Day 24: The house on Zagrebacka

On the 5th of August Croatia celebrates their Day of Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving and the Day of Croatian Defenders. As Croatia has many freeways, one advantage for the cyclist is the B-route: often referred to as 'the old road', this road runs parallel to the highway, through the centres of villages and is hardly traficked. On the 5th of August I found myself on the old road between Kutina and Nova Kapela, also known as Zagrebacka. The afternoon proved to be a trip into the very heart of the country.

Looking left and right of the main road, the majority of the houses are still specked with shrapnell holes from shells and grenades. Only a few have new plaster, many have never been plastered and show their concrete base and red brick top. Most of the are still useable, but one in every 10 houses met a different fate. A backyard bulges with blackberry bushes, in between the trees and shrubs the remains of a house can be made out. From the amount of similar ruins, it seems that the direct hits were simply not rebuilt. Every now and then, a new house flanks a skeleton. An old woman tends her garden in the shadow of her past.

Not all of the houses that are habitable are actually inhabited. And many of the cars parked on lawns and on the side of the road have foreign plates – relatives from other European countries visiting. On this national holiday, the number of Croatian flags is almost met by the number of 'for sale' notices – behind windows or simply spray painted on the exterior wall. In the bigger towns, like Nova Gradiska, it is hard to find material witness to the war that ended less than 20 years ago. But in the smaller villages, there seems to be no visibly unaffected building and half of them are for sale.

The village of Medari provides an example of how complete the destruction can still be. Skeletons of Habsburg's adminstrational buildings dating from the 1880's. An empty spot where a church must have been. The bitterness of the scene introduces irony in the name of the village, 'med' meaning honey in Croatian. Where have the sweet times gone?

But the landscape breathes an indestructable fertility on this unusually green August day, the gentle rolling hills sloping up on the left, sloping down into a plain on the right. In the distance the mountains that signal the border with Bosnia's Republika Srpska are visible. The sun is low and gently touches two children chasing each down the garden, their parents and visiting family members looking on amused from their veranda, briefly interupting the conversation they were having with a passing neighbour who has decided to pitch his hoe to aid him in his position of leisurely conversation.

And thus I find myself split between concern and admiration for EU's youngest member state. Will some of the diaspora return with money and skills? Will there be jobs for all those young people finishing college? Will structural corruption find its way to the exit?

I like to see the golden lining. I draw my faith from the incredible people I've met. Young, ambitious, innovative, creative and resourceful, I find it hard to believe that they will let themselves be stopped by the ramshackle house they've inherited. They'll work on it. They may leave the house for a while, but will come back to it in time. Maybe they'll get the chance to plaster it again. But even if a few shrapnell holes will remain sight, it will be a house worth living in.

Hell, if I ever get the chance to retire somewhere; this would be the house of my choice.