Fjaka YU

The untranslatable word fjaka describes “a very particular state of mind when you desire nothing more than to gaze off into the distance and abandon all forms of activity. It’s “the art of doing nothing” and “a yearning for nothingness.” It’s also the title of the latest book of travel writing about the former Yugoslavia, out of Poland.

With Aleksandra Wojtaszek (Fjaka: Sezon na Chorwację / Fjaka: Chorvátska sezóna; Fjaka: A Croatian Season).

Listen: “Fjaka YU” (Episode #113)

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Transcript: “Fjaka YU” (Episode #113)

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[SOUNDBITE]

[JINGLE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and information hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to everyone. 

Come along on this journey as a member and let’s write the travelogue together. Visit Yugoblok.com to join today. 

[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your guide, Peter Korchnak. 

Encyclopedia Britannica recently highlighted the word fjaka on its X account. 

“The Croatian term “fjaka” is defined as complete relaxation or the art of doing nothing. “Fjaka” is something that can’t be learned; rather, you must experience it to awaken its meaning,” Brittanica wrote before calling for making Fjaka Fridays a thing.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Fjaka, it’s a concept, and it’s really hard to translate. It’s really deeply rooted, especially in Dalmatian culture, and it describes a very particular state of mind when [a] person desires nothing more than to gaze off into the distance, of course, ideally at the sea, and abandon all forms of activity. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Aleksandra Wojtaszek [vojtašek] is a writer, journalist, and translator to Polish of mostly poetry from the Serbo-Croatian. She has a doctorate in literary studies, she wrote her dissertation on Croatian and Serbian speculative fiction, and she is an assistant professor at the Institute of Slavic Philology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Someone once explained fjaka to me as a philosophical state on [sic] yearning for nothingness. So it’s some kind of Mediterranean version of mindfulness, or even an art of doing nothing. 

She is also the author of Fjaka: A Croatian Season, a book of travel writing, or as they call it in her native Poland, literary reportage.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: But for me, which is really important for me, fjaka perfectly illustrates this duality I always feel when I’m writing about Croatia. Because on one hand, there’s this really admirable ability to enjoy life, to reflect, to resist the global pressure of, you know, constant achievement. But on the other hand, there is, as always, a darker side, a kind of apathy, a lack of motivation or even initiative. And for me, it’s often tied to a broader social, political and of course, economic issues.

PETER KORCHNAK: I couldn’t do it. I’m a person who can’t sit still. You know, we have to do something, even relaxation is more of a task than anything. And so I’m wondering how, as someone from a neighboring culture, neighboring country, deals with that.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: I have a theory. Because I have, like, more than dozens  meetings in Slovakia last year. And my idea is that Slovakia, especially south Slovakia, for example, Bratislava, is already Mediterranean. Really. When I see this way of life, for me, it’s more Croatian than Polish, for example. People are drinking at two o’clock and they are sitting and speaking. For me, Bratislava is similar to Zagreb, really.

PETER KORCHNAK: Wojtaszek spoke with me from her home village near Poland’s border with my native Slovakia. The village is one of a handful of villages stranded on the Polish side of the Spiš region; my father is from the historical region’s main town in Slovakia.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: I really love Slovakia. I was born 12 kilometers from the border, so I really found it very I find it almost my country.

[SOUNDBITE}

Fjaka (the Book): Origin Story

PETER KORCHNAK: I read Fjaka in the Slovak translation. Polish and Slovak are the only languages the book has been published in, but the book is coming out in the Croatian and Czech translations this year.

As with most outsiders who become fascinated with the place, for Wojtaszek too it was basically an accident.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: The truth is that Croatia and the former Yugoslavia weren’t really a part of my original plan, because growing up, I was absolutely in love with journalism. I even started writing for some local newspaper when I was a teenager. 

Thanks to that experience, I started to realize that I need something which gives me a deeper understanding of the world. So I started to think about maybe philology, because it’s language and it’s also a knowledge about some part of the world. I landed on the Slavic studies and Croatian language. 

Somehow, it was kind of coincidence, but it was a very lucky one, because the summer after, after the decision, I traveled through the countries of the former Yugoslavia. I remember my first was Montenegro, and somehow, something just clicked. I started to feel like it’s my place on the Earth. I started to spend more and more time there, traveling, after that, studying. I was studying in Croatia for [a] few years, and after this in Belgrade a little bit. So I don’t know how it happened, but really it’s my second home.

