Ok, there is food delivery, now, but there are still no decent, covered, paper cups for coffee to-go even in Zagreb, and they charge you for plastic bags in supermarket, but, on the bright side, Internet access is not tied to your credit card, you can rent a car without much hassle, and, while cannabis is just four times cheaper than in the States, dentist, doing perfectly legal job, is whooping ten (10) times cheaper, and in Montenegro you can get a pack of antibiotics, over the counter, for about $2.

So, I am thinking about dental/medical tourism for American seniors. Visit-Dubrovnik-and-get-your-teeth-done package for a price of two crowns in New York city, plus get all the medicine you need shipped over from Montenegro.

In Zadar, I rented a car from Rino Rent-A-Car. That was the easiest car rental in my life. I gave cash to the dude, the dude passed me the car keys. He never asked for any stupid major credit card. He never even asked to see my driver’s license, now that I reckon. Likewise, the car came with no papers. But it was a brand new small Fiat, that took me where I wanted, when I wanted.

True, I could have taken the car to Montenegro and sell it for 2000 Euros, making good profit. But that kind of thinking eventually drove U.S. to become the nation of control freaks, where everything has to go through papers, and insurance companies, and major credit cards, and background checks. So, I didn’t want to introduce that evil into the pristine new market economy. I called the dude on his cell-phone when I said I would do, and I returned the car to him.

I am still in awe how in such places people still use common sense, instead of rules, guidelines, and terms, to solve the life’s little annoyances. Things can be agreed upon ad hoc. People - officials, officers, salespersons, customer relations people - seem to be ready to act corresponding to the individual situation, rather than parrot the instruction manual. Here, there is still the enthusiasm of dwellers in the young society that like to see things happen.

The Westernization (which is a combination of long working hours, small wages, no benefits, adherence to rigid standards of conduct) will eventually kill that and make bored employees who can’t wait to go home, and whose only allowed small pleasure is to say ‘no, that can’t be done, didn’t you read the terms of agreement, sir?...’

So, that the entire world maybe not exactly looks like, but, at least feels like the big U.S. corporation. To get a little taste of ‘how does that feel’ I offer this story as an example.

Take the Chase bank - large corporate entity that makes a living of your money. As it was suggested to him, by bank’s representatives, a customer has opened two linked accounts: one higher-interest bearing money-market, and another checking. All his withdrawals are posted to checking. If the checking is close to zero, the customer is supposed to deposit money or transfer it from the money-market.

Now, why wouldn’t the transfer be automatic? The checking balance is close to zero, money is automatically transferred from money-market. But it doesn’t work that way. That’s not in the terms of agreement. Because, it is not in the bank’s interest. Of course, that would be better for customer. But who gives a fuck about customer! How else would rich become even richer?

In bank’s interest is to set up a trap - making the customer open the two accounts in the first place, then patiently wait - large, rich corporations have all the time they need to be patient with their prey - for customer to be busy traveling abroad and forget to transfer money. Then when the checks come to be paid, and there is no money in checking - that’s where the bank makes a killing with the insufficient funds fees.

By the time hapless customer finds out, his checking account is a couple of thousand dollars in red, and he is rushing to transfer money to cover that, usually forgetting to ask: why exactly does he pay so much money to the bank only to have it work with his money?! Why do not they warn their customers before they charge insufficient funds fees? Why money between linked accounts is not transferred automatically? Why U.S. interest rates on savings are the smallest on the planet, while simultaneously the interest rates on credit are the highest?

Then, take the AT&T Business, an Internet service provider, that ties its service to your credit card, and whose customer service representatives even outright refuse to give you their legal postal address when you ask them for: without any compassion they would tell you that by accepting to use their service you gave them the right to revoke your service at any time, if your credit card denies their charge, with them having no obligation to notify you of such their intention by any means.

In other words - you may be in the middle of traveling overseas, in some country with underdeveloped telephony, in dire need of internet access, and they can simply pull the plug on you, because your credit card, for whatever reason, denied their charge. Earthlink, at least, sends you an email notice about the credit card problem, so you can act upon it. AT&T revokes your service and makes you call them in the U.S., go through the ‘press 3, press 8' voice-mail maze, to argue about it. So, if you happen to have only a rotary telephone at the place you are, you are in deep trouble.

Then, they have the gall to say that all of that is your fault under the terms of agreement that you accepted by dialing their service. Well, sorry, folks. I think you are rude sons of the bitches, and I think nobody should use your service under those terms. I, certainly, will not ever any more. You just lost a customer, forever.

