i met up with arvin, my persian friend from london, who was staying at the flat of his designer cousin sofia in athens. sofia being absent and the flat being inhabited solely by arvin and his other cousin mamad, we divided the space up between the three of us. to my benefit - being good boys from good families, arvin and mamad gave me the only proper bed in the flat and themselves slept on couches and cushions on the ground.
the flat was near omonia. on alkiviadou street. off III septembriou, gourmeli, stournari, aristotelou, losios, marni, makedonias - all those being names of streets in the neighbourhood that i frantically typed into my mobile on my first morning, hoping to find my way back to the flat later that day. and nevertheless, for some reason, kept turning around in circles and getting lost every single day. all streets, all junctions, all houses and shops looking the same, all huge and ugly and overwhelming and noisy.
i spent the next three days getting stressed at internet cafes over a job application, and, other than that, watched persian music TV via satellite and the boys (mock-) lap-dancing in the sitting room. in the afternoons, arvin, mamad, their friends ali and ahmed and i usually took the tram at syntagma square and went down to the beach, towards glifada, but getting off at edem. now, edem was - compared to nafplio or - later - paros - hardly worth mentioning. and yet, when arriving at that beach late those afternoons, together with other athenians coming straight from work, feeling the warmth of the sea even at that time of the day and swimming into the sunset - was an experience in its own right. and on the beach the boys were cracking jokes in persian, arvin played translator and i tried my best not to mix up my newly acquired greek with my even fresher - few hours' old - 5 words of persian - and not to judge those kids for not having bothered to learn any english, let alone greek in the days or weeks they had been here.
immigrants
persians, it turns out, are quite a common sight in athens these days - with a lot of immigrants from asia and africa populating the place, including somalis, nigerians, afghans and iraqis... - most of them clustered together in the big cities of athens, thessaloniki and patras. in athens, most of them are concentrated around omonia square - precisely where i was staying. with a lot of crime going on - drugs and prostitition mainly - on the other side of the square, in the area flanking the acropolis, on geraniou and socratelis streets and theatrou square (or similar). in 'my' neighbourhood, around the flat, i saw a lot of ukrainians and arabs - one arab being the owner of 'my' internet cafe and one ukrainian the manager. and many more lingering about in and around an array of cafes - cafe sevastopol on one corner, a falafel and shisha place on another one. and the odd nigerian prostitute on a nearby sidewalk later that night.
in a conversation with a greek social worker later that week, i was told that greece has a serious immigration problem and that the greek authorities aren't doing much to support the immigrants, but rather deliberately neglect them as to signal them that they don't have a future in their country. as a result, the immigrants fall prey to organised criminals, also immigrants, who - in exchange for their services in drug or prostition deals - provide them with free accomodation and pay for their utility bills.
the ukrainians and albanians seem to yet enjoy a special status. being europeans, they tend to have learnt the language - greek - in record speed - many of them speaking greek without an accent. and many a ukrainian woman - of all ages - seems to have found herself a decent greek husband. albanians are a different category still - most of the ones i saw being men doing odd jobs from olive picking to building and painting. and it seems that they are only now - after almost two decades since they started coming - beginning to shed their bad reputation. the greeks seem to have concluded at last that albanians aren't the worst thing that has happened to them, and that many albanians are infact honest and hardworking people, and - in terms of lifestyle and mentality - very similar to the greeks themselves.
athehran
'my' persians however didn't have any ambitions of staying in the country. they were there on holiday. going west from iran - like ali who was there for just two weeks and heading straight to the army upon his return to tehran. or going south-east from london - like arvin, who clearly felt nostalgic about iran and anything resembling it. and athens, so i was told, resembled it a great deal.
we spent the next few days living on 2,5 euros a day - 1,50 euros being spent on our daily big fat ration of falafel acquired in the iraqi falafel shop on losios street - and for the rest chewing on pita bread - on the beach mainly -, hot peppers and cheap chocolate chip cookies. the main stimulation to our stomachs being not food, but ali's jokes.
like this one: on a taxiride around tehran, an american asks the taxidriver about a certain building on a street corner, and the taxi driver replies 'yes, that is the soandso building - built 2000 years ago'. the american replies - 'pa, in america, we'd build that in just 2 months', and they ride on.
on another streetcorner, the american inquires about another building - the answer is, again 'that building is 500 years old' and the american says - 'pa, in america we'd build that in just 1 month'.
on a third street corner, the american asks about yet another building. and the taxi driver turns his head, looks, looks again, and suddenly says, 'i have no idea - it wasn't there 1 hour ago!'
and so on. one joke upon another. relentlessly. ali had a whole collection of them, most of them playing on ethnic themes - taking the p... out of the persians, the turks, the ... (forgot the name of that group). over and over again, in all possible fashions - some made up at the spur of the moment, some being good old classics. and it was hilarious. note that out of the three guys present in that greek tram that one afternoon, one was pars (arvin), one turk (ali) and one ... (that third group - ahmed). and all spoke persian - albeit ahmed with a funny accent. and we laughed our heads off. and thoroughly did away with every form of political correctness.
on monday 8 september, arvin flew back to london and i decided to move on, too. and embark on part II of my greek experience. which - i didn't know that yet - would cause me to change my flight again - and last for another full two weeks.
escape from london
tired from my job-hunt in london and with very little money, i finally boarded my flight to athens, athina, on 26 august, which i had booked several months earlier, to make my way to nafplio, a small town on the peloponnese, where, on 30 august, two greek friends from london were to get married. i was very excited, and hoping to finally get my share of something resembling a bit of a summer. august 2008 in london had been worse than august 2007 and august 2007 had been about as bad as a summer could possibly get. with lumpy grey skies hanging low over an edgy city and depressed people walking about, putting on fake smiles, and going to the gym everyday to beat their chronic winter-blues.
so, the prospect of getting away from it all, to athina, to greece, to a mediterranean country, to another life on another planet - held a promise nothing short of salvation and deliverance. deliverance from all the shabbiness and constant frustrations of my life in london, perpetually closing doors and antagonisingly polite voices carrying messages of rejection on topics as varied as bank accounts, overdrafts, appointments at the eastman dental hospital, a deal with virgin mobile and jobs applied for through recruitment agencies. hick-ups and negativity all over the place - high time for a serious shift.
so, when on a cold and ugly 25 august i locked the door behind my tiny ground floor flat and walked out of the council estate, i felt that my 'real life' was finally dawning, and a snappy little voice inside me told me that i wouldn't be back any time soon.
petros
at gatwick airport, i was surrounded by an army of overweight red-faced and white-bossomed english people, off to their late summer holiday. and the only greek person i spotted was a handsome young fellow, standing out somehow, in his mid-or late twenties, and i decided i'd sit next to him. and that's what happended, and i spent the next 4 and a half hours (the flight was delayed) learning my first greek phrases. starting with 'then eho pai pote stin ellada' or 'i have never been to greece before' and ending with 'to megalo tondro elleniko gamo' or 'my big fat greek wedding'. and obviously - as i always do - i played my little game freaking people out with my good pronunciation and speed at which i'd pick up even lenghty phrases (which doesn't mean i'll still remember it 10 minutes later). and it worked this time like it always does.
and the guy, petros was his name, loosened up and we dived straight into a fun conversation about everything and anything and the greeks and the english and whether he preferred london over athina or the other way around. and he shared his thoughts about greek doctors taking money from greek patients even if it should be the greek NHS paying for it. and about greeks in greece being generally lazy and lacking in ambition and work ethics. and about greeks in greece being worlds apart from the greeks in london. and, about the fact that 'europe is feeding greece' and has been for a while. and, last, but not least, about greeks having huge inferiority complexes when going abroad and behaving accordingly. and i was amused. and beginning to ask myself whether petros was greek at all. needless to say that he didn't smoke or drink black coffee. and that his only distinctively greek vice was to eat souvlaki at thanassis, famous-infamous for its juicy and soft meat chops ('no one knows what they put in it')...
