From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 10:15:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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Zagreb Diary
26-08-1992

Dobar Dan,

When I walked this morning to the office from the other side 
a red ferrari came, doing at least 120 Km a hour in the 
middle of the town. My first reaction was something like: "He 
friend it isn't Sarajevo here (that's were car drivers rather 
must have rally skill than being polite car drivers)", but 
when he passed I saw the yellow number plate saying "HV ??? 
??", so it was an army car. I told you before that the army 
is investing their money in strange expensive cars, but this 
broke the absolute limit, what is the use of a ferrari two-
seater for an army (other than giving the boys a macho 
feeling). 

Like under the communists the army is becoming a separate 
power in this country, which is absolute isolated from real 
live in the cities. Besides the razzias in the refugees camps 
they start more and more with street controls, which was up 
to now the exclusive right of the MUP (normal police). Every 
time when they control my pass, which happens about 3 times a 
week, they look curious at my visa for all the Eastern 
countries, you see them thinking "what is this communist 
doing here ?".

And than you have to know that Tudjman is surrounded by all 
kind of former communists. The head of police and even the 
head of secret police just changed side. Former they were 
hunting nationalists, now they are hunting communists, is an 
often said they you hear.

Cars are always a kind of barometer for the state you are in. 
If you look on the streets in Zagreb you see that the middle 
class cars are nearly not there. You will see cheap cars 
(Fiats, Yugocars, Volkswagens, Renaults, etc.) and expensive 
cars (Volvos, Mercedes, Japanish class cars, etc.), but the 
middle class cars you hardly ever see.  An other thing is 
that the expensive cars are often brand new and the cheap 
cars old (of course it is not so black and white as I write, 
you will see middle class cars, but not so much as f.e. in 
Germany, new cheap cars I have seen none so far).

This is an other example how the population falls apart 
between rich and poor. You can't see it in clothes or such 
things, since people seems to eat rather less than safe money 
on clothes and luxes things. And at this moment it is summer, 
it is warm and fresh vegetable are relative cheap. In a 
couple of months it is cold, the electricity bills go up and 
food in the stores get expensive. 

When somebody ask me the other day (a foreigner) if I wasn't 
afraid of riots and stealing, I answer that for the time 
being people have mostly a war on their mind and that I 
honestly feel safe in Zagreb. I don't have the feeling of 
getting robbed at the streets. Up to now I only can recall 
one case that somebody I know was robbed on the street.


What I expect is that when the holiday period is over and 
people come back from their holidays at the sea sides, some 
kind of social unrest will start. The prices have gone up in 
the time they were on holidays a lot, f.e. 1 litre of milk 
costed around 50 Croatian Dinars in April and now it is often 
over 200 Croatian Dinar. And so has all basic food prices 
went up. I wonder how long it will take until the labour 
union start their demands to double the incomes. They 
announced a general strike already before the summer 
holidays, but somehow the government could convince them not 
to do it, but for how long.
 
In the afternoon I went with Nina to look at the possible 
rooms we maybe can get in the building of the school for 
social work and I was feeling really idiotic somehow when I 
saw the school. The school looks like an old English ghost 
house and besides the fact that they renewed the roof some 
years ago the rest of the building looks if nobody hasn't 
take care of it for years.

On the school there are about 400 students, from which about 
200 are mostly there, the rest is doing practical periods 
outside. Those 200 students are learning in classroom which 
is overfull with tables and chears to fit the app. 50 
students per class in (in my school of social work in the 
Netherlands in such a room only 20 students would be 
teached). The paint in the class rooms is slowly coming down 
and besides a blackboard there is no other material for 
teaching. In many ways I felt like a voyeur, if I compare it 
with our schools back home I hardly can imagine that people 
are able to learn anything under such conditions. It is like 
going back in history.

Going through the depressing classroom I spend some time 
reading the benches in which the whole love and national 
history was carved by different generation of students. 
Besides the names (and hearts) of popular boys and girls (and  
of course music groups), you saw the weapon of arms from 
Croatia, the swastika mixed with hammer and sickle and red 
stars with big crosses going through it, the big U from 
Utashe and the V from Vukovar. One bench is reflection of all 
what happened on micro and macro level in the last 3 years, 
but I can insure you people keep falling in love in a war and 
dirty drawing are the same all over the world.
  
In the evening we had an other appointment in Hotel 
Esplenada, maybe the hotel which went through the biggest 
style change in the last half year. The hotel and it's 
personal maybe stay the same, but with all this journalists 
staying there in the blue jeans and dirty clothes it looks 
more and more like the hotel in Hemmingways book. For the 
first time I was allowed to go in with my short pants, two 
months ago they would have refused me at the door. Now we 
could sit in the hall under the nice Jugend Style lamps in 
leather chairs in which you nearly totally disappairs. With 
whom we talk and what we discussed I will write tomorrow, 
since it became a late and long meeting and I am tired after 
all the things which happened the last days.


With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)

  

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