** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  49  of  67
** Written  1:05 AM  Jun 11, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
11-06-1992

Dear Friends,

I have been a little lazy the last few days, there for two stories on one day, at least within 12 hours from each other written, the 11 is just a few minutes old. By the time you will read it will be on my way or already (even have been) in Osijek, were it is a lot safer than in Zagreb, since the on the street is a lot less. I am very anxious to see if the windows from Australia are already placed in the centre and to find out if the stress of the people is different now after nearly 3 weeks of living without shelling.

Christine from Germany will accompany us (Vesna J. and me) to Osijek and maybe some Arkers will popup at the station when we go, Osijek has a special call you know. So it wouldn't be a boring trainride (what it was in the days before the war, I made the trip from Beograd to Zagreb 12 years ago nearly every week for a half year and often I went via Novi Sad and Osijek, since the view was boring). 

In Osijek I hope to finish the last official documents for the workcamps and maybe can arrange some public sleeping places for people who like to come earlier to help with the rebuilding. Maybe by the time that you arrive Osijek will live after 11 o'clock as well outside the houses. The last messages were that everybody still have to be in before 11 o'clock, that makes evening sessions rather short.

Christine told us this evening a crazy story which was the first reason to jump behind the computer. She told that in the earlier days of the war in Croatia from the bus station in Cologne busses went to Zagreb and Beograd to join the war. The police in Cologne had their hands full keeping them from killing each other already in Cologne. Ofcourse immediately a picture comes to your mind of a bus station with all kind of buses to different warzones in the world, special trips visiting upperside warzone in one tour. On the otherside buses for peace activists to all different demonstrations which is held in that weekend. If somebody has not to do in the weekend, why going to the movie or watching it on television if you can get it live in in real 3D. Come on your weekend urban warriors.

Also  it reminds me of a beautiful tradition which went on a few years back in Belgium. Just 40 Km down from Sittard (you really have to find a map from the Netherlands this time), a little south east from Maastricht you will find a place called the "Voerstreek" or "Fouron" (or they other way round, depend if you are from the Wallonie or from Flanders, or they other way round). In some summers it was a popular sport in that area that every Saturday busses from Gent and Antwerpen came there to fight with people which came in busses from Liege and Namur. And the police on horses riding around those groups. Some times it went on for weeks in a row, especially in mid-summer (when there was no football). 

The whole battle was about the fact that this area lays in the French speaking province of Liege, but belongs to the Dutch speaking province Limburg. That means schools are Dutch or mainly Dutch, but the most of the new population came from Liege. The major is or was French speaking and was not willing to speak Dutch, which is an obligation in that area for official meetings and so on. It belongs to the category "Cucumber news (summer news)" of the Dutch newspapers.

Here the first frontsoldiers were football hooligans and hard rock fans (or ofcourse a combination of them) on both sides (if you count JNA out in that period) and that resulted in the so-called Croatian or Serbian Urban Warriors, dressed in old American camouflage uniform, football or hardrock t-shirt, ray-sunglasses, rozenkreutz, bands around their head, hand grenades in their pockets and the strangest colours of half long hear. In the weekend and holidays joined by workers from factories and offices (from Serbia and Croatia or from abroad). The time just before Vukovar was taken by Chetnik forces (I hope I wrote it neutral enough, I really worried some times how I can formulate something without offending anybody (I don't only have to watch out for my words about the situation here, I just wrote about the Belgium and maybe I wrote something not 100% true you know, or I used a word, which meaning can be mis interpretated), I really have to watch my words).

Don't get me wrong during this "romantic" period a lot of people got killed and it really was a total chaos on the front, a lot of casualties were because of that total chaos. And I think that a lot of things has happened in that short period, which set the route for the whole war which came after it. The war of the football hooligans is long over now, all armies in this battle are becoming more and more professional (if you understand what I mean). What made the war starting and who made it so cruel in the first place will be a discussion point for years, fact is that in a weeks things happened, which totally shocked people on both sides. Why and how was it possible? I think in those days a lot of the things were seeded which are now in full blossoming in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Revenge on revenge, I am sure if those first few weeks would have been a little less chaotic these wars would have been a lot different. 

I named Vukovar, since that town you nearly can see every day on HTV, the re-run from a total destroyed street and a group of marching soldiers with black Chetnik flags, singing that they are going to make barbecue meat from Utachi. These 5 minutes I have seen a 100 times. So I have heard the stories over and over again. I have been a couple of times in Vukovar Hotel, were the displaced people from Vukovar live. I have seen soldiers from the Vukovar Vets, according to HTV the best fighters on the front, they never sleep. Still I know that that have to watch my words very very tense.

Rumours and television pictures are a strong weapon in this war, I don't know if has been told in the west, but this morning in Sarajevo Serbian and JNA forces used fragmention and chemical bombs according to Croatian radio. Don't react that that's against the Geneva convention, since that convention is anyway broken millions of times already. As said some days ago, they even shoot at the referees.

Zagreb becomes more and more centre of the world, more and more UNPROFOR soldiers are arriving from all parts of the globe and the street our office, looks a lot often like those films as Casablanca in modern style, the amusement centre behind the war zone. Soldiers checking the chicks out. Drinking beer on a cool summer evening. Soldiers spending each minute of their free time, before they have to return. Boys who just are demobilised, soldiers of fortune spending their money. Soldiers fighting in the discotheeks. The smell of popcorn and people selling bootleg tapes. That is our street, the heart of a living world city.

Zagreb also a city which is more and more clean, now more and more foreigners arrive, no refugees in the station anymore (at least not during the day), the beggars nicely concentrated in one or two street. In two months I saw Zagreb changing rapidly, the war is loosing his face in Zagreb, it turns into a real swinging city.

One more thing if you ever come to Zagreb and you see cherilic writing of the wall it is probably the name of a Croatian politician which just said something wrong in some people eyes.

When I come back from Osijek and when in the next week nothing will happen again I can write for the first since I have been here the War is over (for Eastern-Slavonia). Let's hope it would be such a relief.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

P.S. I just heard that my bike is stolen in the Netherlands and so it is not on his way to Zagreb. It is anyway dangerous to bike here, but it would be nice to have a new mountainbike one day. So if anybody from the CSFR (or one of those countries) comes by pleas phone me, maybe we can organise something. 

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