and i held that against something i had read on a Greek website, written by another Greek traveller, a certain Costas, who sustained that 'in greece, everything is better than in holland' - yes, he was comparing it to holland -' except for gouda and salaries'. and i felt tempted to substitute gouda with cheddar, fish 'n chips or guiness. and trade that in for better weather, food, friendships, music, sex, prices, beaches and parties. or whatever the guy had been thinking of.
no plan's land
i finally landed in athina, and to cut a long story short - because otherwise i'll still be sitting here tomorrow, telling, re-telling the ins and outs of every encounter with every greek person i met there - i will skip a few episodes, and get straight to the gist of what i'm here to tell.
when i first got to greece on 26 august, i didn't have much of an idea of what i'd be doing there. i just knew that upon my arrival i'd be staying with my old friend/acquaintance katerina for two nights. and that on thursday 28, i would move on to nafplio, where another wedding guest, renia, whom i had met at the groom's name-day party in london half a year earlier, had reserved a two-bed room for three nights for us. on saturday 30 at 6pm 'when the heat from the day is waning' - yes, greek people marry in the evenings - i knew there would be the wedding itself. and on sunday 31, i suspected we'd sleep all day.
and after that, i had no plans. and still another 7 days to go. my return flight was on 6 september. and i was worried about not getting what i wanted. that is, the real thing - the real greek experience - the real mediterranean experience, eastern mediterranean that is - with all its madness, exhilaration and crudeness. and sanity-restoring sincerity and straightforwardness. and kindness and generosity. and that different rythm to life, that rythm i knew from bosnia and serbia and italy. that heart-warming and energising way of interacting, cracking jokes and having a good time - and not just over a bucketful of pints after a certain hour, but throughout the day, as a way of life.
now, of course i had an inkling that the 'deliverance' from my woes in london and a real sense of recreation and recharging my batteries wouldn't have kicked in after only 12 days, arrival and return days included. and yet, i had no one to stay with or travel with for longer, and hence, when booking my flight, pressed '6 september', with a tear in one eye, and hoped for, against all odds, to somehow get what i wanted anyway.
and then, the day of my departure, i decided i'd have a great holiday no matter what.
and this is how things unfolded:
athina and nafplio
when i first got to athens, i was sick. temperature and a throat infection. and so i spent two days and two nights tucked up in katerina's guest bed in her flat in kifissia, a posh neighbourhood in the north of Athens, trying to get better and telling myself not to fret too much about losing 2 of my precious 12 days. the latter not being that easy.
on day 3 i eventually took the tube to piraeus where i boarded a train to korinthos, and from there a bus to nafplio, where i arrived after a 3,4 hour trip altogether. in nafplio, i found the room renia had booked at hotel athina and spent the rest of the day in bed - sweating, coughing, sneezing - not a lot of fun - and renia, who arrived shortly after me - putting up with it heroically.
the next two days were spent sleeping, visiting mykene, sleeping again, skipping epidavros, sleeping some more and, on friday 29 august, eventually joining the rest of the wedding guests from out of town on a pre-wedding night get-together on the beach... and, later that night, an attempt at checking out the local clubbing scene consisting of two or three bars altogether, one next to another, outdoors, on an elevated sidewalk leading to yet another beach - with a splendid view of a most beautiful skyline over a night-black sea and glittering lights on the horizon. no wonder they say that nafplio is one of the most beautiful towns in greece.
and i'd have plenty of occasion to convince myself of that again over the coming week. nafplio is made up of narrow streets laced with pretty little houses converted into small museums, squares made out of polished marble, shining in the morning sun and in the evening lights, with couples, parents and small children playing on them until late at night, and countless little boutiques selling crafts and jewelry at every corner, very much like in sarajevo. no wonder nafplio had been greece's first capital, and some leaflet referred to it as greece's 'most elegant city'.
my favourite spots in nafplio were the beautiful little church of agia paneia (?)where i lit many a candle, the icecream place selling home-made icecream tasting of kadajfi, and, next door, the guy making beautiful bright blue kombolois out of miniature dice, spelling out people's names.
