By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Dec 30 2004 (IPS)

The Tito train will remind many in the Balkans of good old times as it resumes its run Dec. 31 after almost a quarter of a century in the shed.

It was called the Blue Train after the colour of its 29 coaches when it was built in 1956 for Josip Broz Tito, late leader of the late Yugoslavia.

“People have the right to know, and want to know what things looked liked in the past,” Vesna Vukasovic from the Belgrade Rail Company told IPS. “The Blue Train was off limits for decades and we thought it would be a good idea to present it to the public, both the nostalgic and curious part of it.”

Tourists will travel in old world style in ten carriages to the popular resort Vrnjacka Banja, some 200 km southeast of Belgrade.

The carriages are “like a hotel on rails”, Vukasovic said. Their interior is wood-paneled, with silk and velvet curtains and old style leather chairs. The sleeping cars and conference rooms look like they did when Tito and his guests used them.

Original items like books, lamps and ashtrays will all be in their usual place. Special security measures are being taken “so that the tourists do not reach for souvenirs,” Vukasovic said.

The last journey of the train was also Tito’s last. It carried his coffin from Slovenian capital Ljubljana where Tito died to Belgrade where he was buried. Tito died May 4 1980, three days short of his 88th birthday.

Tito, of mixed Croatian-Slovene origin, was the undisputed leader of the six-member Yugoslavia since World War II, when his communist troops liberated the country from German occupation. But the federation fell apart in the bloody wars of the 1990s, barely a decade after his death.

Official propaganda in the newly created states disregarded the good Tito did, such as his role in establishing the non-aligned movement with Indian and Egyptian leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser back in the early 1960s.

His communist past and ways were described as dictatorship. His critics called his role in keeping former Yugoslavia intact an annihilation of the national identities of its 24 million people.

But memories of Tito’s era of peace, the economic improvement then, and the high reputation of the country remain deeply rooted in the hearts of millions living now in the independent states carved out of former Yugoslavia.

Problems following the transition into a market economy and the effects of devastating wars have lowered living standards in all former Yugoslav nations except Slovenia.

“It’s normal that Tito’s 35 years of rule are regarded as very good,” sociologist Ratko Bozovic told IPS. “It was the longest period of peace and prosperity in the region. Even if we could disregard the effects of wars, the changes for many were not for better in the 1990s, but for worse.”

The Blue Train is not the only sign of Tito nostalgia. In the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, café Tito is among the most popular spots.

The clock on its wall constantly shows 15.05, the hour of Tito’s death. A small statue of Tito is placed in a corner. The staff wear t-shirts that carry a World War II photograph of Tito or his signature that was made up of the letters ‘t’ and ‘o’ only.

“I wanted to have a place with an image and Tito was the major image creator,” says café owner Amir Ibrovic. Only a kid at the time of Tito’s death, Ibrovic thinks the late leader was a “positive kind of guy, unlike those who led us to wars.”

Another café in Tito’s name with memorabilia from his era opened recently in the central Serbian town Kragujevac. A regular at the café Jovan Simovic told IPS “this was just what people needed – a look into the better past in order to take a step into the better future, without war or inter-ethnic hatred.”

In Slovenian capital Ljubljana, a statue of Tito was erected outside the offices of the ruling Slovenian National Party last week. Slovenia became the only former Yugoslav republic to join the European Union last May.

Tito’s grave in Belgrade has become a major tourist spot for people from former Yugoslav republics. Coaches with licence plates from towns such as Sarajevo, Ljubljana or Zagreb (Croatia) fill the streets surrounding Tito’s memorial park.

Excerpt: