This is my second blog about Zagreb. The first one is here.
This one will be mainly about two museums I went to, but let’s start with a monument at the main train station, behind this steam engine:
Steel suitcases
"From this place about 800 Zagreb Jews were deported to the Nazi camp Auschwitz in August 1942”. Note: nowadays, the official name of the Auschwitz museum includes the word German, to remove any possible confusion about who the "Nazis" were.
Travelling in Slovenia and Croatia I saw plaques and monuments to the heroes of Yugoslavia. This one is in Zagreb:
Commemoration of Zdenka Baković (1918- Zagreb 1941), and Rajka Baković (Oruro, Bolivia, 1920 - Zagreb 1941), members of the anti-fascist resistance movement.
In the Europe Square in Zagreb, there is this simple monument:
1 July 2013 - the day when Croatia joined the EU as the 28th member. No other country joined the EU since then, and one left.
Located in the old town. Not all photos and exhibits have English descriptions.
The impression I had while visiting and learning about Slovenia and Croatia was that the history of the region, that was in my youth known as Yugoslavia, was much more complicated than the history of Poland. Thinking about this now, half a year later, I think that history of a country is more complicated the more neighbours it has, especially powerful ones, and the more complex internal composition in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, and wealth. My short stay in Slovenia and Croatia gave me only a glimpse of the history of the region. I know a lot more than I knew before the trip, but still just scratching the surface.
Entrance to the museum
People lived where Zagreb is today for millennia, but very little survived, because of wars, fires, floods, earthquakes, passage of time, re-use, and more recently, perhaps because of "renovations".
Archeological sites in Zagreb.
Roman era find.
Reconstruction of a helmet found in one of the archeological sites.
The mid XVII century church on the left, "renovated" in the early XX century.
If something was not needed anymore, or was crumbling, or was obscuring the view, like in this case (XV century walls and the Bakacev tower), it was dismantled. This is what happened to medieval walls in many European cities.
The part that survived the "renovation".
Some art pieces from the inside of the old church...
The interesting thing for me was how the war started for Yugoslavia. It was unique. First, on 25 March 1941 Yugoslavia signed up to the German-led fascist axis. Two days later, on 27 March, there was a military coup and the new government refused to ratify the signing. Later the same day Hitler signed an order to attack Yugoslavia (and Greece) about a week later, on 6 April.
Yugoslavia was invaded by Germany, Italy and Hungary and capitulated after 10 days. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Germany, Italy, Hungary, Albania and Bulgaria. Croatia became a fascist state, known as Independent State of Croatia. Germans set up a puppet Serbian government and a volksdeutche Banat government. The situation in Slovenia was a mess.
Generally, the people in all of Yugoslavia were in a terrible situation. Italians had genocidal aims towards Slovenes. Croatian nationalists were committing a genocide of Serbs, Roma, Jews and Muslims. Germans were murdering Jews and anybody who opposed them. There were partisans royal to the king and partisans loyal to Tito. Communists were killing nationalists, including after the war. About 1 million people lost their life: 530k Serbs, 192k Croats, 102k Muslims, 57k Jews, 20k Montenegrins, and 125k others. Relative war losses compared to the expected population in 1948: 78% of Jews, 31% of Roma, 10% of Montenegrins, 7% of Serbs, 7% of Muslims, 5% of Croats, 5% of Germans, 2.5% of Slovenes, 1% each of Albanians, Macedonians, Hungarians.
German army in Zagreb on 10 April 1941.
The "Ž" stands for Židov - Jew in Croatian.
The sign in the bottom photo says that entry is forbidden to German soldiers - this was a street of sex workers.
"The fall of the Berlin Wall led to the collapse of communism in all countries across Central and Eastern Europe" - I see this falsification of history often. By the time the wall fell in November 1989, Poland already had partially free elections and a non-communist prime minister. Hungary was also more advanced on the way out. East Germany was the 3rd in line in the Revolutions of 1989.
A very interesting museum, except the exhibits showcasing bitcoin, NFTs for art, and suggesting that climate change has been always happening and anyway the volcanoes are to blame - I think that was sponsored by some fossil fuel company.
Some of my old, non-digital photos. In 1999 I lived in Bray and commuted to Dublin by train. Ireland was in the EU, but it still used the Irish pound, although the exchange rate to ECU - the precursor of the euro was fixed. The Republic gave up the claim to the northern counties and the political arm of the IRA joined a coalition government in Northern Ireland. The Troubles were ending, but still very fresh. The animosity between the Irish/Catholic and the British/Protestant was very real and very personal for some people. A British girl from Belfast told me a story. I don't remember if it happened to her or her friend, but it went something like that: The girl was on a date in a pub with a man who was Irish. She left her purse and went away for a moment. When she came back he was gone. When she opened her purse there was sh*t there... A number of years earlier, I think in 1990 a bomb went off while I was in London. The extraordinary thing was that the Troubles ended by talks.
Bray / Bré:
Palm trees in front yards and a sunny, 11 degrees Celsius weather in January surprised me on my first visit. Snow is very rare in Dublin. The winter I lived there, it snowed once and the snow melted quickly.
Some houses were tiny.
All public signs are in Irish and English (Irish first). All places have Irish and English names.
Sugarloaf mountain. Note 'NO CYCLING' written on the promenade. Now there is a bike path parallel to it, along the street.
This church was probably all stone and very old, but some new buildings used stone only as a facade and were really timber.
New houses are likely to be timber frame with brick cladding.
The Irish Sea was always cold.
Dublin / Baile Átha Cliath:
DART - Dublin Area Rapid Transit. If you visit Dublin, make sure to take this train all the way south. The route is very scenic. Ireland uses wide track gauge: 1600 mm. The lines are electrified only around Dublin, at 1500 V DC.
The tallest (habitable) building in Dublin... till 2010.
Saturday mornings meant rubbish in the streets and sometimes cars with broken windows after Friday night out.
The office park where I worked. Btw, Sheila, if you ever happen to read this, sorry for the problems I caused you at work - I didn't know it at first, but I was a wrong person for that job and it was stressing me like hell. I tried to suppress it, but it was an emotional rollercoaster.
This was a time when American companies were moving European headquarters to Dublin, mainly for tax reasons. This office park had Oracle, Sun, and others. The historic trend of graduates emigrating for work reversed and the Irish started coming home from the US and the UK. They were joined by people from all over Europe showing up to work for international corporations - I was one of them.
We could either walk or wait for the free shuttle bus from the train station to the office park.
James Connolly was executed for taking part in the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland.
Vandalised monument to the victims of UVF bombings.
Dublin still had a long way to go to reach prosperity. In 1999 I remember stickers on buses and plaques in various places with "Partially financed by the European Union". Today Ireland's GDP per capita is twice that of Germany.
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