LETTER FROM CRIKVENICA/Paddy Agnew: It is a magnificent June evening in Crikvenica, just down the Croatian Adriatic coast from the port of Rijeka. The atmosphere is distinctly holiday time as lithe, suntanned bodies glide along the busy seafront against the backdrop of the craggy, rugged Adriatic coastline.
Cafes, pizza houses and restaurants are doing a brisk trade, mainly catering for Italian, German, French and Dutch tourists .
Some 17 years ago, when this correspondent first travelled down this coastline, there were plenty of tourists about but, in the meantime, just about everything else has changed. Back in the mid-'80s, "Yugoslavia" was by no means a starving, poor country but it nonetheless retained a sombre, East-European feel in which the most sought-after items of Western consumer demand were conspicuous by their absence.
In today's Croatia, in contrast, the majority of cars on the road are the latest Western models available, whilst clothes have an Italian fashion feel and the busiest, most extensively equipped shop in the mall is the one selling mobile phones. The hedonist, consumerist West, complete with Internet cafes, has arrived in Croatia with a vengeance.
There is no surprise about any of this, given the enthusiasm with which the former East Bloc has embraced capitalist market forces, notwithstanding all the inevitable difficulties encountered along the way. What is surprising is to listen to Tanjia, a trained nurse now in her early '60s. In response to the not exactly original observation that "you Croatians are all a lot better off now, aren't you?", her reply is unexpected: "What do you mean? We were far better off in the old Communist days under Tito. Today we have half a million people unemployed. Twenty years ago, everywhere was safe, you could walk out of your house and leave the door open and nothing would happen. Now, I am afraid to walk around my city (Rijeka) late at night.
"If young people get a chance, they just want to get out of here and find a life somewhere else, in the States, Canada, Italy, wherever." Like a lot Slovenes and Croats, Tanjia speaks excellent Italian. To round off her current pension, she travels to Pordenone (in Friuli, Italy) every month for a two week stint to live with and look after a physically disabled 75-year-old Italian woman.
In a country which is still proud of its ultimate victory in the bloody and traumatic "Homeland War" of independence as it struggled to fight free from Belgrade less than 10 years ago, Tanjia even has the nerve to utter the most heretical thought of all: "When you look at the difficulties our economy has, then I think it was a mistake to break free entirely from Belgrade. We should have stayed in some sort of confederate Yugoslavia, a country that would be run along the lines of Switzerland and its cantons".
Tanjia's views are probably not representative. Recent opinion polls, for example, show that 75 per cent of Croatians, rather than being nostalgic for a Yugoslav past, are impatient for a European Union future. A recent state TV programme, addressing the theme of nostalgia for the communist past, registered only a small minority who admitted to longing for the days of Marshall Tito.
Marin, a young public service employee, says that Tanjia's views about today's Croatia relate to her generation's history. He speaks excellent English and carries two mobile phones.
Marin admits that 400,000 unemployed in a country of 4.4 million is painful. He concedes that the low average annual wage of about €3,851 certainly encourages young Croats to emigrate to Italy, Germany or the USA. That, however, does not mean turning the clock back, he says, adding: "If you grew up in a world where work was guaranteed, where the economy was state-planned and state-run and where, under Tito, people were spared the repressive totalitarianism of the Soviet regime, or of East Germany, then such a reaction is normal.
"The fact is, though, that if anyone stood up and seriously tried to persuade Croatians that they should join some form of confederation with Serbia, then he would be the most unpopular man in the country, people would think he is just mad."