Compared to this sophisticated, legal, cold, polite torture of small and weak, Croatia is still naive and innocent. It is actually only in the places where the foreign owner came, that those things slowly change. To worse, of course.

-/-

Garbage disposal is one of the principal problems of the Adriatic coast. When Croatian-American industrialist Maglica (of Maglite flashlights) came to his birth-town Zlarin, he had the same impression, and, being an entrepreneur, built immediately a waste-processing plant, that some grumpy townspeople greeted with ‘why didn’t he better build a casino?’

Maybe Montenegro needs one Maglica, too. As I wrote previously, lack of containers, bad habits, unrepaired sewer lines damaged by earthquake, make Montenegro’s garbage problem less of a tourism issue, and, unfortunately, more of a health issue. After all, I did get a diarrhea, like I was visiting some sub-Saharan country. (I flew from Montenegro to Slovenia, and hiked Kamnicko Sedlo completely dehydrated, so when I reached the peak all puffing and panting, two older Slovenian gentlemen, asked me in surprise that why was I, a youngster, so exhausted. I explained them my misfortune. Laughingly, they told me that in Montenegro I should have drunk ‘schnapps’ - not water...).

It is true that the international community understands that Montenegro has a waste problem - USAID just recently donated a brand new garbage truck to Ulcinj. What I am not sure is whether the locals understand that they have a problem. There are no signs warning people not to throw garbage everywhere. There is severe shortage of containers. Maybe a model from New York and Ljubljana may be applied to Montenegro.

New York has "Ready-Willing-Able" organization that employs homeless and poor on cleaning up streets. Ljubljana gives part-time jobs to students to keep the city center clean - maybe USAID can help Podgorica do the same. Just the sight of them would work miracles on the habits of the rest of the population, I think. Montenegrin environmentalist NGO-s organize clean-ups of canyons (Tara, Zeta), which is also underfunded.

This year, Croatian coast actually looks excellent regarding the garbage problem. Unlike in Montenegro, there is enough containers, and signs warning about forest fires, and prohibiting throwing garbage, are everywhere. Still, for a Mediterranean country with hundreds of forested islands, exposed to the danger of fire during the long, hot, dry summer days, it is alarming that Croatia has only two (2) operating Canadair firefighting planes.

With Forest fires, too, it is better situation in Croatia than in Montenegro: presence of warning signs, and less dry and less hot climate - still daily acres of forests are lost to fire in Dalmatia (nearly entire pine forest on the far-west island of Bisevo burned this summer; I hiked to the top of burned landscape, retracing the prime minister Racan’s Land Rover’s tracks - it is a sad picture). Encouragingly, an NGO is just established in Zagreb, which goals are to raise money to buy more fire-fighting airplanes.

Some say this is the "mentality" issue: fires are treated as someone’s else problem, something that state, or higher powers are expected to take care off - in Dalmatia there is little or no local organizing on fire prevention and fire fighting - contrasting that, in North Croatia, with far less forest fires danger, benefitting the tradition they share with Slovenia, Austria, and Bavaria, every little hamlet has a volunteer fire-fighting squadron.

-/-

Here are some of my on-the-road impressions about Croatia:

Everybody seems to sit in cafes all day long sipping coffee and talking deals, particularly in Dalmatia. I am still trying to find who is actually doing the lifting.

One reason is that it is cheap to sit in cafes, twice as cheap then in New York. The other reason is that unemployment is high, well in the double digits.

To eat out is also reasonably cheap with most places being around $10 for a dinner, and the range is roughly $5-$30. It is cheap to be an American in Croatia, kind of like being an American in New Zealand. But it is not cheap to be a Croatian. As a gym trainer in New York, I’d make at least $9/hour, in Queenstown $6/hour, but in Zagreb, with prices comparable to Queenstown, I’d make $3/hour (17 kuna). Average Croatian barely makes the end meet.

There is enormous natural and historic treasure but - except for Dubrovnik - not very enormous tourist offerings - it is always all about FOOD and LODGING.

There is not much to be seen between Zagreb and the coast, except empty prairie, where my friend wants to raise bisons. The disaster of abandoned hinterland - both Croats and Serbs just left their homes, at each others gunpoint, and nobody ever returned back there.

More surprisingly, I found tons of abandoned housing - literally, whole villages - in South Dalmatia and on islands, where there was no war. How did that happen, then? People left to America and Australia a long time ago, and in many cases the real owners are hard to trace.

