Dark Tourism: History is Never Dead

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, History, Modern History

 

This is a photograph I took of a house in Vukovar Croatia that was riddled with bullet holes. The owner could not get a permit to fix it up, even though town was eager to clean it up after the Croatian War of Independence in 1992, so in a huff he decided to leave it, bullet holes and all, but now surrounded by flower pots. You can read about war, but seeing the bullet holes makes it real.

I mentioned how much I disagreed with my friend who told me he did not want to learn anything about old European wars. He had no interest in that. To him it was boring history. I wondered why he would bother travelling to Europe in that case.

 

I was lucky in my journey. In each country on our trip through the Balkans we had a local guide who gave us the local slant on its history.

 

Secondly, I had the benefit of being informed by 3 brilliant historians of European history:  Eric Hobsbawm, Tony Judt, and Michael Ignatieff. The three of them transformed my view of European history. I can’t thank them enough.

 

The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“.  Winston Churchill said something very similar, in a speech he gave in 1948: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

 

And it is true that much of European history is brutal. That is a sad fact, but that makes it ever more important to make sure that we do all we can to make sure we don’t repeat the brutality. Much of the important history of this region of European is fairly recent, 30 years ago, when I was already the father of 3 young boys, makes it vitally important to know this history. This is not ancient history,  I do not require any insisting to heed the warnings of the past of this region.

 

I know what happened here could happen again much closer to home.  I know enough to know that I don’t want my country to go there and there are many similarities to this region and my country and our closest neighbour. There is no comfort in thinking falsely that we are an exceptional nation. We are not. We have had our national crimes already and don’t need more of them.

 

The night before we arrived in Vukovar, where much of this brutality occurred, our cruise director warned us that here we would be learning some uncomfortable truths, but he felt that it was important for us to learn. I agreed completely with that sentiment.

 

Our guide for this region was a young woman by the name of Marda. She apologized when she brought up that history as we were standing in the public square. I think she thought we could not handle too much of such history. She might be right, but I was glad she did.

 

Was this so-called dark tourism? Dark tourism refers to traveling to sites associated with death, tragedy, the uncomfortable, and the macabre, such as concentration camps, disaster areas, and battlefields. The phenomenon, also called thanatourism, can be motivated by a desire for education, historical connection, emotional experience, or a morbid fascination with death. It can be morbid, but it can also be a respectful engagement with difficult history. I think that is important. We should know that. If we don’t the bad parts of our country’s history, we don’t know our country. Unlike so many conservatives today, I don’t want to keep our “sacred ignorance” as James Baldwin called it. I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

 

Probably one of the most popular dark tourism sites would be the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland which I would like to visit but have not had the honour. Another would be the catacombs of Paris. Or the colosseum of Rome. Although I have not seen those, I have seen the well-preserved Roman colosseum in Split Croatia in 2008. Not far from here. I have already talked about the first settled city of Europe that we saw this trip. Lepenski Vir. Very interesting.

 

A more modern site would be the World Trade Center site in New York which I have not seen. I have seen slave quarters in New Orleans, and I think I learned things of value there. I don’t think it is only people who hate their country who go to such places as the Trumpsters wrongly suggest.

 

Closer to home it might mean visiting a former Residential School. Or the scene of the Battle at Batoche. Or Little Bighorn. I know people who don’t want to know anything about places like that.  They want to go to beaches, or shopping malls, or wineries. Nothing wrong with going to such places, I like to go to such places too, but I think interesting travel can be more than that.

 

I always remember the advice I got from my great uncle, Peter Vogt when he heard I was going to the pub in LaBroquerie: “If you would have been through the Russian Revolution you wouldn’t bother with that.” I think that was going a bit far, but I know what he means. It was shallow entertainment, but there is nothing wrong with socializing with friends and having some fun too.

 

I know I wished on this trip that we would have visited Belene island in the Danube River where there the largest Bulgarian concentration camp is located.  Or even any of the other ones. But they are not high on most tourist agendas.

 

In any event I wanted to learn about the history of this region of the world. And I was glad I had learned a lot. So that I could bore you about it when I got back.

 

 

 

A Bloody Mess: The Five Wars of Yugoslavia

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia

 

The disintegration of Yugoslavia was accomplished by 5 over-lapping wars.

The first of the 5 Yugoslav wars was about to begin.

It is very difficult to keep track of all the wars of Yugoslavia because they did not fall into line neatly without overlaps.  It really was a schmozzle.