PETER KORCHNAK: That trip took place in 2011, and beginning the following year and for another six years after that, Wojtaszek lived part time in Croatia and Belgrade. She then moved back to Croatia during the pandemic, then back again to Poland. She visits often. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: For me it’s great, because I like to drive, and for me, from Krakow to Zagreb is like, you know, 10 hours of listening to podcasts, for example like yours, and I’m there. So it’s not, not so far away.

PETER KORCHNAK: Final proof that Remembering Yugoslavia is better for driving than falling asleep to. 

As for the distance between Krakow and Zagreb, it’s slightly less than Portland, Oregon is from San Francisco, California.

The book we’re here to talk about was in a way also a happy accident. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: It was in the publishing house where I mentioned my idea, like, “oh my god, I’m so I’m so exhausted with my PhD. I love journalism. I want to write a book about Croatia one day. And it was like, you know, just my dream. And after a few days, they contacted me and tell me, yeah, it’s a great idea. Let’s do it. Send us your idea for this book. 

I think this book was inside me for all this time, because, I have written it already for 10 years in my head. So I really well knew what I want to say. 

After that the pandemic started, I was first. I was really, scared what I’m going to do. But after, I was still working for more than three years to finish it.

Most of the time I was, for example, I was on the islands, islands in Croatia, which Croatians are really proud that they have more than 1,000 islands. They were a great place during [the] pandemic, because there was not a lot of contact between people. And it was [a] great place to write, to think.

About the Book Fjaka: A Croatian Season

PETER KORCHNAK: Given that that it’s not translated to English, let’s talk about the book. What is it? What’s in it, what kind of stories you’re sharing, you’re talking about?

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: The book is structured in three parts. I started from something lighter topics, and after that, I’m going darker. 

So the first part, it’s called Sea and Land, and this section look[s] at tourism, which is a key part of Croatian economy and the way of life on the islands, also. It explores the really complex history of the Istrian Peninsula, some small Dalmatian towns. And of course, there’s also Zagreb, which is [the] capital city. So it’s somehow geographical a little bit, but this is where some underlying issues begin to surface. So for example, it’s post-Yugoslav deindustrialization, economic overreliance on tourism, growing, social inequalities, and topics like this.

And the second part, it’s about Croatian identity. So there I delve into question[s] of language, national narratives, identity. I also look at the socialist Yugoslavia period, and these three major historical figures, Franjo Tudjman, which was the first president of Croatia, Josip Broz Tito, of course, you know him, and Matija Gubec, who was a peasant revolt leader. And in this part, I wanted to understand how Croatians see themselves, and how their collective memory or collective narration has been shaped, especially, of course, the parts that are controversial.

And the third part, the last one, it’s called Shadows, and it focuses on the wars, on the Second World War and the 90s conflicts. But not by, you know, detailing battles, but by examining their impact on today’s life, with special focus on war veterans and the city of Vukovar, which was destroyed by Serbs during this so-called Homeland War, but also the Ustashas concentration camp on the island of Pag.

PETER KORCHNAK: As an avid reader of travel writing, really my favorite nonfiction genre, I found Fjaka to be quite informative, perhaps even didactic, in that it contains a lot of background info about Croatia. And, on the reportage side of it, a lot of human stories unfold against that background.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Polish literary reportage, sometimes it’s a lot of impressions. 

For me, it was really important to not rely only on my impressions. There is a few moments in [the] book when I travel sometimes with some ideas I already had in this time. But after that, I don’t know people or conversation or places, just changing [sic] my mind. So it was, for me, it was really, really important also to read a lot of books, to watch many films, to speak with as much people as possible, people from different backgrounds, there are many references in my book to literature, to music, film, art, but above all, it’s about people and their stories. And I really wanted to have people from different backgrounds and social classes, not only, I don’t know, politicians or artists.

I didn’t want it to be only my impressions.

PETER KORCHNAK: It was the dissolution of Yugoslavia that provided the narrative thrust for Fjaka. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: When I was writing this, I realized that many stories in the book revolve around some pivotal moment, and that’s the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 90s. Like that period really marked a total transformation, politically, economically, socially, and in many ways, it wasn’t the change for the better. Which is really important. Croatia is a small country, but it’s very diverse. Different regions have some different history, dialects, land space. It’s really united in diversity, but there are some experiences that are shared, especially this, from 90s, like war and privatization. So my idea was that to truly understand Croatia today, you have to look back at that decade.

[SOUNDBITE}

How Croatians Remember Yugoslavia

PETER KORCHNAK: Now, of course, this is a podcast about Yugoslavia, the memory of Yugoslavia. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what you’ve heard from people on your travels, what you’ve seen in terms of that connection. How do people, quote, unquote, remember Yugoslavia in Croatia these days, based on your experience, based on your conversations, based on your research.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: People, especially older ones, when we were speaking about nowadays life, but they would often, very often, say to me, like, you know, back then, we had factories, life might have been simpler, we were connected to the work the way we are now. But still, we could go to the seaside in the summer. We didn’t worry so much about our jobs, about our life. And I heard this again and again, especially in some in this part of Croatia, which are not so not, maybe not so much in Zagreb, or, I don’t know, in Split, but in islands, in Slavonia, in some smaller towns. 

So there is this quite persistent feeling that something important was lost during the transition. The ordinary people never really got a say in what came next. 

The stories I heard while researching to this book were about people who lost their jobs, their homes, their future, and they are the real consequences of the 90s. So it’s why maybe the idea of Yugoslavia is still so so alive for some people. 

And people really focus on artifacts, like what car people draw, what drinks they had, what posters looked like. [The] aesthetic of the time. 

But I think we need to go further. We should to think about the ideas of the time, the politics of this time. And I see that people in Croatia are also aware of that. 

But on the other hand, it’s really interesting how this collective memory, or official memory, is about this that Yugoslavia was a big jail for nations, or that Croats were always treated badly there. That’s the official narration. And many politics [sic] and even many people will say it if you ask them, What do you think about socialist Yugoslavia? But when you start to speak with them about their real life, they start to tell the stories I mentioned now. So about the easier and better life, about stable jobs, about stable health insurance, health care, about some much more just system. So it’s really interesting how you can, like divide those two types of memory.

PETER KORCHNAK: One review of the book, in a Polish outlet but by a Croatian critic, charged the book with leaning too far to the left in terms of its sources. But as you heard, Wojtaszek explores both official and popular memory narratives and speaks to people across the political spectrum. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: The easiest way was asking my friends who are mostly more on the left side of the political spectrum about their parents, and because their parents mostly mostly like me, they were pretty open with me about speaking about this, these times. 

But maybe the my worst experience, which is not in the book, because I decided I don’t want it there was speaking with men who thinks that Jasenovac, the concentration camp, was not a concentration camp, but it was just a working camp, something like that. 

So on [sic] the end, I decided not to tell [a] story about Jasenovac, especially that it’s more, much more popular story. I decided to tell the story about [the] Second World War through the lenses of some small concentration camp on the island of Pag, which is called Slana, and it’s really not recognized still. It was there only for three months. And it’s really, somehow, it’s a big shock, because I love the island of Pag, it looks like the surface of the moon. The nature there is wild, and it’s really beautiful. And if you don’t know that there on this beautiful beach, near to this beautiful sea, there was a concentration camp for Serbs, for Jews, for antifascists from Croatia, also, you will never find any signs of it. And also the fact that you cannot find any sign of it was, for me, a good syndrome of how Croatia is today dealing with this complicated past. Which means it’s not dealing, it’s trying not to deal.

PETER KORCHNAK: 20th century wars undergird Croatian official identity.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Still, there is so much people who are, for example, about this common enemy. One of my chapter[s] is devoted to war veterans. And I really can understand them. They were 20 years old. Somebody told them they need their homeland, they need independence, and I can understand it. It was war. They are already often suffer[ing] from PTSD, and for them, it’s easier to have an enemy. It’s easier to have one common enemy, because war is black and white. 

And the whole political narratives in Croatia from 1991 is that war was the most important moment of Croatian history. It’s also really interesting, because in this narration, in this right-wing narration, you cannot never [sic] criticize anything which happens from 1990s till today, because Croatia has his [sic] own homeland so everything is great. 

But still, there was a rapid and chaotic privatization. There was the rise of nationalism. But there’s a kind of collective, I don’t know, oath; we are not, not going to speak about our problems, because the independence is the most important. And I believe that for many people, the independence of Croatia is the most important. And it was, for example, for Franjo Tudjman, the first president. But the problem is that he only wants Croatia, he wanted Croatia. He was not really interested in how this Croatia will look like. So today we see the many problems who are the results of this way of thinking, like the corruption, the nepotism, and the many problems because of which the young Croats are emigrating.

