Croatia Quotes

We’ve arrived,” Leo announced. “Time to Split.” Frank groaned. “Can we leave Valdez in Croatia?

The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you … your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option – a choice that didn’t hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon – but he couldn’t see one.

When you’re talking about the culture, maybe there is something that just permeates sort of thing, you know you pass it on or take it in, without ever being aware of it. - Ivan Pavelić, Croatia

Hungary to the upper left, upper left, Serbia to the lower left, lower left. Bosnia on the bottom, on the bottom. Slovenia to the top, to the top. And where’s Croatia?” “Where? Where?” Jacob sung. “It’s next to the Adriatic Sea, across from Italy!

Europeans the Poles or Balts coming in here … we brought here knowledge with us and our culture with us, but we assimilated … assimilated is not one way, it’s a two-way street. - Fred Ritzkowski, German

I had covered wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and elsewhere, but the work had started to feel routine. I wanted to leave the journalistic herd, to find a project that would both daunt and inspire me. Facing down the Congo was just such a project.

The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.

That is why it could happen anywhere, given the right ingredients: particular people in government, competing with others- or with each other- over natural and wealth-creating resources.

I love the way folktale and fantasy tap into the roots of story telling. The paradox, for me, is that by moving a story into the fantastic we can actually bring it closer to the reader, not move it further away. It is more than an escape. When we read of the only daughter of a fisherman (or the third son of a woodcutter) in a fairy tale, we are all that character. That's the underlying pulse beat of such tales. Using the fantastic as a prism for the past, if done properly, removes the tale from distancing specificity. It can't just be read as unique to a time and place; it is universalized in interesting, powerful ways. When I wrote Tigana, about the way tyranny tries to erase identity in conquered peoples, the fantasy setting seems to have done exactly that: I'm asked in places ranging from Korea to Poland to Croatia to Quebec, "Were you writing about us?" I was. All of them. That is the point. The fantastic is a tool in the writer's arsenal, as potentially powerful as any there is, and any tool we have works to the benefit of the reader.

We’ve arrived,” Leo announced. “Time to Split.” Frank groaned. “Can we leave Valdez in Croatia?

Jasenovac concentration camp, which had been the largest “place of extermination” in fascist Croatia during the Second World War. “No one know exact number, but some say a million murdered there. They killing Jews and Gypsies, but most was Serbs.

You know, I'll tell you honestly: if you like food and you haven't come here to eat, you're really missing the fucking boat. This is world-class food; this is world-class wine; this is world-class cheese. The next big thing is Croatia. If you haven't been here, you're a fucking idiot. I'm an idiot.

May your penis fall off when you are asleep” – Croatia

Babe i žabe ('just say no to Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia and Islamic State!')

The fact that no military was deployed to the hot zone during the seven-hour attack was unthinkable. Military assets were just hours away in Italy. Nordstrom testified, “The ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service.”87 Yet aside from that one team from Tripoli, which included Glenn Doherty, there was no show of force from outside Benghazi. A special ops whistle-blower told Fox News that the military had a team ready to scramble from Croatia. That would have taken some four to six hours. The attack lasted for seven hours.88

Can someone please tell me where Croatia is on this map?” Jacob groaned. “Like is there a song I can come up with that will somehow remind me of this?” “Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia,” I said, pointing at the blank map of Europe. “And then there is Serbia.” Jacob glared at me. “Fucking overachieving bitch.” I popped a red Skittle in my mouth. “Sorry.

Vice President Gore, Richard Clarke, and Madeleine Albright were “strong support[ers]” of the program, joining in President Clinton’s “intense” interest in it.5 Egypt’s most famous terrorist, Talaat Fouad Qassem, was “seized in Croatia, flown to the USS Adriatic, a navy warship, interrogated, then flown to Egypt for [torture and] execution.”6 Egypt’s secret police, the Gihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma, is widely known for its brutal torture regime, “real Macho interrogation . . . enhanced interrogation techniques on steroids” and was used by both Presidents Bush and Clinton.7 Congress attempted to end this program in 1998. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act slipped in a passage making it the policy of the United States not to “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”8 Clinton vetoed the bill in late October,

Every communication tool under the sun and none of you seem able to talk to each other.

I was so tired of his being even-keeled in the face of all that was upsetting and ugly and illogical.

Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse.

The country of Croatia was lifted from recession when Kandinsky took a liking to its beaches and built a vacation home, plus several manufacturing plants; certain historians pin America’s downfall to a tax that chased Kandinsky’s California business away. Moreover, Kandinsky boasted a blue-blood pedigree: the right schools, the right clubs, actual royals in the roots of his family tree.

EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE POISON. Two days after leaving Venice, Hazel still couldn’t get the noxious scent of eau de cow monster out of her nose. The seasickness didn’t help. The Argo II sailed down the Adriatic, a beautiful glittering expanse of blue; but Hazel couldn’t appreciate it, thanks to the constant rolling of the ship. Above deck, she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon—the white cliffs that always seemed just a mile or so to the east. What country was that, Croatia? She wasn’t sure. She just wished she were on solid ground again. The thing that nauseated her most was the weasel. Last night, Hecate’s pet Gale had appeared in her cabin. Hazel woke from a nightmare, thinking, What is that smell? She found a furry rodent propped on her chest, staring at her with its beady black eyes. Nothing like waking up screaming, kicking off your covers, and dancing around your cabin while a weasel scampers between your feet, screeching and farting. Her friends rushed to her room to see if she was okay. The weasel was difficult to explain. Hazel could tell that Leo was trying hard not to make a joke. In the morning, once the excitement died down, Hazel decided to visit Coach Hedge, since he could talk to animals. She’d found his cabin door ajar and heard the coach inside, talking as if he were on the phone with someone—except they had no phones on board. Maybe he was sending a magical Iris-message? Hazel had heard that the Greeks used those a lot. “Sure, hon,” Hedge was saying. “Yeah, I know, baby. No, it’s great news, but—” His voice broke with emotion. Hazel suddenly felt horrible for eavesdropping. She would’ve backed away, but Gale squeaked at her heels. Hazel knocked on the coach’s door. Hedge poked his head out, scowling as usual, but his eyes were red. “What?” he growled. “Um…sorry,” Hazel said. “Are you okay?” The coach snorted and opened his door wide. “Kinda question is that?” There was no one else in the room. “I—” Hazel tried to remember why she was there. “I wondered if you could talk to my weasel.” The coach’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice. “Are we speaking in code? Is there an intruder aboard?” “Well, sort of.” Gale peeked out from behind Hazel’s feet and started chattering. The coach looked offended. He chattered back at the weasel. They had what sounded like a very intense argument. “What did she say?” Hazel asked. “A lot of rude things,” grumbled the satyr. “The gist of it: she’s here to see how it goes.” “How what goes?” Coach Hedge stomped his hoof. “How am I supposed to know? She’s a polecat! They never give a straight answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got, uh, stuff…” He closed the door in her face. After breakfast, Hazel stood at the port rail, trying to settle her stomach. Next to her, Gale ran up and down the railing, passing gas; but the strong wind off the Adriatic helped whisk it away. Hazel

Ana—Ana, listen to me.' A shot. 'We're going to play a game, okay? We're going to trick the guards.' A shot. 'They're drunk—it'll be easy if you pay attention. All you have to do is stay close to me, very close—' A shot. 'Then when I fall down into the hole, you fall at the same time. Just close your eyes and keep your body straight.' A shot. 'But it won't work unless we both fall at the very same time, okay?' A shot. 'Do you understand? Don't! Don't look at me.

I want to see a thousand tiny places, smell their flowers, and taste the sauces made by their people. I want to feel the difference between the textures of grit in Sri Lanka and Morocco. I want to meet the woman who bakes the best bread i n the smallest town in New Zealand. I want to find the best vantage point to see Bosnia from Croatia. What do the Grand Marnier crepes taste like in Rouen? In Paris? There are untold numbers of tiny places and extraordinary people who occupy them. We will perhaps see a hundred of both.

But old tensions and enmities persisted. Britain’s King George V loathed his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany’s supreme ruler; and Wilhelm, in turn, envied Britain’s expansive collection of colonies and its command of the seas, so much so that in 1900 Germany began a campaign to build warships in enough quantity and of large enough scale to take on the British navy. This in turn drove Britain to begin an extensive modernization of its own navy, for which it created a new class of warship, the Dreadnought, which carried guns of a size and power never before deployed at sea. Armies swelled in size as well. To keep pace with each other, France and Germany introduced conscription. Nationalist fervor was on the rise. Austria-Hungary and Serbia shared a simmering mutual resentment. The Serbs nurtured pan-Slavic ambitions that threatened the skein of territories and ethnicities that made up the Austro-Hungarian empire (typically referred to simply as Austria). These included such restive lands as Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Croatia. As one historian put it, “Europe had too many frontiers, too many—and too well-remembered—histories, too many soldiers for safety.

So I saw someone with one of those "home of the free because of the brave" shirts a few days ago. I almost laughed. I tried not to because of the upcoming Veterans day… I guess. Home of the Slaves because of the cowards, I think would be more appropriate. Look at these American wars. Vietnam… Iraq… is that really the “brave” thing to do? Beating up on little countries cuz u’r trying to look brave huh? Cowards. And then they tell me to go work at Kroger? Are you insane? Don’t you know my fucking SAT score, you dumb fuck? Why don’t you go and invade Croatia or something instead. Idiots.

This questioning of pronouns started in the former Yugoslavia, which after terrible wars between 1991 and 2006 was divided into six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. In that environment of war and hypermasculinity, patriotism was made up of a mixture of nationalism, patriarchy, and misogyny. Masculinity was defined by power, violence, and conquest. Women and girls from one’s own group had to be protected—and impregnated to provide children for the nation. Those on the enemy’s side were systematically raped and tortured, both to impregnate the women and humiliate the men.

Moji suborci i ja nismo pravili razliku između ljudi koje smo branili, a ja nisam ni znao tko je Srbin, a tko Hrvat. Nikome od nas to nije bilo važno niti smo o tome pričali. Dok se srpski civili prijavljuju vojsci da su Srbi, usput nas prokazuju, a najgore od svega je to što optužuju bez razloga izmišljajući nebulozne zločine.

In 1976, while involved in research at the New York Public Library, I stumbled upon a strange text entitled Return of the Dove which claimed that there was a man not born of this planet who landed as a baby in the mountains of Croatia in 1856. Raised by “earth parents,” an avatar had arrived for the sole purpose of inaugurating the New Age. By providing humans with a veritable cornucopia of inventions, he had created, in essence, the technological backbone of the modern era.1 His name was Nikola Tesla, and his inventions included the induction motor, the electrical-power distribution system, fluorescent and neon lights, wireless communication, remote control, and robotics.

Christianity spread across northern Europe more or less from west to east, slowly, but with greater speed after 950 or so. Ireland was first, in the fifth and sixth centuries; there followed Pictish Scotland, England and central Germany in the seventh century, Saxony – by force as we have seen – after Charlemagne’s conquests in the eighth, Bulgaria, Croatia and Moravia in the ninth, Bohemia in the tenth, Poland, Rus’ (covering parts of European Russia and Ukraine) and Denmark in the late tenth, Norway, Iceland and Hungary in the years around 1000, Sweden more slowly across the eleventh century.3 Only the far north-east of Europe was left out of this, the Baltic- and Finnish-speaking lands, the former of which would eventually, in the thirteenth century, turn into the only large and powerful pagan polity in medieval Europe, Lithuania, before its grand dukes went Christian as late as 1386–87.

When I talk on the phone with my brother Ivo, who is a theology instructor at Baylor, he invariably wants to talk politics, and I hear clicking in the background, and I say, Why talk politics, just remember where we are! I used to have that experience with my older brother Vlado in Yugoslavia: I would want to expound my political views, but he would point to the phone, and say, Why talk politics, remember where we are. This is not America. How things have changed! Now I tell my brother Ivo, Remember where we are. This is not Croatia! Now I am tempted to say, Remember where we are. This is not America. We as Americans are being exiled from our country of liberty through the general paranoia being injected into our asses. The total spying which we suspected in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and East Germany, is only now possible, in the States, through credit cards, computers, EZ passes, surveillance cameras, and well-meaning neighbors.

Dubrovnik, Croatia Dubrovnik’s old architecture, all wrapped within its ancient stone walls, have made this city a World Heritage Site. It’s an old sea port that sits above the Adriatic Sea. Its background, from medieval times was trade between the east and Europe and the city rivalled Venice for its reach and connections. Today, however, the principle economy is based on tourism. The old town is a warren of narrow, cobbled streets, sometimes steep, but pedestrianised which makes it easy to walk. However, be careful – signs do not always point to where they say they are going – many of them are old and the hotels, restaurants, bus stations have moved. The City Walls might look familiar to fans of Game of Thrones – many scenes were filmed here and there are Game of Thrones tours to visit the film’s settings. The area suffered a devastating earthquake in the 17th century, therefore much of the original architecture did not survive. The Sponza Palace, near the Bell Tower, is one of the few Gothic buildings left in the city. The Stradun is the main street in the Old Town – restaurants, shops and bars all pour out onto here. It’s lively, especially towards the end of the day. Don’t forget that the city’s location on the coast means that it also has beautiful beaches. Lapad Beach is two miles outside of town, and has a chilled atmosphere. Banje Beach is closer to the old town. It has an entrance fee and is livelier. One of the reasons Dubrovnok appeals to solo travellers is because it has a low crime rate. In addition, its cobbled streets and artistic shops all make browsing easy.

Why did those governments decide to murder their own people? Why did soldiers and police and barbers and mechanics murder their own neighbors? I think the answer is self-interest. Particular people in a government of a single ideology with effectively no political opponents have supported national institutions that maintain power for themselves. What muddied the waters were the “reasons” the decision makers gave for their political agendas. Take Kosovo: were the killings and expulsions in the 1990s really meant to avenge the Battle of 1389, as Serbian president Slobodan Milošević was fond of stating? Or was it because mineral-rich parts of Kosovo can produce up to $5 billion in annual export income for Serbia? Or take Rwanda: did Hutus kill their neighbors and all their neighbors’ children simply because they were Tutsi, as the government exhorted them to do? Or was it because the government promised Hutus their neighbors’ farmland, land that otherwise could only have been inherited by those very children, and those children’s children, ad infinitum?

The weapons were delivered aboard the Sky Bird in mid-1992 – with two UN arms embargoes being violated by a single deal. In order to avoid detection, the shipping manifests were altered. Repeating their previous ruse, it was claimed that the shipment was intended for the Lebanese Christian militia.27 Umag, a port city in Croatia, was the real destination, with an end-user certificate provided by the Finance Minister, Martinovic.

