I travel to explore. I plan trips that allow me to move my body through those natural wonders I seek. For Croatia, hiking and biking topped the itinerary. I will clamber around castles and sprint up stone walls, but I have no interest in museum-strolling or hours of beach-lounging.
As with most of my travel, my priority was not to absorb Croatian culture or history, but, as with all my trips, it seeps in through my pores as my sweat drips out. In the early 1990s, Croatia was involved in a horrific, bloody war and the reverberations of the conflict hum in the background of daily life to this day.
Our guide, Ivana, brought up that war during our drive to the park. She was a teenager at the time, and was “obsessed with some boy,” but remembers how worried her parents were, the shelling, the food scarcity, the havoc and mayhem, the fear. She says war was not the answer, there should not have been a war, and there should never be another.
A bit of a conversation stopper, that.
During our drive, we asked which of Croatia’s many (many) islands is his favorite. Darko named one that he spent nearly a year on as a young teen. He explained that it was just out of reach of Serbian shelling during the war, so many parents sent their sons there for safety. They “lived like hippies,” running to the docks every few days to meet the boats to see whether parents had sent food or money. It was a hard time, with hard memories, but Darko smiled thinking of the island and the youthful joy it allowed him.
Twenty years gone, yet still, the war is so close to the surface here. It seems to come up in every conversation.
Our hosts loved to talk to their guests. Miho, the husband, came into breakfast the second day, and in his spotty English said: “You know peyote? Peyote? The droga? I have some! I have it in my garden! Hah!” That was all. He also “forced us” to sample some of the local wine he had on hand. It was a special place.
With hands crossed over her heart, she said how deeply she feels for the Syrians crossing through her country, because she too was a refugee.
But this is not a travelogue. This is a story about war.
Our country has been at war since 2001. The US has had its troops fighting and dying in foreign lands for a decade and a half. How often do we discuss it? How often do we feels its pain and carry its burden?
During all our years of war, Croatia has been healing and rebuilding. And still, the scars can’t be hidden by new roofs, new walls, new roads.
We keep our war distant and place its hardship and heartache on the residents of those faraway lands rather than carrying the load and bearing the scars of war ourselves. Would we be so quick to pull the trigger on a declaration of war if our families, friends and neighbors might feel the bullet?
Croatia’s natural beauty and sites of historical interest have drawn tourists, helping the country rebound. You can rebuild cities, but people are harder to fix. We can learn from Croatia. Years of bloody war is never the answer.