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