With arms embargoes quickly imposed on the region, each side had to scramble for whatever arms they could find – a veritable feast for daring arms dealers. Croatia, seeing the likelihood of war, started to equip itself as early as January 1991.

Just find someone who can stamp your papers as many times as possible. Stamp it all, with any stamp you can find. It doesn’t matter what type of stamp it is.

All of this points to an important dimension of a spirituality of reconciliation. A spirituality of reconciliation involves not directing one's thinking along the traditional channels of power, but making possible the springing up of alternatives to dominative power. To counter power with the same kind of power may restrain it, but it does not lead to peace. This is something practitioners of non-violence have known for a long time. But it is a lesson hard to learn. The power that broke the hold of sin on the world was the powerlessness, the agony, and the humiliation of the cross. The blood that was shed in violence becomes life-giving, redeeming blood. Reconciliation requires finding a different kind of power from dominative power to transform situations. Matthilde Mellibovsky, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, speaks of it as a “circle of love around death.” The women in Croatia called it a wall of peace. It is the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

The country was at war, but for most people the war was more an idea than an experience, and I felt something between anger and shame that Americans - that I - could sometimes ignore its impact for days at a time. In Croatia, life in wartime had meant a loss of control, war holding sway over every thought and movement, even while you slept.

Analogously, men value physical attractiveness, and I found that women were most likely to cite enhancing their appearance as one of their primary mate retention tactics—a finding that is replicable across cultures, including Brazil, Croatia, and the United States.40 Out of the nineteen clusters evaluated, enhancing their appearance was the second most effective tactic used by women, after love and kindness.

Croatia and Serbia will always seek to advance the interests of their ethnic compatriots in Bosnia, at the expense of each other and of the Bosnian Muslims, no matter who is in charge, democrat or autocrat. But

Put those national institutions under the magnifying glass, I challenged the class. Take a closer look, not just because those institutions have denied illegal activities of which we now have clear evidence, but also because the bodies unearthed from supposedly different conflicts have told such similar stories. For example, Rwanda has been described as having experienced “spontaneous tribal violence” in 1994, while the former Yugoslavia was said to have experienced “war” between supposedly discrete “ethnic and religious” groups from 1991 to 1995. How could such different conflicts produce dead who tell a single story—a story in which internally displaced people gather or are directed to distinct locations before being murdered there? How could “spontaneous violence” or “war” leave physical evidence that reveals tell-tale signs of methodical preparation for mass murder of noncombatants? I’m thinking about countrywide roadblocks to check civilians’ identity cards, supplies of wire and cloth sufficient to blindfold and tie up thousands of people, bodies buried in holes created by heavy earth-moving machinery during times when fuel alone is hard to come by.

Had he used his real name, or had immigration officials dug deeper, it might have been evident that Artukovic was a top cabinet minister in the Nazi puppet government in Croatia, or that he had reputedly ordered the murder and imprisonment of some 600,000 of his countrymen, or even that Yugoslavian war crimes investigators wanted to arrest the man known there as the Butcher of the Balkans.

In May 1941, when the German army overran and split up Yugoslavia, the pre-war terrorist-nationalist Ustaša and its longtime leader Ante Pavelić were permitted to take power in the newly independent state of Croatia. Even Nazi onlookers were appalled by the disorderly slaughters in which the Ustaša massacred a soberly estimated 500,000 Serbs, 200,000 Croats, 90,000 Bosnian Muslims, 60,000 Jews, 50,000 Montenegrins, and 30,000 Slovenes.

Born in 1856 in Croatia, Tesla was a talented engineer and physicist who impressed the scientific world with his invention of the electromagnetic induction motor.

In the programs and statements of these parties one hears echoes of classical fascist themes: fears of decadence and decline; assertion of national and cultural identity; a threat by unassimilable foreigners to national identity and good social order; and the need for greater authority to deal with these problems. Even though some of the European radical Right parties have full authoritarian-nationalist programs (such as the Belgian Vlaams Blok’s “seventy points” and Le Pen’s “Three Hundred Measures for French Revival” of 1993), most of them are perceived as single-issue movements devoted to sending unwanted immigrants home and cracking down on immigrant delinquency, and that is why most of their voters chose them. Other classical fascist themes, however, are missing from the programmatic statements of the most successful postwar European radical Right parties. The element most totally absent is classical fascism’s attack on the liberty of the market and economic individualism, to be remedied by corporatism and regulated markets. In a continental Europe where state economic intervention is the norm, the radical Right has been largely committed to reducing it and letting the market decide. Another element of classical fascist programs mostly missing from the postwar European radical Right is a fundamental attack on democratic constitutions and the rule of law. None of the more successful European far Right parties now proposes to replace democracy by a single-party dictatorship. At most they advocate a stronger executive, less inhibited forces of order, and the replacement of stale traditional parties with a fresh, pure national movement. They leave to the skinheads open expressions of the beauty of violence and murderous racial hatred. The successful radical Right parties wish to avoid public association with them, although they may quietly share overlapping membership with some ultraright action squads and tolerate a certain amount of overheated language praising violent action among their student branches. No western European radical Right movement or party now proposes national expansion by war—a defining aim for Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed the advocates of border changes in postwar Europe have mostly been secessionist rather than expansionist, such as the Vlaams Blok in Belgium and (for a time) Umberto Bossi’s secessionist Northern League (Lega Nord) in northern Italy. The principal exceptions have been the expansionist Balkan nationalisms that sought to create Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia, and Greater Albania.