The brilliant historian, Tony Judt tried his best to make sense of this:

 

…the Yugoslav wars, for there were five.  The Yugoslav attack on Slovenia lasted just a few weeks, after which the army withdrew and allowed the secessionist state to depart in peace. There then followed a far bloodier war between Croatia and its rebellious Serb minority (backed by the army of ‘Yugoslavia’—in practise Serbia and Montenegro) that lasted until an uneasy cease-fire brokered by the UN early in the following year. After the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia voted for independence in March 1992, the Serbs of Bosnia declared war on the new state and set about carving out a ‘Republic of Srpska’ again with the backing of the Yugoslav army, [the ‘JNA’] laying siege to a number of Bosnia towns—notably the capital Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, in January 1993 a separate civil war broke out between the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia, with some attempting to carve out an ephemeral statelet in the Croat-dominated region of Herzegovina. And finally, after these other conflicts had been brought to an end (though not before the Croat-Serb war broke out afresh in 1995 with a successful move Zagreb to recapture Krajina, lost to Serv forces three years before), came the war in and over Kosovo and was only preventing from destroying or expelling its Albanian population by an unprecedented attack on Serbia itself by NATO forces in the spring of 1999.

 

The first of those wars was one of the least bloody.  After just a few weeks of attacking Slovenia for trying to rebel, in 1991 the Yugoslav army withdrew, permitting the secessionist state to depart in peace.

The second war, against Croatia by its Serbian minority, supported by the “Yugoslav” army, which really meant Belgrade and Montenegro, was much more devastating. It was bloody like only civil wars are bloody. That war lasted until 1992 when the UN finally lost its stomach for the growing casualties and finally brokered an uneasy cease-fire.

It really was a melee of wars, difficult for a poor student like me, to make any sense of. But I am trying. I hope my poor readers bear with me, because I will try to make clear why it is important, for us hear in Canada and the United States.

 

From Coca Cola Communism to Anarchy

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Extremism, History, Modern History, Pluralism

 

A Proud Croatian in Vukovar

At the end of World War II, communism was ushered in to Yugoslavia by the Russians. This was no favor.  Josip Broz Tito, commonly called Tito led the country as a communist prime minister from 1944 to 1963, and as president from1953 until his death in 1980. Of all the countries under the Soviet umbrella his regime was by far the least intrusive and most gentle. Some called his type of communism Coca Cola Communism.

 

To the amazement of many, Tito boldly declared Yugoslavia independent from the Soviet Union.  The people of Yugoslavia loved it. People around the world loved it, Celebrities from around the world, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton came to visit him. Russia was not so keen, but to the surprise of many, it tolerated Tito.

Yugoslavia under the communist regime had been a federal regime, like Canada. It was designed to allow different groups from different regions to live together in relative harmony.  While he was alive it worked quite well. After Tito died things fell apart and as the poet W.B. Yeats said, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” That is exactly what happened.

After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire the leaders of Slovenia, Croatia, (under its first President Franjo Tudjman) and Macedonia were persuaded that they should annul their federal ties and instead each declared independence after a referendum that clearly indicated the people favored separation. The same thing of course, could happen in Canada or the United States, and in fact, there have been some recent rumblings of discontent with the federal system in both countries.  That is why for Canada and the US Yugoslavia is so important.  We should learn from it, but so far there are few signs that we will do that, or even try to do that.

Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991. The Croatian Parliament officially announced the separation, following a referendum held in May 1991 where over 90% of voters favored independence. That should have been simple right? Wrong! It was actually very complicated by the awkward fact that Croatia had large ethnic minorities of Serbians who feared that they would be forever after dominated by the Croats. And the neighboring Serbian state who was dominating Yugoslavia after Tito died, saw themselves as the saviors of their fellow Serbs in Croatia.

 

The Serbs did not take kindly to this rejection of the state they dominated, citing traditional ties and the need to protect Serb minorities in these states. As a result, not just war, but wars, broke out.

 

One might have thought that in modern times with the advent of civilization, things would be more civilized and less bloody.  If one thought that one would be wrong.

 

Tito was a powerful and charismatic leader who amazingly managed to weld together the various ethnic groups of the country that otherwise found it all too easy to attack each other. However, as soon as he died in 1980, the ties that bound these ethnic groups began to fray. As Adam Michnik once said, “the worst thing about Communism is what comes after.”  There is at least a sad grain of truth in this remark.

 

With the collapse of the communist state of Yugoslavia, a number of states that had been held together by the iron fist and charisma of its long standing-leader, Tito, broke off like pieces of glass from a broken window.  With that breakdown the rule of law, such as it was under Tito, evaporated.  Anarchy soon prevailed. When states collapse, they rarely do that in an orderly fashion.

