Suntanning in the Powderkeg

Greetings all - the "If not now, when?" tour has now disembarked Dubrovnik. We have been successful, by and large, in our quest for the idyllic Adriatic town we were looking for in our last post washing up in the charming, walled island town of Trogir about 30km up the coast from Split. The tourist invasion is in full flight here but we are learning how to beat it back every day, waging battle marble laneway by cobblestone path in our temporary pied a terre.

As I ponder this daily battle, I am reminded that a mere fifteen years ago real war was being waged in these streets. We are, after all, within the famously unstable Balkan powderkeg. I have toured many battlefields in my time but none as recent as these. Those pockmarks in the ancient walls of Dubrovnik are not the product of centuries of erosion. They were blasted there by mortar shells in the 15 month seige of Dubrovnik by the "Greater Serbs" in 1995. The photos on "The wall of martyrs in the Craotian war of independence" in Trogir are not the sephia tones of WW Two portraits but yearbook style photos from the late-disco era. By my count, seven countries now occupy the frontiers of what we once knew as Yugoslavia. The most recent was added just last year as Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. A few hundred km up the road from Trogir is Sarejevo where the tripwire that plummeted the world into the Great War of 1914 was sprung. A few hundred beyond that is Szebernica where sanctimonious western leaders who defiantly vowed "Never again!" after the holocaust of WW Two turned a blind eye and let Slobadan Milosevic execute the worst ethnic cleansing in Europe since taht war - just a few years ago.

I stand to be corrected but I sense that the Balkan powderkeg countries collectively constitute a smaller population than Canada"s. Applicatioons for membership to the EU are flying right, left and centre in the hopes that acceptance will legitimize the smallest of territorial claims and cement fledgling democracies in place. But how long will this last until the next Tito or Milosevic rears his head and plunges this part of the world into another explosion with the fleets of yachts and legions of suntanners evacuating from these parts as fast as possible. I, for one, do not fully understand the origins and contours of the last Balkan war (who does?!?). But I hope for the sake of the locals who still bear the immediacy of suffering, we all find a way to ensure that it does never happen again.

Cheery thoughts from a Balkan beachtown.