How the hell did I end up here? I certainly had no intentions of making this comic. There was, in fact, no comic to be made. Sunstone was the end result of the deepest fast-food and burn-out I have ever experienced in my life. It was three years ago. I had just finished my last issue of Witchblade, a comic that I had lived and hated at that point. Comics itself had nothing to do with it ... [sic.] Truth was, artistically speaking, I hit a wall and there was no way past it. In my eyes I wasn't a storyteller anymore. I was a grinder going through the emotions. And I was burnt out. So there I was, sitting and hate-staring my computer monitor... or way...too...long... , Something had to change. I had to find the spark, which by that time, I had obviously lost. I started reminiscing about those great outbursts of inspiration and drive I experienced in my past. And there, I remembered it. The most exciting moment of my career. It was just before I got hired by Top Cow. I was in my early twenties, and my dream was to become a comic artist. Chances of this living in Croatia were slim to none, but my work was noticed, and I got asked to do a fetishistic erotic comic. Not all that unusual in Europe. I was ecstatic. For the first time I would be able to help my family by doing something I love. I remember drawing up a storm. I drew over 30 sample pages, and then crazily enough, Top Cow's offer came in. I had to make a choice. And it was a choice I never regretted. But I remembered something about those long list sample pages ... They were expressive. There was so much energy to them ... Energy that got lost in my work over time as a result of trying to emulate other people's work. I shrugged ... said "Fuck it!" turned to Linda, and told her about my idea ...

Although Bush is not mentioned, it is clear from Sadleir’s memo that the Republican leadership had taken precautions to hide its campaign association with Fascist groups, particularly the Croatians. Sadleir was told by his State Department counterpart that “prominent” federal, state and municipal American politicians were discreetly advised by the Nixon administration to stay away from Croatian gatherings on April 10, because that was the day they celebrated Hitler’s establishment of Ante Pavelić’s “puppet State of Croatia,” an artificial nation under the complete control of Nazi Germany.36

VOJNI ŽUPNIK: Hoću reći, mira ima i u ratu, ima on svojih mirovnih mjesta. Rat naime zadovoljava sve potrebe, među njima i za mirom, tu je on zbrinut, inače se ne bi uspijevao održati. I u ratu se možeš pokakati kao i u najdubljem miru, a između jednog i drugog okršaja ima i piva, pa čak i dok se napreduje možeš malo zadrijemati, oslonjen o lakte, to se uvijek može, u grabi na ulici. Za juriša se doduše ne možeš kartati, ne možeš to ni dok u najdubljem miru oreš njivu, ali nakon pobjede ima tih mogućnosti. Može biti da ti kugla odnese nogu, isprva ispustiš grozan krik, kao da je to nešto, ali onda se primiriš ili dobiješ rakije, pa na kraju opet cupkaš, a rat nije nimalo lošiji no prije. A što te priječi da se usred tog klanja i množiš, iza nekog štaglja ili bilo gdje drugdje, od toga te nije moguće zadugo uzdržati, i rat onda dobije tvoje izdanke i može krenuti dalje. Ne, rat uvijek nađe izlaza, kako da ne. Zašto bi morao prestati?

MY FATHER TRIED IT. In Daruvar, Croatia, he bought a piano, sat my oldest brother at it, and hired a teacher. Whenever Vlado made a mistake, the teacher caned his fingers. After a few such lessons, Vlado skipped one; the teacher complained and wanted his money. Vlado said he was beaten; the teacher denied it. Father believed the teacher, and beat Vlado for maligning such a gentleman. After that, Vlado made sure not to play the piano again. Father attempted to persuade him a few times with the belt and a stick, which only confirmed Vlado’s impression of the piano as the black instrument of torture.

When I talk on the phone with my brother Ivo, who is a theology instructor at Baylor, he invariably wants to talk politics, and I hear clicking in the background, and I say, Why talk politics, just remember where we are! I used to have that experience with my older brother Vlado in Yugoslavia: I would want to expound my political views, but he would point to the phone, and say, Why talk politics, remember where we are. This is not America. How things have changed! Now I tell my brother Ivo, Remember where we are. This is not Croatia!

Hravat is the Croatian word for “Croat” and it’s where we get the word cravat. So Croatia means “tie land.

