Between There & Forever – Locating Osijek (Lost Lands #89)

I knew beforehand that developing the Croatia portion of my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders would be a challenge. Now that I have plunged into northern Croatia, I am discovering that though this region has innumerable historical links to Hungary, the further eastward I go, the greater the role played by the Habsburg Empire, Ottoman Turks, and Serbia. Each was a major historical actor in events that defined the region. Hungary still looms large, but its greatest connections to northeastern Croatia is geographical proximity and topographic similarity. This is the region of Slavonia, known for its fertile soil that sprouts sunflower fields and corn fields for miles on end. Much of Slavonia is covered by a featureless landscape that has a great deal in common with the plains of Hungary.?

Sublime Slavonia - Resigned To Oblivion

At the previous stop on my itinerary, I learned that the Baroque splendor of Varazdin constitutes a vital, yet lesser-known side of Croatia. Now I am on to Slavonia, the antithesis of the most popular parts of Croatia. Forget the gorgeous Adriatic coastline, islands floating in a sea turned silver by the sunlight, villages and strongholds carved out of stone, or the mesmerizing waterfalls and lake at Plitvice. There is no mistaking that this is the opposite of the Croatia so many of us have been conditioned to dream of. Slavonia is just as much a part of Croatia as Dalmatia or Istria, but few who travel to the country are aware of its existence. The closest they will come is by glancing at the shape of Croatia on a map. Their eyes are drawn to the scraggly, broken coastline. They might also take note of Zagreb, since it will be marked as the capital. Everything beyond that is resigned to oblivion. The space on the map has cities, towns, villages, roads going in every direction, and no bothers to study them for more than a milli-second.

Slavonia can leave a traveler at a loss for words. I learned that from firsthand experience since it was the first place in Croatia I ever passed through. I can still recall asking myself, is this really Croatia? Back then, I was still new to traveling in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I had yet to discover all those places on the map that are worth taking the time to notice. Slavonia was just a region I had to cross on the way from Bosnia to Budapest. At the time, I had no idea of what I had gotten myself into. The landscape outside the window expanded to the point where there was no horizon. It did not take me long to realize that Slavonia is defined by space. The countryside can prove daunting for a first-time traveler. It felt eternal and in an unsettling way. The enormous sky offered a canvas to dream, if only those dreams were not defeated by distance. Time took on a different meaning. A feeling of longing, for anything to fill the vacuum between there and forever.?

From A Distance - Perception As Reality

That train ride through Slavonia convinced me that the region is mostly made up of sky. The vistas were infinite. That made it hard to know where to start in Slavonia because there seemed to be no end. My preconceived image of Croatia could not have felt further away. I was inside the country, but which one. Slavonia is a land full of mirages, where it is difficult to discern the real from the unreal. How can it be that the closer you get to a village, town or city, the more it would?recede into the distance. Perception is reality. I could have mistaken Slavonia for eastern Hungary, southern Romania, or the black earth region of Ukraine. It looked similar to all of them, and still somehow unique. Perhaps that is the Croatia effect which led me to think of Slavonia as a region that should not be within its borders. The region was an impossible dream that came to me in the daylight. I did not know what to do with it. I could not have been the only one.

Slavonia made me nervous. That has become reason enough to make a return visit. The tension I felt was because of its recent war torn past. When I took that train trip, the region was only sixteen years removed from the fighting between Serbian and Croatian forces that caused thousands of deaths in Slavonia and led hundreds of thousands to flee from their homes. The situation was life or death. Most escaped, tragically some did not. I scanned the countryside for signs that war had paid an extended visit to the area. There was not much to see. This had little to do with the war and much more to do with the sublime flatness of the landscape. I was coming from Bosnia where bullet holes were a common sight. One back street in Sarajevo looked like it had been used for target practice by an entire army. I saw nothing like that in Slavonia, but I was only there for a few hours. The damage had been done beyond the line of my sight. It was hard to square the peaceful pastoral landscape with the violence of modern war. Maybe if there had been low hanging clouds to add a sense of menace, I might have been able to imagine more. Sunshine and clear skies put a happy face on that day. The weather could not have been more pleasant. That made the idea of a war-torn region feel absurd.

Alternate Reality - Arrival At Osijek

Slavonia became a mystery to me. Nowhere was this more apparent than when the train pulled into Osijek, by far the largest city in the region. A city made little sense in such a landscape. What little I saw of Osijek from the train made it feel like an alternative reality. In that regard, it was the same as the rest of Slavonia. A region that is an ill-fit for its country, and yet it was there. It still is. That is why I want to go back there.