Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 01:05:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 9 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7241    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
09/11/1992

Dobar Dan,

My other (youngest) brother has his birthday today (I have mine 
in 14 days from now), when I phoned my mother to get his 
telephone number she told me that she decided after 12 years 
living together to get remarried with Pieke (my father died 18 
years ago, so it is time). When she was looking for his new 
number I talked with Pieke, asking if he didn't mind if I 
wouldn't be on their party, he told me that he could 
understand, and that he and my mother decided not to make a big 
party as long as the wars here were going on and more over that 
he asked his fellow artist in the Netherlands (Pieke is a more 
or less famous (at least in the Netherlands) puppet and 
television artist and painter) to sign a letter to one of the 
biggest paint factories in the country asking if they (that 
company would donated the amount of paint they have used over 
the years for their paintings for the children in the refugee 
camps in Croatia. I hope they do and I hope that more people 
get such a good idea. We at least are very thankful and hope it 
will work.

"Clash" my computer said during an uploading process from 
Austria and for 2 hours I could check what happened, but when 
the electricity went back on I show the disaster about 5 
megabyte of information was demolished, among which a big part 
of my whole databank with other computer users which I have 
send or from which I have received some message in the past. 
When you see it happening you feel rather stupid, since you 
can't do anything, the power breaks and that is it.

The last day in town it was remarkable how many people bought 
fire wood for the house, so I started to asked around. I 
remember the real East European smelling in the air when I 
came, cheap coals and browncoal used in nearly every house. But 
now you see no coals. The answer was simple, there is only 
coals for the electric power plans, but since coal came from 
Kosovo and BiH there is no coal in Croatia for normal 
households, so that's why every turn over to wood.

When I was with Goga and Mark-Jan in town to visit the head of 
the account department of the monistry at Kaptol, since they 
own the whole area in the middle of the town and one of the 
weekly newspapers, Globus, found themselves a new office and so 
there old building on Kaptol stands empty and would make a good 
office for us. I spend some nights in that building working 
with Mak and Vesna J. on ARKzin the magazine of the Anti War 
Campaign, which haven't came out since a long time (Vesna J. 
promise to bring out a new number soon, but like everybody from 
ARK she was really tired during the summer).

During the time that we were waiting for the priest in charge I 
was watching the building of Caritas, nearly every minute 
somebody went in to collect some help, a few minute later they 
came out again with a plastic bag full food or clothes. After 
some time a man, short hear and looking if he hadn't seen a bad 
in a very long time came down the road. He had an empty wine 
bottle in one hand the rest of a paper box in the other and was 
obvious already drunk (it was about 10 in the morning). 

When he reached the building of Caritas he put the bottle 
behind the fence and his box on the ground and sat down on it. 
He started begging, I watched him for over half an hour and 

counted what he got, it must have been at least 5000 Dinars, 
the half of the minimum monthly income in Croatia. How he did 
it god knows, but only every 9th person walked by without 
giving him anything. Most of the people passed him like they 
pass the gypsies begging in the main street, just looking if 
their is something real interesting down the road, absolutely 
not recognising the man sitting there. But mostly after 5, or 6 
metres they stand still took their wallet, took out some green 
papers (100 Dinars) and went back to give it to him. Maybe it 
was the place, but if you compared it with what gypsies are 
getting when they are begging this was a big surprise for me.

After 30 minutes, he stand up, pick up his empty bottle and his 
box and disappeared down the road in the direction of the main 
square, obvious to get more drunk. All that time I stood about 
10 metres away from him and he never ever said Hvala (thank 
you) but took the money if it was the most normal think in the 
world. I thought about the many other beggars in town, do they 
know about this place or is it just his spot.

In the evening I went with Vesna J. out eating, it was time to 
do something together again, we are not seeing eachother so 
often since I moved outside the town center and spend more time 
in the house than outside. We went to one of the nice fish 
restaurant in Zagreb (in Split you nearly can't find any, but 
here they are there). In the bar of the restaurant there were 
to older Dalmatian man singing love songs in their dialect. 
They also were obvious rather drunk, but I wouldn't like to 
have missed it for a lot of money. The songs where beautiful, 
even they singing and the melody was melancholic. Something 
like that happens here, in the Netherlands they would have been 
thrown out immediately. I start to like this countries and the 
people more and more.

Who also like the country better and better is one of our ex-
soldiers. John, who left Croatian army, in which he was 
volunteer for 6 months, a few months back and started to live 
in our house. He turned out to be one of our best co-leaders in 
the workcamps. He is beautiful with children and peaceful and 
open minded towards everybody (you never would found out that 
he was for months a frontline soldier, if you didn't asked 
him). He asked for Croatian state member ship today, when I ask 
him why, he answered "First I have been suffering a lot for 
this country fighting against the Chetniks, and now I have 
hundreds of children hanging around my neck every day, I think 
I deserve it and why going back to the UK, things are much more 
positive down here, here I have a good job and there I am 
unemployed'.

Being a soldier in Croatian army is not as heroic as it was a 
year ago. More and more young people starts to hate going in, 
they are not allowed anymore to dress them self the way they 
like it and they army is becoming more and more army like JNA 
use to be. You see in town more and more boys in normal clothes 
but with extreme short hair, they have to get it cut again and 
when they are out of their barracks they like to wear civilian 
clothes, instead of their uniform, that was different some 
months ago. How fast things can change.

Tonight is the "Kristalnacht", I hope it wouldn't happen again.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

                            Wam :-)
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Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer 
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do. It has no 
copyright and may be used in all forms of further distribution 
among all types of media. But please if you use something drop 
me a line. You can reach me via wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de. I 
dedicate Zagreb Diary to Tyche, Pjort and Rik in order that 
they will know what their father was doing all that time in 
Zagreb.