Brothers at Each Other’s Throats

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Democracy, Extremism, Fear, Hate, Modern History, Pluralism, Polarization, Populism

 

The problem in the north of Yugoslavia was not so much resurfacing of ancient hatreds, or religious or linguistic differences, as it was economic nationalism. The northerners were producing most of the wealth of the country and felt that much of this wealth was being siphoned off by their poorer southern cousins. They were starting to believe in the north that they would all be better off as independent countries. Sounds a lot like Alberta doesn’t it? Resentment is often fuel of strife.

 

The Communist leader, Tito, had managed to suppress such serious criticisms during his life time, but as soon as he was gone such critiques flourished.

The economy of Yugoslavia had seriously unraveled during the 1980s.  The country moved into hyperinflation.  By 1989 the inflation rate was 1,240 % and rising.  These were conditions in which tensions were incubated into vigorously nasty animosities. As Tony Judt another brilliant historian said, in his book about Europe after the Second World War, “the growing distaste for feckless southerners was ethnically indiscriminate and based not on nationality but on economics.”

 

The ruling centres of former communist enclaves in Belgrade, Serbia, were also spectacularly corrupt. When these led to financial ruin, the people were ready to revolt.  These feelings were intensified by fears that a small group of former Communist apparatchiks coalescing around the brute Slobodan Milošević were planning to make a bid for power in the political vacuum that followed Tito’s death.  That is exactly what happened. He gained power by arousing and manipulating Serb national emotions.  Like Trump decades later, he was a master of that. Many Communist leaders had tried similar tactics in other countries.  As Judt said, “In the era of Gorbachev, with the ideological legitimacy of Communism and its ruling party waning fast, patriotism offered an alternative way of securing a hold on power.” Or as Samuel Johnson said, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

 

In Yugoslavia however, Milošević and his cronies encouraged nationalist meetings at which the insignia of wartime Chetniks were on public display and this aroused deep disquiet among those groups that had been abused by the Chetniks during the war. The Chetniks were the Serbs who had fought on the side of Hitler during the war, using that opportunity to commit mayhem and destruction. Riding a wave of Serbian nationalism, Milošević was confirmed in power as the President of the Serbian republic in 1989.

Milošević wanted to forge a more unitary Serbian state. No more wimpy federalism. Like so many autocrats before and after him, he used nationalism as an instrument to cement his power. After all, he told his fellow Serbs, we are just taking what is rightly ours.  He could have said, I just want to make Serbia great again.

Naturally the other 4 republics were not so keen on Serbian domination. In Slovenia and Croatia, they saw only one way out from such domination, secession. Unlike other Communist countries where the former powerful Communists had no internal ethnic divisions on which to prey when their political power waned, in Serbia those divisions were exploited for the personal gain of the former Communist power brokers. As Judt said, “The country offered fertile opportunities for demagogues like Milošević, or Franjo Tudjman, his Croat counterpart.”  The problem as Judt saw it was that, “in Yugoslavia, the break-up of the federation into its constituent republics would in every case except Slovenia leave a significant minority or group of minorities stranded in someone else’s country.”  Then when one republic declared itself independent its neighbours quickly fell like dominoes.

 

Milošević was the first Yugoslav politician to break Tito’s ban on the mobilization of ethnic consciousness.’  He liked to portray himself as the defender of Yugoslavia against the secessionist longings of Croatia and Slovenia, and, ominously, as the avenger of old wrongs done to Serbs. He wanted to build a greater Serbia on the ruins of old Yugoslavia, but with Serb domination. Milošević was quite capable of inciting Serb minorities in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosovo to rise up and demand Serb protection.  In fact, that was his favoured technique.  The Serbs in these other republics to a large extent merely served as Milošević’s pretext for his expansionary designs.

 

Although most Serbs at the time displayed little nationalistic paranoia, and even less interest in distant Serbs, Milošević transformed their vague memories into rabid fears and paranoia that Serbs spread around the old Yugoslavia were about to be annihilated by the majority in their republics. Milošević, in other words, used these fears to further his demagogic purposes. He used the oldest trick in the playbook of wanna be autocrats–manufactured fear. Trump does it all the time.

 

Milošević did not invent the fears.  They grew up naturally when Yugoslavia disintegrated, as every national group feared they were endangered as a minority in some republic. So, for example, the Serbs, as the largest minority group in Croatia, they felt particularly vulnerable. He did not make up the fears, but he sure knew how to exploit them.

 

In the Slovene election in April of 1990 a government was elected that was still pro-Yugoslavia, but also highly critical of the Serbian government in Belgrade. In the following month of May a new nationalist party under its leader Tudjman came to power in Croatia. In December of that year Milošević seized, without authorization, 50% of the entire drawing rights of the Yugoslav federation in order to pay back pay and bonuses for federal employees. Again economics, as always, was a crucial factor in developments that often wore an ethnic or religious disguise. In January of 1991 the Slovenia government declared independence.   Within a month the Croats did the same thing. Soon the Parliament of Macedonia did the same thing.

 

The hasty recognition of the independent states by Europe, especially, Germany, perhaps were not helpful. When an independent Croatia was formed, political leaders in the Serbian capital of Belgrade began to play on the fears of Serbians with outrageous propaganda on radio and television.  This helped to invoke in the Serbs memories of massacres in World War II and prompted those Serbs to rise up in revolt against their ‘Ustache’ neighbours. The Ustache had been seen as traitors in the Second World War who supported the Nazis and did their best to exterminate the Serbs, so now the Serb minorities feared, a repeat, not entirely without  justification.

The Serb minorities in these states were deeply worried.  Clashes with authorities followed. They called upon Belgrade to help them against their ‘Ustache’ oppressors.

When Serbs were dismissed from their positions in the police force, judiciary, and military, many thought the Croats might be setting the table for another massacre. They believed they might be seeing the return of a an ethnic state with a genocidal past. Croats denied that this was the case, but there were some reasons for this angst. When Serb police were fired, Serbs armed themselves as militia. When the Croats were unable to maintain order, the Yugoslav national army, under the direction of Serbs from Belgrade stepped in at first to restore order, and later to obliterate Croatian independence. As Michael Ignatieff said, , “War was the result of an interacting spiral of Serbian expansionism, Croat independence, and Serbian ethnic paranoia in Croatia.”

 

Even though the Americans claimed to support a democratic and unified Yugoslavia, as Judt said, by then “a ‘democratic and unified Yugoslavia was an oxymoron.’” There really was no room for democracy.  Slovenia and Croatia took active measures to implement their independence by actually unilaterally seceding from the federation.  They enjoyed the tacit support of a number of European leaders.  The Serbs responded by moving the national Yugoslav army to the borders.

Although the Serbs and their army, the Yugoslav National Army bear the primary responsibility for what happened, since they hurled 150,000 shells into Croatia from the surrounding hills, but Croats were not without blame. They dynamited parts of the great city as they left so there would be nothing left for their Serb brothers. These are the type of things you can expect when all sides seem to be represented by their loudest and most extreme voices.

Unfortunately, all around us today this seems to be happening.  We had best be alert.

 

Blood and Belonging

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

 

This is now a quiet business street. Not long ago, it was hell on earth. It has been completely rebuilt.

The Balkans is one of the most interesting areas on the globe.  Michael Ignatieff wrote a series of excellent books that focuses a lot of attention the region, and were supplemented by some documentary films. Michael Ignatieff was a much better writer and thinker than he was a political leader. As he said in one of the series of books I mentioned, Blood and Belonging,

 

“…huge sections of the world’s population have won the ‘right-of-self-determination’ on the cruelest possible terms:  they have been simply left to fend for themselves.  Not surprisingly their nation states are collapsing… In critical zones of the world, once heavily policed by empire—notably the Balkans—populations find themselves without an imperial arbiter to appeal to.  Small wonder then, that, unrestrained by stronger hands, they have set upon each other for that final settling of scores so long deferred by the presence of empire.”

 

It is not good enough to blame the melee on the assertion that this area of the world was filled with sub-rational intractable fanatics.  Though it was more than its fair share of those. We have to think more deeply than that.  We have to ask why people who had lived together for decades were transformed from neighbours into enemies?  That was the crucial question that has to be answered.

 

It was that great British philosopher Thomas Hobbes who wrote about the war of all against all that occurs in the state of nature (when there is no state) and requires the creation of a state to protect all and to provide a platform for morality when all give up the means of violence in favor of the sovereign. As Ignatieff said,

 

“Thomas Hobbes would have understood Yugoslavia.  What Hobbes would say, having lived through religious civil war himself, is that when people are sufficiently afraid, they will do anything. There is one type of fear more devastating in its impact than any other: the systemic fear that arises when a state begins to collapse.  Ethnic hatred is the result of terror that arises when legitimate authority disintegrates.“

 

This was the basis of the film Civil War shown a couple of years ago, speculating what might happen in the United States if their state broke down. Not at all an impossibility. It was brutal.

 

Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia, with his brand of Coca Cola Communism,  had realized that the unification of each of the 6 major Slav peoples required a strong federal state to keep it together.  Like Canada.  Who knows what would happen in Canada if the state collapsed as it did in Yugoslavia? If later any group wanted to secede it would have to deal with the minorities within in its own territory. After all, people don’t live in neatly separated enclaves.  In the case of Yugoslavia, in too many cases, this led to the forcible expulsion of whole populations.  They called it ethnic cleansing, an expression now known around the world, thanks to Yugoslavia. Remember that as much as 25% of both Croat and Serb populations have always lived outside the borders of their own republics.

 

The big mistake that Tito and the Communists had made was to fail to provide for divorce or succession. They failed to provide for the eventual emergence of civic, rather than ethnic based multi-party competition.   His doctrine of socialist rhetoric had lauded, not without some moral attraction, the “brotherhood and unity of all Yugoslavs.” This was a lofty goal, but it provided no mechanism for that to be accomplished when the state disintegrated.  That idea swiftly melted in the face of the profound hatreds that were released between the combatants. As Ignatieff said,

 

By failing to allow a plural political culture to mature, Tito ensured that the fall of his regime turned into the collapse of the entire state structure. In the ruins, his heirs and successor turned to the most atavistic principles of political mobilization in order to survive.

 

If Yugoslavia no longer protected you, perhaps your fellow Croats, Serbs, or Slovenes might.  Fear, more than conviction, made unwilling nationalists of ordinary people. …

 

Ethnic difference per se was not responsible for the nationalistic politics that emerged in the Yugoslavia of the 1980s.  Consciousness of ethnic difference turned into nationalistic hatred only when the surviving Communist elites, beginning with Serbia, began manipulating nationalist emotions in order to cling to power.

 

That is precisely the issue; people have to learn to live in plural cultures.  If difference leads to hate, as it often does, bloodshed soon follows when the dogs of hell are let loosed. No one should insist on my way or the highway, but many do. Who doesn’t like variety? Who thinks they have a monopoly on the truth? Many conservatives in the US now want a country without those nasty liberals. Of course, many liberals would like to get rid of the conservatives too. How could that happen peacefully?

 

Well, the extremists think they have a lock on the truth. Sometimes they even come to believe their own lies. This can even happen in modern countries such as the United States. Or Canada.

 

We all need to learn to live in pluralistic societies. If we can’t look out for those hounds. That is why Yugoslavia is so important. Even in Canada.

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.