On the other hand, unlike the brick houses in Lika and Krajina, those houses are built of stone, and will last forever. Some of them are already hundred years old, and completely habitable with minor repairs (roof, windows). It is already becoming a trend among Croatia’s younger generation of professionals, artists, ‘rich & famous’, and even alternative community to move to the coast and live in such a place.

With Internet (which comes in the package with telephone service), ubiquitous GSM mobile service (you can even pay a parking meter by a cell-phone in Zagreb), and newly built highway through Velebit, Croatia reaches level of connectivity, where it is possible to live outside of Zagreb, and still be there within 3 hours, if necessary, from most places.

The trend is also picked up by the foreigners: BBC reported that Brits bought 300 such houses in South Dalmatia. Buyers are also from Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Russia. At 30-50 thousand Euro, those places are still a bargain, although they need work, and are sometimes hard to get to.

One of the heaviest polluters in old Yugoslavia, smelter in Omis, is closed down, and abandoned. This happened to many other heavy industry plants. Besides empty houses, Croatia became a land of empty factories. While this is a victory for environment, there is very little today being ‘Made in Croatia.’

The war and post-war trauma is much more felt in Zadar region than in Split or Dubrovnik region. There are still houses damaged by war on outskirts of Zadar. And people when they talk about war, they talk like it was yesterday. In Split they talk about it like it was decades ago.

Old Yugoslav Army military barracks in Zadar center are leveled and apartment buildings are freshly built from the rubble. A large picture of general Ante Gotovina greets tourists at the entrance to the old walled city, saying "Not a criminal, but a war hero!"

Pakostane, with the name sounding like Pakistan, located about 20 km South from Zadar, Gotovina’s hometown, and the place where he is most probably hiding, is a drape, greyish township, peppered with graffiti in support of ‘our general,’ with a big auto-camp, patronized mostly by Czechs.

The town has no ATM, copy machine, or a bus station. But, remember, you can rent a car without a credit card and driver’s license, and it has a mean, well equipped gym (Fortius) with entire line of new machines, which are Made in Croatia (v-gym.com). I guess, the general likes to stay fit.

Somewhere at my trip I learned that B92 in Belgrade has been privatized. Privatization is now going on in Serbia-Montenegro. It is already successfully concluded in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina. As a result some people became very rich, while most of them stayed poor, ore became even poorer. The story of privatization, Balkan way, consists of: converting executive positions into ownership rights, selling those rights for hard currency, establishing competing companies, and living of the land... ...everything works that way: customs, police, and port authorities included - there is a very thin line between public and private in all of the Balkans, including the parts of it that hate being included in it.

Croatia is a small country that Pope Woytila visited more than any other country in the world - even more than his home country Poland. Churches are everywhere. They are all nicely renovated, lighted up during night, and many new ones are built or under construction. Catholic church argues for even larger role in the society, complains about loss of its lands under communism, and plans the acquisition of Croatia’s largest insurance company. Croatia is the only place in the world where all philosophy graduates have a job: because they can teach catechism in schools.

But, the same is in Slovenia. The two countries are united in Christ, one may say. During my expedition in Kamnik Alps, I stayed at the beekeepers home in Lukovica, which is located very close to the church tower. I could barely sleep from the bells. This becomes an often complaint by the denizens of small townships in Croatia and Slovenia: noise pollution by the church. Feral Tribune recently reported on a group of artists-activists that broke into one church in Istria and muzzled the bells with blankets and - boxing gloves.

-/-

If Slovenian and Croatian societies are so similar, what then is the recent rift about?

On surface, Slovenia-Croatia fake cold war is about a non-existing Slovenian maritime right, and an empty Croatian promise, given opportunistically for reasons of foreign policy, that is broken, now, to satisfy domestic political concerns. There is no real rift - it is just a series of gaffes by two politicians not up to their roles - Slovenian foreign minister Rupel and Croatian prime minister Racan: Racan gives promises that he cannot keep, and Rupel issues threats that he cannot deliver upon. German ambassador in Zagreb said that he was very surprised that a not-yet-member of EU - Slovenia - already threatens not to support Croatia’s application for the EU.

In the middle there is the hysteria about so-called Euro-Atlantic integrations (E-A-I): stubborn belief in all post-Yugoslav societies that all their problems will be solved once their little countries are ‘accepted’ in the big-boys clubs, and the terrible consequences of that dependency: expecting handouts, expecting an umpire, local politicians giving statements to please foreigners while disregarding their own electorate.

