Soap about turbid waters

The first weeks after I arrived in Croatia, my skin was itchy and irritated. I soon realised the reason was the high level of chloride in Croatian tap water. My body got used to it, although the smell sometimes still bothers me. Also annoying is the huge amount of calcium bicarbonate in the water. Within weeks coffee machines and water cookers stop working properly due to limescale.
You can image I was surprised to find out that - of all things - citizens of Zagreb are the most proud of drinkable tap water. I can't see why. I used to drink a lot of tap water, but Zagreb's tap water tastes too bad. According to the same survey, Zagrepčani are equally proud of Maksimir park. Well, that makes more sense.
The survey was conducted on the eve of the International Healthy Cities Conference, held in Zagreb this week. I can't prove the survey's questions were biased, but would you spontaneously mention "tap water" if somebody asked you to name the city's number one pride? Certainly not the people living in the new apartments in the Vrbani neighbourhood who were unaware of drinking contaminated water for a long time. The city blamed the construction company and advised the residents not to use tap water to take shower, let alone to drink it, but to get water from the hydrant outside of their buildings. The residents faithfully did so, only to find out that it was contaminated too. The blame then shifted to the municipal Water Supply. The construction company now says the residents tarnished its image and it seeks a million kuna damages. It's no water under the bridge yet...

A Shakespearean drama: Marin Držić

This year Croatia celebrates the 500th anniversary of Marin Držić, Croatia's foremost Renaissance writer. Držić was born into a big family in 1508 in the then city state of Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is obviously proud of its writer, to say the least, and regards him as the Croatian Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante and Moliere. No visitor to Dubrovnik could possible miss the big cloth hanging at the Pile gate, the main entrance to the old town.
Chronologically speaking, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante and Moliere should be referred to as the British, German, Italian and French Držić, since he was born before these literary icons. That no one does so, suggests that Držić passed into oblivion outside of his homeland.
I can't say much about the quality of his plays, but if they are only half as interesting as Držić's life then they are definitely worth reading. He travelled to Vienna, Constantinople, Venice, Sienna and Florence. There, in Florence, he tried to convince the Medici to help him overthrow the autocratic Dubrovnik government. Under the new government, the nobility would share power with popular representatives. The Medici, however, didn't even bother to answer Držić's letters. Držić moved to Venice, where he died in 1567. He was buried in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo church in Venice.

Croats in Dalmatia

It is conventional wisdom that Slavic tribes, and among them Croats, settled in Dalmatia in the 7th century. This thought is primarily based on the book De Administrando Imperio, written in the 10th century by Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. As Constantine wrote about things he thought that happened three centuries ago, some of his observations could be wrong.
Professor Neven Budak, for example, recently stated that there is no material evidence at all that Croats already lived in Dalmatia in the 7th or 8th century. He presented this "sensational discovery", as the paper Slobodna Dalmacija called it, at a conference organised by the University of Zadar.
De Administrando Imperio is known to contain a lot of errors, so Budak's disovery is not as sensational as Slobodna Dalmacija suggests. Much more surprising is the absence of further discussion in Croatia. I couldn't find the proceedings of the conference and read what Budak exactly said, but his findings should provoke some reactions in the small field of Croatian historians. Right?
Two painters put the arrival of the Croats on canvas. The first and most popular painting is by Oton Iveković. I can see why. Iveković portrayed the Croats as a well-dressed, civilised people, a kulturni narod as Croats like to say. Celestin Medović's painting, however, shows the Croats as a wild, barbaric and warlike tribe that fought its way to the Ardriatic Sea. We will probably never know how they looked like, but we might some day get an anwer to the question when they saw the sparkling Adriatic Sea for the first time.

A paper house

A certain book in the flood of publications about the violent breakup of Yugoslavia carries the title: A Paper House. The Ending of Yugoslavia, written by Marc Thompson. One could equally say that paper serves to build a nation. Countries that gained independence often establish airlines, build prestigious infrastructural objects and publish encyclopedias. Croatia is no different in that respect. In a time in which even renowned encyclopedias, such as Britannica and Brockhaus, struggle to survive, the Croatian Lexicographic Institute Miroslav Krleža (LZMK) annually publishes a volume of the Hrvatska enciklopedija (Croatian encyclopedia). The encyclopedia will consist of eleven volumes. The tenth volume was published this summer, so the series should be complete in a year or so. Notwithstanding its name, the Hrvatska enciklopedija is a general encyclopedia, although it pays more attention to Croatian subjects than, say, Britannica does to British.
Croatia has an unfortunate history when it comes to encyclopedias. The first big encyclopedic project, led by Mate Ujević, was interrupted by the Second World War and the subsequent victory of the partisans. In Tito's Yugoslavia the LZMK needed almost twenty years (1955-1971) to publish the Enciklopedija Jugoslavije (Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia). It is still the only complete encyclopedia on Yugoslavia, because its second edition (1980-1990) was halted by the war of the 1990s. Of the twelve planned volumes only six were published.

Obituary of a newspaper

After two and a half years, Metro Croatia issued its last edition on Friday. Due to financial problems, Croatia will lose its one and only free paper. Croatia proved to be too small for the biggest newspaper on earth. One wonders why, because earlier this year market research agency Mediapuls revealed fantastic statistics about newspapers and their readers in this country. Some 63 percent of all Croats read daily a newspaper. And we're not talking about the pensioners that make up a large part of Croatia's population. An astonishing 72 percent of young people, age 15 to 19, read a paper every day which places them in the top of Europe. Croatia reverses the almost global downward trend in readership.
It's almost too good to be true. So I think it's not true, although I can't prove it. For reasons unknown to me Croatian newspapers don't disclose information on their sales, so I must rely on my own observations. First of all, you rarely see someone reading a paper in places where you expect people to kill time with news, like trams and trains - and believe me when I say they move slow enough to get bored with the landscape. Also, I doubt most Croats have the financial means to buy a paper everyday. A paper costs almost 1 euro, which is much more expensive than in other countries. Maybe it's the many photographs in full colour that drive up the price, as I don't believe that the few foreign correspondents earn a fortune.
The general problem is the lack of a newspaper culture, if I may say so. Croatia was for centuries part of the Habsburg empire, which meant among other things that the emperor himself had to grant permission to someone who wanted to start a newspaper. Literacy in nineteenth century Croatia was very low and for literate people some German papers were available. Under communism the literacy rate improved dramatically, so more Croats could read that workers in capitalist countries were starving to death.
Unfortunately, public and scientific libraries here don't seem to care much about newspapers either. In most libraries you'll search in vain for papers and digitalizing archives has't even started, except for one Istrian paper.

Lifetime of a Homo universalis

Faust Vrančić, born in Šibenik is honoured as one of Croatia's greatest inventors and thinkers. He was a learned man, which meant in his days that he was active in many sciences: philosophy, history, lexicography and so on. But which were those days? New research suggests he was born on 1 January 1551 and died on 20 January 1617. His birthplace is now known too, and I have no doubt that Šibenik will turn that house into a tourist trap. I mean tourist attraction, of course.
Vrančić is mostly remembered for his parachute, which he called Homo volens, flying man. In 1617 he seems to have jumped from a tower in Venice to demonstrate his invention.
Considering the fact that Vrančić died on 20 January 1617, I suspect that his parachute did not work or that he caught a fatal cold, as I could not find any information about his death. Among his numerous achievements - suspension bridge, wind turbine - Vrančić's book with the lengthy title Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europeae linguarum; Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmaticae et Hungaricae stands out. In plain English: Dictionary of the five noblest European languages, Latin, Italian, German, Croatian and Hungarian. As you may conclude from the title, many countries have colonised Croatia but Britain was not one of them. You can read the work online (have some patience with user-unfriendly system) as it is one of the few books that the National and Scientific Library in Zagreb has digitalised so far.

Homo's op tv? Liever niet!

Dezer dagen wordt in Zagreb de Gay Pride gehouden, een gebeurtenis die garant staat voor een hoop gedoe in de Kroatische machomaatschappij. "Jesus loves me" is een van de slogans die Kroatische homo's dit jaar met zich meedragen, maar ik betwijfel of de Kroatische katholieke kerk het daarmee eens is. De invloed van de kerk rijkt hier ver, en bisschoppen bemoeien voortdurend met van alles en nog wat. Te weinig baby's, te toegeeflijk jegens Serviërs, zangeres Severina die een fout shirtje draagt - er komt geen einde aan.
Ook van de media hoeven we weinig steun voor homo's te verwachten. De programmaraad van de HRT - de staatstelevisie - heeft besloten dit onschuldige spotje niet uit te zenden. Leden van de raad vonden het spotje "te radicaal" en sommigen vonden zelfs dat "minderheden vaak een grens overgaan en de meerderheid terroriseren". De minderheden kunnen de borst natmaken.

Autovrij

Zagrepčani klagen steen en been over het gebrek aan parkeerplaatsen in de hoofdstad. Onterecht, volgens mij. Vergeleken met andere Europese hoofdsteden is het vinden van een parkeerplaats in Zagreb een eitje. De ochtendspits hier zou voor veel Nederlanders ook een verademing zijn.
In de Bovenstad mag van mij het parkeren helemaal verboden worden. Toeristen worden er vaak van hun sokken gereden en, zeg nou zelf, al dat blik in die oude straatjes is geen gezicht.

I love Zagreb

De hele Zagrebse Bovenstad wordt verlicht door het sfeervolle type lantaarn zoals op de foto. Vandaag ontdekte ik bij toeval dat dit soort buitenlamp ook in Nederland te krijgen is, en wel onder de naam "model Zagreb".
Zagreb was, zo lees je hier vaak, de eerste Europese stad met elektrische straatverlichting. Helaas gunt Wikipedia die eer aan Timişoara in Roemenië.

Maarschalk Poetin

Toen Kroatië onafhankelijk werd, was het snel gedaan met socialistische straatnamen. Het Plein van maarschalk Tito bestaat nog, en ergens in een buitenwijk kun je wonen aan de Arbeidersstraat, maar dat is het dan wel. Kroatische communisten die op enig moment uit de gratie raakten bij Tito hebben na de onafhankelijkheid wel een straat gekregen, zoals Andrija Hebrang. Hebrang was een vooraanstaand partizanenleider, maar hij zou na de oorlog te nauwe banden hebben onderhouden met het Kremlin. Dat was na de breuk tussen Stalin en Tito in 1948 natuurlijk ongewenst. Exit Hebrang. Zijn zoon, ook Andrija geheten, is trouwens tweemaal minster van Volksgezondheid geweest en is op dit moment leider van Sanaders HDZ-partij in het Kroatische parlement.
In Servië is het Kremlin na zestig jaar weer helemaal terug. Vladimir Poetin is al ereburger in Sombor, Vrbas, Loznica, Raska en Apatin. Novi Sad, Kikinda en Nis zullen hem naar verwachting ook uitroepen tot ereburger. In Banja Luka, hoofdstad van de Republika Sprska in Bosnië, zag ik oudjes rondlopen met portretten van Poetin. Hoe groot de liefde tussen de Slavische broeders is weten we zondag aanstaande, wanneer er in Servië presidentsverkiezingen worden gehouden. Tomislav Nikolic, leider van de Servische Radicale Partij en verklaard russofiel, is een van de grote kanshebbers.