Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A tourist here was so rare that there was nothing designed for me to buy. Coming from
Croatia, I was primed to think of Serbs as the villains. Wandering through the market, I
saw only a hardworking community of farmers offering a foreigner a warm if curious wel-
come.
High on a hill overlooking Trebinje is a spectacular Serbian Orthodox church, with
an opulence that belies the modesty of the town filling the valley below. And, as with
everything here, its symbolism is loaded: It's modeled after a historically important mon-
astery in Kosovo, a land that Serbs claim as their own but have recently lost. Exploring
the grounds, I bumped into a youthful monk who had been an exchange student in Cleve-
land. He had a great sense of humor about our cultural differences. I explained that part of
my mission was to help Americans understand rather than fear people who looked differ-
ent. Stroking his long black beard—which matched his long black robe—he joked, with a
knowing wink, “Around here, a priest without a beard looks suspicious.”
As I continued along the road, it became apparent that the complex nature of things
here comes across in the powerful language of flags. Just as bars throughout Europe don't
want football team colors, and pubs throughout Ireland don't want the green or orange
of the sectarian groups, flags in this region come with lots of pent-up political anger.
Throughout the day I saw different flags, each one flying with an agenda. Croats salute
their red-and-white checkerboard flag, while Serbs proudly hoist their flag with four C's
(the first letter of “Serb” in the Cyrillic alphabet). But in the not-too-distant past, each of
these flags was also employed by an oppressive regime—so Croats and Serbs each view
the other's flag as equivalent to a swastika. Meanwhile, the country's official flag—which
nobody really embraces (or is offended by)—is a yellow-and-blue, triangle-and-stars con-
figuration dreamed up by the European Union.
While most tourists can't tell the difference, locals notice subtle clues that indicate
they're entering a different ethnicity's home turf—those highly symbolic flags, discreet
but hateful graffiti symbols, pictures of old Serbian kings stenciled onto abandoned build-
ings, ruined castles guarding ghosts of centuries-old threats on strategic mountain passes,
new road signs with politically charged names, and even ATMs with instructions in
just one language—Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian—but not all three. During the days of
Yugoslavia, these languages were all lumped together into a single, mutually intelligible
mother tongue called “Serbo-Croatian.” But, stoked by the patriotism of proud new
nationhood, each of these groups has artificially distanced its language from the oth-
ers—inventing new words to replace ones they find “too Serbian” or “too Croatian.”
While I met generally gentle and thoughtful people in all communities here, I can also
see the potential for more of the sectarian tumult that made the 1990s so terrible. There's
a certain strata of society here in each ethnic community, and when you see them, you
can't help but think “For war…just add bullets and agitate.” A café filled with skinhead
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