Racan promised Slovenia sea, that Slovenia does not have, because he probably hoped such obsequiousness would please Europe, just like Tudjman once believed that pushing his country into the Enron electro-servitude would please US into supporting Croatia’s ‘E-A-I’. Now, as he failed to dig up a wider Piran bay to accommodate that promise, he rescinded it under the pressure of his parliament. Rupel called foul and, offended, cried uncle to Europe to rule. Europe, annoyed, nervously quipped: "knock it off, guys."

Deeper, there is a reality of natural geo-political rivalry between Zagreb and Slovenia, a 1.2M city and a 2.2M country. While others were at war, destroying that meager infrastructure built during communist Yugoslavia, Slovenia was busy building roads - and that shows: Slovenia looks pretty much like Germany. Of course, Slovenes will be quick to point out that they had 10 days of war, and that 80 people died in it. But, economically, this is peanuts compared to the calvary through which Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, and, particularly, Bosnia went.

So, there is a sense of bitterness among other Southern Slavs, that their Slovenian neighbor’s cow is not dead, while their cows died. Zagreb rightfully demands from Ljubljanska Banka to pay what it owes to Croats who had savings accounts at it before the bank defaulted (and decided to pay off Slovenian customers, and large, but not small, Croatian ones). There is also a rift about undelivered but paid for electricity from the only former-Yugoslav nuclear power plant, situated at Krsko - in Slovenia - but mostly providing power for Croatian capital, Zagreb.

As Clinton used to say, it is always about economy. And right now all the economy talk in the region is about the corridors - routes through which the large trucks will carry their goods between Ukraine and Adriatic, and between Middle East and Western Europe. All Balkan countries are literally obsessed with corridors. In seventies most of the cargo was trucked from Istambul over Thessalonike, through former Yugoslavia (a two-lane Skopje-Nis-Belgrade-Zagreb-Ljubljana-West highway from hell), because former Yugoslavia was a ‘free country’ - well, at least, compared to Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

With the war and collapse of former Yugoslavia, the post-Yugoslav societies lost that trade route to meanwhile emerged democratic Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. Sadly, the six-lane motorway called naively "Brotherhood and Unity", was finally finished only after there was no more brotherhood, no more unity, and, also, no more real need for it, with all cargo being trucked elsewhere. Now the race is to fill the corridor Ukraine-Portugal. It can go from Hungary to Italy via Ljubljana, or it can go via Zagreb and Rijeka. Historically, Slovenia was a nicely manicured province of Austria, with no large cities, but rather with a good infrastructure of small towns, serving as Vienna’s "downstate".

This architecture helped Slovenia become the best developed part of former Yugoslavia, and most ideologically prepared to jump train, when it became necessary to do so. However, the regional Austro-Hungarian center for the Balkans always was Zagreb. And its economy was the only to rival Slovenia’s in former Yugoslavia. With the war costs, Zagreb fell behind, and one can still find Gorenje’s refrigerators and stoves in Montenegro, but no Koncar’s (Gorenje is Slovenian company, Koncar is based in Zagreb). With foreign investment, Zagreb, however, is quickly regaining its importance as a regional hub, and the largest city between Vienna, Venice, Budapest, and Belgrade.

This is what makes Slovenia and Zagreb natural rivals for the same position. In the matters of the said corridor, Slovenia has an advantage, because the route through it is shorter. But the route through Croatia would offer closer contact to the Southern Balkans markets (Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia-Montenegro), and, more importantly, access to the Adriatic - the one that Slovenia wants to get. Currently, neither Zagreb-Rijeka, nor Zagreb-Split highways are completed yet (while Maribor-Kopar in Slovenia is). The most difficult portion of the highway between Zagreb and Dalmatia is, however, done: the Sv. Rok tunnel through Velebit and the serpentine approach to it. Meanwhile, highway to Rijeka is mired in bad decision making: environmentalists from Open Circle oppose 16km highway around Rijeka - it goes through sensitive waterbed area, and - it also costs 2x as much to build it, than the alternative route.

Another participant in the highway wars joined up: Budapest-Osijek-Sarajevo-Ploce highway. This would cross the Belgrade-Zagreb highway, making a use of its connection to the West, and with Belgrade, while exiting on Adriatic South enough to be able to serve Split, Dubrovnik and Montenegrin coast. It would also provide badly needed infrastructure to Bosnia, and revitalize otherwise underused Croatian port in Ploce. Alas, there is already a rift between Croats and Bosnians about who should build it. Croatia offered to build the entire portion Osijek-Ploce, while Bosnian ministry of transportation assigned building of Bosnian portion of the highway to Bosmal (Bosnian-Malaysian construction company), telling Croats to rather take care of their own highways.

