Monday

We go to see the new baby. The outside of the apartment block looks normal, but inside is very new, marble all over the place, new kitchen and ceiling lights.

There's no place like home, with any luck. The girls go back
to where they came from.

After that we go to Marko's for dinner, check out their house, and the long veggie garden out the back. He also has a sensational looking vintage Miele (same as the electrical appliance company) bike, made in Germany, still running fine every day. It's got a retro front light and dynamo (made in Germany) that sits on the tyre, and a leather saddle with springs. Dinner is meat, meat and 2 big trays of meat. Some of the restaurants we went to later, they didn't bother with a menu; it's either meat or chivapis, and a salad.

The family home is now a small
pile of rubble.

In the morning we cross the border into Unka. The guard is interested to know what Marie is doing and how often she comes to Croatia, since she's got her original family name in the passport, and the place of birth is now effectively off limits. It did not have a friendly atmosphere I'll put it that way. Mara wants us to go first, as the cops are there, and French plated cars are less likely to have problems than plates with a Grb on it. This national symbol is not appreciated by the other side.

The family home. If you look closely,
there's a fence ther in the middle.

On the way, there is a Catholic church, new, then a mosque, new, then another couple of new churches. All the homes are bombed out shells. The local school has the Serb flag flying, and a memorial with the paranoid two headed eagle looking both ways, and pictures of 5 men on it. Why you'd want to remember the people who did these crimes is odd. I'm sure the school's history books make for interesting reading. Every student would get high grades in history, because there would be so much revision (get it, get it, eh?).

The neighbours.

The old home has been completely destroyed. 20 years of overgrowth is making it hard to see that there was a place at all. The fence is still there in the undergrowth. Two more homes nearby are in ruins but still standing, and the rest of the village is mainly a collection of weeds. After viewing the rural villages all the way to here, it is hard not to imagine that it would normally have been lined with homes close to the street. The little chapel looks little used. All the gravestones are quite new. Zdenka said the old ones had been shot up. We visit their sister's grave, and later their granma's.

This memorial is actually inside a
school near Unka, complete with Srb
flag flying overhead.

Further on towards Zeravac, a hand full of homes amoung the weeds have people who watch us roll by. Of the cars that pass, only a few will wave back.

Zeravac has a large brand new church. Apparently they destroyed the old one, and removed it brick by brick. The local priest is currently documenting all of the churches that did exist, so that the deniers cannot simply claim the area. All the cars here are HR plated. It's one of the few places that I'd let the kids play with their soccerball, which is covered in the national symbol. Paranoid I know, but the place makes me feel this way. The priest says a few families have returned, and hopes that more will come home. We chat to one of the builders, who has married a local. He says he gets no problems. He just keeps his head down and works. Just nearby, the local school is a shell, as is every single other home around in the area.

Brave people and new homes at the
only place that looks normal, Zeravac.

The new home with bullet holes and
grafitti, 5-10km away.

A new home a few k's away looks new, has bullet holes and nasty graffiti. It says something like we'll say when you can join us.