SOCIETY: Peace Can Be a Lot of Fun in Belgrade

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jan 19 2006 (IPS) - Young people from Croatia and Serbia are rapidly putting aside the hatred that tore the two apart into separate countries through the bloody wars of the 1990s.

Serbian capital Belgrade has become a target of another kind now, for weekends for young Croats. Large numbers arrive every Saturday, move into still cheap hotels, spend their day shopping and then go for the nightlife.

“I love to travel and meet new people,” Lena Sasic (24), a Zagreb student told IPS at the posh Knez Mihajlova street in Belgrade. “Belgrade is the perfect place for fun, good shopping…besides, everybody understands you, you don’t have to speak any foreign language.”

Serbs and Croats, who were together in former Yugoslavia until 1991, fought a war that ended in 1995 with the creation of a separate Croat state.

The prevailing political view in Croatia is that Croats and Serbs have little in common, despite the fact that they speak almost the same language. But in Belgrade, that kind of prejudice almost does not exist.

“People just look at me with curiosity when they hear my Zagreb accent and most of them say, ‘welcome, it’s so good to hear it again’,” Lena said.

Belgrade and Zagreb are 400 km apart, connected by a modern yet largely empty highway because traffic has still not returned to pre-war levels. Young Croats travel to Belgrade by car, bus or train. Regular bus and train service was re-established only a few years ago; all ties between the two nations had been cut in 1991.

Lana’s friend Maja Matic (25) loves the nightlife of Belgrade. “There are no places like boat clubs that open until the early hours in Zagreb. People are more relaxed here than anywhere else.”

The confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers in Belgrade is lined with hundreds of boat restaurants and nightclubs with live music that ranges from gypsy tunes and Serbian folk to jazz. The clubs are popular both with the young and with older people.

The clubs have earned for Belgrade the title of ‘Sin City’ over the past few years.

Now many DJs from Croatian capital Zagreb take charge of the music on the boat clubs over the weekends. One who calls himself ‘Verbal’ has become particularly popular.

“I’m fascinated by this city, its cosmopolitan atmosphere,” he told IPS. “Zagreb is a dull place, with fewer possibilities.”

Belgrade is also cheaper than other capitals in the region. The most famous brand products cost less here. Shops of all kinds are crowded with foreign visitors.

With a population of two million, Belgrade is the biggest city in the Balkans. Its population equals the population of Slovenia or half the population of Croatia.

While young Croats are discovering Belgrade only now, young Slovenes have been celebrating their New Year holidays here since 2000. This year a record 35,000 Slovenes visited Belgrade for New Year’s Eve.

Serbia opened its doors to its neighbours and former Yugoslavs in 2000 after the regime of Slobodan Milosevic fell from power. His regime led Serbia into the wars of the 90s that led to a portrayal of Serbs as primitive, war-mongering and brutal people. Propaganda in Croatia and Bosnia only strengthened that image.

“Belgrade is everything opposite to what we were told,” Janja Bacic (22) from Zagreb told IPS. “Still, I do not tell my parents that I’m spending weekends here, they’d freak out. Many people simply hate Serbia or are frightened by the idea of visiting, so I prefer to say I’m at the (Adriatic) coast. Cell phones are a marvel, aren’t they?”

Janja’s concern was not groundless. Many Croats sent hostile comments to Croat newspapers that wrote about young Croats spending weekends in Belgrade. Someone said that such excursions “clearly poison Croatian youth”, another that they threaten to drag Croats into “some new, yet impossible friendship with Serbs.”

But many see the advantages. “There is a new generation on the scene, one not burdened with ideology, hatred, fear or war,” Belgrade University sociology professor Stjepan Gredelj told IPS. A Croat born and raised in Belgrade, he often says he is a “living testimony” to the friendly Serbian capital.

“The values of new youth are different as they do not tend to live in the past,” he said. “The more contacts, the better the views on both sides, to the benefit of both Croats and Serbs. Prejudice should be eradicated so that people in the region can start living normal lives again. The revival of ties is a step in this direction, even if it starts out of mere curiosity and nightlife.”