Nachricht Nummer : 456 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 45 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 20 March, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 23.03.1994 19:14:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 20 March, 1994 Dobar dan, The friends from Netherlands asked me to pick them up from the peace hostel, since they were afraid to drive through the whole town, the days before they totally got lost some where in the traffic system from Zagreb. Indeed with a car Zagreb is not the most easy town to pass by. On the way to the peace hostel, which just move this last week from one and of the city to the total other side I decided to pass by the computer system at the peace center and I found that I was just in time to save the system from getting overloaded, I must have made a mistake somewhere yesterday evening when I was working on the new LAN. I was watching how the system recieved their netcalls from Germany and till my big joy the first messages from ZaMir-Sa (Sarajevo) were coming in. It works. Via one of the 120 satalite telephone links which seems to exist between Sarajevo to Switzerland the messages get out to the system of ICVA (Int. Co-ordination Voluntary Agencies) and there it travels via our hosts in Germany to the InterNet's and to our ZaMir systems in Beograd, Ljubljana and Zagreb. I must say that I was a little trilled when I saw it happening, for more than one and half year we had no connection with eachother and suddenly.... let's hope it will keep on working. Further on with the tram to the end of the line, next to the UNPROFOR HQ, around which still the app. one meter high wall of stones are standing with on each stone a name from somebody who was living in what is now Serbia Krajina and who from whom still is not clear if he or she is alive or dead. The wall has been made there by their relatives and other people from those area's, who now live as displaced people somewhere in Croatia. During the first months of the wall almost everywhere candles were burning in front of it, but now you hardly can see any of them anymore. Those things always are happening in waves it seems, the people are still lost, but at the moment you don't hear so much from them anymore. Like the little poster this month in the magazine from the organisation of volunteers in the Croatian homeland war, a body of a dead defender with the text "Some have forgotten them". Of course I nearly missed the bus stop at the new peace hostel, but just was fast enough to get off the bus at when I saw one of the famous trucks from NeXus. The new hostel is a lot smaller than the old one but therefor also a lot cheaper and by far more familiar to the house on Mlinovi were we all started nearly 1 1/2 years ago. Behind house there were busy to make the one of the other trucks ready for another tour to Tuzla, they will drive in a couple of days. Like the first NeXus truck this one is also dressed up with children drawings. Since the agreement between the Croats and Muslims in BiH driving to Tuzla is a lot less dangerous than during the last months. The airport will be opened in a couple of days from now, it seems that Akashi will be one of the first to go there. Nevertheless it is still not so simple to go there with a personal car, as two guest in the peace hostel were planning, they wanted to collect some relative from a friend the knew from a refugee camp in their home country. I saw them yesterday shortly, but didn't had the time to tell them that their idea was a little bit impossible. Luckily for them some other people in the peace hostel has been telling them the same, besides the fact that it is technical nearly impossible to drive to Tuzla with a small car, because of the nearly none existing road they also had no papers for the woman to leave BiH and transit Croatia. But I don't think that the both really understood what was told to them since when I met them in the hostel they told that they now were planning to go to Beograd and see if they could reach Tuzla from there. Maybe they are lucky, but I have a hard head if they make it in and out of Tuzla that way they establish something which is even nearly impossible for UNHCR. The road to Pakrac was as always, a nearly empty highway, with some huge convoy of the International Red Cross, probably coming back from the North of Bosnia and for the rest hardly only UN cars. It is clearly spring in Slavonia, the trees are blossoming and in the some of the fields you see the flocks of sheep's with around them small lambs playing in the pale spring sun. What a different with the snow which was laying here until about 3 weeks ago. Once back in Sector West I was surprised to see that even in those villages which are totally destroyed, mostly blown up after the war, people are starting to return. It is nearly unbelievable to believe but in the middle of the burned and bombed out ruins you see suddenly a family from which the children play around the house and the parents are trying to prepare the place for rebuilding, or maybe they are trying to see if they can find some things they had to leave behind. In rest of what use to be the gardens the spring flowers are coming out and in a couple of weeks half of the buildings will be hidden behind a wall of wild herbs, flowers and fast growing bushes. My Dutch companions were as everybody with whom I visit this area the first time confused and impressed by what they saw. So were the officials from UNICEF which we passed by somewhere half way the 4 1/2 kilometres of ruins, 6 persons with video camera's trying to film the indescribable scene. Mir from somewhere in Hrvatska, 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.ztn.zer.de . 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 (postbox 33), 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. Old numbers can be found by sending a message's with as subject "FILES" to pakrac.info@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de, to order a file send a message with subject "SEND " to same address. ## CrossPoint v2.93 ##