 

This is even more remarkable because Yugoslavia was generally considered the most liberal of all of the Communist regimes. Why did it collapse into such bloody anarchy while Czechoslovakia did not in 1989?

 

No treaty, no law governed what would happen when Yugoslavia broke apart.  It was thus even more fractious than the splintering of Mennonite churches, if that is possible. The basic problem was that the Imperial power, Soviet Russia disappeared, leaving a terrible vacuum behind.

As usually happens, the void was filled by the worst.

A Silly thing in the Balkans

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Hate

 

 

In the late 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, the great German statesman and first Chancellor of Germany predicted “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” And that is exactly what happened in 1914. And it was silly. But deadly serious.

 

All hell broke loose in Europe in 1914 when the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.  For some unfathomable reason this precipitated an incredible melee that goes by the name of World War I or, even less aptly, The Great War. This initiated the Austro-Hungarian empire of the Habsburgs to dissolve, as for some mad and entirely irrational reasons, most of the countries of Europe and even Canada and the United States were drawn into this absurd conflict between disintegrating European empires. If any war showed how thin the veneer of European civilization was, this was it. One of the enduring legacies of Europe, like it or not, is frequent absurd wars.

 

 

World War I never really ended until the state of Yugoslavia, such as it was, got drawn into another European conflict, World War II in 1939. At first the country supported the Nazis, but later it was invaded by them.  Once again Hitler was not afraid to turn on his former allies, sort of like the current leader of the United States, who does so but of course, less violently.   The resistance to the Nazis was led by a communist, Marshall Tito who later became world famous when he became the leader of the Communist Party and the country.  During this time as well, there were bloody conflicts between various factions in the country, breeding hatreds which have not completely dimmed nor have they been forgotten to this day.

 

Hatred has a long life in the Balkans. Empathy, sadly, seems to have a much shorter shelf life.

Ilok Castle, Croatia

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, castle, Croatia

 

After sampling the wines, we returned to the boat. Although I did not have enough time to see the village, I did manage to sneak outside for a very brief view of Ilok Castle, or as some called it, the Odescalchi Castle. It is an impressive on a hill in the middle of town  built on the foundations of the castle of King Nikola Iločki from the 15th century . I managed to take a few photos of it.

 

The castle was built in the 15th century by Nicholas of Ilok a Croatian viceroy and king of Bosnia. We did not visit Bosnia-Herzegovina this year, which I did see the last time we were in the Balkans. It is another of those states that was created when Yugoslavia disintegrated and needless to say, a lots of serious warfare happened there. Many lives were lost in those battles.

The Ottoman Turks conquered Ilok in the 16th century but the Austrian Hungarians recaptured it in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. As a result, the grateful Emperor Leopold I granted the castle to Livio Odescalchi, the nephew of Pope Innocent XI who was also a member of the powerful Odescalchi family. That family reconstructed the castle in the Baroque style in the 18th century. The Yugoslavian government (communist at the time) nationalized the castle in 1945. Apparently, the wine cellars are among the most famous in Croatia, and we never got to sample any of the wine from there. Sometimes, life sucks.

ILOK, CROATIA: Paradise for Wine-lovers

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia

 

Church of St. John of Capistrano

Today we visited our 4th country as we cruised and explored. Christiane and I had visited other parts of Croatia the last time we visited the Balkans and I have always thought it is the most beautiful country in Europe. Not just the Balkans, but the most beautiful country in all of Europe. Today we saw only a small part of the country, but it was a part we had not seen before so that was good.

Our guide today was the perky and enthusiastic Marda and it was a joy to spend the day with her. We started in the village of Ilok, which is a tiny village whose history goes back to the 3rd century when it was under Roman domination.

 

This was a wall still standing in the town, built by the Romans in the 3rd century.

 

The  village had many small and ancient buildings that I would have loved to explore and  photograph. Sadly, that was not to be. I was only able to take a few photos from the shore where our boat was tied up. The problem with tours is that I can’t go where I want to go. I have a leader and have to follow the leader or risk getting lost or abandoned. Usually, I am quite content with the places selected by the tour host. Today was not one of those days.  I tried to hide my disappointment and take it like a man.

 

That does not mean what we saw was uninteresting. It was interesting, but I would have liked to explore this tiny village. With hindsight, I could have done that and rejoined the group when they got back. My hindsight is always perfect. Unlike my foresight.

