Nachricht Nummer : 299 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 32 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.zer.sub.org Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 7 November, 1993 Erstellungsdatum : 08.11.1993 23:19:00 W+1 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 7 November, 1993 Dobar dan, Through the coloured trees sudden a noise is raising, a yell, a scream, from thousand of voices, it comes out of football stadium, just a few hundred meters from where we are walking. It is a wonderful autumn day and Vesna and I are having a scroll with a few thousands others in Maksimir park. It is fantastic autumn Sunday afternoon weather, young boys on the mountainbikes, couples in love walking on the side paths, young families with children wagons. Another young Croat who wasn't killed by anticonception, the huge action against abortion and for good Croatian families, with at least 4 children, is more or less over, but now you see the effect on the streets. I don't know anything about statistics around here, but the birth statistics must have made a very strange swing the last two years. Every time that we walk her she shows me a sand pyramid, with on top the beginning of a monument, but beside from the Croatian symbol a impressive stone and in red the word 975-1991 nothing is to see. Each time she explains that here will come a monument for a very important thing in Croatian history, something every Croat should know, but as always she can't remember what it was. She is not the only one by the way, up to now nobody could explain what it will be, but all know that it was something special. "What a big number of soldiers" Vesna said, and yes, there are far more green camouflage uniforms around than normal in the last year. Later we hear that the football match in the stadium was a match between Croatia (former Dynamo Zagreb) and the first Croatian army brigade. The Tiger brigade is now three years old and they had a kind of party in the stadium. Bobetko, the small bulldog looking commander in chief of the Croatian Army held a nice speech and the heroes from Croatia, the tigers, marched over the field. Nothing special. We look at some bookstores and seen that most of them have a very strange mixture of new Croatian history and warbooks, yoga and other positive minded coursebooks and like everywhere in the World a growing amount of computerbooks. In one of the window we see a poster of the first modern Croatian war film, the poster remind me on the old partisan heroic films. A small destroyed house on the back, a tiny woman in a white dress in the mud, her arms stretched into the air and in front of it a dying soldier in camouflage uniform. At least that is what it looks like to me. Although HTR (former HTV, Croatian television) is pushing the film, you see regular pieces from it, the amount of Jurassic Park posters is far outnumbering this one. I think that I going to see it one of this days, that Croatian film I mean, maybe the story is more originals than the poster. From a poster in a chocolate and candy shop window two funny carton soldiers laugh at us, children. If we collect 20 wrappings of CRO-ARMY children chocolate we can have a CRO-ARMY sticker book or badge to iron on your clothes. I brought some packages CRO-ARMY with me to the Netherlands, but at the last moment I realised that it was a little out of place to give it with the wrappings to my children, so somewhere in my bag I must have at least 15 wrappings. The amount of admiral clubs in Zagreb and the rest from the country is also growing. I don't know when the first one opened, I think it was around the time that I arrived in Zagreb last year. As far as I know the first one was opened in Hotel International (or Hotel Vukovar), but I can't mistaken. It was in those days that you saw their posters everywhere. Now I think there must be at least 7 in Zagreb, but it can be more. I have never been in one of them, but the card symbols and the screaming word "casino" makes clear what you would find inside. A few hundred one-arm thieves and maybe some black-jack tables or so. Gambling is a blooming business, I saw that the national lotto had something like 400.000.000.000 HDR per week, but maybe I overestimate a few zero's. We find in some of the side roads of Maksimir a brand new, at least number four, "centre for the improvement of life". This one is specialised is selling cosmetics and natural medicines. Yes, an improvement of life is what we all need, but I must say that looking into the shop, I imagine that improvement a little bit different. Yes, Sunday in Zagreb, although I thought more than 18 months ago that I would have given up my search for war symbols I notice that I still like to find out what is "normal" normal and what is new "normal" normal (war normal). We stand in front of the ministry of defence, one soldier with an automatic riffle in the garden, just a couple of meters away from him we stand an observe the building closely. We can't remember if those hawks on both side of the stairs to the front door stood there before or that they are new. They look at least a lot cleaner than the rest of building. A few blocks further still the shop who sells the symbol's from all the different battalions, maybe those hawks are indeed new, beside the tigers there are a lot of hawks around. And of course grenades again in Eastern Slavonia near Zupanja and Slavonski Brod and in Dalmatian near Zadar, 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. 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