Went to Croatia in July. The gals there are amazingly beautiful - far more so than in Poland (and Polish gals are famous). But in general everyone is also pretty miserable, and it's very difficult to meet people, even at the most buzzing places in Croatia. It seems to be a post-Communist thing. Or maybe a Slavic thing? I don't know, that's why I'm posting here.

I suggest that I sleep on the cot. “Not open to discussion,” declares Svetlana in a friendly but firm tone. “We Yugoslavs are a hardy people. I myself can sleep on the floor if required. We are Yugoslavs. We are tough.” Her casual remark, certainly not intended to hurt me, inflicts a wound. I see I have much to learn about being flexible and adaptable.

Apart from the Croat-Muslim unifying narrative, the Ustashe also used overtly anti-Serb propaganda. They banned the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the Serb national alphabet, on April 25, 1941, and on May 3, 1941 passed legislation that viewed religious conversion for the Orthodox as the only way to grant them equal rights before the law.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and Russian democracy advocate who now lives in exile in Croatia, opined, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

Someday, maybe, the various constituent parts of America will become “empowered” the way Serbia and Croatia are. Someday Aryan Nation, NOW, the VFW, Act Up, AARP, Native Americans, Right to Life fetuses, people with Hispanic surnames, the blind, the deaf, the rest of the differently abled will have their dreams come true. Having made the drive to Slavonski Brod I now know what America will look like when it happens.

I got out my phone to research Croatia, and spent the night going down a rabbit hole learning about the country and its immigration policies. Because when you are confronted with that kind of perceived threat of violence, it plays with your head. You wonder what you might have done to incite it, when really, you just existed in a public space that did not want you. In 2019, there’d been a spike in nationalistic hate crimes in Croatia, one of the whitest countries in the world with Croats making up more than 90 percent of the population, and Serbs being its largest “minority.” That night I read countless accounts of Black travelers horrified by racism in Croatia, including apparent poisoning of meals at restaurants where waiters stood around and giggled as Black people ate. Beatings, intimidation, and refusal of service. I

The coast of Austria-Hungary yielded what people called cappuzzo, a leafy cabbage. It was a two-thousand-year-old grandparent of modern broccoli and cauliflower, that was neither charismatic nor particularly delicious. But something about it called to Fairchild. The people of Austria-Hungary ate it with enthusiasm, and not because it was good, but because it was there. While the villagers called it cappuzzo, the rest of the world would call it kale. And among its greatest attributes would be how simple it is to grow, sprouting in just its second season of life, and with such dense and bulky leaves that in the biggest challenge of farming it seemed to be how to make it stop growing. "The ease with which it is grown and its apparent favor among the common people this plant is worthy a trial in the Southern States," Fairchild jotted. It was prophetic, perhaps, considering his suggestion became reality. Kale's first stint of popularity came around the turn of the century, thanks to its horticultural hack: it drew salt into its body, preventing the mineralization of soil. Its next break came from its ornamental elegance---bunches of white, purple, or pink leaves that would enliven a drab garden. And then for decades, kale kept a low profile, its biggest consumers restaurants and caterers who used the cheap, bushy leaves to decorate their salad bars. Kale's final stroke of luck came sometime in the 1990s when chemists discovered it had more iron than beef, and more calcium, iron, and vitamin K than almost anything else that sprouts from soil. That was enough for it to enter the big leagues of nutrition, which invited public relations campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and morning-show cooking segments. American chefs experimented with the leaves in stews and soups, and when baked, as a substitute for potato chips. Eventually, medical researchers began to use it to counter words like "obesity," "diabetes," and "cancer." One imagines kale, a lifetime spent unnoticed, waking up one day to find itself captain of the football team.

I shove down the hazy memories of everything that mouth did in Croatia.

The smallest town in the world is Hum, Croatia. It has only 30 inhabitants but has preserved its town institutions from the time when its population was considerably larger.

In London, patient digging in British postwar papers finally paid off when these documents revealed direct Papal complicity in the protection of war criminals. Documents I requested from the United States under the Freedom of Information Act proved how Perón’s top Nazi smuggler had actually been a secret agent of the SS, sent out of Berlin in 1945 on a mission slated to start after the end of the war. Declassified CIA documents also explained how gold looted from the Serb and Jewish victims of Croatia’s Nazi puppet regime had found its way to Argentina in the early 1950s.

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use every opportunity to communicate with my friends and family. Anytime I am sitting in the back of a cab, airports, or trains I use the time to send a note to my closest friends and family. I speak with my children and my mother every day. With my sister several times a week. Frequency of communication is important, much more so than duration. These techniques have helped me to stay in touch with my family and friends in Croatia even though I left it 30 years ago.”—Tom, 56

Thus, the pope’s call was answered by King Sigismund of Hungary and Croatia,

Taxonomically the bora and mistral are katabatic (downhill) winds, found anywhere that cold mountain air can make a steep escape to ground. Wind names in the Mediterranean derive largely from geography. Llevantade has roots in the Spanish verb llevar (to rise) and is one in a family of winds that originate from the east. Poniente means west in Spanish and denotes fair breezes that blow in off the Atlantic, funneling through the Strait of Gibraltar. The sirocco is drawn up from Africa, a gritty inhalation that grows wet and foggy on a diet of evaporated water as it makes its way north. Microparticles of airborne sand form nuclei for condensation, bringing tiny bits of the Sahara down with the rain onto Europe. The sirocco is called the arifi (thirsty) in Libya, and the jugo (south) in Croatia. I posit that we are experiencing the Mediterranean’s unnamed breeze, the nonwind. “Ah, yes,” she replies. “El sin viento.