 

Our coach driver first took us to a drive-through of interesting little farmhouse where a lot of weddings were held. It was high on a hill top and people loved the view from there. The weddings were marathon affairs.   They lasted all day and all night. Usually, they start at about 9 in the morning and ended the next morning. Many people are usually invited. As a rule they have, about 400-750 people in attendance.

 

At our first stop, we got out of the coach and visited the lovely Church of St. John of Capistrano.  St. John of Capistrano, for whom the church was named, was a 15th-century Franciscan friar, lawyer, and preacher, known as the “Soldier Saint” for his vital role in leading an army to relieve the Siege of Belgrade by the Turks. Like so many others in the Balkans, he and the people of the area took great pride in their roles in the defense of Christian Europe. Serbians and Croatian often are proud of their history as defenders of European civilization and the true Christian church against the hordes from the Turkish empire. Notice though that he was a lawyer and preacher. How is that possible? It seems like an unholy combination.

John of Capistrano was born in 1386 during what has been called “a turbulent time in history.”  Really, one must look hard to find times in European history that were not turbulent. But they might have a legitimate claim to the word. First, one-third of the people and nearly 40 percent of the clergy had been wiped out by the bubonic plague. There was also a Schism in the Catholic Church as 3 different men claimed to be the Pope at one time!  England and France were at war, but times were actually rare when they were not at war. Added to that, the city states of Italy were constantly warring against each other. I guess “turbulent” is a fair description of the times.

 

John was a very talented man who really had earned the title of Renaissance man. He became governor of Perugia at the age of 26. At the battle with the people of  Malatesta he decided to change his life so at the age of 30 he entered the Franciscan order as a novitiate. He was ordained as a priest 4 years later. His preaching was so popular that it attracted large throngs of people even though most people were apathetic about religion. He and his 12 fellow Franciscan brethren were received by the countries of central Europe as ‘angels of God’. Together, they were instrumental in reviving what looked like a dying faith.

 

Perhaps his greatest achievement occurred after the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. He was commissioned to rescue the city of Belgrade and actually Europe from the devastation of takeover by an alien religion. Why would they commission a lawyer who was also a priest? But he was a good choice for he successively led an army of mainly Hungarians and won a victory against overwhelming odds leading to the siege of Belgrade being lifted. Sadly, he caught an infection (the plague) in the fighting and died on October 23 1456 in the town of what is now called Ilok where we were. Naturally, his grave became a site of pilgrimage and it is credited with nearly 500 miracles in the first 70 years.

The church as built in the 14th century and has survived numerous wars including the most recent war for the Independence of Croatia about 30 years ago. This was one of the rare churches in the area that survived that stupid conflagration. Over the centuries the Christians destroyed the mosques and the Turks destroyed the churches.  We could call it “mutually assured destruction.” Or perhaps, madly assured destruction would be more apt.

We were able to walk through the wine cellars built in the 15th and 18th centuries, withs massive wine barrels of fine wines. During the most recent war, in the 1990s, time between Serbs and Croats, when the Serbian Army was approaching one diligent man, quickly built a wall to hide the collection of vintage wines, from the marauders. He even went to the trouble of covering the wall with dirt and mould to make it look old. It was sufficient to fool the Serbians who missed out on a real treat.

This part of Croatia is famous for its wines and even though we stopped for a wine testing at 10:30 in the morning, we were prepared to make the big sacrifice and enjoy a glass or two of wine.

 

The area here is a well-known and respected wine growing region. We were fortunate enough to go to a local establishment for a wine tasting of several local wines. The wines here are so famous that Queen Elizabeth of England came here as a young woman shortly before she got married and loved the wine so much that she bought 11,000 bottles of wine for her wedding. Locals claim that after that she always kept some bottles for herself in her various castles. I can attest to the fact that the wines are good, even though we were not given the best of the wines as she was. After all, peasants should know their place. And we did.

Sacred Happy Hour

2025 Cruise up the Danube River

 

 

A friend of mine got me this T-shirt which reads, “I drink and I know things.”

I can’t figure out why he got that for me. Was he mocking me?

When the people got back on our boat each day from their excursions—like every day—it was time for happy hour.  On a river cruise filled with tourists’ happy hour is a sacred trust.  Nothing is allowed to get between the tourists and their happy hour. Sometimes the cruise director had to make heroic efforts to twist things around so that no matter what, happy hour was preserved. And thank goodness he did.

Christiane who had to miss some of the excursions because of her limited mobility, was a regular attender. The bartender knew her well. She did not have to order her Jameson and Ginger. It was delivered after she arrived. For her, Happy Hour was more sacred than most.

