Hello blog reading type people, I’m officially calling this one. I’ve made it all the way to August 3rd, just over one month since I started this blogging assignment and it has officially become work. Lucky for me I only have a few more days of mandatory writing, a week at best and lucky for you I’ll soon be home to tell my stories in person and you won’t have to deal with sub-par summations of my days. This morning we had another political meeting, yay! Given the location of our hotel in relation to the presidential offices (actually, in relation to everything), we piled into 6 taxis for the drive there. Then, after being dropped off at the gate, secret service-esque SUVs/minivans came and drove us up to the main house for our meeting. No, we weren’t meeting with the president but we were meeting with his foreign policy advisor. The compound where our meeting was is located in a largely residential area because it was initially designed as an official residence for Tito even though he rarely ever used it as such. I found the meeting extremely interesting, especially the connections and implications to East Germany. The unification of Germany is usually viewed as a good thing but it also sent the precedent for a state being wiped off the map and the radical redrawing of borders. Afterwards, it became clear why we couldn’t have taken public transportation all the way there. To get back to the center we had to take a bus to a train and then later to get back to the hotel we’d need to take another bus. The interesting thing to note is that Zagreb appears to be a quiet city – much quieter than any of the others and especially the other capitals. It’s almost eerie. We found what is likely to be our major food source here, it’s a chain of bakeries that also sells sandwiches and pizza – all our favorites. During our down time we explored a little bit and got to see a really cool gothic style church.
Our afternoon meeting was with a ‘language guy’ specializing in the languages in the region; Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are all recognized and all can be understood by the others. I was looking forward to an interesting discussion on the differences between the language and how they play into politics. However it turned out to be more of a history lesson, a bit disappointing. After the meeting, we were all dragging a bit so back to the hotel we went. Later we headed back over to the mall for dinner again. It’s really the only close place, there aren’t a lot of restaurants nearby. Also, Wok & Roll is easily the best food court food I’ve had in a long time – so good. It was a silly night for our family but so much fun, I hadn’t laughed that hard in a while.
The next day we took public transport into the city (bus 234 to tram 6 or 13) for our meetings. First up was a tour of the Parliament building and a little bit of history on that. I found it interesting to learn the members of the Croatian Diaspora are represented in the parliament. It is not uncommon for there to be some sort of representation quotas in this region, especially in societies that are more multi-ethnic. However it is odd/noteworthy that anyone with dual Croatian citizenship can not only vote but has a designated representative in the parliament, regardless of where they actually live. Sessions at this parliament are broadcast on TV in the morning and available online with transcripts for all sessions. It’s been interesting to see the steps taken by all the different legislatures to build the openness and legitimacy of their bodies as institutions. A big part of that is making sure the public knows and understands what’s going on. Broadcasting the sessions is a way to help prevent the story from being twisted too much. In between meetings we had gelato and not just any gelato, the best of the trip. My dark chocolate, aka brownie batter, and cappuccino was good enough to pass for lunch. Next we met with members of the Serb community in Croatia. The Q&A session was interesting because we got into discussing the identities of our presenters and how they viewed themselves in the broader context of the region. This was our last official meeting and we had a lot of free time in the afternoon but since Zagreb is soooooo sleepy we headed back to the hotel to work on our projects (presentations were today). Later we had our final group dinner with all of us, a sort of goodbye hurrah.
Today is somewhat of a lazy day in the sense that I haven’t left the hotel. We had presentations and discussions this morning and now we’ve spent the time getting tickets organized for tomorrow, writing last minute papers, and just chilling. There’s a chance that this will be my last post, especially since it took me several days to finish this post so I just want to thank everyone who’s been reading throughout the trip. I’ve had a blast and am already looking forward to coming back. Bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment