Nachricht Nummer : 203
Übertragungszeit : 3 min 44 sec
Nachricht von    : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ZER.sub.org
Betrifft         : Zagreb Diary 30 July, 1993
Erstellungsdatum : 31.07.1993 17:35:00 S+2

Realname: Wam Kat

Zagreb Diary 30 July, 1993

Dobar dan,

Just before I took my sleeping bag to go sleeping outside in under the olives 
trees near the house of Ognjen's parents in Birbir, Ognjen said to me that I 
had to look out for the deer's, which will come in the morning. I am not so 
afraid of deer's, coming out of the "forest" area in the Netherlands and 
spending most of my "free" time of my childhood in the Belgium Ardennes 
trying to find deer's so I was looking forwards to a visit from my red brown 
friends. During the night it weren't the deer's however which kept me out of 
sleep but almost all kind of insects of the meditarian area, which decided 
that my blood was just that nice taste were they were looking for all their 
short live. I fight with ants, flies, fleas and god knows what more of 6 legs 
animals run over and in my sleeping bag.

So when the sun came up I decided to stop my attempts to sleep and went 
in to find the Dutch newspapers, which Astrid left behind a week ago when 
she past by this place. For the first time in months to read some news in my 
own language, but old as they were they gave me some news from what is 
going on in my country. Nearly automatically I always screen the papers for 
information about the war here. I honestly must say that all that news from 
my own country is not interesting me a lot, my main interest is finding out 
how does the people in my country think about the situation here. And again 
it was fantastic to see that the so-called specialists absolute seem to put all 
their efforts in miss information. Not only are they totally incapable to 
analyse the facts proper, they just invent their stories it seems.

But from all the information I could find the article which really made me, not 
really angry, but close to it, was a report about a refugee centre in Den 
Bosch, were 600 refugee from Bosnia are placed. The newspaper, 
telegraaf, is known as one of the worst in the country, but even that wouldn't 
free them from a kind of openness towards other culture. Anyway the major 
line in the article was that the (Dutch) people working in that refugee camp 
were doing a great job in making Dutch people at of the Bosnians. As main 
arguments they use the opinion that those people never would be able to 
return to their home and should be able to become full citizens of the 
Netherlands.

I was angry because they just except a reality that Bosnia never will be 
Bosnia again, something we are afraid of, but from which we always hope 
that we can somehow stop it before it is too late. I more or less felt it like 
stealing the culture away from people who have a much older culture than 
the Dutch one. Also the way they talked about those "half wild" unorganised 
tribal idiots, not in those words, but they undertone was there, made me 
angry. Hope that this is not the meaning of most of the people in my 
country, since in only one think I could be agree with the article, namely that 
the Dutch culture could learn a lot from the Bosnian culture, although they 
meant it in another way than I would like to see it.

After a breakfast with nice cheese from Pag we went on our way down 
south, since we heard on the radio that the bridge at Maslinica is now open 
for all freight transport, that means that all trucks and buses are not allowed 
anymore to go via the ferry on Pag, but have to go via the bridge, we 
discussed if we also would go over the bridge.  And of course we decided to 
take the risk, after nearly one and half year here I know and understand the 
importance and the symbolic of the bridge, so from the moment we went 
from Zagreb I hoped that we would be able to take that road.

During the way down I looked with half an eye on all the cars which we 
passed by, it is now high session of the tourist industry, but still the amount 
of foreign cars is rather low. So German, from which a closer look make 
clear that they are mainly Croats who live in Germany, Hungarians and 
some Slovaks, most of the foreign cars are those from relief organisations. 
On both sides of the road all the hotels, hostels, auto camps and pensions 
try to get at least a little bit from this huge invasion of tourists, but it looks 
again like a lost session. Again another year that Croatia will loose a lot of 
money of all the tourists who didn't came, one of the effects of the war and 
small scale shelling on Zadar and Sibinik in the last months.

Nearer to Maslinica we get some police controls, that is the police, sitting 
under nice colourful parasols are checking the cars with foreign number 
plates. Our car with Zagreb number plate can pass by without problem. We 
start looking a little more closely at the cars coming from the other side, but 
everything looks safe.

Just a few kilometres before the bridge you start to see burned out and 
shelled houses on both sides of the road. And also you see that the road 
has been hit a lot of times by grenades, but the holes has been filled in the 
last week. The famous hotel next to the bridge, now used by UNPROFOR 
looks like a total disaster surrounded with NATO wire. We drive down and 
pass one of the ferry which was shoot down a couple of months ago. And 
then the new bridge, some pontoon parts, together about 200 meter and 
that is it. I look to the left into the hills, but I can't see the big guns, which 
must stand here only a kilometre or something away. To right I see the 
orange iron pieces of what just to be the old bridge, 5 minutes later we are 
on the other side, 15 kilometer straight open road ahead to Zadar, which 
has his 101 days in a row of general alert.

Bok I Mir from Zagreb,

							Wam
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