PETER KORCHNAK: I found some parallels in this story with Slovakia. In the 90s, nationalist politicians managed to make it an independent country but there never was a real substantial discussion about what kind of country it would be. Independence was the mantra and the goal—and mission accomplished.

Aside from learning about new places, when it comes to travel writing I particularly enjoy reading about places I’ve visited, if only to compare notes. Here’s an excerpt from Fjaka: A Croatian Season about a place that exemplifies Croatia’s attitudes toward its socialist history. The translation, from the Slovak translation, is mine.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC]

PETER KORCHNAK: Today, Kumrovec is an open-air museum, which houses not only Tito’s birthplace and a copy of his most famous statue—a thoughtful Marshal with his hands behind his back taking a bold step into a bright future—but also several other buildings and a whole host of artefacts presenting the life of a Zagorje village at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. (…)

The local authorities promote Kumrovec with the slogan: “The most famous village in the world.” They are partly right: few places in this part of the world can boast of a visit by an American president. In 1970, Richard Nixon extended his official visit to Belgrade to include Zagreb and Kumrovec. After the Marshal’s death, the communist authorities had no better idea to consolidate Yugoslavia than to come up with the slogan: “We are all Tito’s, Tito is ours.” Forty years later, the leader is a brand and his native village has become a “destination.” On May 25th, several thousand tourists come here to celebrate the birthday of the leader who maneuvered between the East and the West. The Broz family home, hung with corn cobs, presents itself as sympathetic but poor. Rumor has it that the house’s modest appearance is deliberately maintained to support the legend of the leader’s impoverished childhood. A few years after Josip left for Sisak, the family lost their last piece of land and in 1920 they were forced to sell the house. Although Tito expressed a certain nostalgia for Zagorje, he did not buy the house and the surrounding land until the 1970s, more than half a century after it had ceased to belong to his parents. 

But it is another building which rests in ruins in Kumrovec that presents a better illustration of the fate of socialist Yugoslavia. It is the so-called Political School – a place where young proponents of “socialism with a human face” and promising party activists received an education in Marxism. In Belgrade, after World War II, the Higher Party School, named after the pre-war communist revolutionary Đuro Đaković, operated until the mid-1950s. Toward the end of his life, Tito expressed a concern that there were “many good communists in the country who were very weak in theory.” So in the mid-1970s, a center with the official name of the Josip Broz Tito Political School of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was established on a hill near his native village. A few years later, a larger building was put into use, where numerous students were accommodated in comfortable conditions, with a dining room, lecture hall, cinema, large library, sports hall and swimming pool, as well as a nuclear shelter. Over the fifteen years of its operation, the school produced one thousand five hundred graduates, while six hundred teachers, mostly with solid academic backgrounds, lectured here. Today, this impressive example of modernist brutalism is overgrown with grass and mold. 

Branko Pratengrazer, a local poet and retired teacher as well as a local activist from the socialist era and a graduate of the school in 1977, guides us around the building. He shows us a red commemorative album with Tito’s portrait on the cover and the inscription “Proletarians of all countries, unite.” In the first photo, the Marshal himself is lecturing the audience gathered in the auditorium about the history of the party. In the graduation photo, Branko has shoulder-length hair and sideburns and a white shirt, seeming dreamy and a little absent-minded. He does not resemble the extremely energetic old man of today who cannot stand being contradicted. (…) 

“Sons of peasants and workers attended elementary philosophy lectures. That was a real social experiment. But of course we also had a rich social life,” laughs Branko, winking at me.

He describes himself as a supporter of the regime at the time, which elicits a murmur of approval from the Croatians who accompany me. He admits that the school was founded in Kumrovec because the officials at the time were servile to Tito. The village had already built a state-of-the-art elementary school, but, as Pratengrazer claims, for a long time it had not been able to sufficiently exploit the fact that “the greatest son of our nations” was born here. This opinion is not unique in this region. “If we had licked some boots instead of sitting quietly in a corner, this would have been Las Vegas,” I once heard another Kumrovec resident say.

“Zagorje people always have some boots up in the air,” teases his Croatian friend. “Back then and since the 1990s as well.”

“It’s not our fault that there aren’t enough skilled staff,” Branko retorts.

