Croatia: Sunflowers, Churches, Monuments, Music

Croatia was carved out of the country Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Bloc.  Part of the country declared their independence with no problem, but when Croatia declared its independence, Serbia which had control of the army invaded them and a bitter war broke out in the early nineties.  Eventually, Croatia won its independence and Serbia had to withdraw.  Ostensibly, they are at peace, but our tour guide told us there is still deep, deep enmity between the two.  All of you can probably remember the difficulties in Bosnia, another section of the old country, but today we were in Croatia.

The primary reason Serbia wanted to retain Croatia is that it has the port on the Adriatic Sea and Serbia is a landlocked country.

Where we were today is just across the Danube River from Serbia.

After driving through Vukavo, we passed through flat fields of corn, sunflowers, sugar cane, beets, and hay to the village where we would be divided between several homes.  Our hostess was waiting at her garden gate and escorted the eight of us to tables set up under a large arbor covered in thick grapevines loaded with green grapes.  As we sat and sipped on our homemade cherry juice and nibbled on cherry cakes and brownies, Snjezana told us about her life, family, and the war.  She also answered questions about life in Croatia.

When the war broke out, she and her husband were living in Germany where their two children were born.  They both were working; he in construction, and she, cleaning house.  She said that theirs was a mixed marriage:  She was Russian Orthodox and he was Roman Catholic.  Because Serbia is the former and Croatia is the latter, they really did not fit in in either place.  People who had been friends for years, Muslim and Christian were no longer comfortable together.  When the war was over, Germany gave them three months to leave the country.  Since the children had been baptized into the Catholic Church, they returned to Croatia where they have lived ever since.  Their son is soon to graduate from university and their daughter is in her second year.  She now operates a bed and breakfast because her husband had built the house large enough to accommodate the extended family and some of them have returned to Serbia.  Many of their guests come to enjoy the national park which is s few miles away.  After close to an hour in the village of Bilje, the bus picked us up and we went to a town to visit the Church of St. Anthony.

St. Anthony is the patron saint of the region, children, and lost things.  The church is a Franciscan church and is right next to the monastery which now has only 3 monks.

We were treated to a flute concert at the church and enjoyed sitting in the beautiful sanctuary with the notes floating around us.  The young flautist was another blessing on this trip.

We saw the two statues in the courtyard, one of a crucifix which commemorates that we are all to forgive but we should never forget the atrocities of war.  The other was a monument to the millions of Jews who died in the holocaust.

We walked on the old three hundred year old cobblestones to see the Jesuit Church where the bell in the tower rings at eleven each Friday morning to commemorate the time Ottoman Turks finally left the country.

We made one more stop on our way to the river so see the water tower destroyed ,by the Serbians in the war which is being a memorial to Croatian freedom.

When you see the damage done to this and many of the houses which have not been repaired, the consequences of war seem a whole lot more real than reading about it or seeing it on a newscast.

We drove past the old city wall thinking about how old this country is -- they have a relic found in a dig which is over 5,000 years old

(copy of the relic)

--and how wonderful it would be if all the hate and discord which has been built up due to war could be forgotten.  After all the dove is a symbol of the region.