EU/Balkan Tour

I have just visited 3 countries in 48 hours. First on our way to Osijek, Croatia, we took a brief diversion to the town of Bosanski Brod in Bosnia Herzegovina. We only stopped for a quick cup of coffee, but even though it is just across the river from Serbia, it is a world apart with many bombed out buildings, roads in poor condition and very clearly an area in economic stress. I took one photo (see below), which is not a happy photo, but my Croatian colleagues insist it is an accurate portrayal of Bosnia – I will have to rely on their opinion until I see more.

That said, the town of Osijek, the second most important city in Croatia before the war, was also much more affected by the conflict than Zagreb. The first thing I noticed as we drove in was a new form of graffiti of the buildings – pockmarks from bullets and even partially destroyed. At one point in the conflict Osijek was surrounded and attacked on three sides. The good news is that there is now a lot of reconstruction underway, which I take as a good sign that the local people have faith in the long term outlook of the city.

I thought I was in Osijek to visit farmers to see the project impact on the ground, but due to some confusion I visited just one farmer on my “field” trip, so I have a sample size of one. We went out to a small village and drove down a street where every third or fourth house was abandoned to visit a young unemployed family. The husband was laid off from his job so they are now trying to live off the land. They grow their own vegetables, keep chickens, ducks and even a pig and last year started growing strawberries commercially. I was there because of the strawberries (one of our success stories) but was impressed by the range of activities. It brought back memories of working on permaculture farms in Australia – a system that would greatly benefit this family. I was told that this family is not unusual – there is very high unemployment in many of the distressed areas (as the war-affected areas are now called) and traditionally many rural households or those in small villages are part-time farmers with the land behind their houses. Many keep cows or pigs as well as growing vegetables.

This traditional system is slowly changing as agriculture becomes more commercial in order to meet quantity and quality demands of the market. For example, in the dairy sector new problems are surfacing as the sector has gone through a major transition in the last three years from 90,000 milk producers with one or two cows behind their houses in 2003 to 40,000 consolidated larger herds averaging 10-15 cows, some of which are still kept behind the house but now in modern dairy barns that meet EU standards and have manure management systems. Of course they may meet the right standards, but the neighbors are not overjoyed at the amplified odor of an additional 13 cows in one small plot next door.

I mentioned to a couple of the local staff that in my high school yearbook I listed my goal as traveling to every country in the world. They decided to help me achieve that goal. Hence the visit to Bosnia, and on the way back to Zagreb today we drove a few hours out of our way to have a very late lunch in Hungary! So I was hungry in Hungary. I’ve always wanted to say that. Of course there was really very little difference from the farmland in Croatia just across the border, except for the traffic roundabouts every 10 km in the middle of cow land. I did discover that the Hungarians are perhaps even more vegetarian unfriendly as the Croats. The only non-meat items on the menu were 6 different potato dishes and a type of garlic bread.