Dinner by the Danube
Dinner by the Danube
Pilgrimage for peace, part V
(Editor's Note: Englewood resident Jean Ranallo, representing the Florida Southwest Peace Coalition, recently returned from a trip to Croatia, where she and Mario Spalatin, president of the Croatian-American Society of Sarasota, toured the Eastern European country ravaged by war in the 1990s. Following is the fifth installment of Ranallo's first-person account of her trip. Part I appeared in the Oct. 1 paper, part II on Oct. 4, part III on Oct. 8, part IV on Oct. 11, part V on Oct. 15 and part VI on Oct. 22.
(The story continues with the author visiting her longtime friend Lidija Taus in war-torn Osijek.)
It was drizzling on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 21. The sunny Saturday seven days before would have been better for harvesting the grapes of Lidija's Uncle Geza, but some relatives who only visited once a year had come at that time, so the harvest was put off a week.
On Friday, Lidija's parents had taken a freshly slaughtered suckling pig to the baker to have him roast it for the harvest dinner Saturday. When we awoke that morning, they were already leaving with all the food to pick up the pig at the bakery on their way to Batina. Lidija and I soon followed in her car.
It was a road I'd taken only once before, in the summer of 2000, when I was in a group of visiting teachers in Pecs, Hungary. One weekend, I visited Lidija's family and on that Sunday after the nine o'clock Mass at St. Michael's in the old town, we set out with the car loaded with food.
Shortly after crossing the Drava Bridge, we came to a back-up in traffic due to soldiers de-mining the woods near the road. We had to wait near the old front line. When we were allowed to proceed, we passed groups of exhausted soldiers sitting near ambulances. At that time, in July of 2000, one soldier had died and one had been seriously wounded while working to uncover and remove the mines.
This area had been seized by the Serbs in 1991 and given back after the Dayton Agreement, so it saw no fighting or shelling to speak of, and those who had fled have begun to return. On Sept. 21, we were going to a house in Batina that belonged to the family and was being used for Sunday dinners with Lidija's cousins and their parents. The house was located near Strauss' beautiful blue Danube.
Now there was no delay. Soldiers are no longer risking their lives near the road and it is clearly marked where mines have not been removed. We quickly arrived in Batina, on whose slopes the grapes were ripe.
High on a hill is a huge Soviet memorial to those Russians who died fighting here, for it is at Batina that the Red Army was able to cross the Danube in the Second World War.
The ground was damp and muddy and there was a light drizzle as several dozen of us snipped away at the clusters of sweet yellow grapes hanging from Uncle Geza's vines. In the early 1990s, vines from the Primorski Region of Slovenia, the only republic of the former Yugoslav Federation to succeed in seceding without much bloodshed, provided the grapes for wines that people could buy at Winn-Dixie and Publix, including a chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon that were real bargains. As I tasted Uncle Geza's sweet white grapes, I wondered if those from near the sea were similar.
When we were finished gathering the grapes, tables were waiting with platters of the roast suckling pig, salads, desserts from Osijek and sweets from Sombor.
At the table, I sat next to Uncle Geza's sister-in-law, Mila Matasovic, who had been one of 10 children. She was from Karlovac, the city we passed through on our way to and from the Adriatic coast, a city whose ruins served as a reminder of the terrible fighting that had gone on there.
Uncle Geza's beautiful house, which had been designed by his architect son, survived the conflict, but on the wall were photos of what it had looked like after Serbs had been living in it for about five years. All the furniture had been taken. There were piles of junk and garbage in the rooms and the gardens and vineyards were in an awful state.
Now everything looks as though nothing had happened. The furniture has all been replaced and there are no weeds or wild vines. The grounds look very well tended. And the house is lovely.
Aunt Mila, who was a geography teacher, asked if I had ever been to Egypt. Back in 1997 I had to decide whether to go to Guatemala or Egypt and it was the Mayan pyramids that I wound up climbing. She told of her travels to the land of the pharaohs and her enthusiasm was like that of all our Egyptologist friends. It makes me long to visit the graves of those whose dieties included both great gods and goddesses.
After coffee Lidija, her cousin Marta, and I went for a walk along the levee that protects the little houses of Batina from the high waters of the Danube. They told me about having taken a short trip across the Adriatic to Venice in the summer. At one time, long ago, Croatia's coast had been part of the Venetian Republic and even now there are Croatians of Italian descent for whom there are special schools where Italian is taught. Not only the Italian minority attend such schools, but also Croatians wishing to learn Italian.
We returned to Uncle Geza's and looked at the pictures from the trip to Venice. After another cup of coffee and some very moist rice cake, Lidija and I set out for Osijek in the early afternoon. The sun was trying to shine.
Return to Osijek
(Editor's Note: The following excerpt was inadvertently omitted from part V of the author's account of her trip to Croatia.)
Over the years, I'd been back to Osijek several times, visiting with Lidija while she was still living in Pecs.
In the summer of 2001, after Lidija had moved back to Croatia, my husband finally felt safe enough to come along. We stayed at the refurbished Hotel Osijek.
In September of this year, I noticed that much more of Osijek has been repaired. There remain some facades still to be brought back to their former glory, but life is returning to normal and those who fled are beginning, like Lidija, to return.
The drive from Pakrac to Osijek was slower this time, for only country roads remained and often, since we were passing through agricultural areas, we had to share the road with wagons with only one or two horsepower.
Arriving in Osijek, we went to the Center for Peace, located in a building near a McDonald's and an apricot-colored theater that had been destroyed in the winter of 1991 and rebuilt thanks to international donations. Shortly after it was rebuilt, however, the new facade began to crumble, with pieces falling on passersby. It had to be redone. I don't know if the facade of McDonald's had similar problems.
The Center for Peace occupied a floor of the building rent-free from the city of Osijek. Branka Kaselj and Snjezena Kovacovic met us and told us about their efforts to bring the various ethnic groups back together.
They set up chess clubs and computer classes, tried to get people involved in community projects and organized holidays for children of different ethnicities. They were reaching out beyond Osijek as far as Pakrac and Vukovar, and even into Bosnia.
We thanked them for meeting with us and Mario returned to Pakrac, while I went across the street to wait for Lidija in front of the cathedral.
Soon Lidija's white car was making a U-turn and she was climbing out. After a quick hug, we put my bag in the trunk and pulled into traffic. The drive took us past parks and the old town with its many bright red rooves having been replaced after the shelling.
Behind the apartment building I got out of the car so Lidija could squeeze it into the garage. Up on the seventh floor, her parents were waiting and asked if I'd eaten. They had had milk-rice after Lidija had returned from school and there was plenty left. It hit the spot.
Lidija had books to return to the library, so we walked along the Drava, paused at an ice cream stand and ordered scoops of hazelnut, pistachio and chestnut ice cream.
A beggar came by asking for a hand-out, and Lidija gave him a coin. She explained that he was a sort of mascot in Osijek. He was always polite and always grateful. People liked him, she said, and his photo is in a little book about the city that tourists can pick up.
After dropping Lidija's books at the library, we returned home and ate supper rather late, watched a Hungarian costume drama on TV, then turned in.
By JEAN RANALLO
Special to the Sun
http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/110502/ew4.htm?date=110502&story=ew4.htm
