Karlovac, Slunj, and the Plitvice Lakes
How this tour swings between beauty and battle. Today it was supposed to be beauty with us right in the middle, taking a two-mile hike through woods and past waterfalls to a boat that would take us down the lake beneath the mountains to a landing where, after another hike, a little train awaited to take us through the woods back to point where we could walk back to our starting point. Shortcut plans were provided for those who couldn't make it.
We were all psyched for this but before we could get to the National Park (and World Heritage site) we had to go through towns Julia had to comment on. Karlovac. Serbs were a big minority in Croatia. Here they, wanting to join Greater Serbia, revolted and the local Croats destroyed many of their houses. The rebel Serbs battled and took over the town. The Croat Army came on and a line was formed south of the town. From behind it the Croats shelled the town and the southern sections were devastated. We, coming through on our bus twenty years later, saw many facades still pocked with bullet holes. On to Slunj, town of waterfalls. Here the Serbs did the damage, destroying a church and a bridge.
Julia added that in a town north of here it was Serb fighting Serb. One faction wanted to join Greater Serbia. The other, led by the mayor, wanted to stay with Croatia. The latter devastated their town. (How much damage makes a town "devastated"? What did the Croat mean by "70% destroyed"? By now we hear in every report the message, "They did worse things to us than we did to them."
The hike was very aerobic, with many ups and downs, but oh, what scenery. Water cascading down hundreds of feet on all sides into lakes so clear you could see the fish in them, way down there. Log-paths so close to the rushing streams that sometimes the water gurgled over them. Storms were predicted but you know our motto: Don't Be Bullied By The Weather. And, hey, we'd been so lucky so far in our travels so far there surely was no need for US to bring an umbrella. Well, after a couple of cracks of thunder, as we got off the boat it started to rain. Rained hard as the path went up and down and then turned into steps that went up and up for ten minutes. Not even having done what would have been so easily done, thrown in a rain-proof, hooded golf jacket that took up no room, we got what we deserved: about as thorough a drowning as two rats ever got.
What made our misfortune worse (forget "adventure") was that Julia discovered that the restaurant she (the tour company) planned to take us to, the close one, had burned down a few days ago. So she had to make new arrangements by cell phone during the hike. For 26 diners. She coolly did all this, but couldn't protect us from ourselves.
The price of our meteorological arrogance was that one of us (me), after lunch (hot soup, thank you, thank you, Lord), had to join the group going back to the bus, taking the heavy, wet jackets, while the other continued the hike.
MA the hiker reports more great beauty but also a small dustup. The guide of an adjacent group, discovering that Julia was Hungarian, rather loudly claimed that she had no right to guide people here. "You have to be Croatian." Julia coolly (again) replied that she was not a guide but a group leader, and she held a European Union Certificate that let her lead groups anyplace, thank you. Her unspoken communication was, I think, "Look, your country is going to join the EU July 1. Do you want to make an issue of this?" Once again, though, ethnic touchiness.
Tomorrow Slovenia, the most stable and prosperous of the five republics we are visiting, and the least affected by the war. It won its independence in ten days, joined the UN and, later, the EU. Is the fact that its troubles are relatively few attributable to its distance from the troublemaker, Serbia?
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