I am a child of the Cold War. And I never took a world history course--in high school or after. It wasn't until my youngest son took an AP World History course that I knew much of anything about how the world has shaped up over the last 10,000 years. And I know impressively little about the world to the east of Western Europe, besides that Russia was on our side during WWII and after the war we had a falling out. So all those countries that made up the Soviet Union were more or less a mystery to me in terms of both history and culture.
So when my husband said he had a meeting in Serbia and would I like to come, it was on the one hand an automatic yes--I really try hard to make travel possible. But on the other, what I knew about Serbia was limited, and tinged with the press they got during the break up of the former Yugoslavia.
The Balkans, which are still not completely broken up--Kosovo is under the control of NATO and Serbia is not contented with that situation, and Montenegro is also a bit of a black box as well--and the history of the region makes it clear that peace was never attained in it's long and turbulent history. Located between Italy and Turkey, the Balkans had the dubious honor of being an essential path on the way from the East to the West and visa-versa. Which made them important but not independent. They have been more or less continuously occupied since the time of the Romans--true, the Romans got around--and left voluminous buildings in their wake (the Balkans are no exception to that rule--with 3,600 kilometers of Adriatic coastline, they were very accessible to the Romans), but the importance of the region led to it being taken over by a host of other invaders. Which makes the region complicated, both culturally and politically. It is not a straight forward post-Cold War story of violence, and an intriguing place to visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment