Nachricht Nummer : 241 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 53 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ZER.sub.org Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 16 August, 1993 Erstellungsdatum : 27.08.1993 12:54:00 S+2 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 16 August, 1993 Dobar dan, The refugee camp in Savudrija has been changed a bit since a was here in May, Chelsea is gone, she has got a job with another organisation to do social work in Bihac, which is something she excepted after some thinking, Chelsea and Savudrija were one. When she went nearly to whole camp came to the sport stadium to say good-bye to her. The biggest change is probably that it is again summer in Istra and tens of thousands of tourist have found their way down to the Adriatic sea in this region. Suddenly everything has turned back in to the tourist resort it use to be. In Umag it looks a lot like the Costa Brava in the summer, coloured lights everywhere and the town looks more like a giant amusement park than the boring dead town it was during my last visits. In a couple of weeks the Croatian open tennis championships will be held in the tennis bowl, for the time being the party goes on. Also a part from the refugee camp in Savudrija is reserved for "normal" summer guests, a small red plastic band cut the war (the refugees at the camp) off from the western world, the world without war and fresh memories of violence. The entrance to swimming pool, which the Suncokret volunteers have created this spring in the sea near the camp, ended on the peaceful side of the line and the refugee children have to bath again in the less excesable part of the sea. It is nice warm weather and although the weekend is over expensive yacht cruise by on the sea around the camp, yesterday the sea was white of ships, tells the co-leader of the Suncokret volunteers. They, those people on the boats should know who is living in this camp, like those tourists, who scroll down the beach and pass by the camp in the swimming suits and with their cooling boxes full of pleasure food. We are sitting in the open air theatre which the domestic (refugee) volunteers of Suncokret have created and talk with Darko, he was one of the two co-leaders from the first pre-suncokret camp in Pula, not more than a year ago. I look at the sea and at the camp, a lot has happened in a year. Darko tell my friends from Sittard the story of Suncokret and Savudrija, behind us the little van from Suncokrets arrives back from Umag, the driver is the school teacher which arrive from a prison camp in Bosnia in September last year and is since than the main man behind the school on the camp. It is summer now and the school is closed, but a few weeks from now the first children left it with the first diploma of a primary Bosnian school outside BiH. What a change with the mud and the tents when we discussed it with him in his little caravan somewhere last year autumn. Savudrija is alive, the little village, which is growing again, just after our talks two busses from Rijeka arrived with 100 new inhabitants, soon the Belgian cabins will be used by more than two families at the same time. The camp commander already ask Suncokret to give up one of their cabins. Slowly an economy in the camp is building up, one of the examples, beside the Suncokret working place (wood, bikes, clothes, etc) is a woman who started a kind of burek and bread bakery in her caravan. What looked like an emergency camp a year ago has become a place where people plan in years, rather than in days. After Savudrija we went to Pula to visit one of the friends of my guests, they use to come to Yugoslavia every summer and made friends over the years in what is now Croatia, Serbia and BiH. In the car yesterday and today they tell the stories from their earlier visits, nearly every fifth line I whisper the new names of the different republics. I notice from myself that I have excepted long ago that Yugoslavia don't exist anymore, and so did they friends in Pula. In the evening sun we are sitting in the garden from the summer house of the parents of this friends, a former JNA officer, who also was before the second world war officer in the Italian army (not under Mussolini, he said), so they can survive of the small pension they get from Italy, otherwise they had to live from the money their children bring in, which is maybe just enough to survive with a family of 2 working adults and 2 kids. Since the war started they couldn't work anymore on their new house what they started to build 10 years ago just outside Pula. The windows are standing in the basement, but their is no money to hirer an expert to put them in the casco. In the open field a few kilometer outside Pula, away from the apartment building the friends start to speak about the last two years, the women is from Monte Negro and has to admit that she has a hard time, since one of her neighbours is a strong HSP member. Still when we visit with her the mini market in her building you could see that she is accepted and part of the community. When the shop filled up and the owner had to cut cheese, she took over the cash register and helped the other people. They have voted for IDS (the party of Istra, one of the four Regional Parties, the others are Dalmatian Action, Slavonia-Baranja Party and Medjimurje (around Varazdin), the main aims of all of this parties is about the same, they want to have more freedom of decisions in the region itself and feel far away from the politics of Zagreb)), which is in an offensive (you see everywhere billboard promoting IDS and Istria in two languages) against the Croatian government at the moment about the new law about local management. They say that the centralisation process of Zagreb is wrong and that Istria should have a special status, a bigger co-operation between the Croatian, Italian and Slovenia parts of Istria, like other so-called "euregio's" in Europe, for example my home province which has a simular status together with the German and Belgium part of Limburg. Bok I Mir from Zagreb, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3, 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. ## CrossPoint v2.1 ##