HAGERSTRAND'S GOT NOTHING ON ME

Ni drugi broj EG-a ne može proći bez mog članka, ovaj put tema broja je "Moje najdraže mjesto na svijetu". Nadam se da mi uredništvo neće zamjeriti što ga objavljujem ranije.

If you start looking for it on a map, you’ll probably come to conclusion that my favourite place actually doesn’t exist. With only about a hundred people living in it, it’s not important enough to put on the majority of maps in Croatia. But in the atlas of my life it’s on the first page – it’s the place where everything started.

The year was 1982 and Yugoslavia was in deep crisis – what a perfect time to be born! Luckily for my Dad, he owned a car whose licence plates started with an odd number so he had no problem in taking Mum to hospital. At that time the “odd and even days” rule was in action due to a severe domestic petrol crisis. On certain days of the week only cars with first odd number on licence plates were allowed to drive and on other those with even. With my good sense of timing I have chosen the odd day. Otherwise my favourite place on earth could have easily been the backseat of our old Renault 4.

Soon I was brought back from hospital to our first-floor apartment where we had tenure rights. That was the socialistic way of having an apartment without actually owning it. You just owned the right to live in it, but were free to sell your rights to someone else. Above us lived a strange lady with cats (there has to be one in every story) and under us was the biggest shop in the region and the centre of all social life. It was the place to see and to be seen at, and the news there would spread from mouth to mouth faster then over the internet. Every time I entered the store I felt like a millionaire. Sometimes even a billionaire, depending on the rate of inflation in Yugoslavia. On Monday you could buy a chewing gum for a few millions, next week you would need at least a billion; it was so easy to get lost amongst all that zeroes. But even with all that money I still don’t recall that we were rich at the time.

On rainy days my geographic exploration was confined to our apartment and the window views. From the front side I could see the nearby river and the bridge over it. This is the place where Dinaric Alps are the narrowest in all of Croatia, and some important roads were built here back in the 18^th century. Some still look that way. The stone bridge on the other hands is one of the nicest examples of bridge-construction in the country. It was built in 1775 but because of the depth of the river canyon, in1836 another bridge was built over it to decrease the amplitude of the road. The river springs from a 300 m deep cave under the Krpel hills. The cave almost became a sensation a few years ago when gorgeous drawings were discovered on its walls, only to be realised that they were made by some more recent local artist with a strange sense of humour. He also took the liberty to break and destroy the majority of the cave decorations which grew inside for thousands of years. Maybe the pictures were drawn by a Neanderthal after all. Still, the cave had it's 15 minutes of glory thanks to a little sponge called Eunapius subterraneus. To this day it is the only discovered subterranean sweet water sponge in the world. It was found only in six other caves in the vicinity, one of which is located a few hundred meters from this one. It is called The Quarry cave and with its length of 8 487 m (so far explored) it is the third longest cave in Croatia. Apart from the little sponge, the cave has some world-unique cave ornaments such as meteoric phreatic speleothems, created during the ever-changing process of speleogenesis which is still very active in this area. Because of its importance the cave system was put in the list of top ten most endangered karst ecosystems in Croatia. The problem is the quarry which is situated above the cave. Constant mining and material extraction with heavy machinery already caused the destruction and collapse of large parts of the cave. Even the Karst Waters Institute from USA has placed this tiny region in the list of ten most endangered karst eco-systems in the world. Yes, it’s so easy to be proud when you live in a place like this.

But that’s not the only ‘famous’ thing about the village. A bit to the east from the caves there’s a tiny gothic church of St. John. The architect of the church was Herman Bolle, important Croato-Austrian architect who designed the gothic cathedral of St. Stephen in Zagreb. Our priest would always say that the churches were similar as twin sisters, but to be honest, our looked more as some illegitimate child. And except for the old women, not a lot of people went to the church. Not until 1991 when everybody discovered their Catholic background, and suddenly the body of Christ was more popular than bagels from the shop down the street.

The 1991 brought other changes also. Some of my neighbours went away. Some said good-bye, others disappeared during the night. I didn’t quite understand what was going on until the war started. Luckily I was a child and everything seemed like an exciting game. Air raids and blackouts would be spent in the shelter, but all of my friends would be there and it almost seemed as a big slumber party with added danger and excitement. Winter that followed the autumn outbreak of conflict was one of the snowiest ever. Usually the school would be closed for a day or two until the roads were cleared, but that year the school remained closed for more than two months. When it finally started, every now and then the danger of air raids would be announced again and we would be sent home. I can still remember the taste of ‘war Nutella’. It was made of water, sugar, powdered milk from humanitarian aid and a few spoons of cocoa. No Ferrero could ever beat that! For sure it was the longest summer of my life, and one of the most remembered ones.

The following year we moved to Zagreb. My room never looked emptier than that day when all of our stuff was put on a truck which took us to our new home. Years later there was a documentary on Croatian TV called “They fought also” about the place we lived in. It was so strange to see everything through an older pair of eyes. The people were the same, the buildings and the mountains also, but still I had an odd feeling that something was different. That’s why I am not sure anymore. My favourite place should still be there, all the maps and road-signs point in the same direction. But geography hasn’t helped me much this time, because every now and then I try and try, but to this day I haven’t managed to find that special place again.