-/-

Non-governmental sector in Croatia and wider region is going to be hit very hard by several future developments:

Open Society is closing its doors in Croatia in a year, shutting down their grant-giving and leaving a lot of small NGO-s without funding. - for a summary of their presence they will offer a benchmark study of whether Croatia so far attained various goals of openness; the study will not play a role in EU acceptance, but OSI sure hopes to leave a mark. Some activists would make a remark that OSI already left a mark: disunited, nervous, dependent, inert, expecting, and hungry, local NGO community, that lost its grassroots origins. This feels less to be the case in Croatia, than in Slovenia. Maybe, because in Croatia, without OSI, there would not be any NGO community left after the Tudjman era.

There will be an availability of EU support in pre-acceptance period under Stability Pact for various ngo activities developing better trans-regional cooperation (in the jargon: "trans-frontier cooperation") between communities, reconciliation, similar to the current East-West Institute micro-project Trebinje-Dubrovnik-Hercegnovi promoting anti-drug use programs among teens.

That "micro-project" is worth .5 million Euros, and it went to a US-based NGO, that takes 20% overhead. That’s because EU grants are notoriously hard to get - requiring huge, dedicated, costly bureaucracy to prepare the proposal, and deal with reporting, a hurdle that Croatian NGO-s will have to jump if they want to survive.

Also, besides government sponsored activities, there is very little work being done (and much needs to be done) with carriers of violence, war veterans, persons suffering from PTSD, and their children. Number of people, that were involved in the war, as percentage of the society as whole in Croatia (and Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia-Montenegro), is much larger (~10x) than it was in the US after the Vietnam war, yet there is scarcity of projects in that area.

With Bosnia-Hercegovina still not functioning as a single state, there is little that the officials there think about such marginal problems. Serbia-Montenegro still largely did not come on terms with them starting and losing a couple of wars. As the Vietnam syndrome shows, the PTSD is likely to be the biggest problem in Serbia, the loser society. Croatia, as a winner, has the opposite problem: they are simply too much in love with their victory to recognize that war, any war, is always a bad choice.

Violent patterns of behavior learned in war may be easily inherited by children, creating a more violent society, and making it possible for the cycle of violence to repeat AGAIN: that’s how people in the Balkans never unlearn to ‘solve’ their problems using violent means, and they are at war every 50 years, for thousand years.

And on trans-frontier reconciliation between people who were involved in fighting I found only one project in the entire region: Quaker Peace & Social Witness Representative in Post Yugoslav Countries brought to my attention "Four Views" by Center for Non-Violent Action Belgrade-Sarajevo (www.nenasilje.org). CNA organized a series of moderated lectures in Bosnia and Serbia featuring a dialogue between four veterans, some of whom had been unwilling conscripts, and some who were fiery volunteers, from various post-Yugoslav entities (Serbia-Montenegro, Republika Srpska, Bosnian-Croat Federation, Republic of Croatia) under the motto: "How did I end up in the war? How can we build the lasting peace?"

Meanwhile, curiously, of all ministries, the over-bureaucratized Croatian government has, it will shut down the Veteran Ministry coming this fall. While Croatia definitely has too many Ministries, ministers, and politicians altogether, interestingly, it never occurred to the US to close down the Veteran Administration, and Croatia will do just that, less than a decade after the war. This move will sure ad strain to the non-governmental community dealing with the war’s aftermath.

Naturally, the veteran and the PTSD problems are tenfold worse in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia-Montenegro, with more people involved, and there is even less interest to confront them there. Montenegrin way is to let them drink and drive mad on roads, and hopefully kill themselves in the process.

-/-

One off-hand thing that I noticed, the post-Yugoslav societies may be improved by imports from the U.S. is: there is no sports-drinks on US scale anywhere in Europe (not even in Germany!). Europe still stands to be conquered by the gargantuan US sports-drinks industry. Here there is only Red Bull and its imitations: carbonated sugar drinks with caffeine and taurine. There are no non-carbonated drinks with taurine in re-closeable containers (like Sobe Power). And there are no drinks with ephedra, carnitine, yohimbe, androstenedione, chromium, and other creative combinations of various stimulants available on the US market. Ok, a Croatian company just started selling a drink with carnitine, but you can find it only in the gyms.

This pages are under constructions, pictures from the trip will be added soon