The conversation is interrupted by a visit from the police. They ask for our documents, but in the end, thanks to Branko’s intervention and our journalistic IDs, we are allowed to stay. The policeman explains that the abandoned building is regularly broken into by thieves who are mainly hunting for copper, and much less often for the scattered books from the once perfectly equipped library. A few months ago, Krešimir, a historian and specialist in Yugoslav self-government, saved some period literature, but now the books are in a poor condition, they have become damp and are falling apart, lying in large, moldy piles. Branko says that a few weeks ago a National Geographic crew had been filming a film here, and in order to get better footage, they moved the books to a room with a leaky roof. The soggy faces of Tito and Lenin stare sadly at us from the floor.

Reception for Fjaka

PETER KORCHNAK: There was a market for a book like Fjaka in Poland because, as for other peoples of Central Europe, Croatia is a major summer destination.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Polish people love Croatia. I know that not only Polish people, but we are 1 million of Poles every year is going to Croatia for holidays.

But I was not sure if people are really so interested in in this way of writing, in the reportage— I really don’t want to write some tourist guide book, so there is no information about beaches, or, I don’t know, about hotels. In my book, there is a lot of problems. There’s a lot of complicated pictures. So I was not sure. 

But on the other hand, I was always speaking with Polish people about Croatia. And I had this feeling that maybe people are interested in something more than [the] sea, than, I don’t know, then some great food or something like that, or swimming in the sea.

It was true, because the reception of this book was, was really, really good. Both critics and and readers like gave me great, great feedback, not only in Polish, but also in Slovakia. So I think there was, there was a yearning for something like this in Poland.

PETER KORCHNAK: Aside from it being a solid piece of writing, the relationship with Croatia was reflected in the book’s good reception in both Poland and Slovakia.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: I have to say that I’m pretty happy how [the] book was received in Poland, and I’m also really, really happy, amazed how it was received in Slovakia. 

And I feel like I managed to strike this balance between reaching people who don’t know much, but also offering something to experts. So but still, of course, it’s impossible to write a book about [a] country. I was always aware it’s not possible. And it’s really a blessing, because if you know something is not possible, you are free. You can focus on topics you think are the most important, compelling, interesting, and everything. 

I really like how people react to this book, they’ve I really like. They think it’s funny, because I really wanted to be at least a little bit funny, because I know there is so much different difficult topics. Even when I’m writing about Vukovar and the war, I still make it a little bit funny, because I believe that the people in [the] Balkans are like this. They like to laugh, but also they have a lot of problems, so somehow I need to manage so people think that’s funny, which is very important to me. 

And people really often tell it to me that it’s not only a story about Croatia, it’s also a story about all our postcommunism [sic] countries, which during [the] 90s were in the process of transition, of changing economy and everything. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Whatever the sub-sub genre, good travel writing can double as a travel guide. Which is exactly what’s happened with Fjaka.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: I’m really happy that people are sometimes traveling with my books. So they are sending me pictures, I got many pictures during summer from Croatia on Instagram because people are traveling to some place I mentioned, or they are trying to reach some other parts in Croatia. For example, they’re writing, we are we are spending summer vacation in Croatia for 20 years, but now we have read your book, and we finally started to understand some things, and we are trying to get somewhere in some other city than before, something like that. So I really like it. I really like that, that so many people is contacting me and telling their stories from Croatia and also from ex-Yugoslavia. So it’s very, very important for me, that it’s something which is, which is helping people to know something more about this really interesting, really rich, really vibrant and compelling country.

PETER KORCHNAK: I live in the United States, and my sister lives in the Netherlands. And when I saw, I don’t know, somewhere online, maybe some of the media that I that I follow, you know, news or information about this book, I asked my sister to buy it for me on her next trip to Slovakia back home, and she did, and first she read it herself, and then she mailed it to me for me to read. She’s been traveling to Croatia a lot, but she said, You know, I learned so much. I did not know about this. I did not know about that. That was amazing. And you know, so like, you know, people see, people who casually visit or visit in the summer, see and experience the sea, the beaches, that atmosphere but there’s so much more to this country that’s so much ruled by tourism.

Tourism in Croatia

Croatia relies on tourism so much, and maybe increasingly so. What are you seeing that tourism of this kind is doing with the country or to the country. You know, there’s a lot of voices within Croatia complaining about it, but what are you seeing as a visitor, as a journalist, as a scholar of Croatia? 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Tourism is a huge part of [the] Croatian economy. It’s— almost one quarter of the GDP comes directly from it. So because since the fall of Yugoslavia, industry and agriculture have declined. So tourism and services are now essential, and there’s been constant investment in infrastructure, highways, ports, hotels, and of course, every year, [the] media celebrates the new records in touristic numbers. 