D&G's big fat greek wedding
and then the wedding itself. well, if i was to recount it all, i'd still be here tomorrow morning. here, just a few highlights.
the 'stag' and 'hen' dos: dimitris in his underwear getting dressed by his pontiac-samothracean cousins. georgia-cinderella, surrounded by her numerous arcadian-aeginean family, trying on her satin shoes and writing her single girl-friends' names on their soles. dimitris being fed big bites of sweet round pies and having to pay money to get his second shoe. georgia riding off in a horse-drawn carriage.
the service: at the church of ai-yiannis. really beautiful. byzantine, ancient. priests in heavily adorned, embroidered robes walking around in circles, chanting, swaying incense, placing wraths on the bride and grooms' necks and shoulders, candles flickering, more chanting, more incense, the lithurgy, the rings, the vows - i felt elated. and yet almost fainted as i was shaken by another bout of temperature and other flu-like symptoms.
the feast: great location by the seaside and the sunset and the breaking waves, great food with luscious bits of baked aubergine and all sorts of other delicacies, great and crazy guests from both north-western and south-eastern europe, great dancing and live music from thrace and the peloponnese - and everyone who was there, will have taken home their own unforgettable memories.
more nafplio
and then, at some point, the beautiful big fat greek wedding was behind us and we all said goodbye. and the next day, my cold was waning (the day after the wedding - what outrageous timing) - and my friend sabrina from london had finally, very last-minute, booked her flight to athens and joined me in nafplio on sunday 31st august. and... i was delighted.
to make a long story short - sabrina and i basically spent the next 5 days lazing around nafplio, with no desire to do much else than sleep in the morning, sleep again in the afternoon, and drag ourselves to arvanitsia beach at some point in between. there we tried chatting up the occasional, unresponsive italian - one of them, a lonesome ranger archeologist whom we crossed at least twice a day -, and kept running into georgia's mother sitting at the same cafe at the same time every afternoon - once with her son, once with her husband and twice with her friend - just when we made our way back from the beach to the hotel. eventually, we were withdrawing to our daily evening meal trying out another restaurant every night - where we spent our money on wine and fish and - of course - baked aubergines and papucaki (i'm a junkie)... and discussed the 'events' of the day.
our favourite topics: 1. why the lonesome ranger italian was resisting our charm. 2. what life must be like being georgia's mother who, every day of her life, has the luxury of sitting herself down after a certain hour at a cafe facing the seafront, breathing the salt, letting her mind wander, and watching her friends and family walk by and sit down next to her. 3. what exactly the albanian waiter lendi meant when he invited us to 'join him in his house' later that first evening. 4. whether to finally take a bus to mistra or olympia the next morning or just keep lazing around in nafplio. we never made much progress on any of those subjects, which got drowned in buckets full of wine and the odd ouzo on the house, and we took them up again the next evening.
and eventually time was up and sabrina and i returned to athens, allowing her to catch her flight home and me, to change mine from the 6th to the 17th. what exactly i had in mind and how i intended to spend those remaining 10 days, i still didn't know. i just knew that my holiday had just about started now and that this was not the time to go back.
persian connection
and here begins the persian chapter of my little greek saga. on 5 september, i met up with arvin, my persian friend from london, who was staying at the flat of his designer cousin sofia in athens. sofia being absent and the flat being inhabited solely by arvin and his other cousin mamad, we divided the space up between the three of us. to my benefit - being good boys from good families, arvin and mamad gave me the only proper bed in the flat and themselves slept on couches and cushions on the ground.
the flat was near omonia. on alkiviadou street. off III septembriou, gourmeli, stournari, aristotelou, losios, marni, makedonias - all those being names of streets in the neighbourhood that i frantically typed into my mobile on my first morning, hoping to find my way back to the flat later that day. and nevertheless, for some reason, kept turning around in circles and getting lost every single day. all streets, all junctions, all houses and shops looking the same, all huge and ugly and overwhelming and noisy.
