Comments by "Pedja Milosavljevic" (@pedjamilosavljevic6235) on "Living Ironically in Europe"
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Well , (i don't know why I write this in English , accept for sake of others who may read it) I'll tell you a story , which is true. I was born in Yugoslavia and I assume that you are quite a bit younger person. Besides war(s) , of which younger generations only learned in school (according to prevailing narrative) , there is a very little difference between two nations and mentality (which would be debated by many , but that's my opinion - in general , of course). In 2014 , my friends and I attended some event on island of Krk. It was Fico gathering . Like , exhibition , drive trough Malinska and Krk and all around , with unavoidable barbecue and feast at the end. Our cars had Belgrade plates. We were very welcomed and taken care of by locals. So we invited them back to Belgrade when we made similar event (4-5 months later). Now , I didn't had any concerns about going there , since I was there (all up and down Adriatic cast , when I was younger) and I served army in Zadar , nor my friends did. However , when we invited them to visit our event (mind you there vere people from various parts of Croatia including , amongst others , one "defender" from Vukovar and he was also , prisoner of war) , they were (well most of them , especially younger people) pretty surprised and , kind of showed (not verbally) some concern. Anyway , they showed up on our event and , it was fun to watch them while they were exiting their cars. I did approach them first , because , I was organizer and because they already knew me. Since they gathered in Zagreb and made their way from there , it wasn't a long journey , but most of them look pretty pail and anxious (especially one guy from Rijeka and the other , who has told me that he was serving in a war in a special unit). They (well most of them) really thought that they would be eaten alive , or something like that. That's the moment when I understood , how strong is propaganda (at that time) in Croatia. Though , as organizer , I took precaution and engaged police to track them from the border in unmarked cars , just to be on a safe side (they didn't knew about that). Suffice to say , they had the best time for couple of days they (most of them) were here. Guy from Vukovar is my friend , we visit each other occasionally (he slept at my house many times , since he was involved in racing , here in Serbia) and I'm a pretty good friend with most of the others , including special forces guy (who lives in Zagreb) and one from Chakovec. They came here many times since and nobody complained about anything. Mind you , we have many people here that were expelled from Croatia , at the end of war - some of which were engaged in organization of these events.
The point is - look for things that connect you with other people and don't focus on differences . By the way , there are loads of Croatian car plates around , especially around New year and rarely someone's car (lately no one's) is damaged. There were some incidents at Croatian coast , during the summer season , but you can't avoid idiots anywhere in the world , it just depends on luck.
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