It is not often that a person is given the opportunity to get a direct insight into the past, a healthy relationship towards it, together with the present in which we live and the future that is actually here, on just one, and short, trip. It's the end of September, I'm traveling to Retrofest in Ljubljana, which is organized by the History Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, and the trip is from Korčula, through Split and Zagreb, and to the capital of Slovenia.
And while I am being escorted out of Croatia by columns of tourists, discussions about the introduction of a real estate tax, presidential elections that deal with almost nothing concrete, and the establishment of another hardcore right-wing party obsessed with the attitude towards the war and the Serbs, already on the train between Zagreb and Ljubljana I realize how Schengen actually "passed away gently in the Lord". This news is actually strengthened by Germany's current decision to introduce border controls on all its borders, but Schengen, the greatest asset of the European Union, or the idea of a Europe without borders, is evidently running out, driven by the issue of migration.
From the romantic idea of an empty compartment, a book and thinking about a common past and the topic of cultural conflicts about the interpretation of the legacy of the Second World War, I find myself in a full compartment and a train, together with two, obviously shocked Syrians and three young Hungarians who are returning from a summer vacation as excursions. Even before the departure of the train, the Croatian police examines the Syrians to see if they have all the papers and permits, checks their documents, while not even looking at the rest of us.
At the border with Slovenia, the same thing happens, which now takes much longer, with a detailed check of the undercarriage of the train, probably in search of stowaways.
The evening Ljubljana that greeted me looks like a typical Western European, somewhat sleepy city, with many foreigners working in fast food restaurants and as deliverymen, with a huge pedestrian zone, ideal for evening jogging, but also with a visible Yugoslav heritage and the fact that burek is one of the main night meals.
I run past Tivoli and think about the cult album by Zoran Predin and Arsen Dedić, Witnesses of the story, on which Bora Đorđević joined them on the signature song "Homeland", and which was recorded in Tivoli, in the spring of 1989. Just in time to sign off a country and an era.
In the window of the Cinematheque, I see that a cycle of films dedicated to Karp Godina, an icon of Slovenian and Yugoslav cinematography and a man whose collaboration with Želimir Žilnik is iconic in the film world, is being released.
Retrofest is held in the old castle above the city, a recognizable sight of Ljubljana, but I use the earlier part of the morning to visit the symbolic center of both the country and the capital. The former Revolution Square, and today the Republic Square, with the parliament building, Ravnikar's Iskra skyscrapers, Cankar's house and monuments to the revolution and Edvard Kardelj. And I inevitably think about how long those two monuments would have lasted if they had been located on Zagreb's main square, after 1991, and what initiatives for their removal would have been met, if it had been Belgrade's Republic Square, until today.
What is both beautiful and painful for us from other post-Yugoslav republics in Slovenia is obviously a much healthier attitude towards our own past. This does not mean that there is no historical revisionism or nationalism in Slovenia, but it is a fact that the Partisan and Yugoslav heritage has not been erased or questioned. And this regardless of the fact that Slovenia was the first to question the survival of the SFRY, as it was, and that in the end it withdrew from that community and the socialist social order by plebiscite.
This impression is further strengthened by the arrival of school children in front of the main entrance to Cankar's home, where there is a monumental socialist realist monument to Boris Kidrič, authored by Zdenko Kalin, while I listen to the teachers explaining to the children who Kidrič was.
The Retrofest itself, in which apart from us from the former Yugoslav republics, people from Central Europe also participate, we deal with all aspects of the legacy of the Second World War, but not only with our revisionisms, but also with what is happening in Italy, as well as important issues of the success of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the position of the remaining German minority in that area. In other words, it is possible to simultaneously deal with the Yugoslav context, with full awareness of the inseparability of that context from the European one. And that is actually the key lesson and feeling that I carry from Ljubljana, with sadness that this is not self-evident in other contexts here.
At the festival, all of us from here speak our languages, and the people from Central Europe speak English. And we all understand each other perfectly. However, I justify my regret and genuine discomfort in front of the hosts, due to the fact that I can only understand Slovenian, but not speak it, with the structural cynicism of socialist Yugoslavia, which did not teach us all its official languages, and it should have.
At the end of the conference, I go down to Ljubljanica and I can't help but admire Plečnik's markets and that combination of Venice, Paris and the Balkans that Ljubljana breathes, so I hurry to catch the train to Zagreb. This time in a really empty compartment and without any border controls or stops.
Because everyone is running away from the Balkans, and few think of returning to it. And in such circumstances, I logically play Štulić and Azra's first all-time hit, "My Balkan, be strong for me and stand well for me".
Bonus video:
