Last weekend was our first completely free weekend without a scheduled field trip. I planned on going to Rijeka on the Catamaran like almost everyone else. But Friday afternoon the little bug I was fighting reared it's ugly head, and kept me pretty well bedridden until Tuesday morning. Most of that time I slept, one day sleeping almost 18 hours, but in between gigantic bouts of sleep I watched a documentary by the BBC about the end of Yugoslavia and the war. Enough to learn at least the key players and more or less accurate timeline of events.
I'm glad I got to watch it because this weekend we went to Osijek and Vukovar. The site of the first massacre of the war. Preparing for this trip emotionally was complex; I was very excited to be done with construction for a few days, stay clean and dry for awhile, and see a lot more of the landscape. Vukovar is on the border between Serbia and Croatia and is completely across the country from us. But I knew that the weekend would be emotionally trying, not just learning about places where atrocities had been committed, but being there, standing on a spot where hundreds of people were shot in the head and pushed into a grave was going to be difficult.
The nine hour bus ride was very pleasant, we had our same favorite driver, Marco and he told us about places we were passing through on the way. Also, every gas station has a cafe/bar and grocery store attached, so we were able to get our coffee fixes.
In Osijek we were split between two apartment buildings a few blocks apart. My two roommates and I were in a very comfortable modern apartment with a big bathroom and by the grace of God an awesome shower. After quickly freshening up we walked to the other apartments and had a meeting with everyone before going our own ways in the city.
Osijek is a small city, but it's bigger than Rab, so to me it felt gigantic, having not been in a city since Zadar. It's very flat and when we were there very cold, I piled on all my layers and still bought a bigger fluffy scarf when I found one. It's still in the swing of fall, though most of the leaves are down in the streets. The architecture is varied gracefully for the most part, a mix of newer modern and Secessionist or Art Nouveau styles, the Secessionist buildings are spectacular. You can sit and stare at one for hours just taking in all of the details. They are brightly colored, so the street is like a rainbow when you look down, the facades have columns, statues, and a hundred other small pieces. The fences have very fine iron work in intricate patterns, flowers, plants, in some cases animals.
But among all these beautiful details there were holes and pock marks, splatters of missing mortar and broken bricks. There wasn't gunfire in Osijek, but the city was shelled from three sidea, so the holes we were seeing were from shrapnel mostly from grenades. Some of them the city is fixing, but a lot of them they are leaving as memorials to what happened. Ivan, our guide (who we met later, I'll get back to him) said that they want to honor the past but not live in it.
Friday night we met at a small restaurant in Old Town in the north end of the city. It took me awhile to realize that it was a family style place, they don't have menus. When we asked the waiter said "your meat will be ready in five minutes." And meaty it was. The meal was traditional, with a bland white macaroni-ish pasta with a cheesy sauce then a spicy beef stew on top.
Old town was a fortress built when Croatia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it used to hold soldiers and their horses, now most of the buildings are high schools with different focuses and tons of bars and nightclubs. After dinner a smaller group of us followed our ears to a place that was starting to play live music. To my surprise over the stage was a huge confederate flag with the face of I think the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd on it with the words "If the south had won" something something, the bottom was hard to read. The band that played was a four piece band that played classic American rock songs. As usual, there was a big space in front of the stage with everyone staring at the band, I too stood wondering if people would dance until I heard the first chords of "Well Dressed Man" by ZZ Top and that was the end of that. I danced the first one by myself but got a Croatian girl out on the floor with me and we danced our way through Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and Gold Earring.
As it started to get later more and more people appeared in the bar until the space behind the stage was packed with people. We left at about midnight and the main club street was beginning to come to life. On the way out of the bar a guy yelled to me "It's better to be quick, than dead!" then erupted into laughter. We went to a few other places and had a great time but in general a lot of the dancy places were pretty empty. Saturday, they said, come back on Saturday night, every bar will be packed. So we called it an early night and got home about 3:30.
A few hours later I was up at seven and out in the cold foggy morning in search of breakfast. The open market a few blocks away was similar to the one in Zagreb, but the vendors were a hundred times more friendly and didn't glare at me for only wanting four pears. They also have a pastry here that's made out of philo or something like it packed with spinach and cheese or sausage and it's amazing on a cold morning.
We met Ivan when we got on our bus to Vukovar, he's from Osijek and was 11 years old during the siege, he was able to give us an inside opinion of what happened during that time. We were on the road to Vukovar by 8:45 and drove through foggy fields for forty five minutes to the hospital.
The hospital stayed open through the whole siege, taking in soldiers from both sides as well as civillians. They moved to the basement immidiately after the fighting started, knowing that even though it was a medical building with a giant red cross on the roof it would be attacked. And it was, but no bombs from planes that fell into the hospital went off, the theory is that the pilots did it on purpose because ethically bombing a hospital is so monstrous. Either way, the hospital's symbol now is the red cross with large holes through it.
Ivan told us that one of those bombs that hit the building came through the roof and five floors before it stopped in the basement and practically landed between a patient's legs in a bed.
"Wasn't that patient a Serb soldier?" Someone in the group asked.
"He was a human being." Ivan replied without hesitating. "It doesn't matter what side he was on."
The hospital was a little difficult, but ok, we watched a short film with a few fairly graphic parts about the death and destruction they had to deal with. Then we went lower to the basement and all the rooms were set up the way they were during the siege. Intensive care in one room and the nursery in the next, a larger room with bunk beds and a few smaller service rooms and that was it, for over 400 people for three months.
When the siege was over and Vukovar was overtaken six busses with people from the hospital were taken out to a shed on a farm, held there for awhile, then moved to a mass grave, shot and buried. For absolutely no reason. I think the most disturbing part of this whole thing is the simple chaos of it all, Ivan said that the Serbs could have taken Vukovar in a few days if they had been better organized. As it was they bombed and murdered their way in for three months. Every side did horrible, horrible things for what I can tell very little payoff.
After the hospital we walked into Vukovar along the river, you can tell it was a beautiful place. And slowly it's being built back up but the spirit has been decimated. Many buildings are still in ruins and there are large blackened dead trees that must have been magnificent at one time. The town is very cute, the main street having colonnades on either side up the hill, but you can tell something is still very wrong. I don't know if Vukovar will ever be ok again. But it is for sure very sad, such a waste.
The town still has a segregated Serb and Croatian population, their kids don't go to the same schools, they don't go to the same bars or restaraunts, they will only support the businesses of people who are the same race as them. Ivan told us about some work he has done to try to bridge the gap, especially with the children. If they grow up never playing with or creating connections with people of the other nationality they are just going to hate each other forever. The kids are the ones who are the most nationalist because they don't have any relationships with the others. To many Croatians the Serbs are just these monsters on the other side of the fence and vice-versa. Even the teachers and parents are more tolerant because they lived through the war. Basically it all adds up to more violence when those kids grow up hating each other.
And the most ridiculous thing is that no one is "racially pure" every Croat has some Serb blood and every Serb has Croatian. Kids of mixed parents have to choose which one they are, then get bothered about it for the rest of their lives. It's ridiculous and awful. It's not like the other side is going to go away any time soon. But I can't imagine going about your day consciously or unconsciously avoiding people and wishing badly on them all day long.
Ivan said "If you have money it's easy to fix the buildings. It's much harder to fix the people." He is working on a project to open up a third mixed race school that is an option for parents who want their kids to be around both groups. It's had a hard time getting off the ground, and it will continue to do so, but it just got the ok from the new mayor.
After the city we went to the storage shed out on a nearby farm that was used as a concentration camp for the people from the hospital. Then we went to the mass grave where they were all buried. Now there are monuments in all of these places, and their memorial day is coming up soon so every place was covered in candles and pictures, rosaries and gigantic wreaths. All of these things left by people who had been hurt by this ridiculous war, all these mothers, fathers, widows, widowers, and children who had to go on without someone they loved. Why? There will never be a good enough reason.
----
Saturday was intense emotionally and physically. After we returned from Vukovar, and Marco woke us all up - we went on a whirlwind tour of Osijek again from Ivan, from old town down the main street with the most Secessionist buildings to the main square, through the cathedral (my favorite part) and back to old town along the river. By the end of the tour everyone was cold, tired, starving, exhausted and very, very grumpy. A potentially explosive combination. Soon though we were back at the apartments, I got the blanket off my bed and laid on the couch for a long time, contemplating getting food but was finally warm and too tired to walk anywhere to feed myself.
Thankfully, one of us had the great idea to order Chinese delivery and awhile later with warm rice, soup, noodles and vegetables in our bellies the grumpiness melted away.
--
After a power nap I got ready to leave as the others in my apartment were getting ready to go to bed. I did question the wisdom of staying up another whole night, bringing the three day sleep total to about six hours. But I knew I would have nine hours on the bus the next day to get some good sleeping in. All bundled up I met up with a friend and off we went to meet everyone else in old town for another night of dancing.
The bartenders the night before hadn't lied. Saturday night was hopping, every bar and club was packed with people to the point that some of them weren't fun because we couldn't move at all. The first place we went to was full of extremely well dressed people, it was a cool place but no one was dancing and the music was really repetitive. So we went back to Big Ben, the bar the band had been playing at the night before and who should we run into but Ivan. He told us that Big Ben was more of the local place, and the place we had been at before was a Serbian club.
Even though the tension and segregation had been pounded into my head all day I hadn't thought about the possibility of the clubs being segregated too. Ivan said that they played a style of music that was all Serb folk songs with techno beats put over, that's how everyone knew all the words.
Then once I was made aware of it I noticed it everywhere; when we asked different people which clubs we should go to some said to go to club a, b, and c because they were SO much better than x, y, z. While other people insisted the opposite based on who hangs out there. We had a fun night but that tension vibrates beneath every interaction that happens here. It's really too bad, people just can't go out and dance and have fun, they very specifically are and are not welcome at certain places based on their nationality.
----
So where the heck is Caitlin now? Back in Kampor, tucked into bed after a lot of shoveling. Last night the rain woke me up it was so loud on the skylight I thought it would break. The weather does not mess around here.