Bad Oma! Bad Opa.

Eastern Europe needs more lawyers

2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Law

 

 

When I walked down this hill, an old man, about my age in others words slipped and fell while walking down this hill, but was not seriously hurt. It was a close call however and he was fortunate. Others in our group were not so fortunate.

 

Another day, another one of our people on the trip fell and got seriously hurt. Serbia, like most of the Balkan states was liberated after the fall of the Russian empire in 1989, but all of these states emerged as third world countries with weak economies.

 

Under communism of course, nothing was cheaper than human life. And now, in my opinion, tourists feel the effects of that dismissal. People here unlike in the west don’t notice dangers at their touristic sites. Such dangers are not important. There is little accommodation of people, like Christiane, who have mobility issues. They must fend for themselves. That may work with young and fit people. With older people who often have poor balance it does not work so well.  For example, people going up staircases at a fortress popular with tourists  had insufficient hand railings and steps were often uneven.  I know in one case I took one look up and stayed at the bottom. Call me chicken; or call me prudent.

 

In the US in the 1920s people began to appreciate the importance of some health and safety standards. One of the first places was food preparation. People demanded safe food and regulatory institutions were required to ensure the food was safe. For example, people were disgusted to learn how cavalier food production businesses were about mice in their food and understandably they revolted.

 

Places to which the public were invited had to be safe. Lawyers helped in this process. The classic case in fact was one from England where person got sick from a snail in her ginger beer. The case was Donoghue v Stevenson and it laid the foundation for the modern law of negligence and established the principles of the duty of care. People had a duty to be careful if it was reasonably foreseeable that their negligent actions might harm other.

 

In that case Mrs. Donoghue went to a cafe in Scotland with a friend, who ordered her a bottle of ginger beer. Inside the bottle was the decomposed remains of a snail, which u8nfortunately could not be seen until most of it was drunk. By then she suffered shock and severe gastroenteritis and sued the manufacturer, Mr Stevenson. She said a manufacturer of goods owed a duty to her as a consumer to take care that they contained no noxious elements. She alleged that he had neglected that duty, and was therefore liable for any damage. She had no contract with the manufacturer and in the law up to that time prevented her from suing without a contract.  The English court agreed with her and created a new ground of liability—the tort of negligence. A tort is a civil wrong. Not a criminal wrong.

 

After that successful law suit the law in the English speaking world was changed for ever. I know some people will be revolted at the thought that lawyers might do some good, but it’s true. Through the weapon of litigation, they forced businesses in that country, and in others like Canada, to produce safe food, entertainment, housing, cars, and everything that they produced. We are all better for that.

 

Activist like Ralph Nader also forced American businesses to stop ignoring safety. And road safety increased immeasurably. Governments jumped on the band wagon and produced regulations that industries were not keen on but were forced to accept. This was before the age of neo-liberalism that started in about 1980 and was juiced up under Donald Trump.  Donald Trump never met a regulation he was not prepared to strip.

 

Eastern Europe has not gone through this revolution. It is still in the era of neo-liberalism where all government regulation is considered and unbearable shackle no matter how many benefits they deliver.

 

By now, in the west most people agree that governments are expected to impose reasonable standards of safety on businesses, even when the businesses howl in opposition. That is not the yet case in eastern Europe. In the west, usually, if a business or its practices lead to harm to others, they will be held responsible, unless their practices were reasonable and the harm was not reasonably foreseeable. Added to that, if the business practices are such that they cause harm to others which is reasonably foreseeable, they will be held responsible for that damage. The test is what would the reasonable person do in the circumstances of the business person. Would the reasonable business person avoid the risk or take it? If the reasonable person in the same situation would not take the risk, and harm occurs, the business person will he held responsible. Such standards have been imposed by courts (lawyers in other words) through the law of torts (civil wrongs). They are not usually imposed by criminal laws, but civil laws. The business owners get sued for the harms caused by their negligence or that of their employees. They must compensate the victims for their losses incurred or harms suffered from their actions. No one (except ideologues) think businesses should be able to do whatever they want.

 

In eastern Europe the restrictions on businesses are still pretty loose. Therefore, people get hurt unnecessarily. And that is what we saw on this trip. Over and over again.

Christiane was lucky that our cruise director was diligent in warning her about unsafe conditions for someone with her mobility challenges. Others were not so lucky. Or perhaps they ignored the warnings.

Out of 147 passengers on our ship, at least 6 of us got seriously hurt in about 12 days.  That is too many, in my opinion.

Eastern Europe needs more lawyers!