Zadar: Thoughts

After a tough bus ride, we arrived in Zadar and walked to the booking agent to get another room. Once again, a random person picked us up to take us back to his house. The Croatian are not nearly as good at English as Slovenia. The fellow that picked us up was soooo disappointed that we were not German (since he speaks German). This guy ( I will name him James for this story) was an interesting fellow. He spoke a little english but not much at all and we had a 10 minute drive to Jame's house.

Small talk is common in car rides like this.

"English?"

This time we understood him the first time.

"No, American, Californian"

He immediately became embarrassed.

"California, Ocean, Beautiful. Croatia, hmmmm"

I disagreed out of politeness.

"President Obama... Yeah"

In Spain, we found that people were very confused with our election and were assuming that the election was between Obama and Hillary. We tried to correct him.

"Obama..... or McCain"

He didn't understand. At least I tried. James continued to press his point.

"Bush....no like"

I wasn't going to diss my country so my response was.. "Yes... we need a change."

He wanted to tell us that he disliked the war. He shaped his fingers to formed a gun and made sounds that sounded like shooting with his mouth.

"No Like Iraq. Croatia 15 years of bad. Many people....uhhhh... lost minds"


He was right. During our two days in Zadar, we saw quite a few people that were not quite right. A couple stopped us and talked us in Croatian with a lunatic voice. We also had one guy waves his arms in the air and yell at us.

I can respect James's opinion. He has seen 15 years of war. I checked the history in Zadar. They had a 60% loss when the Allies bombed them during World War II. In addition, they were pummeled during the 90's. Some of the houses we passed by were pockmarked and we just knew that the people suffered here immensely. When Yugoslavia dropped missiles on the town of zadar, the townspeople were held hostage in their houses for months without much food or water.

I can understand, why they disagree with the war. They know what an air rade feels like first hand. All in all James was a nice guy and I am guessing he would vote for Obama if he could.