Destination Balkanization

We arrived, as planned at the Zagreb train station at about 5 am. The three hour dead time turned out to be good thing as it basically took that long to decipher the local the tram system. Erica was in a well lit, modestly comfortable, and safe area in the train station, so I ventured out to find the correct tram for our hostel. There were actually a lot of people out for 5:00 in the morning, but none spoke English. So I tried some Russian (Croatian and Russian are somewhat similar). I found out that a lot of people understood Russian but were not especially happy to hear me speaking it. I got a couple of very icy receptions to my questions. Over the course of several failed attempts at interrogating in Russian, I realized that the responses were much gentler if I started off asking in Russian if they spoke Russian. I finally got one woman talking and she gave me some tram info in Russian (or in Croatian and I just understood her, I’m not sure which because it sounded funny). But when I followed up by asking how much it cost, she said she didn’t know. At this response I started to get pretty angry. I asked her how long she had lived in Zagreb, she replied "always". I told her I couldn’t believe she didn’t know how much it cost. She told me to go away. As it turned out, she wasn’t lying; the tram does cost money but no one buys tickets. Evidently no one ever checks tickets so no one buys them. Of course it took a while longer to figure this out.

My next stop was an ATM to get some local currency; my Euros had already been turned down twice which surprised me. Just a year or two ago all of the former Yugoslavia was Euro-hungry, but apparently the economy is booming with a resurgence in tourism and business investment related to Croatia’s eminent EU membership. The problem with my ATM search was that I could not remember the exchange rate. So looking at a screen filled with withdrawal choices of large numbers of Kuna, I had to text-message my Mom to get her to look up the exchange rate. (Now you know why, mom).

I returned to the train station to find Erica in conversation with a drunk (and getting drunker) Croatian guy ("I am not a Croatian, I have German heritage.") The rest of the time went as you would expect in Eastern Europe; drunk Croatian ("No! I am a German!") hitting on my wife, showing us photos from semi-pornographic magazines, quoting American action movies, reciting the lyrics to Duran Duran songs and repeatedly giving me copies of early 1990s Croatian sports magazines, which he insisted were collectors items.

The best place I have been to base a comparison of Zagreb off of is Kiev. The first and most obvious impression is that Zagreb has not experienced the level oligarchial theft that has destroyed any hopes of economic equality in the Ukraine; here, wealth is somewhat more modest (Mercedes for the rich instead of Bentleys and Rolls) and there is a lot of middle class construction going on. Zagreb is a slightly charming though not exciting city, but it is trying to capitalize off the Dalmatian Coast tourism boom. All this said, there are still many people that have obviously been left behind by the new economy and will suffer at its expense, as is the case in all transforming, post-communist countries. Furthermore, although many business people and government officials are enthusiastic about integrating with Europe (most gov’t buildings already display EU flags), I think there remains among the general population, an acute xenophobia that will impede any chance of cultural assimilation. Communism, or more precisely in this case Titoism, leaves a long and painful scar that is not easily excised.