Croatia’s 1st MEP Election
Only 20 per cent of Croatia’s eligible voters turned out for the first European Parliament election in the country’s history on 14 April. Croatia voted on their first 12 European Parliament seats and will officially join the EU on 1 July. Political analyst Davor Djenero attributed the low turnout to a “weak campaign” to inform [...]
Croatia Introduces Cyrillic
The Croatian government announced plans to install municipal signs written in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts in the eastern city of Vukovar and its surrounding municipalities. The decision is a response to constitutional law requiring bi-lingual signs where a minority surpasses 30 per cent of the population. Vukovar remains a symbolic place as the location [...]
Croats to rebuild historic Ottoman bridge
A popular TV series in Croatia on Suleiman the Magnificent has inspired residents in the eastern city of Osijek to rebuild a bridge that the Ottoman Sultan had built in 1526. The show “Muhteşem Yüzyıl”, or Magnificent Century, chronicles the life of the Sultan and the period of Ottoman expansion under his rule, and is [...]
Vienna’s Croatian Connection
In a city endowed with history, place names in Vienna often evoke brief encounters from another time, moments when eventual figures of history stayed in a hotel (Mark Twain, 1897-99), might have crossed paths in a park (Stalin and Hitler in January and February 1913), dined in the same restaurant (Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Grillparzer, [...]
Worst drought in decades hits Central Europe
From wildfires in Bosnia and crop shortages in Moldova and Serbia, to the decreased water levels of the Danube in Bulgaria, the Balkan and Eastern European region is experiencing the effects of record heat and drought. Following a record winter, the summer’s heat has wreaked havoc on potato and corn crops, especially in Serbia and [...]
Racism Persists In Croatia
Mersiha stood in front of a modernist apartment block on Varsavska street in the centre of downtown Zagreb and nervously rang the bell at the entrance for the umpteenth time. She called the same mobile number over and over. She looked up at the light in the fourth floor window, in what might be her [...]
Revisiting and Reviving the ‘Austrian Riviera’
On 28 Mar, 1894 at 19:00, Emperor Franz Josef boarded the Abbazia-bound Hofjagdzug at Vienna’s Südbahnhof to meet the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The following morning at 9:00 sharp, the Kaiser pulled into the small station of Matulji with “beautiful sunshine, clear sky, blue sea and warm, kräftig air.” Coats of arms and laurel decorated the station with Austrian and [...]
Let’s talk about the Balkans
The first political talk show to be broadcast simultaneously across Balkan countries since the break up of Yugoslavia went on air in April, with support from ERSTE Foundation, the charity wing of the Austrian bank. In the five episodes of Okruženje (Vicinities) broadcast in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia, guests from the different countries discussed [...]
