Day 10 (16 June): Recent Warzone?
We took a very early bus from Ljubljana to Zagreb (Croatia) this morning. I ended up striking up a conversation with an older woman who generously paid in Slovean Tolars our 2 USD luggage transport fee for the bus. Such a fee was not advertised, but the driver would not let us on the bus without paying it, even though we had spent our last Tolars since the currency is pretty much useless and illiquid outside of the Delaware-sized country.
She was an older Croatia who had left the country over 30 years ago first moving to Germany and then to Canada. Some interesting tidbits from the conversation were:
1) There are over 500,000 former Croatians living in Toronto alone (although she said they don't have a very cohesive community there)
2) She thought many of the former Croatians living in Canada would start moving back to retire on the supposedly beautiful Adriatic Coast in Croatia on their foreign pensions which are worth much more in the former Yugoslav state.
3) Young people in Croatia no longer have forced military service (which seems strange for a country that in the last very recently fought a war). Instead she complained that they all waste time and money taking 6 months off to spend them at the 'Disko-teka'
Zagreb itself was a much nicer city than I imagined it would be and there were no signs that it was a recent warzone which surprised me. The president's house which was shelled during the war, in particular, showed no signs of damage or even recent reconstruction. The city itself is built into a hill overlooking a large valley.
Zagreb was also much more overtly Catholic than any other city I've been too which was surprising for a place with a 1.5M population. I've never seen so many nuns on the street or a place with such strict clothing guidelines for entering its churches. (I guess this lends credibility to the war between the Serbs and the Croats being over ethnic and religious differences.)
Later that evening, I experienced a slight scare that turned out for the best: I left my day pack with passport and onward plane tickets for the rest of my trip in a restaurant downtown, but didn't realize it, until we had made it back to our hostel, 45 minutes on a tram away. Fortunately, the girl who managed the hostel (an American from Lancaster, PA) had here Croatian husband drive us back to the restaurant in his 20-year old Yugo (which I thought was cool to get to ride in) and my bag was still there. Along the way we talked about a couple things:
1) Particularly high unemployment in Croatia. He seemed to think it wasn't as bad the official statistics since a lot of people work contract jobs and don't report the income or their employment to avoid paying taxes. He attributed this to why the government doesn't' have any funds to do anything with.
2) He also solved the public transportation mystery from Prague for me (since Zagreb has a similar system where you are supposed to validate tickets you purchase elsewhere). The truth in Zagreb at least is that the government intentionally doesn't check people's tickets because it wants to encourage public transit for those seeking jobs. For people with jobs they are required to buy longer transit passes through employers.
Economic observation of the day:
1) Highway infrastructure in the Balkans is definitely improving as we saw a lot of construction along the bus route. Many American style highways with exits and dividers are being built.
2) There are very few traffic lights in Zagreb despite huge intersections and a large number of cars. At the busiest intersections instead there are people directing the flow of traffic and at others drivers seem to wait for a certain period of time and then the flow of traffic just switches. Its pretty amazing that more accidents don't occur or that the government doesn't fund public works for it, since clearly there will be more and more drivers as the country recovers from the war, from Communism, and from being led by a non-communist totalitarian regime.
coincidence of the day:
The NY Times Travel Section just wrote an article about hiking in Europe including a section on the Slovnia's Julian Alps where I just was:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/travel/19hiking.html?th&emc=th
She was an older Croatia who had left the country over 30 years ago first moving to Germany and then to Canada. Some interesting tidbits from the conversation were:
1) There are over 500,000 former Croatians living in Toronto alone (although she said they don't have a very cohesive community there)
2) She thought many of the former Croatians living in Canada would start moving back to retire on the supposedly beautiful Adriatic Coast in Croatia on their foreign pensions which are worth much more in the former Yugoslav state.
3) Young people in Croatia no longer have forced military service (which seems strange for a country that in the last very recently fought a war). Instead she complained that they all waste time and money taking 6 months off to spend them at the 'Disko-teka'
Zagreb itself was a much nicer city than I imagined it would be and there were no signs that it was a recent warzone which surprised me. The president's house which was shelled during the war, in particular, showed no signs of damage or even recent reconstruction. The city itself is built into a hill overlooking a large valley.
Zagreb was also much more overtly Catholic than any other city I've been too which was surprising for a place with a 1.5M population. I've never seen so many nuns on the street or a place with such strict clothing guidelines for entering its churches. (I guess this lends credibility to the war between the Serbs and the Croats being over ethnic and religious differences.)
Later that evening, I experienced a slight scare that turned out for the best: I left my day pack with passport and onward plane tickets for the rest of my trip in a restaurant downtown, but didn't realize it, until we had made it back to our hostel, 45 minutes on a tram away. Fortunately, the girl who managed the hostel (an American from Lancaster, PA) had here Croatian husband drive us back to the restaurant in his 20-year old Yugo (which I thought was cool to get to ride in) and my bag was still there. Along the way we talked about a couple things:
1) Particularly high unemployment in Croatia. He seemed to think it wasn't as bad the official statistics since a lot of people work contract jobs and don't report the income or their employment to avoid paying taxes. He attributed this to why the government doesn't' have any funds to do anything with.
2) He also solved the public transportation mystery from Prague for me (since Zagreb has a similar system where you are supposed to validate tickets you purchase elsewhere). The truth in Zagreb at least is that the government intentionally doesn't check people's tickets because it wants to encourage public transit for those seeking jobs. For people with jobs they are required to buy longer transit passes through employers.
Economic observation of the day:
1) Highway infrastructure in the Balkans is definitely improving as we saw a lot of construction along the bus route. Many American style highways with exits and dividers are being built.
2) There are very few traffic lights in Zagreb despite huge intersections and a large number of cars. At the busiest intersections instead there are people directing the flow of traffic and at others drivers seem to wait for a certain period of time and then the flow of traffic just switches. Its pretty amazing that more accidents don't occur or that the government doesn't fund public works for it, since clearly there will be more and more drivers as the country recovers from the war, from Communism, and from being led by a non-communist totalitarian regime.
coincidence of the day:
The NY Times Travel Section just wrote an article about hiking in Europe including a section on the Slovnia's Julian Alps where I just was:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/travel/19hiking.html?th&emc=th
posted by Traveling Brian at 1:33 AM
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