Back in England and a bit about Gračac

Hey readers wherever you are, I'm back in England. Me and my mother returned via aeroplane the way we had originally set off to Croatia in the evening and my father took us back home.

In this blog entry, I want to talk about Gračac, where my family come from and my impression(s) of the place and the area. Gračac, in case you haven't read anything about it, is a town and municipality located in the south of Lika. Prior to the recent war (1991-95), the municipality had a Serbian ethnic majority, the majority of which does not live there anymore. The Serbian population of Gračac fled along with around a hundred and fifty thousand Serbs in a mass Exodus from the short-lived Republika Srpska Krajina, which was mostly defeated by Croatian state forces during the 1995 Operation "Oluja". After the war, Croatian refugees from Bosnia took residence in vacated Serbian houses in Gračac and other towns throughout the area of the short-lived republic. There has been a return of Serbs to the area since the war, and in the 2001 census, Serbs made up almost 40% of the population. However, as is usually the case with refugee return, it is mainly the older generations of Serbs that return to live permanently, the younger generations living either in Serbia or elsewhere around the world.

We stayed in Štikada, a village immediately outside the town to the west. It has a hamlet called Podkosa, where my mother's family lived in for centuries. There we stayed with my old grandmother I mentioned in a previous post and another relative. We had other relatives come visit us. A cousin of mine with two kids stayed twice. The younger one, five years old, was very sweet. While his older brother, seven, is very clever for his age and also understands fairness. He even has tips on getting yourself a girlfriend!

Of course, I got to visit two cemetaries there, the one on the outskirts of the town and the Štikada one. Obviously it's important for anyone to visit graveyards, namely to see where your relatives who are no longer with us are buried. At the Gračac cemetary, I have a grandfather, grandmother, uncle and a great-uncle and great-aunt from my father's side buried there. While at the Štikada cemetary, I have relatives from my mother's side buried there. They include her father - my grandfather, her late brother - my uncle - who died nearly four years ago in September of 2003, another brother who died during the Second World war - not killed, just died, and a number of other relatives.

As for property in the town, my father has a house there which is connected to his brother's house. Like a semi-detached house, only there is an inside staircase between their houses. Both he and his brother built that one building with two adjoined garages on either side. Their houses did not get burned, bombed or destroyed by Croatian troops during "Oluja". However, their houses were looted. His brother, my uncle, and his family today live in Serbia near in a town just south of Novi Sad. They have no intentions of returning to the town and they don't believe things will improve there. Both my father and his brother want to sell their houses. I bitterly oppose my father selling his house, since I want the house to stay in the family for my descendents to inherit. Life's unpredictable, things can change as they have done and are, and you never know when things like that house in Gračac could come of use. I've heard how Serbs have sold their property for some thousands of Euros, only for it to be sold again for even bigger money later. Our houses won't be sold for so little. I don't want my father to sell his house at all. As for my uncle, I just wish I could have the money to buy it!

The Gračac valley is a picturesque place to live in with the Velebit mountain on one side and Resnik on the other. However, as I have noticed staying in Podkosa, Štikada, looking at the surrounding mountains that are part of such a breathtaking landscape, as beautiful as they are, they are also witnesses to a tragic past. And that goes back further in the past to the Second World War and even beyond.

Although I love the mountainous region of Southern Lika, as I have travelled many times on the Gračac-Knin road, passing by villages like Grab, Glogovo, Vučipolje and the rest and the stunning Zrmanja valley in the very south of my mountainous homeland, I must admit that neither would I want to live in Gračac on a permanent basis myself. If I were to live in Croatia at all, I would travel to the town often during the year and stay in the house for perhaps a few days, visiting my grandmother during my stay for as long as she lives. So regular visits yes, permanent residence no.

You see, there is another place south of my parent's hometown, on the other side of the Velebit mountain in the region of Bukovica in Northern Dalmatia. This is a small town, whose residents - members of the pre-war population who have returned after the war - along with relatives who come stay during the year, have made it a place that I have come to hold dear.

And I will tell you all about it, gladly, in my next post!