But the problem is, there’s, of course, a darker side. The season is short but extremely intense. It disrupts local life. Jobs in tourism are often seasonal, unstable, not very ambitious, and young people increasingly see no reason to purse [sic] education, because they will likely end up waiting tables or cleaning apartments anyway. And of course, it’s also a fragile industry, and the jobs it creates aren’t exactly long-term or even well paid, but it’s changing. 

There’s extreme seasonal swing. For many locals on the coast, summer means chaos, and then winter becomes almost totally quiet. And so this overtourism has become a major issue in Croatia is not just an economic driver, it’s overwhelming, really. It has led to a housing crisis, rising pollution, environmental degradation. 

Places like Dubrovnik are the great examples. They are cities with ancient, rich history, and now they feel hollowed out. Like a few decades ago, people actually lived in these old towns, and now it’s only Airbnbs and some overpriced cafes and tourist shop[s] which is, which is pretty, pretty sad. You know, Dubrovnik today has been made into some kind of tourist Disneyland, like, it’s packed with people searching for King’s Landing or following some trail of, I don’t know, Denerys or Cersei.

It also leads to mass emigration, especially among young people, because many don’t see a future. And the big question is, How sustainable is this model, really? Croatia, managed to weather the pandemic, for example, pretty well, and now I see it also is trying to shift its focus slightly. They are trying to attract more high-end tourists. 

But I’m also afraid that the real game changer may be the climate crisis, because already these heat waves and wildfires are starting to drive some visitors away. So I’m not really sure how longer this model can exist.

[SOUNDBITE]

Wojtaszek’s Future

PETER KORCHNAK: The Polish book about Croatia is finally getting a Croatian translation. Fjaka. Hrvatska: pogled izvana (Fjaka. Croatia: A View from the Outside) should be out right about now.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: This book appears in my head in Croatian first, because I was speaking with people in Croatian, I was reading Croatian and everything. And after that, I felt it like I need to translate it into Polish from Croatian, and now it’s going back, because it’s, it’s now it’s translated back to Croatian. So it was really interesting.

My publisher house, likes to mention that I’m the same age as independent Croatia, because we were both born in the [sic] June of 1991.

PETER KORCHNAK: Years later, Wojtaszek keeps traveling to the region, albeit differently. 

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: The truth is that my way of traveling has changed a lot. Like 15 years ago, it was just me, my backpack, and I also loved to hitchhike. But now, of course, I have less time and more responsibilities, so I travel more intentionally. 

I’m often in search of a specific story, but still, I usually drive which I enjoy, and having a car helps me to reach some more remote places, and I also can bring more home, more books.

I also must admit, I love traveling alone, especially since I have friends in almost every major city in the former Yugoslavia. 

I still also have these quiet, flaneur moments when I’m just wandering through the streets, observing people, everyday life, because it’s really important, it’s the moment when the most unexpected stories reveal very often, and it I still believe that for writing some good stories, you need time, because you need to have relations with people. I know that people from former Yugoslavia, they make this impression [that] they are really open and they are but for really important stories, about war, about identity, about some economical problems, you need to make some kind of a little bit tighter relation.

So now my trips are some kind of mix of professional and personal experience. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Her new project is taking Wojtaszek to Montenegro.

ALEKSANDRA WOJTASZEK: Somehow I’m also trying to cover some topics which I didn’t cover so much in book about Croatia and fjaka. For example, Partisan movement, because Partisan movement, for the today’s Montenegro, Montenegrin identity, the Partisan Movement it’s really important. In this Montenegro book I wanted to focus a little bit more about women and their path from this Balkan region, which is a little bit, you know, conservative, but it has changed a lot. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC – “Balkan Blues” by Sticky Keys]

PETER KORCHNAK: In an era where overtourism rules the streets and beaches and media reports, a deep engagement with a country becomes all the more valuable. I hope Fjaka: A Croatian Season gets a deserved English translation soon. Until then, you can read some of Wojtaszek’s other English-language work online. I’ve included links in the episode webpage at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening and traveling with us. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member and take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. 

Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys; additional music by Mello C, licensed under Creative Commons.

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Cześć!

[SOUNDBITE] 

English-Language Works by Aleksandra Wojtaszek

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