i spent the next three days getting stressed at internet cafes over a job application, and, other than that, watched persian music TV via satellite and the boys (mock-) lap-dancing in the sitting room. in the afternoons, arvin, mamad, their friends ali and ahmed and i usually took the tram at syntagma square and went down to the beach, towards glifada, but getting off at edem. now, edem was - compared to nafplio or - later - paros - hardly worth mentioning. and yet, when arriving at that beach late those afternoons, together with other athenians coming straight from work, feeling the warmth of the sea even at that time of the day and swimming into the sunset - was an experience in its own right. and on the beach the boys were cracking jokes in persian, arvin played translator and i tried my best not to mix up my newly acquired greek with my even fresher - few hours' old - 5 words of persian - and not to judge those kids for not having bothered to learn any english, let alone greek in the days or weeks they had been here.
immigrants
persians, it turns out, are quite a common sight in athens these days - with a lot of immigrants from asia and africa populating the place, including somalis, nigerians, afghans and iraqis... - most of them clustered together in the big cities of athens, thessaloniki and patras. in athens, most of them are concentrated around omonia square - precisely where i was staying. with a lot of crime going on - drugs and prostitition mainly - on the other side of the square, in the area flanking the acropolis, on geraniou and socratelis streets and theatrou square (or similar). in 'my' neighbourhood, around the flat, i saw a lot of ukrainians and arabs - one arab being the owner of 'my' internet cafe and one ukrainian the manager. and many more lingering about in and around an array of cafes - cafe sevastopol on one corner, a falafel and shisha place on another one. and the odd nigerian prostitute on a nearby sidewalk later that night.
in a conversation with a greek social worker later that week, i was told that greece has a serious immigration problem and that the greek authorities aren't doing much to support the immigrants, but rather deliberately neglect them as to signal them that they don't have a future in their country. as a result, the immigrants fall prey to organised criminals, also immigrants, who - in exchange for their services in drug or prostition deals - provide them with free accomodation and pay for their utility bills.
the ukrainians and albanians seem to yet enjoy a special status. being europeans, they tend to have learnt the language - greek - in record speed - many of them speaking greek without an accent. and many a ukrainian woman - of all ages - seems to have found herself a decent greek husband. albanians are a different category still - most of the ones i saw being men doing odd jobs from olive picking to building and painting. and it seems that they are only now - after almost two decades since they started coming - beginning to shed their bad reputation. the greeks seem to have concluded at last that albanians aren't the worst thing that has happened to them, and that many albanians are infact honest and hardworking people, and - in terms of lifestyle and mentality - very similar to the greeks themselves.
athehran
'my' persians however didn't have any ambitions of staying in the country. they were there on holiday. going west from iran - like ali who was there for just two weeks and heading straight to the army upon his return to tehran. or going south-east from london - like arvin, who clearly felt nostalgic about iran and anything resembling it. and athens, so i was told, resembled it a great deal.
we spent the next few days living on 2,5 euros a day - 1,50 euros being spent on our daily big fat ration of falafel acquired in the iraqi falafel shop on losios street - and for the rest chewing on pita bread - on the beach mainly -, hot peppers and cheap chocolate chip cookies. the main stimulation to our stomachs being not food, but ali's jokes.
like this one: on a taxiride around tehran, an american asks the taxidriver about a certain building on a street corner, and the taxi driver replies 'yes, that is the soandso building - built 2000 years ago'. the american replies - 'pa, in america, we'd build that in just 2 months', and they ride on.
on another streetcorner, the american inquires about another building - the answer is, again 'that building is 500 years old' and the american says - 'pa, in america we'd build that in just 1 month'.
on a third street corner, the american asks about yet another building. and the taxi driver turns his head, looks, looks again, and suddenly says, 'i have no idea - it wasn't there 1 hour ago!'
and so on. one joke upon another. relentlessly. ali had a whole collection of them, most of them playing on ethnic themes - taking the p... out of the persians, the turks, the ... (forgot the name of that group). over and over again, in all possible fashions - some made up at the spur of the moment, some being good old classics. and it was hilarious. note that out of the three guys present in that greek tram that one afternoon, one was pars (arvin), one turk (ali) and one ... (that third group - ahmed). and all spoke persian - albeit ahmed with a funny accent. and we laughed our heads off. and thoroughly did away with every form of political correctness.
on monday 8 september, arvin flew back to london and i decided to move on, too. and embark on part II of my greek experience. which - i didn't know that yet - would cause me to change my flight again - and last for another full two weeks.
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