Croatia,” said Rook with appreciation. “Have you ever been? Croatia has everything. Castles, beautiful woman…Stunningly. Beautiful. Women.

ss. Currently Zagreb, Croatia. The appendix to this volume gives the current names and national affiliations of all of the venues in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire visited by the Wild West in 1906.

One Sunday, the pastor gave a sermon about repentance, the Greek translation of the word being metanoia. "Metanoia means a 'change of mind,' not in the sense of a new decision, but in the sense of a whole new being," Reverend Ruhe said, roaming the altar..."Metanoia is coming to a new life. It's like stepping through a door, out of one existence and into another." I'd never heard of this metanoia. It's a tricky word, difficult to define and hard to understand unless you've felt it. But I knew it after visiting Croatia. Everything seemed different, like that day in September when you know summer is over because the afternoon light has changed.

The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you...your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option—a choice that didn’t hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon—but he couldn’t see one.

The Uskoks – like reformed alcoholics brought face to face with row upon row of brightly coloured liqueur miniatures – were simply unable to avoid helping themselves to passing Venetian Christian ships.

As far as the Balkans were concerned, the result of the EU’s initial failure was a return to the drawing board and the production of a Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe. This overarching set of policies, designed to strengthen democracy, human rights, and economic reform, was later followed by Stability and Association Agreements between the EU and each of the West Balkan states. This is backed by the EU’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance, which provides the West Balkans with some €500 million per year. With the slow stabilization of the region, the EU has been able to offer membership to Croatia; full candidate status to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia; and a provisional status to the others with Stability and Association Agreements, thus providing a strong incentive for local politicians to follow the example of the other Central and Eastern Europeans.

For example, in 1965, the family of Josef K.—who, according to the BVA, was an ethnic German born in 1927 to two German parents—was not granted an entry visa because his non-German wife, Djurdja, did not speak any German and the children had “typically Slavic first names.”37 The fact that past applicants from their hometown Sokolovac in Croatia had had a good knowledge of the German language was held against this candidate. In a similar case in 1964, Emil S. and his wife, Jelka, from Slavonian Vukovar were denied entry despite the “typically German” first names of their three children—Josef, Emmerich, and Karl—because Jelka’s Croatian Volkstum was judged to be dominant in the family.38 In contrast, Stefan V., a Hungarian German man from Czerwenka (Crvenka) in Serbia was accepted, even though he had his father’s typically Hungarian surname and was registered as Hungarian in his Yugoslav identification. His son Tibor bore an equally Hungarian first name. Yet Stefan and his children spoke excellent German and, according to the embassy in Belgrade, “made a very good impression.” Therefore, their application was granted without hesitation.39

used to take many long and uncomfortable hours in a bus, car, or train to journey between the deep interior of Croatia and the coast. But the building of several massive, graded, and multi-laned superhighways from Zagreb down the mountains to Rijeka, to Senj, to Zadar, and to Split along the Adriatic coast has cut the distance dramatically

From Zagreb to Rijeka now takes ninety minutes, to Senj two hours, and so forth. Because of the collapse of distance effected by civil engineering—to say nothing of the explosion of global tourism along the Dalmatian seaboard—Croatia has changed both economically and, to an extent, psychologically. Croatia has begun to move away from a more ethnically obsessed Balkan orientation in the direction of a more cosmopolitan Mediterranean one.

RB Leipzig vs. Man City score, highlights from Champions League as Gvardiol cancels out Mahrez strike Josko Gvardiol secured a 1-1 draw for RB Leipzig in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie with Manchester City. Riyad Mahrez gave City the lead before the half-hour, crowning a dominant opening from the Premier League champions. But Leipzig emerged with renewed purpose after the break and halftime substitute Benjamin Henrichs twice went close before Croatia defender Gvardiol converted Marcel Halstenberg's cross as City were caught napping from a short corner.

For years, Zagreb, Croatia’s chief city, was a layover on the way to the country’s island-studded coast. No more. Tourism had shot up more than 20 percent from 2011 to 2013, when Croatia joined the European Union. Accompanying that rise is a raft of modernized and recently built lodgings, including some three dozen hostels — important additions to the town’s once-inadequate accommodation scene.

