I love this story that Beau Berman forwarded to me. Splicani (residents of Split) are WAY to nosy to ever let this happen. Zagrepcani (residents of Zagreb) must not get into each others business so much.
Governments have changed. War erupted and ended. Neighbors had children, and then grandchildren. But Hedviga Golik never left her tiny apartment in Croatia’s capital — until her mummified body was carried out this week, 35 years after she died.
Here are a few examples of the things Hugo says that I find entertaining. I don’t think he’s insane, just eccentric. I do think he has some compelling reasons to be distrustful of the US if you read our own government reports about what we did in Latin American during the Reagan/Bush I years. But he’s gone from distrustful to completely paranoid. Above all, he is very flambouyant AND he’s recently started learning Arabic and using it in his speeches. My favorite quote is the one where he’s talking about Condi Rice. There have been world leaders who make snide comments about America before, but few have had the creativity and boldness to go to the lengths that Hugo goes to. He’s not just Castro with oil. He’s Castro with oil and a flair for the dramatic. He loves making it in to the news in the US and knows how to get attention for himself. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7090600.stm
Just remember that every time you fill up at a Citgo station you’re helping to fund Hugo’s traveling comedy routine… at least until Pat Robertsen has him assasinated … or CNN.
I love this stuff. As a high-strung American living in Croatia, I thought most Dalmatians were incredibly lazy. However, Dalmatians looked down their noses at Bosnians because they thought Bosnians were lazy. I guess this AP story is an example of what they are talking about:
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — A would-be thief took a nap while burgling a house in Bosnia - and the owner found him sound asleep on the couch, police said Thursday.
The man, identified only as Edin M., 21, managed to snatch two bracelets and an earring before falling asleep, police in the central Bosnian town of Maglaj said.
He confessed to breaking into the house. “He saw the couch and just sat to down to rest for a while and fell asleep,” police said in a statement.
“Oh, this is a nice necklace. Aha, diamonds. That couch looks comfy. I didn’t have my 10th cup of coffee today. Feeling sleepy.”
Here is a picture of me in front of the Iranian Cultural Center and Embassy in Sarajevo. While I find Hugo Chavez wildly entertaining, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just not funny. I’m leaving a “gift” to show my disapproval of his act.
Croatia has some of the last remaining wilderness areas within west or central Europe. Many Germans and Italians come to the remote parts of Croatia to commune with nature. Mount Velebit, just an 1-1/2 north of Split, is home to the largest population of bears in this part of the continent. Some of the locals run a shelter for orphaned bears and other wild animals. They have a lot of visitors who come to see bears up close but not in a cage like a zoo. The video below shows a German woman who was told by the locals that bears enjoy music.
The woman tourist was fine. She escaped with a few scrapes and bruises. The man who runs the bear shelter jumped in and got the bear off of her, but then it got him. His assistant then tried to run the bear off using a chainsaw. Luckily, another guy from the village happened to be walking by and had a pistol on him. He finally had to shoot the bear to get it off the bear shelter owner.
Croatia is still just getting started as a republic. The government institutions that existed before the 1990’s civil war were part of the Yugoslav government, not a Croatian national government. Needless to say, it has taken some time for the Croatian bureaucrats to figure out everything they need to be stifling via oppressive regulations. One activity that has been sporadically regulated is homebuilding. Squatters and land-owners building homes with no license, building permit, blueprints, or really any plan or idea how to build a house have caused their fair share of problems here.
Last year, the Sabor (Croatian parliament) passed a law that said houses that were built without a building permit could be demolished if huge fines were not paid or the house did not meet very stringent building regulations. The squatters were left with no recourse. As the government has investigated, they have found thousands of homes that fit these criteria. Many homes on the islands and along the coast have been destroyed in the past year. Many of them were not finished, but were being used. Many had been there for over ten years, but there is no such thing as common law here.
[Time-out for a story I was reminded of while reading the newspaper article mentioned below.] My friend Brandon Wood grew up on a farm in Newport, Arkansas. His dad a several fields around the White River. Some redneck came along a threw a couch into a strip of trees that lined one of the fields. It stayed there for seven years without anyone noticing it. After the seventh year, the Wood family received notice that they were being sued because this toothless redneck wanted them to stop farminghis property. He explained how if you make improvements to a property and no one claims it, after seven years that property rightfully belongs to the person who made the improvements (according to common law). Obviously, furnishing the forest along the edge of the field qualified as an improvement to farmland. More obviously, the Woods retained that piece of property.
Back to my story about squatters in Croatia. In Friday’s Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia), the newspaper here in Split, I read about a man who had built a weekend house without a permit on land he didn’t own. After a long court battle, the government came and flattened the house. I could NOT believe what I read after that. This whole thing was written in Croatian, so I’m giving you a very rough (the only kind I can give) translation into English. In protest of the government tearing down his weekend house, this guy goes to his full-time residence and burns it. In what universe does this make sense? The guy went from having two houses to living in the park, all in one afternoon. I was and still am mezmorized by this story. The guy was so proud of what he had done.
Now, more facts have come out. The house he burned was brand-spanking new. The government had built it for him to replace the house he had owned that was destroyed during the 90’s Balkan War. The irony here is that the governement wouldn’t have ever built him a new house if they had known about the weekend house. Only people who didn’t have any other home anywhere else in the former Yugoslavia were supposed to have their home replaced. But he did get a new house because the goverment didn’t know about the other house because it was built on someone else’s land without a license or permit.
Back to my story about squatters in Croatia. In Friday’s 
