Tourism in Croatia

”The war is over” says our driver and tourist agency owner Darijan Markotic ”now we are looking forward, to the future!” He only very reluctantly wants to answer my questions of what happened during the war in Croatia. ”I can speak about it to you, but otherwise it’s forgotten. We have to go on,” he says.

He was only a young boy during the war, aware of the crisis, but not closely affected by it. Although everyone knows someone who was hurt or killed, he tells me, as we drive up the coast along the beautiful scenery of the Adriatic Sea towards Krka National Park. We want to see the waterfalls and the nature in the park that we heard so much about. But it’s inevitable to think about the war driving this way.

Krka is very close to the city of Knin, during the war a Serbian area and part of the (internationally) unrecognised Kingdom of Serbian Krajina, and also held by it’s own Serbian leaders Babic´and Martic´, both sentenced for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. On August 5, 1995, Croatian troops took over the area in forms described as pure massacre and ethnic cleansing of the area. This was only one of several such stories, horrors committed by all parties in this very cruel war. Trying to understand the conflict is difficult. One question is pondering the head, as we drive along peaceful and summer warm roads, and after reading pages after pages of what happened: How is it possible that we only fifteen to twenty years ago had such a horrific war in Europe – how could it happen?

Croatian journalist Slavenca Drakulic´wrote the Balkan Express during the war. It’s a set of small personal essays and reflections of what it does to you as a human being, to your senses in the every day life of a war. How it affects you and changes you in ways you could never foresee or understand.

But now it’s different, Darijan Markotic tells me optimistically. Tourism is the future of Croatia, with a coastline starting from Dubrovnik in the south all the way to the region of Istra and the boarders of Slovenia in north, with small villages, tourist places, boat-life and swimming in the clear waters of the Adriatic Sea. He started his business some years ago and it goes slow, he thinks. Bureaucracy around starting a business is time-consuming, it’s heavy with the investments in the beginning, and then of course – the customers have to find you. The tourists have to come.

The book Lonely Planet Croatia states that around twenty percent of GDP comes from tourism. Tourism has changed Croatia, people tell me. Before the rich people lived behind the hills, away from the coastline, which during centuries have been taken over by different conquerors and settlers. Only the poor lived by the Sea. Now it’s the other way around. Rich people by the sea, poorer in the olive-tree covered landscape behind the hills. It is by the beautiful coast the hopes for a prosperous future lies.

Read more posts on tourism here.