We’d been reading a lot about the Balkans and the history of the region (skimming most of the stuff pre-WW1) trying to understand the tensions and conflicts that have plagued the area.  It was definitely a little chaotic to track all the different parties involved, and we ended up sitting down one night in the hotel bar with some drinks, pads of paper, Wendy’s Kindle & my iPhone with various Wikipedia pages loaded (such geeks, I know).   We mapped out the parties involved, the wars fought, and generally tried to simplify things into “good guys” vs. “bad guys”.

Of course, this dramatically over-simplifies things, but we were really trying to just distill things down as much as possible.  One of the things that jumps out at you when you do this exercise is that things aren’t so clear cut as the “good guys” vs. the “bad guys”.  There is perspective obviously (e.g. how the Albanian Kosovars saw NATO vs. how the Serbs saw NATO), and the vicious cycle of revenge and what everybody calls justice.  I’ve spent my whole life in the West (England and the US), so justice to me is pretty clear and absolute.  But justice in the Balkans takes on shades of grey tinged with the red of revenge for war crimes committed by pretty much every side involved.

Given that my only previous background to the area was more or less the news media coverage we got here in the US in the 90s, my initial naive impression was that NATO (and thus, by extension, everyone NATO was “defending”) were the good guys, and that the Serbs (e.g. anyone led by Milosevic) were the bad guys.  Reading the accounts, going through the quite thorough Wikipedia articles, and actually talking to folks present that lived through the wars has dramatically changed that for me.

Wendy and I had dinner one night at Restaurant Europe in the Budva Old Town.  Since it was still low season we had the entire restaurant to ourselves for the whole night, and we conversed quite a bit with the manager, Dragoslav, (who we ended up inviting to sit down and have a drink with us).  (As a random side note, apparently the owner of the restaurant is Dragan Stojković (a.k.a. Piksi or Pixie), the former Serbian national footballer!)  He is Serbian, from Belgrade, but living in Montenegro to run the restaurant.  Getting his perspective of the war was really interesting.  I was initially timid, but perhaps the bottle of Montenegrin Sauvignon-blanc loosened me up, but eventually I asked him what his opinion of Milosevic was, and gave him the impression we all get in the west of a genocidal war-criminal.

This was the first time I’d ever talked to someone directly face-to-face who, without any hesitation, proclaimed Milosevic a hero and a patriot to the Serbian people for trying to hold on to some sense of Serbian identity and pride (prior to my reading and our trip, I had no idea Kosovo holds a special place in Serbian history as a legendary battleground for them… it’s akin to an American Gettysburg, or Scottish Falkirk).

Having now left, I’m still reading my last book on the region and still fascinated by the tensions that I can see still exist in the general populace there. Across the regions we visited, I saw desire to not be involved in any more conflicts, and to move on with life and build up some semblance of a tourist industry – but at the same time, I didn’t necessarily see a desire to forgive and forget. The people we talked to seem to still have the strong national pride, and the museums we visited (including the memorial in Dubrovnik to the soldiers and civilians killed in the shelling of Dubrovnik from Montenegro) still very much evoked a “look at how we were wronged” attitude.

I really really hope that the region can heal… it’s an immensely beautiful land.  Honestly, it’s one of the most beautiful areas I’ve ever visited.  The bay towns of Dubrovnik, Kotor, and Budva will be huge tourist draws (Dubrovnik already is, Kotor and Budva less so… at least internationally).  They are beautiful medieval-era cities with a ton of history, with friendly people, fantastic food, and just overall are incredible towns to explore.  I’d encourage anyone reading this to travel there soon.  While we were in Kotor we came across two EU Election Observers (there to observe the parliamentary elections to ensure fair elections, a requirement for EU admission), and I can honestly say that was the first time I’d talked to someone in the past 8 years who was genuinely excited to see an American tourist.