Kushner, now back from vacationing in Croatia, delivered the news at a Friday morning breakfast as diplomatically as he could. “We’ve really got a problem here, Paul,” Kushner told him. “You’re going to have to step down.” But Manafort objected. “Well, I don’t want to do that, because it’ll look like I’m guilty,” he said. Kushner pressed harder. “It would be helpful if you stepped down.” “Yes,” Manafort replied, “but I can’t do that.” At this, Kushner’s demeanor hardened and he glanced at his watch. “We’re putting out a press release at nine a.m. that says you’ve resigned,” he said. “That’s in thirty seconds.” Manafort’s ouster extinguished the last vestige of hope for

Serbs don’t forget, as the graffito goes, the atrocities that the Croatian ustashas committed against them in World War II. That was repeated in school over and over by history teachers when I was a pupil in Croatia. Many Croats don’t forget the slaughters that the Serb nationalist chetniks committed on the Croatian rural population, although that lesson was passed over in silence in our history lessons. My brother-in-law—who died of stomach cancer, and who had spent the recent war two hundred yards away from the Serb border toward Vukovar, from where his street was shelled almost daily—told me that when he was a child, during World War II, he ran into a ditch full of Croatian peasants massacred by chetniks. He never forgot, and wasn’t even allowed to talk about it because he would be jailed for spreading nationalist propaganda. He told me this in the park after my father’s funeral, at a moment when we were both talking about life, death, and souls. Which is better, to forget or to remember? Of course, to remember, but not to abuse the memories as Serbian leaders have done to spur their armies into aggression against Croats and Muslims. Croats will remember Vukovar. Muslims will remember Srebrenica. And what is the lesson? Not to trust thy neighbor? But that’s perhaps where the trouble began and will resume.

Like the areas in Croatia far from Zagreb, Bosnia was mainly full of nothing: vast expanses of rocky soil, so that even the grass looked like it’d prefer to be rooted somewhere else.

The sieges of Gvozdansko, Croatia and Alamo, U.S. tell the true stories of small bands of heroes who stood against massive armies to defend their homelands. They echo innate human devotion to the idea of fighting for freedom across the world. Alamo was designate by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 2015. Gvozdansko deserves more research and the same level of respect and protection for its equal relevance. The Croatian landmark was the site of the pivotal 103-day Battle of Gvozdansko in 1578 against the Ottoman army. Among those who fought and died there were the common miners together with their families.

The sieges of Gvozdansko (1578), Croatia and Alamo (1836), USA tell the true stories of the small bands of the heroes who stood against the massive armies to defend their homelands. They echo innate human devotion to the idea of fighting for freedom all across the world. Since Alamo has been firmly embedded in the USA collective memory and had become the heritage site ever since, the Battle of Gvozdansko as older and equally important deserves to be studied, promoted, and of course to become a revered heritage site in Croatia and the United Europe.

English medieval history is impossible to understand without France, which exerted a huge cultural influence over its northern neighbor well into the modern era, and so the story of the Seven Kingdoms is not just that of England but rather Britain, France, and Spain in one. In Martin’s words, “Westeros is much much MUCH bigger than Britain. More the size (though not the shape, obviously) of South America.”9 Although the Seven Kingdoms all speak the same language, they are varied in their ancestry and racial appearance, while the geography varies hugely; so, while the five most northerly kingdoms correspond to Britain, the Reach strongly resembles France and Dorne is Moorish Spain. Paris is the model for King’s Landing, and in the books appears far less tropical than in the television series, which is filmed in Malta and Croatia.10

The peace which Kulin Ban purchased by yielding to Rome was not of long duration, for he could not compel his people to observe its terms. On his death (1216) the Pope appointed a Roman Catholic Ban, and sent a mission to convert the Bosnians. The churches of the country, however, increased the more, and spread into Croatia, Dalmatia, Istria, Carniola and Slavonia. Some six years later the Pope, despairing of converting the Bosnians by other than forcible methods, and encouraged by the success of his crusade in Provence, ordered the King of Hungary to invade Bosnia. The Bosnians deposed their Roman Catholic Ban and elected a Bogomil, Ninoslav. For years the war went on, with varying fortune. Ninoslav yielded to circumstances and became a Roman Catholic, but no change in their rulers affected the faith and confession of the great bulk of the people. The country was devastated, but whenever the invading armies withdrew, the churches were found still existing, and the industry of the people quickly restored prosperity. Fortresses were erected throughout the country “for the protection of the Roman Catholic Church and religion”; the Pope gave the land to Hungary, which long ruled it, but its people still holding to their faith, he at length called a crusade of “all the Christian world” against it; the Inquisition was established (1291), and Dominican and Franciscan brothers competed in applying its terrors to the devoted churches.

My politically charged coming-of-age story Voices in the Forest brings the futility of the bygone Croatian marriages to the fore. If the pretty but obtuse image of Fairy of Velebit personifies the Queen of Croatia, it would be better for Croats to dethrone her and put equally beautiful but the shrewd image of Zsa Zsa Gabor in her place. It would give Croatia a new angle how to manage her future marriages while still sexy and in demand. Remember, every marriage a box of diamonds and a house.